>From: Adrian Teo <ateo@whitworth.edu>
> hvt: Neither my writings nor any other works written during the last 19
> centuries have been designated (by human decision) to serve as the canon for a
> worshiping community.
>
> [AT] Side note: What about the Koran?
You're quite right; my statement was too broad. I was thinking only of the
traditional Christian community. One could also ask about the Book of
Morman.
> [AT] You seem to have reduced the formation of the canon to a purely
> sociological process - "very human" as you write. Where do you see God's
> role in this, if at all? And what about the individual books, are they
> _solely_ human actions, of does divine inspiration play a role? I can't help
> but think that you would be willing to grant God a significant role in the
> processes of writing and collating the books.
Yes, but recall what I said earlier: "So, ... I am inclined instead to move
in the direction of another view of the Bible. (3) The (Christian) Bible is
a thoroughly human testimony to the authentic human experience of the
presence of the Sacred -- specifically, God, as experienced by the ancient
Hebrews and the early Christian community."
So, the "significant role" is God's participation in the human experience of
God's presence. The authentic experience of God's presence is the
inspiration. What is written in response is a "thoroughly human testimony"
to that experience.
The concept of inspiration that I find highly problematic is the rather
pervasive idea that inspiration = a direct communication of particular
information from the divine Mind to the human writer's mind, thereby
conveying privileged information (say, about the formational history of the
universe) that must then (because it was directly transmitted by God) be
declared "inerrant."
Question: What does it mean to call the Bible "the Word of God"? (I ask with
curiosity to discover what that title means to people on the list.)
You asked about the process of selecting and collating the particular
contributions to the canon. I see that as a thoroughly human process of a
worshiping community constructing a canon that expresses its best judgment
about how that community's experience of God can be captured in writing. Did
God act in such a way as to ensure a particular outcome of that process? I
sincerely doubt that.
Enough heresy (= minority position) for one post.
Howard Van Till
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