(Say the Jesus Creed morning and evening during Lent.)
I didn't get home early enough to post our usual Friday is for Friends, so instead...
You may have heard about the hermeneutics quiz I drafted up for Leadership magazine; of course, our hermeneutic can't be reduced to a series of questions. So, what we are really doing is seeing if we can generate a conversation about how it is that we read the Bible. So, here's the quiz ... and we can have a conversation about it here if you'd like. The focus of many on which label they are assigned is not at all an interest of mine; instead, my interest is how we make the decisions we do make on issues like these. The labels were added later and not integral to what I think this kind of quiz can expose.
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Julie - Well said. It is amazing how the relationships change when women are valued as equals. A completely different field is created for fellowship and community.
I scored 63 - 'moderate'. It's interesting to note that many people wanted to choose 'none of the above'. I particularly felt this for the capital punishment question. The alternatives were that you either agree with a literal implementation of the text, or that you concede the cultural context of the OT practice and are necessarily led to consider it inappropriate for today. This question is premised upon a(n American) conception of the church/state relation that could be summarised as 'the state needs to implement biblical commands'. And this is where I would disagree. Its possible to consider capital punishment in the OT culturally conditioned, and still consider it an appropriate action of the state. Likewise, its possible to consider the OT command a true expression of God's will, without enshrining it in legislation.
As a possible alternative to linear positions, something like a 2-dimensional graph may be helpful. The vertical axis could represent the difference between high and low views of scripture (where high means a high degree of correspondence between god's actual thoughts, and the words/thoughts that are ascribed to him in scripture, and low being lower correspondence) and the horizontal axis represents the degree of contextualisation that is necessary. This would make space for postliberalism that may simplistically be described as having a (relatively) low view of scripture, and yet resists contextualisation because the biblical story can't be abstracted to principles. Just a thought.
I scored 63 - 'moderate'. It's interesting to note that many people wanted to choose 'none of the above'. I particularly felt this for the capital punishment question. The alternatives were that you either agree with a literal implementation of the text, or that you concede the cultural context of the OT practice and are necessarily led to consider it inappropriate for today. This question is premised upon a(n American) conception of the church/state relation that could be summarised as 'the state needs to implement biblical commands'. And this is where I would disagree. Its possible to consider capital punishment in the OT culturally conditioned, and still consider it an appropriate action of the state. Likewise, its possible to consider the OT command a true expression of God's will, without enshrining it in legislation.
As a possible alternative to linear positions, something like a 2-dimensional graph may be helpful. The vertical axis could represent the difference between high and low views of scripture (where high means a high degree of correspondence between god's actual thoughts, and the words/thoughts that are ascribed to him in scripture, and low being lower correspondence) and the horizontal axis represents the degree of contextualisation that is necessary. This would make space for postliberalism that may simplistically be described as having a (relatively) low view of scripture, and yet resists contextualisation because the biblical story can't be abstracted to principles. Just a thought.
I scored lower progressive at 71. I had the advantage of hearing you, Scot, at the NPC so I was braced for the quiz. Still, I think it reflects my growing understanding of the Bible as God's Word authoratively governing the faith but in need of serious cultural, historical and redemptive-hermeneutical study before it is applied. BTW, speaking of the weakness of the term "apply," I was struck by the wisdom of your term "discern." I heard that term a lot from both N.T. Wright and John Rucyahana of Rawanda.
Anyone care to score Obama based on his hermeneutical stylings here?
http://tinyurl.com/2m2z9z
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