From: Howard J. Van Till (hvantill@chartermi.net)
Date: Wed Jul 09 2003 - 08:38:29 EDT
From: "Glenn Morton" <glennmorton@entouch.net>
Interesting Howard. To what then do we look for information on God's
nature?
I'm not so much looking for "information" in the sense of facts or
propositions, but for ways to make sense of my total experience of life.
That is what leads me to speak of the "Sacred," the "More than mere material
structures," and the like.
Do we look at what we like and don't like, and choose what we like?
No, we look at everything we experience, and then do the best we can to make
sense out of it.
If God in fact is a bloody war-God, then it is best to know that. If God is
not, it is best to know that as well.
Agreed.
My problem with throwing things out independently if we don't like them is
that it is such a messy affair to do it piece meal. If one decides that the
Bible has little truth to say about God, why not throw it out wholesale and
be done with it?
By "throwing things out independently" I presume you are referring to my
rejection of your application of the text that you cited from Isaiah. Yes,
that might be characterized as "messy." One has to take responsibility for
evaluating everything. That's a lot more difficult ("messy") than making an
unqualified choice to designate some inherited text as the one and only
authority and then declare one's own reading of it to be the correct and
divinely sanctioned one.
What I choose to do is to include the biblical text, and the authentic human
experience of the Sacred that it represents, as part of the human experience
that I want to make sense of. In that context, throwing out the entire text
"wholesale" is as arbitrary and unwarranted as accepting the entire text as
having supreme authority over any other form of human experience.
Howard Van Till
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