Tag Archives: Bible

Fred Hiltz on interpreting the Bible

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From here:

All of the bishops received a copy of The Bible in the Life of the Church, a compilation of resources produced by the Anglican Communion. It was created following the meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in Jamaica in 2009. Anglicans around the world say ‘we are formed by scripture,’ said Hiltz. “That’s true, but Anglicans also recognize that there are a variety of ways to read and interpret scripture, and it is that very point that has been so close to the centre of the debates on sexuality,” Hiltz acknowledged. He held up the new Bible study as a gift from the Anglican Communion. “It really is about how Anglicans read the Bible.” The bishops enthusiastically received the document, and Hiltz suggested that not only could individual parishes use it, but it could also be recommended to theological colleges for their curriculums. Bishop Stephen Andrews of the diocese of Algoma is anchoring a House of Bishops working group examining the study.

There are actually only two ways to read the Bible:

  1. The first is to acknowledge that it states objective truth propositionally; our job is to read it and determine what truth it is conveying however uncomfortable it might make us feel.
  2. The second is to impose subjective preconceptions on the text in the hope of making it conform to contemporary prejudice.

The Anglican Church of Canada favours the latter approach; all variations in interpretation are to be accepted equally other than the one that results from adhering to point one.

Richard Dawkins thinks the Bible will put children off Christianity

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From here:

For some reason the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (UK) was not approached for a donation in support of Michael Gove’s plan to put a King James Bible in every state school. We would certainly have given it serious consideration, and if the trustees had not agreed I would gladly have contributed myself.

[…..]

I have an ulterior motive for wishing to contribute to Gove’s scheme. People who do not know the Bible well have been gulled into thinking it is a good guide to morality. This mistaken view may have motivated the “millionaire Conservative party donors”. I have even heard the cynically misanthropic opinion that, without the Bible as a moral compass, people would have no restraint against murder, theft and mayhem. The surest way to disabuse yourself of this pernicious falsehood is to read the Bible itself.

This is clearly a case of projection: Dawkins believes the Bible will put people off Christianity in the same way that his books have put people off atheism. Considering that there are about 2.2 billion Christians in the world who believe the Bible, it doesn’t appear to be the case. So much for Dawkins’ claim that he is convinced by evidence.

No preaching to a captive audience in the US

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I’m not particularly convinced that reading the Bible to people who don’t want to hear it is an effective way to spread the Gospel, but it’s hard to see how it was “impeding an open business”. I bet this would not have happened to someone reading from the Koran.

The Anglican Church wants to know what Anglicans think of the Bible

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From here:

As part of the Bible in the Life of the Church project we are undertaking a Communion-wide survey of the way Anglicans understand and engage with the Bible. We rightly say the Bible is central to our life together but we also engage with it and interpret it in different ways. What are those differences? Why might there be differences? What can we learn from those who differ from us?

Naturally, instead of the starting position being that the Bible is God’s propositional revelation to man, making it the main way to find out what God is like and what he expects of us, the assumption is that the Bible is to be engaged with – whatever that means.

To that end, the survey asks such engaging questions as whether the following are true:

The Bible contains some human errors

Science shows that some things in the Bible cannot have happened

Christians can learn about God from the writings of other faiths

Some parts of the Bible are more true than others [what does “more true” mean? Is Anglican truth a mark on a sliding scale between Absolutely True and Absolutely False. Perhaps my view of truth has been conditioned by spending too long with computers – I thought true/false was a binary condition]

Jesus rose from the dead in bodily form

Jesus ascended into heaven

If I were an optimist, I would conclude that the survey is a surreptitious attempt to discover how far heretical rot has penetrated into the laity in order that drastic remedial steps could be taken. As it is, I’m not an optimist.

Richard Dawkins thinks religion is 'hijacking' the Bible

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From here:

Religion should not be allowed to “hijack” the great cultural resource of the Bible, according to the atheist scientist Professor Richard Dawkins.

Asked by the Labour MP Frank Field, chairman of the King James Bible Trust, what the Bible meant to him, he said: “I think it is important to make the case that the Bible is part of our heritage and it doesn’t have to be tied to religion.

“It’s of historic interest, it’s of literary interest, and it’s important that religion should not be allowed to hijack this cultural resource.

