Posted by Dyfed on Friday, February 3, 2012,
In :
Bible
What role does the Bible
play in defining what a Christian is? Do we need to ‘believe the word of God’
before we can claim to be Christian? In certain quarters today you would think
so. The Bible as the literal word of God to us has to be accepted. Any wavering
on this and you would soon be condemned as being on dangerous ground.
But this has not been the
case throughout church history. One German church historian noted the shift
that happened during the first and second centuries C.E.:
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, January 27, 2012,
In :
Bible
Over the past couple of
weeks I’ve been looking at 2 Timothy 3:16 and suggesting that though some will
pluck it out of context and use it to ‘prove’ that the Bible is the inerrant
word of God in all its detail this verse in fact can be used to do no such
thing. Last week I looked at the word God-breathed and the previous week I
considered which Scriptures it was referring to. Today it would be good to ask
what the verse has to say about the purpose of Scripture.
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, January 20, 2012,
In :
Bible
When Paul said that ‘all
scripture is inspired’ (2 Timothy 3:16, NASV) what did he mean? Last week I
looked at the issue of which biblical books he could be referring to and
concluded that it was the books of the Old Testament alone he had in mind. In
this post I want to look at the word ‘inspired’.
God-breathed
The Greek word here is ‘theopneustos’ – literally
‘God-breathed’. (Interestingly the NIV uses this translation rather than
‘inspired’.) Nowhere else in the NT does...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, January 13, 2012,
In :
Bible
A common misuse of the Bible
is to pluck out a verse to prove a point. Where the Bible itself is the subject
of the discussion the verse most commonly used is 2 Timothy 3:16 – ‘All
scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for
correction, for training in righteousness.’ There, they say with a flourish,
this proves that the Bible as a whole is the word of God. I’d like to take the
next two or three posts to have a closer look at this text.
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, January 6, 2012,
In :
Bible
For the past 200 years or so
the Bible has come to play an increasingly central part in the daily life of
ordinary Christians. It wasn’t always the case. Go further back and few
ordinary Christians could either read or could afford their own copy. Go
further back again and the Bible did not exist in their language. Even further
and the Latin version was quite rare. Take another step to the third century
and there wasn’t even a common agreement on which books should be included in the
Bibl...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, December 20, 2011,
In :
Post-Christendom
It infuriated the atheist
secularists and heartened the religious conservatives but having read the full
text of David Cameron’s speech on Christian Britain I don’t think either camp
has much to be excited about. It was so full of contradictions that it made a
far weaker case than has been portrayed in the press. I’ll give you one
example.
Language
Mr Cameron loves the King
James Bible because of the effect it has had on the English language. He is
particularly enamoured by all the phrase...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, November 29, 2011,
In :
Random
It’s biblical! What is?
Hell; transubstantiation; purgatory; penal substitution; heaven; speaking in
tongues; the rapture; pacifism; the Second Coming; being born again; just war
etc. etc. etc. It’s all biblical. And that’s the trump card that’s presented
with such a flourish whenever theological issues are debated. ‘My view is
biblical and so my view is correct.’ It’s such a powerful word and in its
negative is actually quite a powerful weapon. ‘You’re being unbiblical.’ ...
In
his fourth question Brian McLaren asks who Jesus is and why he is important.
Asking such a question would suggest that he is actually opening up a debate on
the nature of Jesus’ humanity and/or divinity – but this is not something he
does. Rather he responds to some of the pictures drawn of Jesus in the US
particularly – suggesting that they find their roots more in the Greco-Roman
and Platonic meta-narrative referred to in his first question.
Brian
McLaren suggests that reading the Bible like a ‘written constitution’ has led
the church into supporting some clearly wrong actions such as slavery. A
different way of approaching the Bible is to see it as an ‘inspired library’.
‘This inspired library’ says McLaren, ‘preserves, presents and inspires an on-going
vigorous conversation with and about God, a living and vital civil argument
into which we are all invited and through which God is revealed’.
How
should we read the Bible? This is Brian McLaren’s second question and it deals
with the authority of the Scriptures. In conservative church circles this is a particularly
sensitive subject and daring to question the ‘word of God’ is seen as a step
too far in any quest. McLaren tackles the issue, however, with a penetrating
force that cannot simply be ignored.
Science textbook
He
suggests that we have ‘got ourselves into a mess with the Bible’ and that this
mess is threefold. Fir...
What’s
the big picture? That basically sums up the first question that Brian McLaren
asks, or to put it in more theological terms – what is the meta-narrative? By
this he means that there is an overarching storyline that we live our lives
within, that helps us make sense of the world and our faith. His assertion is
that the meta-narrative the church has worked within since the fifth century
has been faulty and has had more to do with Platonic philosophy than the Bible.
