Friday, September 17, 2010

Father, Son, and ?

Nice post on the authority of scripture today by Roger Olson:

I believe in the Bible as God’s Word BECAUSE I believe I encounter Jesus there and am taught by him there. For me it is the Book of Jesus. That means it is extremely important, necessary, valuable, indispensable, but not alongside of or even in the same category (being-wise) as Jesus himself. It is the unique written witness to Jesus and THEREFORE the book of the church.

I suspect this upsets some evangelicals because, even perhaps unconsciously, they believe in Jesus only because and insofar as the Bible contains him. In other words, functionally, the Bible is above Jesus.

The implications of these two approaches for hermeneutics are immense. My view requires Christological hermeneutics. The other view tends to lead to having to interpret everything the Bible says as as literally true as possible without exception or qualification.

<idle musing>
Read the whole post. I think is spot-on; I have said for years that far too many people believe it is Father, Son, and Holy Bible. Olson expands on this very nicely. I'm really liking his blog...
</idle musing>

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