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A MONTH
Wow. This month sure did fly by. If ya care... here's where it went and thus by implication- why no time to blog about it.
SOCCER: 2 games every Saturday. One for TJ. One for Tyler. One on Sunday afternoons for me. Um... yea. Soccer takes a lot of time. I've scored 7 goals this session of indoor. I found that out cuz I was stretching before the game next to some list of goals scored. Guess I'm supposed to be counting. I didn't know anyone was.
INJURY: Got a cyst in my knee. Don't ask me how. It popped in my leg. It was gross. I felt the liquid run down the inside of my leg. Got healed up. Now I'm back to playing... but I was out for a while cuz it caused a tendon to pull too.
CLASS: I took a Theology 1 class this last quarter at school. Liked the class. Tons o reading. Took a final. Wrote a paper on the authority of scripture. Wrote about how I think inerrancy is an unneeded doctrine. Without a long explanation why- here's a brief summary: I believe the Bible is a trustworthy document and the teaching and living out of it's contents changes lives. But, no Bible scholar will tell you that any translation on the planet today- in any language, including the greek or hebrew texts we have- are "inerrant". They have minor errors (usually of very insignificant effect) in them. However, God uses them. And he will continue to- cuz he chooses to. Anyway- theologians made up this doctrine called "inerrancy" that applies to "the original manuscripts" because there is fear that people who don't accept this, start playing dice with the Bible and picking what they think they want to listen to and what they want to say must be an "error". Well, I suppose that's a possibility and some may do just that... but those who do will do it with or without a doctrine telling them not to. Basically we teach a doctrine that cannot be proven and is solely a hypothesis based on the Bible being God's inspired word. Most concervative theologians believe that if the Bible is the inspired Word of God, it is also authoritative. (there's lots of the Bible that teaches that). If it is to be authoritative, it must be also perfect... and that means it doesn't have any errors (that they say- is implied by the Bible verses about inspiration and authority). After all- God doesn't make mistakes. Yeah, that's all well and good but he uses lots of mistaked filled people every day. He also uses the Bible as the Word of God by the power of the Holy Spirit- with or without "errors". So... I'll probably get kicked out of seminary after the prof reads my paper or someone forwards this Blog onto the national office... maybe I'll wake up and find out I'm an idiot. Either way... it's been a ride. Made me think. That was good.
BBQ THE BIRD: Had all the family down for Thanksgiving. BBQ'd the bird on the grill. That was good times. 2nd year I've done the BBQ thing. First time we've hosted the event at "our house" in 11 years of marriage. This time I soaked it in a brine all night before and used a big huge ol gas grill that came with our casa. Can you believe I wore shorts and my kids played outside all day? It was hot here. San Diego is foggy in the summer and sunny in the winter. Remember that when planning your vacation here.
RETREAT: Taught 45 students the Bible was worth reading and how to do it. Gave them new Bibles and showed them what actually is in the preface. Showed them how to use the "center collumn" and the concordance. We also played broomball, ate lots of food, and fed the homeless. It was good times.
SEAWORLD: Took my student leaders to Sea World for a day. That was good times. Had 3 hours of training by Sea World staff on real life skills and job training. Then we played all afternoon. Would do it again in a heartbeat.
ANIMAL PARK: Took my kids to the wild animal park. My first time there. They have been a bunch of times. We were given passes. Didn't know there were so many varieties of Rhinos. Didn't know they had Gorillas. I think they should let them live in the same space. Bet that would be fun to watch. Also, I think it's lame that they don't let the Lions roam the "wild" lands with the rest of the animals. That would sell more tickets too if you got to see them catch and eat a gazelle on your train ride. But, maybe that's why they don't let youth pastors plan animal parks.
HOT AIR BALLOON RIDE: Took the wife on one for her birthday. Did you know they can make those things go up and down really fast. Like several hundred feet per second. Did you know they also can (and do) land them in suburban housing tracts. Yeah... like we landed in a street like the one I live on. We were like Santa minus the reindeer. I swear we could have put the thing on someone's roof. Oh.. and those flame thrower things they heat the air up with.. yeah they're loud enough to send people out of their house to see you fly like 25 feet over their house. It was a memory maker alright. Especially for the kid who got to share in show and tell that one landed in his side yard. Also stayed at a couple of very nice places along the coast down here and ate some great grub.
CABINET: built a 10 foot maple wall unit for our downstairs. It's almost done but I've got my labor and my Dad's labor into it and something like 50 hours between us. Hope it looks it when I'm done.
CHRISTMAS STUFF: Bought Tree. Put up ornaments and lights and such. Added lights to our house.. you know hung the new lights up- that takes like 5 hours after you move and have to do it for the first time on your casa. Made 14 batches of my families secret Christmas Toffee. Shopping. Went to 5 Christmas parties. Planned a few parties. yatta yatta.
