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Re: proofs and people

Oh, wow,  why to the most interesting topics come up when I can't
really respond in realtime?  :-)

Actually, between the two of them, j.marie and peter have covered most of what
I might have wanted to say on the subject, but there is one perspective I
wanted to throw out there with respect to the issue of God loving violence.
Last year at this time I was working at a triennial conference for Quaker
teenagers.  It was originally started by and for Evangelical Friends, but over
the last 15 years or so, more and more of the liberal stripe have been
attending.  Most of these kids are only vaguely aware, if that, that the other
branches of our tradition exist.  Suddenly they're confronted with people who
call themselves by the same labels but are radically different.  It's really
the only forum that the different branches of Quakerism are even talking to
each other, and it's often threatening to fly apart.  The two most Evangelical
groups have actually pulled out rather than be exposed to us liberals.  

Anyway, the important point is that it's still a Christ-centered retreat, and
that can be a real shocker for people not used to it.  Last year was, I think,
much less confrontational, but there was one guy who was leading the Bible
study sessions who took a very rigorous certain-kind-of-protestant slant on
salvation history that really repulsed a lot of our kids.  He said (in essense)
that God demands a blood sacrifice for sin ("we may not like it, but that's the
way God is"), and so sacrificed his son to cover our debt.  To some of the
liberal kids, this made it sound like God was not only bloodthirsty, but rather
stupid: to set up the rules of his own game this way and then try to make us
all feel grateful for letting us off a hook he put us on in the first place.

So, my point in all this was not to slam somebody or put down a point of view,
but to try to tell this story to give a concrete example of how someone might
not look at the crucifiction and see the same image that matt (or anyone else)
does.  Whether it's a triumphal victory or a benevolent sacrifice or a
ludicrous defeat all depends on how you contextualize the image: it may be
worth a thousand words, but they aren't going to be the same thousand words to
everyone viewing the image.

On the questions of biblical infallibility, I'd like to point out two things:
first of all, if you get a greek-english concordance of the NT and an
inter-linear edition and take a look at the phrase "the word of God", I think
you will find, as I did, that the phrase is never used in the bible to refer to
the bible.  Even if you set aside the obvious fact that the bible wasn't around
yet while the books were being written, the word "graphe" (or "scriptures/
writings") is never used in conjuction with "the word of god".  The latter
phrase seems to me to always be used in conection with either the spoken words
of Jesus, or the direct personal experience of God.  If someone who actually
knows koine Greek could correct me on that, I'd appreciate it, but that's what
I've seen in my own investigations.

Second, and related, I think I can provide an alternate take on the "inspired"
question from a Quaker perspective that might be useful.  We don't have pastors
or priests: anyone may be inspired to stand and share a message for the
community during one of our Meetings.  That doesn't mean when we stand to speak
we do so independently of our cultural background and life experience.  Just
the opposite: who we are provides us with a unique set of tools that can be
called upon.  So I think of the bible as inspired in much the same way as
people in Meeting are inspired: not that God dictated the words, or that the
words are the Word, if you follow me, but that the Word (of John 1) is
something beyond the words that moves through the words.  So when I,
personally, read the bible, I feel like I am partaking in a meeting for worship
that stretches across thousands of years.  That's a really cool feeling.  I
don't feel I need to close the canon and declare a certain manuscript
"inerrant" to do that.

And finally, j. marie said:
> "but what's really contradictory in terms of the event and its significance
> given the context of the entire metanarrative?"

As Mulder once said... I am strangely aroused.  ;-)  
-- 
Don Smith                    Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
donaldas at umich_edu                          http://xte.mit.edu/~dasmith/

"Some people dream of fortunes, while other people dream of cookies."
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