From: Howard J. Van Till (hvantill@chartermi.net)
Date: Thu Jul 10 2003 - 11:17:19 EDT
>From: "Josh Bembenek" <jbembe@hotmail.com>
> Did not the writers of the canon not synthesize their portrait of God from
> "Scripture, tradition, reason and experience"?
Indeed they did, within the limits of what was available to them in all 4
categories.
> And why should we make any
> assumption that they were not privileged in experience such to elevate their
> writings above others?
You have a right to ask the question your way, but my form of the question
is, Why should we elevate those writings above others? Of course these
writers had first hand experience of events that we know only by their
reports and their interpretations. We, on the other hand, have experience of
events and discoveries that they could not even anticipate. I'm advocating a
level playing field.
> I did not personally see Jesus, or visit the empty
> tomb, nor was I capable of interviewing reliable witnesses of the account.
> I therefore have no problem placing a higher trust in the Gospel accounts
> than my own ability to reason/experience, etc. concerning the Resurrection
> since the writers thereof had much more priviledged experiences.
See above.
I had said:
>> In constructing our portraits of God, I think we are obligated to use all of
>>the resources available to us -- portraits inherited from the past (canon,
>>tradition), our own human experience, the experience of other humans,
>>history, science, ......... In some circles this list is 4-fold:
>>Scripture, tradition, reason and experience. Not a bad way to go.
Josh replied:
> Yes, this is very important, God will be who God will be despite our
> understanding of Him. But your reluctance of "elevating the cannon" and
> hesitation about the accuracy of our portraits does not necessitate that we
> seek extrabiblical sources to be sure that we are correct.
We will have to agree to disagree here. I have no intention of trashing or
neglecting the biblical text, but I no longer see warrant for isolating that
text as the sole source/authority of my portrait of God. I see no reason to
presume everything in the biblical text to be accurate, and I find
extrabiblical material and post-biblical human experience to be essential.
Howard Van Till
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Thu Jul 10 2003 - 11:18:48 EDT