tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15860677.post6270657868151069215..comments2024-03-25T14:27:40.121-05:00Comments on Heart, Mind, Soul, and Strength: Why average Christians take the theologians with a grain of saltWeekend Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10425001168670801073noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15860677.post-61922862839938154352013-03-26T23:06:11.475-05:002013-03-26T23:06:11.475-05:00Thank you for your replies! I guess my question in...Thank you for your replies! I guess my question in response would be how Paul could describe himself as having been blameless with respect to the righteousness that comes through Law, and yet also have been wracked with a sense of inability to do what he is supposed to of the sort that Romans 7 depicts.<br /><br />It may be that understanding the "I" to be Adam and/or Israel is not the solution, but I suspect we can both agree that there is something of a puzzle here! :-)James F. McGrathhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02561146722461747647noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15860677.post-25154880074343955392013-03-26T22:33:06.994-05:002013-03-26T22:33:06.994-05:00Hi again
I don't know if you're keeping a...Hi again<br /><br />I don't know if you're keeping an eye on comments here, but I did re-read Romans 7 a few times & wanted to mention my thoughts, since you'd mentioned yours. <br /><br />It looks to me as if (2 points here) 1) Paul seems to be talking about himself as an 'everyman'; it's one reason we've always felt so free to join in there. 2) If he speaks of 'everyman' in the first person, not only would he expect that 'everyman' can fully identify with those thoughts, but that he himself also can fully identify with them. He seems to be speaking from the heart. That generally comes from experience. <br /><br />That is: if he speaks of universal sin and guilt in the first person, the most likely reason is because he knows whereof he speaks. <br /><br />In the same vein, the most helpful (from my pov) pastor I've had so far, when he needed an example of a sinner for a sermon, always used himself. And it's not that he meant it to be *only* him -- it's a sermon, he needs it to be relatable -- but it certainly was him and his own personal experience. Otherwise it would have rung a false note, and been a little less than honest. <br /><br />Take care & God bless<br />Anne / WF<br />Weekend Fisherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10425001168670801073noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15860677.post-73091141451664200982013-03-26T21:32:16.569-05:002013-03-26T21:32:16.569-05:00Hi again, long time no see. Thanks for stopping by...Hi again, long time no see. Thanks for stopping by. <br /><br />My purpose wasn't to convey that "all of Ken's points are wrong"; they're not -- though some are better than others. (That could probably be truthfully said of any "top 10" list ever published, possible caveat for the 10 commandments.) <br /><br />My point, paraphrased, was: "Come on now, you must be aware that there are legitimate disputes here. A) Oversimplifying and overstating the case directly undermine the authority of the claim to special expertise. B) The word choice and general approach come across as aloof, and that may not be the best way to gain a wider reception. C) Some of the points being corrected now were introduced by the previous generation of academics, so maybe you can understand why people don't take things unquestioningly from experts; a little modesty never goes wrong."<br /><br />So the "10 points" weren't actually my point, though I needed to discuss them a little in order to develop the point. I thought that my usual plain-spoken approach would get nowhere with that message, so I was taking a more scenic route to my point. <br /><br />Glad you enjoyed the scenery. I'll try Romans 7 with that in mind & see how it fits. <br /><br />Take care & God bless<br />Anne / WF<br />Weekend Fisherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10425001168670801073noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15860677.post-57707237235145508732013-03-25T15:02:38.001-05:002013-03-25T15:02:38.001-05:00I appreciated the thoughtful engagement with Ken&#...I appreciated the thoughtful engagement with Ken's points too, and the main thing that puzzled me was why, when you agreed with most of his points, it sounded as though you were setting out to disagree with him more than you did!<br /><br />On Romans 7, I would point out that, since it is hard to imagine Paul ever having viewed himself as alive apart from the Law, since his upbringing was never "apart from Torah," many interpreters see Romans 7 as reflecting the "I" of Adam and the people of Israel, rather than his own individual person. Philippians 3:6 seems to give us more of Paul's individual experience, and that text seems to confirm Ken's point. James F. McGrathhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02561146722461747647noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15860677.post-25106982949324400072013-03-17T15:16:32.013-05:002013-03-17T15:16:32.013-05:00Thanks for the engagement! I want to make it clea...Thanks for the engagement! I want to make it clear that I have gained insights from observant readers of the Bible in a Sunday School class I'm supposed to be teaching. <br /><br />Still, if a supposed Bible expert can't bring some quantity of unexpected insight on the Bible to those who don't have their degrees, they don't deserve to be called experts. <br /><br />Several of the insights above were obvious to me just by someone pointing them out (e.g., that Gentile converts saw themselves as converting to a form of Judaism or that Christian Jews did not see themselves as changing religions or that Jews kept the Law to stay in rather than to get in). In those instances, my Reformation biases were obvious almost as immediately as they were unseen. Ken Schenckhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09745548537303356655noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15860677.post-25397497574406819182013-03-17T13:18:16.973-05:002013-03-17T13:18:16.973-05:00Hi Martin
Thanks you very much for alerting me to...Hi Martin<br /><br />Thanks you very much for alerting me to that. <br /><br />Take care & God bless<br />Anne / WF<br />Weekend Fisherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10425001168670801073noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15860677.post-89941934150898606402013-03-17T13:17:42.774-05:002013-03-17T13:17:42.774-05:00Hi Aron
Thanks for the encouragement there.
