Re: Biblical Interpretation Reconsidered

Moorad writes: "Howard’s questioning of Scripture indicates that his faith
lies elsewhere."

Howard is not questioning Scripture. He is questioning an interpretation of
Scripture. To say that "his faith lies elsewhere" is the kind of jumping to
conclusions that Jesus warns us against. I am not questioning anyone's faith
here, but I think we should leave such judgment to God.

Bob Schnieder

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alexanian, Moorad" <alexanian@uncw.edu>
To: "Howard J. Van Till" <hvantill@chartermi.net>; "William Hamilton"
<whamilton51@comcast.net>
Cc: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2003 10:44 AM
Subject: RE: Biblical Interpretation Reconsidered

> Howard’s questioning of Scripture indicates that his faith lies elsewhere.
"Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes
to the Father but through Me.' "John 14:6. Any human creature who claims to
be The Truth is an excellent candidate for the mental asylum. Only the Son
of God Himself could utter such words. I love the simplicity of Lewis’ prose
and the profundity of his writings.
>
>
>
> Moorad
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu on behalf of Howard J. Van Till
> Sent: Sat 12/20/2003 10:15 AM
> To: William Hamilton
> Cc: asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: Re: Biblical Interpretation Reconsidered
>
>
>
> Bill gave us the following quotation from C.S. Lewis:
>
> > A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would
not
> > be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic-on a level with
the
> > man who says he is a poached egg-or else he would be the Devil of Hell.
You
> > must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or
else
> > a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can
spit
> > at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call Him
> > Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about
His
> > being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not
> > intend to.
>
> With all due respect for C.S. Lewis, I believe he did Christianity a
> disservice by posing the above dilemma. The two stark choices he poses are
> not the only two that could reasonably be posed. There are others based on
> differing assumptions and judgments about the character of the N.T. text.
> (When was it written? By whom? For what purposes? Does the text give us
> exact quotations of words actually spoken by Jesus? How does Lewis come to
> know Jesus' intentions so clearly?)
>
> Howard Van Till
>
>
>
Received on Sat Dec 20 11:32:29 2003