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From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Interpreting**2
Message-ID: <1140@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 3-Oct-83 04:12:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.1140
Posted: Mon Oct  3 04:12:11 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 3-Oct-83 07:15:48 EDT
References: <552@qubix.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
Lines: 47

The reply that Larry followed up was indeed more than 2 weeks old, and
contained quotes from other newsgroups, not all of which I thought
would (or should) get put together. Oh well. On with the discussion.


	Now, if faith is a gift of God, then all proseltysers have a
terrific way out. Why bother proselytising? The non-believers do not
have the gift. If they did they would be seeking you out, right? So by
proseltysing are you not questioning the decision of your God in not
giving this gift to everyone?  Why bother with those who have been non
given that gift by God?

Back to Larry. he has nailed the problem of Biblical interpretation:

	So who is to say one hermeneutic is better than another? I look
	at the God who wrote (or allowed writing) with such a
	hermeneutic (since the purpose of the hermeneutic is to known
	what God meant). The God of many hermeneutics probably couldn't
	save his own "soul" - why should I trust him with mine?

But what you are doing is making a personal judgement on the value of
one hermeneutic with respect to its ability to 'save his own "soul"',
and (by implication) yours as well.

However, this bit of information does not tend to go over well with
most of the Christians I know. They tend towards appoplexy when you
mention that either a) there is no way short of direct revalation that
one can claim to KNOW anything, all the rest is interpretation, and
that b) even direct revalation is subject to interpretation. Suppose we
all went home and wrote what we thought was meant by Deuteronomy. Do
you think that we would have identical (or even similar)
interpretations? Let's open the competition wide and let non-Christians
of all sorts (seeing as we have some on the net) write their own
versions -- after all is there any reason to suppose that their
interpretation is less likely to be inspired? There have been unlikely
prophets in the past...

So *NOW* what do you do, with startlingly different interpretations?
Besides reading them of course. Sounds like we either need something
more fundamental than Fundamentalism, or we need to give up a doomed
quest for universal Truth, on the grounds that had there been any in a
form that man could realise we would have realised it *ALREADY*.

laura creighton utzoo!utcsstat!laura

Ps -- on Catholicism
Maybe you need to live in a town where there is more than one main bar...