>Someone here, I think it was Bill Hamilon (or perhaps Jim Blake?) wrote:
>
>(Snip)
>
>> > I am willing to accept accept new interpretations
>> >_if_ they meet certain criteria:
>> >
>> >1) They are the result of new scientific knowledge which indicates we may
>> >have misinterpreted the Scriptures in the past
>> >
>> >2) They don't affect the central doctrines of Christianity (e.g. as
>> >expressed in the historic creeds of Christianity)
>
>It may not be germane to the central discussion here, but I think that
>this second criterion is highly questionable. As a statement of your
>personal faith-stance (or anyone's faih-stance, for that matter), it may
>be unassailable in the sense that the statement "I believe that there are
>seven levels of hell, as Dante claimed" [or whatever number he actually
>claimed, if seven is incorrect] may be an accurate statement of your
>belief or faith-stance. But, as a factual statement about the world (in
>this case, about the nature of hell) it may indeed be false.
>
>My point is this: Why, other than faith, should we, or anyone, accept the
>central doctrines of Chrisianiy, or the historic creeds, as fully
>normative? Jesus, for example, made it clear in his teaching that some of
>the central doctrines of Judaism, as expressed in then-historic
>interpretations of the central Hebrew texts, were not accurate expressions
>of God's will and ideal, at least as Jesus understood things. Who can say,
>of a certainty, that the central doctrines of Christianity and the
>historic creeds may not embody similar mistakes?
>
First, I acknowledge that the creeds of Christianity are not inspired, and
therefore, could contain errors. However, they represent a distillation of
Christian doctrine as taught in Scripture that has been accepted from the
early centuries of Church history until the present. My rationale for
using the creeds is not that I consider them perfect, but that I'm not
likely to be able to improve on them. They are concise and that
facilitates using them as a standard to which new interpretations can be
compared. Finally, they focus right in on the essentials: the nature of
God, sin, the need for a redeemer, the identity and nature of Jesus Christ,
His finished work on the cross,....
Your point about the role of faith is a good one, and I would add that
Jesus' teaching in John 16:13 indicates we had better have a strong
conviction from the Holy Spirit that a doctrine is correct before we accept
it.
So I would have to conclude that the criteria I gave were incomplete.
Bill Hamilton | Vehicle Systems Research
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