T. F Torrance quote of the week
Fundamentalists and so-called evangelicals take note:
"Fundamentalism stumbles at the consubstantial relation between the free continuous act of God's self-communication and the living content of what He communicates, especially when this is applied to divine revelation in and through the Holy Scriptures. It rejects the fact that revelation must be continually given and received in a living relation with God i.e., it substitutes a static for a dynamic view of revelation. ...The practical and the epistemological effect of a fundamentalism of this kind is to give an infallible Bible and a set of rigid evangelical beliefs primacy over God's self-revelation which is mediated to us through the Bible. This effect is only reinforced by the regular fundamentalist identification of biblical statements about the truth with the truth itself to which they refer. ...The living reality of God's self-revelation through Jesus Christ and in the Spirit is in point of fact made secondary to the Scriptures." (Thomas F. Torrance, Reality and Evangelical Theology. Westminster Press. 1981. pgs 16,17,18).
"Fundamentalism stumbles at the consubstantial relation between the free continuous act of God's self-communication and the living content of what He communicates, especially when this is applied to divine revelation in and through the Holy Scriptures. It rejects the fact that revelation must be continually given and received in a living relation with God i.e., it substitutes a static for a dynamic view of revelation. ...The practical and the epistemological effect of a fundamentalism of this kind is to give an infallible Bible and a set of rigid evangelical beliefs primacy over God's self-revelation which is mediated to us through the Bible. This effect is only reinforced by the regular fundamentalist identification of biblical statements about the truth with the truth itself to which they refer. ...The living reality of God's self-revelation through Jesus Christ and in the Spirit is in point of fact made secondary to the Scriptures." (Thomas F. Torrance, Reality and Evangelical Theology. Westminster Press. 1981. pgs 16,17,18).
posted by xopher_mc | 6:23 pm
4 Comments:
Once again a theologian manages to say in 3 paragraphs what takes me about 4 weeks of blogging.
This is cool if it means that God is continually speaking to us and continually being revealed - and I think that's what it says.
But I can see that it could also be taken to mean that there is ultimate freedom of belief and interpretation i.e. Jesus iswhoever I think he is and the bible means whatever I think it means. That leads to just as much a disaster as legalistic fundamentalism.
The reason it does not fall into relativism. Is because Torrance would say that we are intracting with a genuine other. Therefore, if this is the case we may marr but we can never make it out to be what it is not.
Do I understand that rightly to say that we can never misrepresent God? or the bible for that matter?
There have been many times when God has been made out to be hypocritical, powerless, weak, dictatorial or even non-existent - all based on 'this is what I read the bible to mean' those can't all be true?
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