I had some good reflection time sitting in the History of American Evangelicalism class today . Krygsman was talking about how people during the beginning of the second great awakening read the Bible basically using reason and even moreso common sense philosophy. I'm not sure what he said about that sparked my thought, but I remembered back in late high school when I started reading the Bible on my own. I kind of told myself that I would not read any commentary or the life application stuff the first time I read it...as to not add outside influence to my understanding of the scripture.
I sat there and kind of smirked as I thought about how rediculous that sounds to me now. Its funny that I didn't realize how deeply my Calvinist/ CRC roots effected my thought and my perception of scripture. Even something as simple as "Jesus loves me..the Bible tells me so"(not distinctly crc) has a message that effects the way I think, live, and believe. Most of the things I learned growing up came from a distinct perspective that influences my "glasses" to seeing the world. (friken even that idea is calvinist).
Moral o story is: To think I could read the Bible with out outside influence was crazy...Ive been raised to read it (and everything) a certain way...Calvin/Kuyper/a host of theologians/Christian Reformed Church/Dordt College/ Nibbelink Family....you get the point.
Just a little muse from class.
7 comments:
There's a campus newspaper at UNL, and just recently there was an editorial on how we shouldn't take the Bible literally, but rather take them as fables that teach us life lessons. He said that if we had to believe that stories like that of Job actually happened, then God wouldn't be worthy of worship. (You can read the article at http://media.www.dailynebraskan.com/media/storage/paper857/news/2007/02/28/Opinion/Miller.Literal.Interpretation.Can.Alter.Bibles.True.Message-2746972.shtml .) Anyway, I was talking with someone last night about this, and he brought up Anselm (I think). Basically, Anselm said "I believe so that I can know" or something like that. The point that the guy I was talking to was trying to make is that we should come to the text with a friendly demeanor, one that accepts as a premise that there is something good we can find in the text (even in stories like Job's), and see what we can learn from it. Anyway, I guess that was a bit of a digression, but what you said reminded me of it. We have to come to the text with a certain framework in order to get the most we can out of it.
That areticle makes very little sense. The whole time I was trying to figure out which part made the least sense. did you post on there?
sorry...article.
No, I didn't post. I think issues like that should be dealt with in the church, not in a public forum. The arguments I would have I don't think would carry much weight to someone with an unregenerate heart. But yeah, I agree with you, it's a lot of junk. I mean yeah, sure, not everything in the Bible is meant to be taken literally, but some if it very clearly is. People in the new testament don't refer to the story of Job as some fable - you can tell they regarded it as historical fact.
No, I didn't post. I think issues like that should be dealt with in the church, not in a public forum. The arguments I would have I don't think would carry much weight to someone with an unregenerate heart. But yeah, I agree with you, it's a lot of junk. I mean yeah, sure, not everything in the Bible is meant to be taken literally, but some if it very clearly is. People in the new testament don't refer to the story of Job as some fable - you can tell they regarded it as historical fact.
Whoops. Sorry for the double post.
Kyle
Well.... I took the Old Testament (pentateuch) class Dordt offers last semester and a few people do regard it as a "Story" and not necassarily fact. This is mostly because it is the first poetic book in the Bible. Also, it is thought to have been written before Genesis (by some).
Interestingly though, if that kid would have done a bit more homework he would have found Ezekiel 14:14 and James 5:11 telling him that Job was a historical Character.
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