Brief and Sundry
I pick my wife up from the airport tomorrow night, and I'm glad. Sure, Mikey and I watched five action movies in five days (two Bruce Lee films, to boot) one football movie (Invincible) ate pizza one night, taqueria another, burritos tonight. I had a good time with my wonderful son, and only got angry once or twice over his extended vision of housework timing. He's 14, so much an individual and almost a man, but he still needs me in young and unexpected ways from time to time. Our pest guy sprayed inside a few days ago and later that night he came out to tell me he thought spiders were crawling in his bed. I was able to comfort him in a way which is rare for us now.
He's a good son, a friend who is closer than friend, and I love him.
But still. Stephanie provides a central point around which housework, grocery shopping, and cooking get done (even if we share those jobs). It's easier to sleep with her next to me. And I'm curious to find out what happens to Fiver and Hazel-rah and the rest of the rabbits in Watership Down, our nightly read. No fair of me to read ahead.
And on reading.
I had to decide what my next book purchase would be, and I went with Wright's second volume, Victory of God. I was looking at Meier, Brown, Crossan...anyone with a big book about Jesus or the gospels. But Wright, once again, it is. I also ordered the first in Sandalstraps' resource list for his 'What is the Bible?' class; I think it's Pelikan. A history of Scripture. Whose Bible is it Anyway?. I'm very curious to know.
For surely, if classical theology, what is still alive in some evangelical theology, is a landscape painting (even with dark corners) what NT scholarship has become is modern art. Abstract. Wild. Uncentered. Highly personalized. The Continuum of Skepticism (I should trademark that). How is a reader to know where on the line to park his or her hiney? Once the NT is seen as a human product (even if it fulfills a divine purpose) how much gets left in and how much gets thrown out is very much up to the individual. And then the question comes up, how much does it matter? I know Crossan denies the resurrection, the gospel miracles, most of the gospel material period. I also know he considers himself a praying Christian. I read a review at amazon where an atheist said he read Crossan's Jesus-book and became a praying Christian himself. I think that's great, of course, but this I feel like Alice past the mirror.
It's a strange time in history to study the NT.
I see no reason to doubt the resurrection at this time. It is the central proclamation of the entire New Testament (and not just because I believe, a priori, a God exists who could do it; the resurrection is half the reason I believe in God). Surely, at least, the disciples believed it happened. But there are Christian scholars who say it didn't (far from all, of course). So many of the most beloved stories in the gospels, Luke's infancy narrative for example (think Linus in the Charlie Brown Christmas Special) have been hammered into oblivion, even by professing scholars. And those who uphold the traditional views often go too far in my view, wrestling like mad to make sure there are no inconsistencies or errors. I'm hoping Wright treads a middle ground, if one can be tread.
The impossibility of miracles is far from proved in my mind, yet that is the central issue for many readers of the NT. The gospels are full of them, and their reliability is deeply colored by what one thinks of the possibility of the miraculous. The thing is this (and I know I'm probably repeating prior blogs): many modern readers of the NT are clearly biased by their presuppositions, by their cultures, really, their place in history. Schweitzer was right about that with the first Quest. But since all of humans are shaped in part by our place in history and culture, the same is true of the original writers of the NT. The original disciples and evangelists. Is finding their perspective the only way to read the NT? Wright seems headed down that path. But surely, none of us can know God's mind with great certainty. How well did Paul know it? Good scholarship may show us 'what St. Paul really said,' but how complete was his revelation?
Of course, when scholars try to step in and say that the NT as we have it (distinguished, as much as possible, from subsequent church tradition or readings of it) is completely wrong about Jesus' actions and words, about atonement, about salvation, about the church...what makes them better equipped, two millenia and multiple cultures later, to peer into the twenty years between Jesus and Paul and tell us what really happened? Or the thirty or forty years between Jesus and Mark.
There's more to this than I have time for.
The two biggest obstacles are the miraculous, as I've said, and the modern sense of the right (I don't know what to call this). A loving God would not send anyone to Hell; he would make sure all humans come to him; he would not require a blood sacrifice, or the suffering of Jesus, to forgive sins, and so on. These two very different issues (my own reading of much of the OT, and some of the NT, is colored by the latter) run in wild streams throughout the broad spectrum NT scholars. On the other hand, many cannot believe God would allow any mistakes, any error, into his book. The NT must be entirely the inspired product of the Divine mind? Else what do we have? Nothing but opinions?
