Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Did Erasmus live in vain? Message-ID: Date: 5 Nov 90 10:18:21 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia Lines: 143 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Being an admirer of Kierkegaard, I ought to be on the look-out for true paradoxes and to appreciate and learn from them. But there's one I've run into that bothers me. My own belief is that the most important thing is salvation, and salvation is manifested in loving God (which is to say, in obeying Him; loving and obeying God are not two things but two names for one thing), and that _understanding_ is important chiefly as a means to these ends. For me personally it is of the utmost importance that I should seek to understand the Bible correctly, and I feel compelled to put my intelligence whole- heartedly to this task. I run the risk of taking this as an end; but it's really a _means_ to the end of learning what God is like and knowing what He wants me to do. I was literally horrified early this year when a minister I had thought well of said to me "Oh Richard, we don't go by the _Bible_!" When I say "horrified", I mean it literally. This was in connection with a moral question, where this minister said "I am more liberal than X", but X had acted out a moral belief radically incompatible with the New Testament, and one which moreover the majority of Americans and Australians regard as wrong. I had asked this minister for help from the Bible, and on getting that kind of reply I felt as if I was suspended 70,000 fathoms over an abyss. And the minister I went to for counsel here to help with my pain about X gave me no spiritual counsel, never opening or quoting or alluding to the Bible, but giving me only half-baked psychology. But my pain was precisely that I couldn't see how to reconcile my love for X with my love for God, how was it possible to approve of X as X demanded without betraying the light I thought I had? Here's the beginning of the paradox: I want to be among people who have a warm love for God, who rejoice that they are sinners saved by grace not merit (not people who the world would condemn who none the less face the strictures of the NT and say smugly "I have done none of these things, there is no sin in me"), but I also want these same people to be interested in the intellectual side. Here's the occasion of the paradox: The night before last I went to the midweek meeting of the church I'm now attending. There was a visiting speaker from America. He was born in my own country and trained for the ministry in this, but was now ministering in California. He had a really thick American accent, and ended his clauses with a loud "-uh", and from time to time shouted like Stentor with a microphone. He seemed a lot like a TV evangelist. (We're spared them here.) I was _ashamed_ that people in the congregation knew that someone like this had come from Aotearoa. He spoke on many Bible passages, but the one that stuck in my mind was Romans 12:3. In the AV, "For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think [of himself] more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith." This man said "We have THE measure of faith-uh! Nobody has more or less than anyone else-uh, we all have THE measure of faith-uh." and went on about that for some time, pointing out that "_if_ you have faith as a grain of mustard seed-uh" doesn't mean that that's _all_ you have (which is true enough). But then he went on to say "I went into the library of an Ivy League college on the East Coast-uh, and I looked up this word-uh, and 'measure' means TWELVE BARRELFULS-uh!" (Yes, I know it's barrelsful, not barrelfuls. I'm quoting.) So he said "turn to the person at your side-uh and say 'I have twelve barrelfuls of faith-uh'." Now I just *hate* that sort of thing, and there wasn't anyone near by, so I kept quiet. We weren't loud enough, so he had them say it again louder. And 5 minutes later he had everyone turn to the other side and go through this rigmarole yet again. Now, this man was holding the largest thickest Bible I have ever seen, and pointing to it, and saying "it's all in here" and so on. Here's someone who takes the Bible very seriously. BUT if you look at the Greek: "alla phronein eis to sophronein hekasto hos ho theos emerisen metrov pisteos" (but be minded so as to be sober-minded according as God has distributed a measure of faith to each) (1) he made a great fuss about "THE measure of faith". There is no definite article in the Greek. If his approach were otherwise correct, it would mean that God had twelve barrelsful of faith which he had divided out amongst everyone; my share thus being about one billionth of a barrelful. (2) he made a great fuss about "twelve barrelfuls". The only way I can make sense of this is to suppose that he had mistaken the word "metron" for the word "metretes", which takes a bit of doing. (Where the AV says "firkin", that's "metretes".) Is it fair to refer to the Greek? Well, _he_ said he had! Getting two major themes of a talk from half a verse, and getting them both wrong, quite _obviously_ wrong, I think that matters. Here's the bite of the paradox: Here's a man who by his ignorance has falsified the Word of God. Yet he has pioneered a church that has grown from nothing to a thousand people in six months, where Anglos, Blacks, and Hispanics worship together in large numbers (they even have simultaneous translation for the people who don't speak English), they have healings, they have reconciliations in families, they are bringing scores into the Kingdom weekly. I despised his "-uh"s, loathed his wanting people to shout Amen and Hallelujah every time he made a point, and was scandalised at his mishandling of the Word. But the earnestness of his desire to be faithful to God shines out of him; _God_ isn't ashamed of him, and given some of the other things he was saying, I don't for an instant suppose that any harm will come from his misunderstanding. The only one harmed was me, puffed up in my own self-esteem because _I'm_ too smart to make mistakes like that! Given the choice between a cool preacher who _can_ read the Word but prefers the wisdom of the passing age and a zealous preacher who isn't very intellectual but is honestly submitted to his God, I don't have a choice. I'll take intellectual _honesty_ over intellectual _ability_ any day. I'll more happily subject myself to the counsel of someone who will _try_ to explain matters of faith and morals from the Bible than to the counsel of someone who wants me to accept what the world doesn't without any explanation at all. (Is this not a paradox? In the matter of X, not one of the liberals who I first consulted would condescend to explain to me!) But oh, do I _have_ to make such a choice? Couldn't this man of God and those like him learn enough Greek to find the right word in a dictionary? Has careful exegesis the power to blunt the two-edged sword? Surely not! As a reward for your patience in reading this, here's a joke. DON'T misread it as criticism, it's just an accidental verbal collision. From "Venereology and Genito-Urinary Medicine", 2nd ed, Catterall, The Unitarian theory holds that syphilis, yaws, and the other treponemal diseases are a single disease. (Looks more like a trinitarian theory to me!) -- The problem about real life is that moving one's knight to QB3 may always be replied to with a lob across the net. --Alasdair Macintyre.