Comment by Forrest Curo on 2nd mo. 11, 2011 at 12:03pm

The Bible contains the writings from a long tradition of people in more-or-less interaction with God. We get the human side of this phone conversation, including what people thought God was telling them... and it makes for a good set of examples of how God operates, how human beings understand (and misunderstand!) God's intentions--and what information we have, partially-muddled, of the efforts a particularly inspired messenger named Jesus made to clarify & carry out those intentions.

 

Worth searching for a clue or two, yes?

Comment by Nikolas Southwell on 2nd mo. 11, 2011 at 1:07pm

Oh certainly yes. I am very much in agreement with your take on Scripture.

Comment by Tom Smith on 2nd mo. 11, 2011 at 2:13pm

I think we often underestimate the power of myth (with "apologies" to Joseph Campbell). For most, if not all, of the time period that the writings that we now call the Bible were being recorded, oral tradition including myths were one of the major ways of communicating history and tradition. Some of the books that were considered and rejected by some but accepted by others, such as Bel and the Dragon, are fairly clearly myths. The reality of the present can be enlightened by these myths if we learn the "lessons" not the "facts."

Comment by Bill Samuel on 2nd mo. 11, 2011 at 9:24pm

In fact, there was largely consensus on the canon long before it was adopted by any Council. This is one of the red herrings liberal Quakers throw around all the time. Of course, in fact, early Quakers rejected the idea of specifying a particular canon. However, they unquestionably accepted everything that is shared by all the major canons of the Christian church (there isn't just one canon - Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox each have slightly different ones).

 

We need to accept books of scripture as what they are and not impose some standard of our culture upon them. Liberals sometimes provide the other side of the coin to fundamentalists and use a literalistic view to reject scripture, Both sides of the coin are false! They encompass several varieties of literature and follow cultural patterns in writing literature of their time.

 

Scripture is full of different voices and different perspectives, starting with the first 2 chapters of Genesis with two creation stories, and continuing throughout. This makes it rich, and invites us to further explore within community. And it puts the lie to the notion that some Council imposed some monolithic view in approving a canon.

 

The non-canonical writings of the early Christian era were either not accepted by most of the early Christian communities as true to Christ's message (the various alternative "gospels" would be included here) or were considered valuable but not rising to the level of  scripture (e.g., the Didache). I'm inclined to be respectful of the discernment of the early Christian church on these. This doesn't mean they are without value, but we should be suspicious when they contradict the official canon.

Comment by Susanne Kromberg on 2nd mo. 11, 2011 at 10:06pm

Quaker sympathizer Howard Thurman wrote that what the Bible says isn't true because it's in the Bible. It's because it's true that it is in the Bible. He said this while traveling among Hindus and Muslims in South East Asia as he recognized the Truth at work within them and recognizing that the Truth is expressed also in Hindu and Muslim Scriptures. For myself, I trust the guidance of the Bible, but not because it has the stamp of approval of certain councils. I trust its guidance because it reveals God to me. Other writings - both sacred and profane - can also reveal God to me. But the Bible has a special place in my life because it has most reliably revelaed God to me, and has historically revealed God to Quakers over the centuries. Therefore I trust it as the Word of God.     

Comment by David Carl on 2nd mo. 11, 2011 at 10:10pm

In these types of discussions might it not be well to avoid generalizing and hyperbolizing about each other?

Comment by Forrest Curo on 2nd mo. 12, 2011 at 1:18am

I've lost the name of this doctrine-- but I've recently read that it's a respectably ancient element within Christian theology: simply put, that God talks baby talk to babies.

 

So one finds mythology in ancient belief-systems, not because it necessarily carries deep meaning, but because constructing a mythology was the way that ancient peoples solidified their political connections with one another. [Our mythologies for that purpose lack gods and goddesses, but is that such a great improvement?] Much of what you find in early Bible stories is mythology in that political sense. But God too could talk that language!

 

Much of the Bible is saying, between the lines: "God really cares about human beings, intending to bring us into a more mutually-satisfactory communion as that becomes workable-- and the significance of these events and stories is that they are part of God's way of making that happen."

 

Moses reportedly had the stone tablets for a foolproof sacred law-- and then, arriving back in camp with them, he found everyone worshiping gold images-- and broke his tablets. A fit of anger?-- maybe partially. But really, this is when he realized that a perfect statement was not what people needed, that if you gave them one they'd just get it wrong and misuse it as well.

People have a lot of blind spots, and we haven't been that easy to communicate with. We learn something new, we forget something old... So I would not read the Bible as a theology text. But it's a great introduction to Divine/human interaction, and a handy reminder of our actual place in the world (another thing that human beings are continually getting wrong!)

Comment by Nikolas Southwell on 2nd mo. 12, 2011 at 1:01pm

I seem to recall George Fox expressly denouncing the practice of refering to the Bible as the  Word of God, saying "I felt moved by the Spirit to tell them that God does not live in temples fashioned by human hands". The Word of God refered to in scripture is of course Christ. I also find the belief that there was a huge consensus in the early Church a bit naive. The gnostics, Ebonites, Ariens, Cathars, Donatists, and Marcionites all considered themselves to be the true Christians, and all had different Canons. The Shepard of Hermas and the Gospel of thomas were widley read in the early Christian world. The Christianity of today was largly shaped by the political struggle of one branch of the church, against another in the early Church councils. It is worth pointing out that the tiny Christian communities of the East (particularly in India) kept what was perhaps the best example of what the early Church was really like. They  celebrated passover, kept the Sabbath on a Saturday, built Churches in the style of Synagouges, and had a bible which missed out Revalation, but included the Gospel of the Hebrews. Were we truly early Christianity revived, we would have to bring back communion and water baptism as well as the veneration of relics, and seriously rethink our selection of Scripture!

Comment by Rickey D. Whetstone on 2nd mo. 13, 2011 at 6:44am

the only source of truth is directly speaking with God,  All other sources are flawed

Comment by Nikolas Southwell on 2nd mo. 13, 2011 at 4:03pm

Well said Rickey!

Comment

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• Next ›
• Page