From: REXLEX@linac.fnal.gov
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Liberal vs. Conservative
Date: 5 Sep 92 20:36:15 GMT
Organization: FNAL

In article <Sep.4.02.53.00.1992.29373@athos.rutgers.edu> REXLEX@linac.fnal.gov
writes:
>In article <Sep.3.04.26.09.1992.29391@athos.rutgers.edu>
hedrick@cs.rutgers.edu
>writes:

>[I'm not sure exactly where the disagreements are here.  I'm tempted
>to say that we are in violent agreement. ...
>I was not of course trying to do a detailed analysis of every book in
>the Bible.  I agree that Romans is much less oriented to specific
>problems of the recipients than, say, I or II Corinthians.
>--clh]

what are people going to think Chuck, when we start agreeing?  There's nothing
you've said here that I, nor the school that I seem to represent, FI, disagree
with.  However, there may be a need for further explaination of your final
comment on Corinthians.  This is a NT book that is specifically written to a
church.  Unfortunately we only have 2 of the 4 letter written to them. Being an
elder of a growing church, I have found more and more application of the
Corinthian letters.  Paul was not just addressing specific people, but also
specific sins, or failures.  These have not change in 2000 yrs per se.  Yes,
women aren't experiencing a new found freedom after countless years of
repression, and yes tongues & prophecy aren't the issue now that they were
then, nor do we worry about eating meat sacrificed to idols. But the issues of
Christian giving, Christian love, Christian ethics in several regards, could
have been written yesterday for Grace Baptist Church of Shorewood Illinois. 
THat being said though, there are many things to learn from the pendulum swings
of the feminist issue of the 1st century and of the tongues issue that can find
application in the 20th century.  But this is not eisegesis.  I feel this is
what is meant, in part, by saying that the Word of God is alive and our
absolute standard.
     As far as the issue of inerrancy, I don't really now know where you stand.
 You say you stand apart from it, but maybe that (I hope) is mearly an
inerranent possition with a *few* qualifiers as you've noted in these last two
postings.  In the posting by Pache, and the one that you're holding for a later
date by VanTil, I would really like to see a point by point discussion from you
and M. Maas on just what you disagree with.  Yes time is limited, and it was
undoubtedly easier for me to type out of a book than it would be for you to
forum a developed point by point apologetic.  Its just that I would like a
clearer understanding of what my brothers of the "liberal" persuasion think as
we peripatetic this issue of innerrancy, which stemmed originally from the
issue of absolutes which I hope to confront again except this time from a more
developed apologetic of theistic ethics.  I know there will be no easy,
inteligent, answer to the arguments that I plan to bring forth on the necessity
and application of absolutes.  But that will come later this fall.
    Well, have a nice and safe holiday.  I was born on on Labor, so quite
naturally, we're having a birthday party this week-end......for my son! 
Parents sacrifice so much.

"A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further,
turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a
miserable world -and might even be more difficult to save." -C.S. Lewis
     
[Your question about II Cor raises a basic one of how we deal with
Paul's letters.  And this is complicated because Paul's letters have a
number of different things in them.  In general I agree with you that
much of what he says is applicable to us.  But we do need to make sure
that the same sins or failures are really the same.  That's primarily
where I think we disagree.  When we keep discussions at the level of
principles of interpetation, we have no problems.  You agree in
principle that we must first understand a message in its original
historical context, and then see how it applies to us.  But when I say
about specific things in the Bible that they do not apply to us
because our circumstances do not match those to whom they were
originally addressed, you accuse me of denying the basic principles,
on which as far as I can tell we agree.  It's this that makes the
discussion so frustrating for me.  I feel the ground continually
shifting under me.  I would have no problem if you said simply that
you think I'm wrong: that the differences in circumstance do not
exist, or that they do exist but would not affect Paul's judgement.
But instead of doing that you keep coming back with claims, usually
shouted in upper case, that I am rejecting God's Word.  And when I try
to pursue it, I end up being deluged with 100KB treatises on
inerrancy, which as far as I can tell is completely irrelevant to this
issue.  It's irrelevant because we're not considering whether Paul is
right or wrong, but how to apply what he said to our current
situation.

You have asked for a response to your series of postings on
"Limits of Criticism".  I've got one, but that seems better done
as a separate posting.

--clh]