I have been thinking recently about the need for the evangelical church to re-think some of those good old "sacred cows" that are held neatly within statements of belief and , my favorite, the good old church constitution. Maybe this will have to be a weekly or monthly endeavor where I propose a "sacred cow" that needs tippin' and we can all work together to de-clutter wonderful evangelical churches. This week's tippin' point is the following statement which exists in most evangelical doctrinal statements: "inherent in its original manuscripts." i am going to make this short and sweet because my brain is feeling like mush (don't hold that against me) from working on my thesis today and feeling like I didn't get anywhere. So, I have been in many churches that affirm that the Bible is inherent in its original manuscripts and I have often wondered. "Mr. Pastor, do you have those original manuscripts? Because if you do you can just quit being a pastor because you could be wealthy!!" As I am spending a considerable amount of time study Hebrew I am coming to the conclusion that humans often suck at minute tasks. We were looking at a passage in Samuel where the Hebrew literally says, "Saul was one year old when he became king and he reigned for two years." Excellent! I guess my main point is that I don't understand this incessant need that there have been some magical set of perfect manuscripts for them to have been from God. I think that the dictation theory of inspiration just negates the way God works to such an extant that it doesn't sound like the God of the Bible. Personally, I am so grateful to a God that would risk putting this Bible, His word, into the hands of lame humanity and working with us to preserve it up to this point and that the message of salvation is still as beautiful as it was 2, 3, or 4 thousand years ago. PRAISE THE LORD and Hooray for cow tippin'.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Cow-Tippin' Time
I have been thinking recently about the need for the evangelical church to re-think some of those good old "sacred cows" that are held neatly within statements of belief and , my favorite, the good old church constitution. Maybe this will have to be a weekly or monthly endeavor where I propose a "sacred cow" that needs tippin' and we can all work together to de-clutter wonderful evangelical churches. This week's tippin' point is the following statement which exists in most evangelical doctrinal statements: "inherent in its original manuscripts." i am going to make this short and sweet because my brain is feeling like mush (don't hold that against me) from working on my thesis today and feeling like I didn't get anywhere. So, I have been in many churches that affirm that the Bible is inherent in its original manuscripts and I have often wondered. "Mr. Pastor, do you have those original manuscripts? Because if you do you can just quit being a pastor because you could be wealthy!!" As I am spending a considerable amount of time study Hebrew I am coming to the conclusion that humans often suck at minute tasks. We were looking at a passage in Samuel where the Hebrew literally says, "Saul was one year old when he became king and he reigned for two years." Excellent! I guess my main point is that I don't understand this incessant need that there have been some magical set of perfect manuscripts for them to have been from God. I think that the dictation theory of inspiration just negates the way God works to such an extant that it doesn't sound like the God of the Bible. Personally, I am so grateful to a God that would risk putting this Bible, His word, into the hands of lame humanity and working with us to preserve it up to this point and that the message of salvation is still as beautiful as it was 2, 3, or 4 thousand years ago. PRAISE THE LORD and Hooray for cow tippin'.
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3 comments:
I'm almost finished with Pinnock's "Biblical Revelation," which he wrote before "the Scriptural Principle," and consequent conversion from a sort of fundamentalism. Amazing how the brain of the inerrantist works. It dies the death of a thousand qualifications as Roger Olson always reminds me.
David,
I checked out your Hebrew link in hopes of finding another tool for my future someday awesome preaching arsenal weaponry only to find that the presupposition of the website is that you know Hebrew. How is this helpful? I may have had a Hebrew class, but I'm still American and God still speaks English.
Hey buddy,
Ok, so the sweet about that sight is that you can listen to the whole Bible in Hebrew read by a really cool Rabbi. The link furthest to the right is "Tanach" in Hebrew. Click on that and then you get the choice of "Torah, Nevi'im, Kethuvim." Once you click on that you can pick the book of the Bible and listen to the wonderful sounds of Heaven. Wonderful, Hebrew.
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