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The Bible Is Insufficient
Kurt Johnson wrote a piece a few days ago on the proper place of Scripture in the life of a believer. He reflects on the fact that we have elevated the Bible to a place that God really never intended. We are a people centered on a person, not a book. He hits the nail on the head in this article, and we hope you’ll take a few minutes and read the whole thing.
Kurt reflects:
The Bible is not anything like a tidy “answer book”… But I’m afraid we have too many treating it as if it is, and going on about our lives forgetting God, living a rather community-less, tradition-less, Godless Christianity, in a relationship with a book, that supposedly has “all the right answers” to life’s complexities.Who needs God if we have all “the answers” in a book? Who needs a community? Who needs a tradition? Who needs Jesus?The Bible is important, yet it’s so insufficient.
Related Reading
Revelation 17:8 refers to people whose names haven’t been written in “the book of life from the creation of the world.” Doesn’t this conflict with open theism?
As in Revelation 13:8, the clause “from the foundation” (apo kataboleis) need not mean “from before the foundation” but simply “from the foundation” (= since the foundation). It’s not that names either were or were not written in the “book of life” before they were ever born. Rather, throughout history, in response to the choices…
God is Different Than You Think
The revelation of “[a] God humiliated even unto the cross,” as Pascal put it, flies in the face of what most Jews of Jesus’ time, and of what most people throughout history, have expected God to be. In this light, we can discern the thematic centrality of the cross in Jesus’ many teachings that reverse…
The Violent “Church Triumphant”
In light of how central enemy-loving non-violence is to Jesus’ teaching and to his cross-centered revelation of God, we have to wonder why the church has refused to listen to its head and instead condoned violence, as pointed out in the previous post? Christian theologians have used OT’s violent portraits of God, at least since…
Pre-Modern Readings of Genesis 1
Biologos posted a three part reflection on Pre-Modern readings of Genesis 1 that are worth a closer look. And no matter what your particular way of reading this portion of Scripture, let’s pay attention to what edifies the Church and whether our reading contributes to that. From Part I of the series: Key theologians of…
Why Did It Take SO Long for God to Reveal Himself in Jesus?
Greg talks about why it took God so long to reveal himself in Jesus. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0048b.mp3
Justice and Biblical Clarity in Hindsight
Murky1 via Compfight Rachel Held Evans posted a challenging look at our history of using the Bible to uphold things like slavery and to condemn people like Galileo for his scientific findings. You really need to check out the specific quotes she cites to experience the full horror of the ways the Bible was used…