djdaneh@pacbell.com (Dan'l DanehyOakes) (01/30/91)
In article <Jan.27.02.01.33.1991.18343@athos.rutgers.edu> davidbu@loowit.wr.tek.com (David E. Buxton) writes: >Here are some reasons why I believe that we should trust scripture, guided by >the Holy Spirit, rather than scripture guided by tradition compiled by the >wisdom of man. Your texts are appropriate; and nobody (in this debate) has suggested that human wisdom be placed *over* Scripture. Not the Roman Catholic church, not any individual Catholics, not me, not the moderator. Nobody. But. If you are guided by the Scripture, you will make decisions based on it; and those decisions are based on "the wisdom of man," even if it is only your own wisdom. Every time you decide whether a Scripture passage means X or means Y or both or neither, some "wisdom of man" is involved, unless of course you believe that God directly intervenes to make sure you choose correctly -- which strikes me as hubris, and I don't accuse you of it! So, if you are making these decisions based on human wisdom, the question becomes: _what_ human wisdom? Your own? Or the accumulated wisdom of two thousand years, sifted and argued out by some of the finest (and some of the worst, admittedly) human minds Western civilization, Christendom, and humanity at large have produced? Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, all is vanity: both the vanity of mindlessly accepting a tradition because it is a tradition, and the vanity of rejecting it because it is not a direct quotation from the Bible. The Bible _does_ need to be read critically: by which I do not mean with an eye toward accepting this and rejecting that, but with an eye toward understanding _how_ we are to accept the very different kinds of wisdom and knowledge it offers. Compared to God, who is wise? But compared to me, many people in the past have been wise, and I suspect the same is probably true for you. I am not so vain as to reject their wisdom out of hand. Are you? >Do not add or subtract from this scripture (Deut. 4:2; 12:32; Prov. 30:6; >Eccl. 3:14; Rev 22:18). True: but who decided what scriptures (which means only, "writings") would be the collection we now call "the Bible?" Not God, or at least at no time did God dictate or hand over a list which included, e.g., the Gospel according to Mark but not the Gospel according to Thomas; or the Books of Samuel but not those of Maccabees. Most Christians reject Thomas' gospel, and most Protestants reject I and II Macc. Why? In the case of the Gospel according to Thomas, it's because it's a Gnostic work, and human wisdom -- one of the seven great Councils of the early Christian era, in solemn conclave -- decided that the four Gospels with which we are all familiar are true doctrin, and the several others which have been lost and/or found over the centuries since, were not. Thomas' in particular was rejected because, being Gnostic, it was heterodoctrinal. The logic was that Jesus' disciples would not have written such a work; therefore Thomas could not have written it, and it was, by definition, a forgery, and probably of later date than the four. [The above is a gross oversimplification of a complex argument.] More recent scholarship suggests strongly that it is at least contemporaneous with the four canonical Gospels, but this doesn't make it genuine. [On the other hand, it has occasionally occurred to me that Thomas was a rather independent-minded fellow, if his few recorded actions and statements are any indication: sort of a protoMissourian with a "Show-Me" attitude. Such a one might well have come up with Gnosticism.] In the case of I and II Maccabees, there is to this date debate on whether they should be considered canonical. Well, actually I don't see much debate: but there is a fair amount of yelling, mostly by Fundamentalists who use the inclusion of these books in the Catholic Bible as "proof" that the RC Church has "perverted" Christianity, apparently not realizing that the _non_-inclusion of these books can equally be regarded as a perversion by those who for centuries have heard (or felt they heard) God speaking to them from those pages. The point of all this is, of course, that "adding to or taking away from these scriptures" is a very slippery concept. -- Then David goes in for a bit of what I can only describe as Jew-baiting. I'm sorry, David, but I am offended to hear you speak out thus against God's chosen people. >Also, to insist that we must put our trust in "learned men" with or without >credentials in theology is to place these men in the place of the Holy Spirit. >Let us pray rather for the guidance of the Holy Spirit each time we sit down >to study the Bible. Amen! But let us also believe that many people have done this for many years. Does God need to repeat the same guidance over and over? Are we to demand that each of us receive a personal revelation? Or are we to look at what others have found in the Bible over all these years, and -- while not surrendering our own minds, but examining critically -- praise God for making His Word speak in so many ways to so many minds, and for inspiring these men and women to put their discoveries in writing so that we might share them? Which is the path of humility and which the path of vanity? >Paul makes it clear that we >should be followers of Christ and not of Paul, Then does this make the Pauline letters less Scriptural than the Gospels? Or what? >"Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they >received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every >day to see if what Paul said was true." (Acts 17:11) Paul was the apostle to >these people and yet Paul holds them up to the world as an example. Uh... You *do* mean, "Luke holds them up..." don't you? Or have you managed to come to the conclusion that Paul wrote Acts? Hooch is for husbandman hondling his hoe. Ho ho ho, Mister Finn, you're going to be Finnegan! Comeday morm and oh, you're vine! Sendday's eve and ah, you're vinegar! Ha ha ha, Mister Funn, you're going to be fined again! --J. Joyce The Roach