Re: [asa] An Evangelical Manifesto

On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 9:42 AM, <mrb22667@kansas.net> wrote:

>
> Thanks for the Galileo quotations, Rich. Those are insightful, though I
> think
> we would nuance it a bit more carefully now. We tend to make a straw man
> argument about the literalists: that they woodenly apply their hermeneutic
> to
> everything --like God having hands, etc. Most educated ones are more
> intelligently selective about it than they are given credit for, even if we
> disagree with the extent to which they still apply it.
>

Terry Gray has in my opinion an appropriate nuance. He came into our church
and did a talk on theistic evolution. During the talk he addressed the issue
of interpreting Scripture. He noted that if there is an apparent
contradiction that that is an appropriate time to reconsider our fallible
interpretation. One of the least appreciated consequences of Sola
Scripturais that nobody's interpretation of Scripture is infallible.
That's why
Luther invoked Scripture and reason vs Pope and Council at Worms. This does
not mean that we drop our interpretation, just reconsider it. In my opinion,
contemporary fundamentalist thought has turned "private Interpretation" into
its own Pope and Council. The refusal to reconsider proves that.

Galileo was noting that wooden literalism is the interpretation that tends
to get you in trouble. I would note that nevertheless being literal as in
"interpreting according to the literary genre" is a good starting point. As
I hope I have shown in the debate about the Fall, it takes a lot to push me
off center. As David O. rightly sensed the doctrine of the Fall and
Redemption is at the core of what it means to be a Christian and we should
not lightly drop it.

In conclusion, the literal interpretation may be wrong in some instances but
we should not go completely the other way and assume -- like apparently
Galileo did -- that it is a priori wrong.

Rich Blinne
Member ASA

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Fri May 9 14:15:08 2008