 “relevant” or “applicable” in a particular situation.
When you say it could turn out bad what exactly do you mean?
If you mean that someone will leave the church family then yes, it could go that way, I suppose. But I wouldn’t say that is always a bad thing. By the time it got to the person leaving, the offending party has proven to everyone that their is no love in their heart.
Am I saying that it is easy to be obident to this passage. No, but very few things are easy in the Christian life.
I was searching around the interwebs and I came across an article that talked about how emergents are rethinking Biblical interpretation. Is that a fair statement? And if it true what type of hermeneutic do most emergents employ?
I agree with you about Matt 18 reformedsteve. It’s not always easy to put it into practice and there’s no guarantee of the outcome.
On the other hand, I don’t think the final step necessarily means the “offending person” needs to leave. That’s not what Jesus said. He said “treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector,” and as I recall, Jesus treated pagans and tax collectors with love and respect, he welcomed them, ate with them, and didn’t try to avoid them or cast them away. So if we’re going to follow Jesus’ advice here in Matt 18 then I think the requirement would be to heap even more love on an unrepentant person, not cast them away. I don’t see excommunication recommended anywhere in this passage.
Yes that’s very true. And yet there’s no way I can tell you how “most” emergents interpret the Bible, since, as I’ve said many times, it’s not a movement based on uniformity of opinion. Besides which, given the backgrounds that many of us come from, it was a big enough step for us to admit that the Bible even needs to be interpreted at all. Many of us come from churches where even that statement would be considered heretical.
Just speaking personally (and yes, for quite a few other emergents that I know), my hermenuetic has become more historically and culturally contextual. I want to understand what the text meant to the people it was originally written to, not just read my own theological or personal agenda into it. Along these lines, many emergents (though again, I can’t estimate as to percentages) have been influenced by NT Wright and the New Perspective school of New Testament studies, which attempts to put the New Testament back in its first century Jewish context, and interpret it through that lens, rather than through the lens of, say, 16th century Catholic vs. Protestant debates.
Though keep in mind that these posts were mainly written in response to questions from atheist friends, not as responses to a fellow Christian like yourself, so you might find that I don’t address all of the particular issues that you yourself would raise.
I think that the statement of Emergent’s rethinking Biblical interpretation comes from the fact that there are so many people, churches, denominations that say “This is the only way you read the Bible” and then they label as heretics anyone who says, “How did you get that from scripture?” To even question the established doctrine was heresy. Emergents tend to be the type of people who can’t settle with that, they keep asking questions. Free inquiry and open discussion is high priority for Emergents. And it is hard to deny that a lot of denominations and churches have not had free inquiry and discussion on their list of priorities.
Emergent is hard to define because there are people from every kind of tradition, denomination, institution, non-tradition, non-denomination, and non-institution involved in it. With that kind of diversity you just are not going to have a well-defined explanation of doctrine, but you will have, ideally, a gathering of people wanting to learn more, eager to see things from greater perspectives.
I haven’t experienced much of any of the strife between Emergents and Neo-Calvinists, so I can’t say much. It just has seemed to me that the Neo-Calvinists are still in that “Don’t ask questions” mode of thinking, which is very restrictive to an Emergent. Maybe this is an unfair description of the situation, and if so then I would love to see the other side of it.
Looking back at my previous post, I should point out that I believe, thankfully, that the word heretic is getting thrown around a fair amount less than it did a while back, and that many people in churches and denominations are becoming much more open to healthy discussions. Definately not everywhere, but I believe it is getting much better.
As you can probability tell I’m very reformed in my theology. Although, my experience has been the same. People seem to get bent out of shape if you don’t feel the need to deconstruct your theology and assert that Scripture has only one meaning with many applications. I think the road goes both ways.
I can understand that. And really, we are all going to come to our own conclusions. And some people don’t have it within their personalities to question and challenge. They don’t feel the need to deconstruct, and build things back up again. I am actually a good example of the difference, because I can’t help but question, deconstruct, etc., but I am a phenomenon to the rest of my family. They don’t do that at all, and they have wondered if I am part of a cult because I insist on challenging the status quo. They just can’t understand my need to dig deeper.
A while back I was having some good hard conversations with a close friend of mine about politics, and we have some strongly held differences. But I noticed that he was getting frustrated and upset and I just had to stop and tell him that I care more about our friendship than I do about our disagreements. And because we came back to that, we were able to continue our discussion in a healthy way rather than it dividing us. I think the whole doctrine thing is like that. Way too often we let doctrine get in the way of our relationships.
The interesting thing about Emergent is that it has brought together people from all kinds of church backgrounds and traditions, from Catholic to house churches, and we can build relationships and work together for the things that we do agree on, and in that interaction we learn from each other. It isn’t easy, but it is worth it.
Bah, another post right after a post. Sorry, I just wanted to clarify that I don’t fault other people for not having the deconstructing, questioning type of personality. I can’t blame people for what isn’t in their nature to do. I have to remember that not everyone needs to take apart every aspect of their life in order to understand it, even if I do.
I used to be anti-Calvinism.
@joe: i don’t think anyone should be anti-calvinism but it’s the idea that you have to be completely calvinist.
let’s read the bible, study the bible, interpret the bible, apply the bible, and follow and worship jesus.
this isn’t a criticism of calvinists but a concern for anyone that ends up worshipping the bible rather than worshipping jesus. the scriptures is god’s revelation that points not to itself but to the One that saves.
Calvinists see no difference in the Authority of Scripture and the Authority of Christ. They both are the same since Christ is the Word made Flesh. This does not mean we Calvinists worship the Bible, but rather see the Bible as the authority of God which reveals the Christ.
Calvinists fear the Lord in the Biblical sense of the word fear. And as such we hold his commandments in very high regard.
Calvinists believes that Christ was totally sinless as the Law demanded. So, for a Calvinist if you reinvent the Law you are reinventing the means which is was carried out.
And therein lies the difference. Some of these Calvinists are basically Fundies that don’t believe in the Trinity but believe that the Ultimate source of Authority is their Interpretation of Scriptures.
Long live the truth of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
I don’t think it’s possible to ever avoid it entirely. We are fallen and finite creatures who have no choice but to interpret the world (including scripture, and theologians like Calvin) through a particular set of “lenses”. However, I think we can mitigate it to a degree by “swapping lenses” as much as possible. In other words, we try to correct for our own preconceptions of what we think the Bible (or Calvin) means by looking at it from other points of view. This is a big part of why, as Andy said, emergents value “free inquiry” and “open discussion”. By listening to and valuing other points of view, we are able to gain a fuller vision and correct some of our own errors and biases.
So, when it comes to Calvin for instance, it’s helpful for me to not just read the Institutes and try to glean my own understandings, but to also read what people like Piper have to say about them, and then read what people like Barth have to say about them, and then read what my Reformed Feminist Theologians textbook has to say about them, etc., etc. I can never get a