And without chang...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, September 7, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Do the genocide passages of
the Old Testament prove problematic to you? They certainly cause me some
headaches and I find it increasingly difficult to reconcile those passages from
Joshua with what I read about God in Jesus in the Gospels. If you have no
problem with God commanding the slaughter of every man, woman, child and animal
in a city then maybe you should turn to your second favourite blog today and
come back to me tomorrow.
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, August 2, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
The authority of the Bible
is among the most contentious issues faced today between conservative and
reforming (or emerging) churches. ‘The Bible as God’s word is true’ is a phrase
that carries a lot of baggage and while on one level I can agree with it I
would have to have a list of caveats added-on – not least my belief that it is Jesus
who is God’s word and that it is with him that any revelation of God must
begin.
But back to the Bible. Is it
authoritative in its entirety? Or to ...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, July 12, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Yesterday was the
'International Day Against Stoning'. As is our way of protesting in this internet
era I ‘liked’ a page on Facebook to show my support. I find any kind of
execution abhorrent – and feel that to do so by stoning must drag humanity to a
very low place. Unfortunately we still need campaigns like these because some
countries still practice this.
But I have a little problem.
We all do as Christians or Jews. Stoning is quite biblical. Indeed according to
the New International ...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, March 9, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
‘An atheist with a huge respect for
religion’ has been employed by the BBC to present a new series on the Bible.
Those of you with high blood pressure may want to stop reading this post now,
lie down for a bit, and come back to it later. The series’ title is The
Bible’s Buried Secrets and it’s obvious from the write-up in yesterday’s Telegraph
that it will contain much to stir up screaming headlines in the conserv...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, December 23, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
Can any
of us be totally objective about what we read, see, hear etc? Do we not all
have our filters – pre-determined by the life we’ve lived and experienced? When
we read the Bible, for example, can we be sure that we understand what we’re
meant to through these filters? I ask in the days when Vince Cable has lost his
power over deciding whether Murdoch should have sole ownership of BSkyB and
when there are now doubts abou...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, July 16, 2010,
In :
Random
The temple in Jerusalem represented the six days of
creation, with the Holy of Holies representing the first day, the veil
representing the second and so on. This is one of the many new things I’ve
learned from Margaret Barker in a book of hers that I’m reading at the moment –
TempleTheology: An introduction (London, 2004).
She also says that there are
basically two streams of thought in the Old Testament...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, March 19, 2010,
In :
Prayer-walking
The people of Brynsiencyn probably
think I’m a bit odd since every once in a while they see me walking my dog
through the village muttering to myself as I go. Somebody who talks to himself
on a regular basis surely can’t be all there. Except I’m not talking to myself
but prayer walking – or maybe prayer dog-walking would be a better description!
We moved to the village some 20
months ago and since then I have been ...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, March 9, 2010,
In :
Post-Christendom
[if !mso]
Did the Reformation change
Christendom? Surprisingly not is Stuart Murray’s answer in chapter 5 of
Post-Christendom. Though the Protestant Reformation brought about much needed
change to doctrine and many church practices, very little was done as far as
the church’s connection to the state is concerned. ‘They refined it, fractured
it and shifted the balance of power within it towards the secular a...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, February 24, 2010,
In :
Post-Christendom
Under
Christendom the church became the dominant force in society. Indeed by the 12th
century the church was able to exercise power over countries and their rulers
in Western Europe. ‘No secular ruler could rival papal wealth or
authority,’ says Stuart Murray in Post-Christendom as he paints a picture of a
totalitarian church in the late medieval period (page 110). Dissent was not
welcomed at all by this time...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, February 3, 2010,
In :
Random
There aren’t many Welsh speaking people in the world. There must be even fewer Welsh speakers who are blind. And we probably could count the number of blind Welsh speakers who are also Christians on the fingers of the hands of a typical Sunday afternoon Baptist chapel congregation in Llanfflewin. But however small that number they should still be able to read the Bible in their first language. This is why Cytun, the ecumenical body in Wales, has launched an appeal for the translation of the...
Posts on my Tumblr site willI now appear here. Tumblr's ability to post by text and email will help me blog even when away from my desk!
Some thoughts following my visit to Occupy London.
October 27th 2011
Ok so there’s plenty to disagree with but this is such a good song.
October 12th 2011
There are so many draining things we can focus on during the day: how we appear to others, how much others do or don’t respect us, how we can get people to do what we want. But once we become aware of the negative impact of these areas of focus, we can get clear on - even excited about - who we really want to be … We can shift our focus toward qualities like mercy, gentleness, courage, and the many others that bring true joy in our lives and in the lives of others.