“You can’t appreciate English literature unless you know something about the Greek gods. You can’t appreciate Wagner unless you know something about the Norse gods. You can’t appreciate English literature unless you are to some extent at least steeped in the King James Bible.”

This is extraordinarily absurd, even for Richard Dawkins. Without Christianity, which he so despises, there would have been no Bible; without the Church, which he so loathes, the Bible would not have been preserved and without faithful Christians, who Dawkins keeps calling idiots, no-one would have bothered to read the Bible.

Dawkins wants Christendom without Christianity, Western civilisation without the bedrock on which it was founded and morality without God. Well, he can’t have them.

If anyone is trying to hijack the Bible, it is Dawkins and his coterie of cockamamie atheists.

Fatwa 40378

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This particular Fatwa saw the light of day – in a manner of speaking – in 2003, so it isn’t exactly news. What makes it interesting is to view its description of Islamic contempt for the Bible in the light of Islam’s maniacal protectiveness of the Koran.

Here are the Rabelaisian ruminations on new uses for the Bible, courtesy of Fatwa 40378. Emphasis mine:

Judgment: Despising the Torah or the New Testament

Question: “Does someone who insults the Torah or the New Testament engage in apostasy, given that these include some words of God?”

Answer: “It would be impermissible to disdain the Torah and New Testament if they contained the truth and the name of the exalted, such as the name of God the Most High. Whoever does this [i.e., disrespect the books] knowingly and by choice would be considered an apostate and would be despised by God. But [in fact] the Torah and New Testament do not have anything exalted in them. They are known to have been corrupted, so there is no problem disdaining them.

Ash-Shams[ad-Din] Ar-Ramli [d.1004 A.D.] said in [his book of fiqh] Nihayat al-Muhtaj: “It is impermissible to use respected books like those of hadith and fiqh for anal cleansing after defecation (al-istinja’,الأستنجاء ), but non-respected books like philosophy, Torah and the New Testament, which are known as corrupt and which do not contain exalted names, can be used for anal cleansing after defecation.”

 

BBC uses an atheist to present the Bible

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From here:

The BBC’s new face of religion is an atheist who claims that God had a wife and Eve was “unfairly maligned” by sexist scholars.

Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou has been given a primetime BBC Two series, The Bible’s Buried Secrets, in which she makes a number of startling suggestions.

She argues in the programme that Eve was not responsible for the Fall of Man and was not even the first woman, as the story of the Garden of Eden did not belong in the first book of the Old Testament.

“Eve, particularly in the Christian tradition, has been very unfairly maligned as the troublesome wife who brought about the Fall,” Dr Stavrakopoulou said. “Don’t forget that the biblical writers are male and it’s a very male-dominated world. Women were second-class citizens, seen as property.”

The idea that God had a wife is based on Biblical texts that refer to “asherah”. According to Dr Stavrakopoulou, Asherah was the name of a fertility goddess in lands now covered by modern-day Syria, and was half of a “divine pair” with God.

Dr Stavrakopoulou is a senior lecturer in the Hebrew Bible at the University of Exeter, and gained a doctorate in theology from Oxford. Born in London to an English mother and Greek father, Dr Stavrakopoulou was raised “in no particular religion” and does not believe in God.

Atheism is itself a religion, one which is gradually gaining ground in the West. Stavrakopoulou, like most atheists, exhibits tedious political correctness – even worse, though, is the BBC’s use of a member of one religion to ridicule the beliefs of another. If the BBC wanted to be fair – an unlikely turn of events – it would air a second program, hosted by a Christian, poking holes in atheism; too easy, perhaps.

The 140 characters per chapter Bible

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From here:

It is a task of truly Biblical proportions.

But dedicated Christian, Chris Juby, has pledged to spread the word of the Lord –  tweet by tweet.

The 30-year-old plans to publish the entire Bible on social networking website Twitter by condensing one chapter a day into less than 140 characters – the maximum allowed for a single entry.

Mr Juby began with the first chapter of Genesis on Sunday and intends to work his way through all 1,189 chapters.

He estimates that it will take more than three years to complete, with the last entry due on November 8, 2013.

You can find it here, but is it a clever way to evangelise or an invitation to reap the rewards of Rev 22:18?