Re: The state of suburban theology

----- Original Message -----
From: "Howard J. Van Till" <hvantill@sbcglobal.net>
To: "George Murphy" <gmurphy@raex.com>; <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Friday, June 18, 2004 11:44 AM
Subject: Re: The state of suburban theology

> On 6/17/04 10:36 PM, "George Murphy" <gmurphy@raex.com> wrote:
..........................................

> > Theology is a human enterprise - but what does the qualification
> > "thoroughly" mean? Surely not that God has nothing to do with it, since
in
> > both traditional & process theology God is involved in everything that
> > happens in the world.
>
> I suppose "thoroughly" was placed there as an indicator of my view that
what
> we possess as the basis for theology is not some direct access to God, but
> only our human apprehension of The Sacred, God. You are correct to note
that
> this should not be taken to imply that God has nothing to do with it.
>
> What that also means to me (but not necessarily to others on this list) is
> that this applies equally to the biblical text. It is, at best, a record
of
> selected human apprehensions of God. As such, humanly crafted doctrines of
> biblical infallibility or inerrancy are just that -- humanly claims, no
> more. To put it even more strongly, I would suggest that doctrines of
> biblical inerrancy/infallibility stand in the way of progress in theology
in
> a manner similar to the way that doctrines of Aristotelian infallibility
> would stand in the way of progress in scientific theorizing.

    Again I think that a difference more fundamental than what we may have
about the biblical text has to do with whether there really has been
anything corresponding to the traditional idea of "special revelation." Or
is what has been regarded as that just "selected human apprehensions of
God" - i.e., instances of general revelation (or what has been perceived as
such) that some people have been particularly aware of?

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
Received on Sun Jun 20 14:52:17 2004