Re: Biblical Interpretation Reconsidered

Walt,
please, analyze what C.S.Lewis said, and what Howard said. Don't right
away conclude that what Howard said means right away that he does not
accept the Word of the Lord. Howard accepts Jesus as Saviour and lord as
well. He would not be teaching at a Christian College if he did
not. However, not everyone reads the Bible as if it was written in the
English language, nor as if it is always saying what we think it says. In
the past the result was that translations did not express what the original
said. So, if someone else's interpretation differs from your, do not think
right away it is a wishy-washy approach. Try to understand your brother in
Christ, rather than right away assume that your reading is better than
someone else's. Howard just tried to say, that it is often not an either,
or approach.

Jan de K.

At 10:47 AM 20/12/2003 -0500, wallyshoes wrote:
>With all due respect to you, Howard, I strongly favor Lewis' words over
>what you
>say here.
>
>I am just a non-theologian but I can understand this issue very well.
>Jesus made
>it very clear that he was to be one's Savior and Lord or else be rejected as
>such. I first came to read the NT (as a theist) and nothing could have
>been more
>obvious (IMO). If there were a wishy-washy middle of the road approach to
>Jesus,
>I would have leaped at it -- rather committing my life to him.
>
>Walt
>
>"Howard J. Van Till" wrote:
>
> > 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
>
>--
>===================================
>Walt Hicks <wallyshoes@mindspring.com>
>
>In any consistent theory, there must
>exist true but not provable statements.
>(Godel's Theorem)
>
>You can only find the truth with logic
>If you have already found the truth
>without it. (G.K. Chesterton)
>===================================
Received on Sat Dec 20 12:30:44 2003