This new blogger is messing up my drafting, also, and I'm signing off before it freezes again. I'm not able to write all I want because every couple minutes it just locks up for a minute or two! Very discouraging.
Well, love to all.
Maybe I should go to Africa and start a hospital.
He's a good son, a friend who is closer than friend, and I love him.
But still. Stephanie provides a central point around which housework, grocery shopping, and cooking get done (even if we share those jobs). It's easier to sleep with her next to me. And I'm curious to find out what happens to Fiver and Hazel-rah and the rest of the rabbits in Watership Down, our nightly read. No fair of me to read ahead.
And on reading.
I had to decide what my next book purchase would be, and I went with Wright's second volume, Victory of God. I was looking at Meier, Brown, Crossan...anyone with a big book about Jesus or the gospels. But Wright, once again, it is. I also ordered the first in Sandalstraps' resource list for his 'What is the Bible?' class; I think it's Pelikan. A history of Scripture. Whose Bible is it Anyway?. I'm very curious to know.
For surely, if classical theology, what is still alive in some evangelical theology, is a landscape painting (even with dark corners) what NT scholarship has become is modern art. Abstract. Wild. Uncentered. Highly personalized. The Continuum of Skepticism (I should trademark that). How is a reader to know where on the line to park his or her hiney? Once the NT is seen as a human product (even if it fulfills a divine purpose) how much gets left in and how much gets thrown out is very much up to the individual. And then the question comes up, how much does it matter? I know Crossan denies the resurrection, the gospel miracles, most of the gospel material period. I also know he considers himself a praying Christian. I read a review at amazon where an atheist said he read Crossan's Jesus-book and became a praying Christian himself. I think that's great, of course, but this I feel like Alice past the mirror.
It's a strange time in history to study the NT.
I see no reason to doubt the resurrection at this time. It is the central proclamation of the entire New Testament (and not just because I believe, a priori, a God exists who could do it; the resurrection is half the reason I believe in God). Surely, at least, the disciples believed it happened. But there are Christian scholars who say it didn't (far from all, of course). So many of the most beloved stories in the gospels, Luke's infancy narrative for example (think Linus in the Charlie Brown Christmas Special) have been hammered into oblivion, even by professing scholars. And those who uphold the traditional views often go too far in my view, wrestling like mad to make sure there are no inconsistencies or errors. I'm hoping Wright treads a middle ground, if one can be tread.
The impossibility of miracles is far from proved in my mind, yet that is the central issue for many readers of the NT. The gospels are full of them, and their reliability is deeply colored by what one thinks of the possibility of the miraculous. The thing is this (and I know I'm probably repeating prior blogs): many modern readers of the NT are clearly biased by their presuppositions, by their cultures, really, their place in history. Schweitzer was right about that with the first Quest. But since all of humans are shaped in part by our place in history and culture, the same is true of the original writers of the NT. The original disciples and evangelists. Is finding their perspective the only way to read the NT? Wright seems headed down that path. But surely, none of us can know God's mind with great certainty. How well did Paul know it? Good scholarship may show us 'what St. Paul really said,' but how complete was his revelation?
Of course, when scholars try to step in and say that the NT as we have it (distinguished, as much as possible, from subsequent church tradition or readings of it) is completely wrong about Jesus' actions and words, about atonement, about salvation, about the church...what makes them better equipped, two millenia and multiple cultures later, to peer into the twenty years between Jesus and Paul and tell us what really happened? Or the thirty or forty years between Jesus and Mark.
There's more to this than I have time for.
The two biggest obstacles are the miraculous, as I've said, and the modern sense of the right (I don't know what to call this). A loving God would not send anyone to Hell; he would make sure all humans come to him; he would not require a blood sacrifice, or the suffering of Jesus, to forgive sins, and so on. These two very different issues (my own reading of much of the OT, and some of the NT, is colored by the latter) run in wild streams throughout the broad spectrum NT scholars. On the other hand, many cannot believe God would allow any mistakes, any error, into his book. The NT must be entirely the inspired product of the Divine mind? Else what do we have? Nothing but opinions?
This new blogger is messing up my drafting, also, and I'm signing off before it freezes again. I'm not able to write all I want because every couple minutes it just locks up for a minute or two! Very discouraging.
Well, love to all.
Maybe I should go to Africa and start a hospital.
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