Lunch hour philosophy on the Bible
Bill Hamilton (hamilton@predator.cs.gmr.com)
Fri, 5 Jan 1996 16:25:50 -0500Today, as I do nearly Friday, I had lunch with a colleague who is a
Lutheran. He's frequently quite amused by evangelical attitudes toward the
Bible. Today we were talking about the "VCR history" discussions on the
reflector, and he observed that evangelicals seem to say, "The Bible is the
word of God, and therefore it's absolutely accurate and I must read it and
believe it." On the other hand he characterized the mainstream Protestant
view as , "I have accepted Jesus Christ as my savior. The entire Bible
teaches about Him. Therefore I read the Bible to learn about my savior."
While I think he was being a bit hard on most evangelicals, I think there
is a tendency to fall into that sort of thinking. On the other hand, if
the Bible teaches me about Jesus Christ (and that's what I believe it
does), then lack of detail about peripheral issues is a rather small
concern. Note that I'm not claiming inaccuracy. I'm just saying that when
the primary purpose of a document is x, then when it mentions y, one would
not expect the author to even consider that he must provide anything other
than human observations/idioms sufficient to communicate the primary
message.
Bill Hamilton | Vehicle Systems Research
GM R&D Center | Warren, MI 48090-9055
810 986 1474 (voice) | 810 986 3003 (FAX)
hamilton@gmr.com (office) | whamilto@mich.com (home)