A Free Bible?
June 24, 2009
Scott Wells from boyinthebands.com and I have been having a discussion about Freedom and the Bible. As Scott puts it:
A few months ago, “Demas” from “Live from Thessalonica” blog and I began a correspondence on freedom and the Bible. Not “Bible” in an an abstract or theologized sense, but as a text which is printed, spoken, translated and edited. Nor “freedom” from a theologized sense, but directly related to the use of the text and how the text may be shared or restricted, and what that says about Christian community.
The Bible may be a shared resource of our religion, but (with the partial exception of the World English Bible) the available translations are either written in a language the age of which puts a barrier between a modern reader and the text, or are copyrighted and subject to the control and power of the copyright owner.
The first part is written up in the latest edition of The Liberal Christian – available now! Check it out.
Eeeek: The American Patriot’s Bible
June 6, 2009
Thomas Nelson, “the world’s largest publisher of Bibles in English” now publish The American Patriot’s Bible:
THE ONE BIBLE THAT SHOWS HOW ‘A LIGHT FROM ABOVE’ SHAPED OUR NATION. Never has a version of the Bible targeted the spiritual needs of those who love our country more than The American Patriot’s Bible. This extremely unique Bible shows how the history of the United States connects the people and events of the Bible to our lives in a modern world. The story of the United States is wonderfully woven into the teachings of the Bible and includes a beautiful full-color family record section, memorable images from our nation’s history and hundreds of enlightening articles which complement the New King James Version Bible text.
Eeek.
More discussion here where Eugene Cho disapprovingly notes:
The Lord’s statement that Moses “is faithful in all My houses” (Num. 12:7) calls for a boxed quote from Grover Cleveland about how the teachings of Christ “results in the purest patriotism…”
Eeek. Eeek.
HT: Better Bibles
Spong on Hell
May 31, 2009
I have always found Spong worth listening to, even as I doubt whether his attempt to provide a grounded liberal Christianity works for me. Anyway, here is a short opinion of his on Hell:
Ballou v Channing
May 25, 2009
From “The Universalist movement in America, 1770-1880” by Ann Lee Bressler pp 4-7, arguing that “Channing’s disdain for those of humble backgound cannot completely explain his lack of collegiality, indeed of civility, toward a neighbouring minster [Ballou] whose doctrinal criticism … often mirrored his own”:
John White Chadwick … maintained in his 1903 biography of Channing that the [Ballou's] Treatise [on Atonement] “anticipated the full-grown expression of Channing’s thonght on all its principal lines.” Chadwick’s subtly condescending assertion, issued long after the Unitarians and Universalists had grown cozy, reflects a view about the relationship between the early histories of the two movements that remains prevalent nearly a century later. Unfortunately, it is based on a fundamental misreading of the Treatise. While many of the major ideas and arguments in the two works are strikingly similar, the central thrust of the Baltimore sermon differs greatly from that of Ballou’s Treatise.
One commentator has observed that, in Channing’s thought, we can see a “vast reversal in the orientation of the New England mind since the time of [Jonathan] Edwards,” even “the triumph of Edwards’s opponents.” Channing valued the gospel for its “aids,” “motives,” and “excitements” to a “generous and divine virtue” and insisted that virtue could not be “infused into us without our own moral activity.” It was in the human ability to oppose nature and history, not in human openness to God, that Channing saw the beauty of man. As Ballou’s biographer, Ernest Cassara, has pointed out, Channing’s Arminianism was directly opposed to Ballou’s belief. The keynote of Ballou’s message was the power of God’s love in the face of human sinfulness and apparent intransigence. Man “experimentally becomes a child of God,” and “by the spirit of the word, the soul is brought into sweet communion with God.” In this key respect, Ballou remained closer to Edwards than to Edwards’s opponents.
Indeed, the disagreement between Channing and Ballon continued in important respects a conflict that bad originated between Jonathan Edwards and the liberal clergy of Boston. Figures like Jonathan Mayhew and Charles Chauney had developed what Henry May has called “a post-Calvinist adaptation of the Moderate English Enlightenment” They held at more than arm’s length the sort of intense concern with human sinfulness and the fate of souls that flared during the Great Awakening.
Channing was clearly an exponent of the outlook they had nurtured. Ultimately, he sought to furnish the rational structure for a religion of moral self-culture. For Channing, after all, virtue was rooted in human moral nature, with its likeness to God. Andrew Delbanco has written that Channing’s conception of virtue “as a property of individual insularity” made him uncomfortable with the “communitarian metaphysics of Edwards, who always conceived of virtue in terms of relation.”
We can see the basic incompatibility between Channing and Ballou when we recognize that Ballou’s vision was essentially communitarian as well. Indeed, Ballou’s understanding of the power of the doctrine of universal salvation is reminiscent of Edwards’s expression of true virtue:
In pure love to others i.e., love not arising from self-love, there is a union of the heart with others; a kind of enlargement of the mind, whereby it so extends itself as to take others into a man’s self: and therefore it implies a disposition to feel, to desire, and to act as though others were one with ourselves.
Ballou held that the heartfelt belief in universal salvation induced people to rise above the “natural moral sense,” to act out of a higher and less purely selfish virtue. Faith in universal salvation severely discouraged the elevation of individual virtue as it celebrated the organic purpose and will of God.
In the end, Ballou and Channing thus directed reason to very different purposes; Ballou put it in the service of fervent evangelical piety, while Channing used it to illuminate an urbane moralism. Channing’s refusal to recognize Ballou, then, was probably far more than the snubbing of one who held a lower social station; it was also an expression of distaste for the broad implications of Ballou’s teachings. Ballou had, in an important way, appropriated the legacy of Edwards, while Channing was socially and intellectually descended from his opponents. Imbuing the organic, egalitarian piety of Edwards with a heavy dose of Enlightenment rationality, Ballou challenged an Arminian individualism that implicitly reinforced a sense of social hierarchy. Intellectually as well as socially, this preacher from the hill country made William Ellery Channing uneasy.
It is obvious which of those visions won. I wonder what was lost, though, in the victory?
76,559,103 words today
May 10, 2009
According to the admin page for wordpress.com, it hosts 215,944 bloggers, who wrote 238,126 new posts comprising 76,559,103 words today. Interestingly, there are more posts than bloggers which means that some bloggers have been more than compensating for the fact that I haven’t posted here since the end of 2007.
It is odd looking back at things you have written in the past, especially for religion. It isn’t that I necessarily disagree with what I have written, it seems plausible enough (I guess), but that I’m not sure how much it really matters in the scheme of things.
After all, true Christianity is first and foremost about the quality of relationships – everything else is hot air.
Anyway, an experiment. Back to blogging for a little while at least to see what happens. (And maybe some other stuff, but let’s keep that a surprise)
On Nontheist Conceptions of the Ground of Being
December 17, 2007
God does not exist
like a rock exists
but God is my sure foundation.
God does not exist
like a tree exists
but God is life.
God does not exist
like I exist
but God was a man.
God does not exist
like the number three exists
but God is one.
God does not exist
like love exists
but God is love.
God is.
