Same Song, Umpteenth Verse

[cjbanning]

Feb 11, 2011 -- 9:11PM, Nino0814 wrote:

You are free to believe that this [i.e., the Virgin Birth--cjb] was a literal event. I want my clergy to intelligently and honest evaluated the evidence in scripture. That is what Spong does.

I'm actually not interested in a clergyperson using scriptural and other historical evidence to try and determine "what really happened." (Although I don't object too strongly to it; I certainly wouldn't them defrocked, and already have said that Spong's episcopacy is one of the reasons I've joined TEC.) Instead, I'd want them to draw on the resources of Christian mythology to instruct and edify souls in the postmodern age and to introduce people to the Risen Christ. That of course requires an understanding of how that mythology developed and evolved, however. I'd want a clergyperson to understand the differing agendas and biases of the evangelists and epistle-writers not to "see beyond" those agendas and biases to some uncorrupted truth, but rather to understand what the evangelists and letter-writers were trying to say to better be instructed and edified.

 

Feb 11, 2011 -- 9:11PM, Nino0814 wrote:

The creeds are telling us that our Faith is sufficient, and does not require addition belief, or worship practices (as the so called Gnostic taught).

Well, the sacraments are means of grace. I'm actually not at all sure what your sentence means.
 

Feb 12, 2011 -- 8:58AM, dutch777 wrote:

 

Nino's and Shel's posts summate my position quite well.

Fr. Dunlop's position effectively is obscurantist and fictionalist, which does imvho a disservice to scripture by removing it from analytic investigation and reducing it to wishful thinking and moral tales, at the level of Aesop's Fables.

 

 

Considering that I worship a God who lives in relational community with Godself as three Persons in one Being, I think I'm okay with being called obscurantist (although I admit I had a long moment of feeling defensive).

One of the things I loved about the Episcopal Church was that it was (and is) a place where I could (and can) live a faith in some ways shielded from Protestant iconoclasm, where the mysteries of the faith could be embraced and experienced without needing to be made able to fit within the categories of human reason, where bread could become flesh and wine could become blood without it needing to be just a metaphor, and where the Risen Christ and the Holy Spirit could move within the context of our postmodern, 21st-century world (and people would respond to the call!).

I say this not as an attack on anyone who disagrees with me but as an affirmation of the "big tent" of Anglicanism; there's room for all of us, high, low, and broad alike.

Feb 12, 2011 -- 7:06AM, Nino0814 wrote:

 

I believe that when you separate the Gospel from historical events then you have a narrative which is metaphysically as valuable as L. Ron Hubbard's for guiding how we should live. It is just creative imagination.

Historians would not claim that their analysis can provide a 100% accurate retelling of events. A historical explanation can be evaluated (unlike purely mythical ones) and therefore can be falsified or shown to be less likely. A historical explanation based on multiple sources is likely to be credible (if not 100% reliable).

 

I don't think I believe that any purely historical account is able to broach the is-ought divide in providing a narrative which is valuable in telling one how to live, to structure our experience in the way which is the basic function of any religion or mythology. There needs to be room for the "creative imagination" of the Holy Spirit. Thus the need for a True Myth, whether or not "True" is understood as "factual" or "historical."

 

Feb 12, 2011 -- 7:06AM, Nino0814 wrote:

The absence of evidence is not evidence, but the contradiction between authoritative accounts is evidence that we do not have historical accounts, but Faith Statements expressed through narratives

 

Yes--which is why I still value the historical-critical method in making those contradictions clear. Scriptures and the creeds are able to be true without needing to be factual.

(Do we all agree that, say, the Book of Genesis consists of "Faith Statements expressed through narratives"?)