You...Hi Aron<br /><br />Thanks for the encouragement there. <br /><br />You make a really good point about the academic bias towards newness. That's something I should have considered as well. <br /><br />It seems that people in that field don't keep track of how often the whole field gets wildly off course and has to go through its own major corrections -- and how those "wildly off track" situations are created precisely by those who are considered experts. Honestly, academics can spend decades trying to untangle misperceptions that were created by other academics (kind of like the situation in Biblical studies right now), and in the meantime there are large numbers of us wondering, if they're so expert, exactly how they got so far off-track to begin with. Things like that are probably more likely to happen in "soft" fields where so much is perception-management, rather than hard fields like nuclear physics where you run up against reality-checks sooner rather than later. <br /><br />The rational response from the rest of us is to take it with a grain of salt. <br /><br />Take care & God bless<br />Anne / WF<br />Weekend Fisherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10425001168670801073noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15860677.post-57223040818594145372013-03-17T13:07:03.465-05:002013-03-17T13:07:03.465-05:00Hi Ken
Thanks for taking the time to read and res...Hi Ken<br /><br />Thanks for taking the time to read and respond. Btw one of your regular readers has tipped me off that I spelled your name wrong throughout. Sorry about that, & I'll get that fixed after I'm done replying to comments. <br /><br />From your pov it has to be frustrating not to get much recognition and respect -- or even awareness of your work -- from some of the pastors, if they were the lower level meant as your target audience. From the pastors' pov, I expect they might consider themselves experts in their own right, though more experts on pastoral issues than on theology. It's more than I would tackle in the comments box to give all my thoughts on the disconnect between what theologians study and what pastors need for their work, but I expect that disconnect is part of the reason theologians aren't always at the top of the pastors' reading lists. (That and the Jesus Seminar, Bart Ehrman, that kind of thing.) And I expect that like anyone else, pastors also hunger for recognition and respect. <br /><br />Take care & God bless<br />Anne / WF<br />Weekend Fisherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10425001168670801073noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15860677.post-78352347113977914072013-03-17T05:30:28.450-05:002013-03-17T05:30:28.450-05:00That was a thoughtful post!
Thanks.
By the way, ...That was a thoughtful post!<br /><br />Thanks.<br /><br />By the way, it's Schenck, with 2 C's, not Schenk.Martin LaBarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14629053725732957599noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15860677.post-74118149691601003702013-03-16T21:54:28.804-05:002013-03-16T21:54:28.804-05:00I strongly agree with this post.
Ken, the problem...I strongly agree with this post.<br /><br />Ken, the problem with your analogy is that most people wouldn't have the first idea how to diffuse the bomb. But ordinary devout Christians have read the Bible, and we notice when what the experts say blatantly contradicts it. <br /><br />Sadly, there's a lot of fields where academic expertise actually makes people less reliable. For example, academics have a well-known bias towards ideas which are <i>new</i>, which correlates with being wrong.<br /><br />Don't get me wrong, there's situations where the academics are right and everyone else is wrong. I just don't think that happens to biblical critics very often.Aron Wallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10552077344304954390noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15860677.post-43730500728781003992013-03-16T10:38:17.283-05:002013-03-16T10:38:17.283-05:00Thanks for your thoughtful engagement. You are ind...Thanks for your thoughtful engagement. You are indeed right that some of these would be more contested than others. If I might give a hint of my "trickle down" comment, when I was saying "popular," I was thinking pastors. Most pastors, I believe, continue to speak in categories contrary to the ones where you say I am on solid ground again. <br /><br />My tone was not meant to be haughty. It was a reflection of chastisement that we live in a context where being an expert is considered an automatic negative. Don't trust him, he's an "expert." In that sense, your thoughtful engagement, whether you like it or not, means you were not someone I was directing that comment at.<br /><br />It's one thing to know the issue and disagree. It's another not to have any clue what the experts, who actually do know more by definition, have been talking about for the last 50 years. That doesn't make experts better people, but it does mean they're far more likely to be right in the same way that you want someone who's been trained trying to diffuse a nuclear bomb. Ken Schenckhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09745548537303356655noreply@blogger.com