Posted on 11/16/2007 10:52:24 AM PST by NYer
From Christianity Today, this fascinating bit of news:
While the ballroom sessions of the first day of the Evangelical Theological Society meeting had more attendees, no session was as packed as J.P. Moreland’s “How Evangelicals Became Over-Committed to the Bible and What Can Be Done About It.” While the average breakout session seems to be attended by fewer than 50 people, easily more than 200 packed the room to hear Moreland’s talk, with dozens standing and more listening outside the door. ...
“In the actual practices of the Evangelical community in North America, there is an over-commitment to Scripture in a way that is false, irrational, and harmful to the cause of Christ,” he said. “And it has produced a mean-spiritedness among the over-committed that is a grotesque and often ignorant distortion of discipleship unto the Lord Jesus.”
The problem, he said, is “the idea that the Bible is the sole source of knowledge of God, morality, and a host of related important items. Accordingly, the Bible is taken to be the sole authority for faith and practice.” ...
“The sparse landscape of evangelical political thought stands in stark contrast to the overflowing garden both of evangelical biblical scholarship and Catholic reflection on reason, general revelation, and cultural and political engagement,” he said. “We evangelicals could learn a lesson or two from our Catholic friends.”
That wasn’t as provocative a statement coming a few months after the ETS president became one of those “Catholic friends.” Catholicism is on the agenda here, and Catholics are both implicitly and explicitly discussed in the meeting’s many discussions of justification. But Catholicism doesn’t seem to be the “new open theism” at ETS.
No, more provocative was Moreland’s argument about why evangelicals became over-committed to the Bible. Rather than developing a robust epistemology in response to secularism, he said, evangelicals reacted and retreated. Now evangelical theologians aren’t allowed to come to any new conclusions about the truths in Scripture, and they’re not allowed to find truths outside of Scripture. As a result, he said, they’re engaged in “private language games and increasingly detailed minutia” and “we’re not seeing work on broad cultural themes.”
Blogger Barry Carey of WithAllYourMind.net is at the conference and writes this:
First, J. P. Moreland delivered a paper entitled, “How Evangelicals Became Over-Committed to the Bible and What can be Done about It.” One might misunderstand Moreland’s topic without having attended the session. In one sense, Evangelicals are under-committed to the Bible, yet, Moreland argues, they have over-committed to the Bible in making it the sole authority, or source of knowledge. This stands in contrast to the historical view which holds that the Bible is the ultimate authority or source of knowledge. This over-committment stems from a withdrawal from the broader world of ideas, surrendering the source of “real knowledge” to the hard sciences. Moreland’s call was for evangelicals to recover the use of right reason, natural law, experience, Creeds , and tradition as subordinate sources of knowledge.
The reaction to Moreland's talk should be interesting to follow. The former ETS president who became Catholic is, of course, Dr. Francis Beckwith, professor at Baylor University (read my June 2007 interview with him here). More to come, I'm sure.
That’s fine. Jesus was “overcommitted” to the Bible too.
To what else would any Christian worth the name turn, however? Certainly not the "Church", the pope, or the Magisterium.
Actually the Word of God is the sole source for faith and practice, not the bible alone, therein lies the difference.
It's not the first time something like this has been said:
And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. (John 5:37-40)
Jesus said there's a difference between Him and Scripture. The Scrupture points to Him -- but it isn't Him. People can say and do some pretty hateful things based on their reading of Scripture ... and in so doing, they miss the point just like the Pharisees did.
"Let him who has 25% of the sin cast the first stone."
Yes, it's just that simple. Whatever you read the Bible to mean is always right. And whatever I read it to mean is alwasy right, too. Even when we disagree.
That's exactly right. For example, if the Bible were solely sufficient, there'd be no need for the Holy Spirit.
Ummm... that's like saying "if a map was solely sufficient to find your way, there'd be no need for cartographers."
Once a cartographer has cartographed, his work is done. Is that really how you view the work of the Holy Spirit?
He inspired the Bible and now rests?
LOL!!! Perhaps someone else is ready to swim the Tiber?
Not me :>)
Me either. I’ll stay on this side of the Tiber, thank you very kindly. I will say all I do is harp, harp, harp on how much Protestants are like Catholics these days. This is just another illustration.
Join the over 1 billion catholics now, itz a very big pool....
When you have that many people in the pool, someone is bound to have peed in it.
Actually no, although I'd view that as a legitimate and defensible position. But I'd say that the *revelatory* work of the Spirit is complete, and the Bible is the only reliable resource for "faith and practice", which is what I was referring to.
Sounds like this guy may be featured on a future edition of ‘Coming Home’.
As a Catholic who flirted w/ being a born again Christian I say you are 100% right. Christ commands us to love and we as Christians should always approach each other’s differences with love. love. love. love. God is Love. Christ is Love and he commands us “Love one another.” I read these threads sometimes and see such sarcasm and vitriol. :(
I see. So I guess you've never been confronted by a moral dilemma that's not covered by the Bible? The "revelatory" work of the Spirit is never done, because otherwise we can't know God's truth or practice His will for situations that are not explicitly in the Bible.
Moreover, the modern world is quite different from that described by the Bible. Just on a practical level, our culture has lost a tremendous amount of context -- parables that would have made perfect sense to a shepherd, mean much less to us.
The Bible is still very relevant -- it's still God's word, after all, and it embodies Truth. But to expect that we can recognize and apply that Truth today, in a world so different, and without "revelatory help" from the Holy Spirit, is a bit naive.
There's a difference between "revelation" and the revisionist canard of "discovering new Truths," btw.
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