NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:Marcus wrote:NapLajoieonSteroids wrote: their community take the Bible "literally" (which is such a reductionist way of looking at a set of books)
I think you are really splitting hairs here Marcus, you know exactly what I meant.
Or is it suddenly the Lutherans/Presbyterians/Reformed tradition do not take the Bible to be the Word of God?
I'm confused, Nap, I do not know exactly what you meant. First you say taking the Bible "literally" is "such a reductionist way of looking at a set of books," and then you accuse me of taking the Bible literally? What am I to infer from that?
But to try again, yes, I do believe the Bible to be God's word transmitted to us through the vehicle of human authors and translators, but God often uses metaphor and analogy to get His point across.
I know it goes against your dna to ever directly agree with me here...
but to quote azari: "come on, Marcus, come on"
There are various levels of hermeneutics that go with the Bible from the allegorical to the literal et al;
And no way to check any of them.
but Typhoon's original contention was that he can determine who takes the Bible literally by living up to every proscription, jot and tittle in the text....that is reductionist;
No it's not. That is what is commonly meant by, "Literal". You seek relief from the proscriptions of God in semantics.
Which of God's proscriptions can be disregarded? Which were "Corruptions" and the sad but inevitable translation drift? Who can say? Who keeps the DNS "A" record? "Why does a diesel love her oil like a sailor love his grog?" The answers are strikingly similar: "No one knows, Swab."
and ignores that most communities that use the texts of the Bible would contend that they do follow Scripture and take it "literally."
Isn't it great that there's so much a community can disregard or reinterpret of God's Word!? And since there's no way in theory or practice or possibility to check the effectiveness of a particular hermaneutic of interpretation, they're all equally valid and live as rooms in Our Father's House.
I don't know how to make it much simpler than: the scripture is read by a community, the community isn't read through scripture.
Ehhh....I think there's still a little deconstruction to do to make that coherent. In particular your wibble of the verb
to read.
Now I am certain there are some people who self-identify as Christians who believe God wrote all the books in cursive and expects to follow every letter written down...but there is nothing that makes such acommunity (and its believers) "more true to the text" than a Methodist, an Anglican or someone in one of those Chinese house churches....
A long time ago, I came to the conclusion that because Christianity wasn't true, there was no necessary definition of
Christian. That this applies to 'groups of Christians' with equal usefulness is further testament to the durability of that conclusion.