The Story Told by An (2000 years) Ancient Stone - it was the Jewish people who called Jerusalem home

Breaks my heart. I don't think it's the chasm that many make it out to be. I am interested to know why you think it so.

I do believe that God is trying to use our mutual love of the Scriptures as a valuable instrument of unity. But I think, just as the ear is not an eye, nor the foot a hand, unity is not unanimity.

It might interest you, or others, to hear what our community believes about the Bible:

The Bible. Thousands of years. Thousands of lives. Thousands of pages. Countless numbers of dreams, hopes, fears. Intimidating to think about getting to know it all. And yet how often are we taught, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, that if you don't know it all, you can't talk about any of it?

At Riverside, we believe that the Bible is the very Word of God. All of it. We believe that the Word became Flesh. And we believe that flesh, that man, was Jesus of Nazareth, and was the Christ who came that the world may know the overwhelming love, extravagant grace, unending mercy and unrelenting power of His Father.

At Riverside's Men's Bible Study, we believe that we can have a relationship to the Bible that looks a lot like a relationship with that man, and a lot less like a relationship with a law book. On Saturday mornings, when many of us would rather be asleep, or holding our wives, or fixing our kids breakfast, the Riverside MBS gathers at The Loft Coffee Shop for a conversation about the Word. No agenda, no workbooks, no real plan - just fellowship, prayer, and a safe place to talk about how you encounter this thing that cannot be ignored.

Join us every Saturday at 7:00 a.m. downstairs for fellowship, 7:30 upstairs for a little worship, a little prayer, and a lot of conversation about what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

I hope that we may all have such a relationship with the Word that is the Son, the Word that is the Spirit, the Word that is the Father. May the love of Jesus, the comfort of the Holy Spirit, and the fear of God be upon you.

I appreciate the invitation, but I have sought solace and wisdom in the works of the great Catholic theologians. Of particular significance in this dialog is St. Thomas Aquinas.

Aquinas viewed theology, or the sacred doctrine, as a science, the raw material data of which consists of written scripture and the tradition of the Catholic Church. These sources of data were produced by the self-revelation of God to individuals and groups of people throughout history. Faith and reason, while distinct but related, are the two primary tools for processing the data of theology.

According to Aquinas, God reveals himself through nature so truth is made known through the confluence of both Scripture and Natural Law.

I would be careful not to ground my understanding of St. Thomas on a wikipedia entry (though I do think it rightfully points out that Aquinas was where he was from and not who he was).

It seems to me that St. Thomas believed that God wrote the Bible, and that God intended it to be taken, in the first instance, in its literal sense, regardless of any other sense (allegorical, tropological or anagogical) in which it may be taken. Moreover, I am pretty sure that he believed that nothing necessary to faith is contained under the other senses which is not elsewhere put forward by the Scripture in its literal sense.

I just don’t think St. Thomas would have the difficulty with Scripture the way that you do. But you seem to have made a closer study of him than I have.

Tell you what - when we get to Heaven after our Resurrection (assuming we don’t get taken up first), track me down, and we will ask him.

God Bless.

The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published The Gift of Scripture, a teaching document instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true.

OK, this makes more sense to me now that I have read the Times article that seems to have taught you this.

Please know that I believe the Catholic Church, if push came to shove, would choose St. Thomas' teachings over the writings of this group of English, Welsh and Scottish bishops. I find this article criticising the "Gift of Scripture" more in line with my understanding of the teachings of the Catholic Church and of St. Thomas.

For instance, those bishops make the following claim:

The discovery of such material [other creation myths from ancient Eastern cultures that have an appearance similar to the first eleven chapters of Genesis] led the Church to develop her teaching concerning the literary genres found in the Bible. It became clear that the material found in these chapters of Genesis could not simply be described as historical writing. Though they may contain some historical traces, the primary purpose was to provide religious teaching.

Candidly, I don't think St. Thomas would have agreed with this assessment, especially given how God repeats, through the words of Jesus and Paul, these "myths." And even if he did, he would still consider them to literally be true, in addition to any other sense. So I think any understanding of the "Gift of Scripture" based on or consistent with the way the media described it is, with all due respect, mistaken.

But what do I know.

How each of us worships is between ourselves and God. I appreciate your point of view and patient dialog on a subject profoundly important to both of us. It is very difficult to accurately or completely portray the complexities of theology in brief postings such as these.

My questions and comments are probative. The crux of my postings in this thread is that I accept Scripture, but not exclusively Scripture, in my understanding and worship of God.

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