In a book I read recently, John G. Stackhouse says this: "The quest is not for the perfect theory, the perfect interpretation of Scripture, the perfect theology but for the best available. The main thing in life is not to figure everything out but to rely on God to provide what we need to accomplish his Will in every circumstance -- including the best theology for the job -- and then to get on with that work."
In theory it sounds like we should be searching for the perfect theology, the perfect interpretation of scripture. However, when you look at the tradition of hermeneutics (interpretation of scripture) you witness the evidence of the impossibility of the ultimate hermeneutic. Slavery is an ideal example. Throughout the whole Bible (Old Testaments and New) slavery is either condoned or permitted if you hold to a literal, static interpretation. Because of this, theologians throughout history have endorsed slavery. Some notable pro-slavery Christians: Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Hodge.
I don't think that any Spirit guided Christian today would knowingly permit or endorse any kind of slavery. In other words... we believe that we have made progress in our theology. We now understand things differently than all of these well respected Spirit guided theologians who endorsed slavery in the past. Somehow we know better. Our interpretation is "more correct".
Now, don't get me wrong... I am not promoting liberal theology in any way. I am completely bound to God's infallible Word. However, I believe that in order for us to aid God in His recreation of our world we need to embrace a progressive theology. How this works itself out with scripture I'll talk about next week...
But until then:
Am I on crack?
Have we as Christians really been making any progress?
Can you think of any theologies in which future Christians might make more progress/change our theology?
What areas of our world need to be recreated the most (ie. environment/human rights/theology/philosophy/etc...)?
7 comments:
I'm hoping future Christians will progress in their theology concerning the call to one body and the whole 'no distinction between Greek and Jew' thing.
In Saskatoon, the division amongst people caused by race and economic class is ridiculous.
Maybe our 'theology' on this issue is at a decent place right now (and I'm not even sure of that), but how it's lived out in practice is sad and crippling.
It's true that in so many ways our theology is almost "stuck in a rut" so to speak. But the problem with progressive theology, the way I understand it, is that many do not follow the infallible Word of God and instead start making up their own rules. It's like walking a very fine line between truth and what we want to believe is truth.
For example, I went to a church when I first moved here and the pastor discussed the same issue, slavery, and how we have grown past that to now know that slavery is okay even though in the Bible it was fine culturally to have a slave as long as you treated them well. In the same way, he added, homosexuality used to be condemned in society but is now acceptable because God never designed specifically for man and woman (he said, not me) to be one, but that for two people in a relationship to be one. That it was a man PERSON and female PERSON with the emphasis being more on the person than on the sex of the person. And, therefore, we can see that although homosexuality was culturally wrong at that time, it is now culturally acceptable and God would also see it as being acceptable as long as the relationship is pure. (Although how you can have a pure homosexual relationship is beyone me...and not YOU specifically, obviously, but any person.) Even so, I seem to remember a lot of problems in the Bible where homosexuality was culturally acceptable and God still said it was wrong. So somewhere along the line I think this other pastor crossed the line and tried to follow a path to make himself culturally acceptable while still trying to sound like he was following God's word. He made the arguement sound so...promising?...that it almost made you re-evaluate your view on homosexuality. For the new believer it would be so hard to see truth from what they want to believe is truth.
At least that is my opinion on the subject. Maybe it's my "truth" that is warped.
P.S. I was waiting in line to return something at Futureshop and they were playing old cartoons of Transformers and I'm thinking that Transformers may be HeMan and Astroboy together. They had some "cool" language going on!
Okay, comment #3. I meant to say Transformers could "beat" not "be" HeMan and Astroboy.
While I'm on a comment roll here, I noticed you are reading "Sex God" and the pastor I mentioned in a previous comment was reading that book at the same time as doing all the talks that he gave on love. It seemed that the book was really good because he had a lot of good things to say that he had learned from it (up until the homosexuality speech which I don't think he got from that book.)
And "Hood" is such a good book and I can't wait for the sequel to come out in September.
"Sex God" is a great book. It's well worth the read. In fact, Rob Bell extensively uses ideas from Webb's book that I talk about in the new post... thus Rob Bell in no way condones homosexuality.
Yeah, "Hood" is really good. I'm actually rereading it so I'll be ready for "Scarlet".
Everyone should go out and read everything by Stephen R. Lawhead. He's pretty much the only "Christian" novel writer (don't get me going on "christian" labelling) that I can stand reading.
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