MISC. JUNK: I finally washed both cars. Yeah that took longer than this blog to get to. Kept getting bumped off the to do list. I finally erased the words "TJ's side" and "Yo Tyler" off the sides of my truck. It was so dirty strangers starting writing on it things I cannot repeat on this blog... Oh.. speaking of things I cannot repeat but will anyway- I also found out that the local hardware store sells bags of chicken crap. No joke. Whole bags of the stuff. Like they have a pallet full of it and they sell it in bags the size of the concrete mix. I think they should advertise that. Big huge ol' bill board on the freeway. "Dixieline: we sell everything from plummers putty to chicken (insert your own word here for dung)". Now that would be funny. Either that or buttons for the employees that read, "Ask me about chicken poop. I can help."
well. there ya have it. a month can fly by. I'm sure I left some stuff out. I just shot off from memory. Hope yours was less busy. Hope you can enjoy Christmas and laugh and eat baked goods with egg nog or a nice hot cup of tea by the fire.
2 comments:
just wondering how you deal with theopnuestos in 2 Tim. 3:16 with your view of innerancy in order to come up with a view like the one you are proposing. I used to think the same of your conclusion until I learned that biblical studies should always be done in greek and hebrew. So with the greek and hebrew texts, shouldn't we see that the small errors in the textual apparatus are due to the translation of the manuscripts, thus the reason why there is so many? What do you think of 2 Pet. 1:20-21? God is the beginning author of prophecy and prophetic writings (which was written down to form scripture) so does the error reside in Him? Your logic (or systematic theology) and presuppositions seem to be a little different than the apostles Peter and Paul. Assuming that you have taken into account that Peter saw Paul's writings as authoraative in 2Pet. 3:15-16 and how the whole OT was authoratative enough for Jesus and the NT writers to use as well.
I ran across your blog, hopefully I'll remember to book mark it and check for your response if you get a crazy break from that life of yours.
Doulos Xristou
First off... I get your questions. Second off- I didn't list verses cuz I was making a fast list, not cuz I haven't done my homework. Here's the answers to yours:
2 Tim 3:16 is a text referring to the Old Testament in specific so I think it's a less adequate proof text for all of the Bible, even though I think that both Old and New Testaments are God's inspired word. I think there are other places that declare more fully that the NT author's thought they were writing God's word like the commands in 1 Thes 4:2 and 8.
And theopnuestos- as you know- is greek and means it is inspired or authored by God. He has authored a lot of things that were filled with error- by man. 1 Cor. 1 declares that God uses a lot of error filled people. If you believe that God gave us his word - like it landed from his hand in a pile from heaven or if it is coming to us by the writers entering into some kind of trance... well then I guess you would have to say that the Bible being inspired and Godly must be therefore perfect in it's recording. But God uses sinful man- including all of the Bible's authors- to acomplish his work and his word.. regardless.
Regarding Translation errors- yep there are some. One cannot argue backwards that the document we don't have didn't have them. I guess one could, but it does nothing except to require the reader to believe something about the Bible it does not claim nor need to be fruitful in the lives of people today. I don't think many Theologians will declare that God cannot use the King James Bible, but virtually everyone knows it's not the most accurate translation. Heck, God even uses paraphrases to accomplish his work. The doctrine is again based on trying to keep people from straying too far from the truth or stretching things. I affirm this. However one does not need this doctrine to remain true to God or his Word in my opinion. I'm not dumping my Bible anytime soon. I'm just not going to make a reverse arguement to justify it based on what I think must be true of original manuscripts we don't have.
2 Peter 1:20-21 - yep. God speaks through prophets. Yes he speaks clearly. Yes he speaks truthfully. Here- the problem does not lie in the "dictated" statements where a prophet says, "thus says the Lord." It's the fact that we teach that even in those texts, when the author leads up to that, somehow he could not have said anything that was in error. Like he couldn't have mispelled the prophets Father's name. Sure- he couldn't have lied about it... but could he have mispelled it. My opinon says sure. I also know I'm opening a crazy box and that many use this box to run a muck and chuck stuff from the Bible. I think it's the fear of that which causes us to demand perfection from documents written by prophets and apostles.
As for the value that the prophets, Jesus, and all the NT writers put on the high value of God's word. I agree. In fact, I believe it is God's word- that is it is authoritative and infallible. I think we see this in God's declaration that David had a heart after God's own. Surely this does not mean all he said or did was godly. It just shows that God can and does use people's mistakes to do his work. I don't think the Bible is chalked full of them. I would have left the pastorate a long time ago if I did. However, I have no need for there to be no typo's for it to be useful for correcting, rebuking, training, and teaching.
ok.. guess that's all. Nice to meet you Doulos. I'm sure we'll meet someday.
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