Tuesday, April 25, 2006
The Tyranny Of The Modern
When I saw the title of the book reviewed here:
I just about blew a gasket, but thankfully it turns out the book is accusing Brown, et. al. of "reinventing Jesus" the book is not attempting to do so itself.
Nonethless, I seem to retain a bit of a rant on the very idea so I thought I'd share. There are two very important points I wish to make about things like Brown, or The Jesus Seminar, and all the rest.
The first point is that to presume new scholarship, in the form of archeology, or earlier manuscripts, or textual criticism, or anything else can radically change the nature of our understanding of Christ is to assume that we have a God that is not active in history. Perhaps the longest running doubt of my life as a Christian has been the concern that the shape of Christianity today is not at all what God intended. That the forces of sin, particularly as embodied in the institutions that call the name of God, have so warped and befuddled things that we are clueless as to actuality.
But then I remind myself, that God has been active throughout history and that He is in control. If I assume that we can get things as wrong as I sometimes fear, then I assume that God has just sat back and watched it happen - that is certainly a very different God than one that would die on a cross. Now, that does not mean we don't make mistakes from time-to-time, we make some biggies, but radical "reinvention" kind of stuff just doesn't seem to make sense.
Secondly, all this type of study presumes that God is subject to my understanding. It is kind of like saying that prior to the invention of quantum mechanics there were no atoms or molecules, electrons or protons - that it was only when we figured them out that they really became something.
"Oh no, John," comes the reply, "we're not 'inventing' we're discovering." If that is the case, to discover radically "reinventive" information would mean that thousands of years of scholarship on the MOST studied field in human history was always wrong. Doesn't that sound a bit like a conspriacy theory?
Scholarship has many functions, it is not always discovery, not always the new. Sometimes it is preservation of the known. The roots of modern scholarship are not in the new, but in the old, in the preservation of the known through the so-called Dark Ages.
We need to return a value to our society of the preservation of knowledge and not just value the discovery of new knowledge. What happens when there are no batteries to run calculators and there is no one left that can use a slide rule, or understand logarithims?
Cross-posted at How To Be Christian And Still Go To Church
Related Tags: The Da Vinci Code, Reinventing Jesus, preserving knowledge, old, faith, history, The Jesus Seminar
I just about blew a gasket, but thankfully it turns out the book is accusing Brown, et. al. of "reinventing Jesus" the book is not attempting to do so itself.
Nonethless, I seem to retain a bit of a rant on the very idea so I thought I'd share. There are two very important points I wish to make about things like Brown, or The Jesus Seminar, and all the rest.
The first point is that to presume new scholarship, in the form of archeology, or earlier manuscripts, or textual criticism, or anything else can radically change the nature of our understanding of Christ is to assume that we have a God that is not active in history. Perhaps the longest running doubt of my life as a Christian has been the concern that the shape of Christianity today is not at all what God intended. That the forces of sin, particularly as embodied in the institutions that call the name of God, have so warped and befuddled things that we are clueless as to actuality.
But then I remind myself, that God has been active throughout history and that He is in control. If I assume that we can get things as wrong as I sometimes fear, then I assume that God has just sat back and watched it happen - that is certainly a very different God than one that would die on a cross. Now, that does not mean we don't make mistakes from time-to-time, we make some biggies, but radical "reinvention" kind of stuff just doesn't seem to make sense.
Secondly, all this type of study presumes that God is subject to my understanding. It is kind of like saying that prior to the invention of quantum mechanics there were no atoms or molecules, electrons or protons - that it was only when we figured them out that they really became something.
"Oh no, John," comes the reply, "we're not 'inventing' we're discovering." If that is the case, to discover radically "reinventive" information would mean that thousands of years of scholarship on the MOST studied field in human history was always wrong. Doesn't that sound a bit like a conspriacy theory?
Scholarship has many functions, it is not always discovery, not always the new. Sometimes it is preservation of the known. The roots of modern scholarship are not in the new, but in the old, in the preservation of the known through the so-called Dark Ages.
We need to return a value to our society of the preservation of knowledge and not just value the discovery of new knowledge. What happens when there are no batteries to run calculators and there is no one left that can use a slide rule, or understand logarithims?
Cross-posted at How To Be Christian And Still Go To Church
Related Tags: The Da Vinci Code, Reinventing Jesus, preserving knowledge, old, faith, history, The Jesus Seminar
