Monday, June 23, 2008

The Faith Once Delivered

I highly recommend Katie Sherrod's thoughtful, informed, and very well written post on the Anglican Rightwing mantra from the letter of Jude.  She rightly points out that there never was a time of unity of belief across the board in the Christian religion, that the arguments and variations began as soon as people left the Temple after Pentecost.

I would only add that such variation and argument is human nature.  The Bible is our witness to what we believe to be God's actions in history.  As anyone who has sat on a jury knows, witnesses to the exact same event can have completely different understandings of what they've seen.  If fender-benders can be problematic, how much more so transcendent interventions in history?  Our viewpoints and our knowledge are always partial.  We can only be more or less certain.  That's why we have faith.  

6 comments:

  1. Very good. this one!

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  2. I sometimes wonder at how little can have been "clear", or even decipherable to the 12, the 72 and the 700.

    Not at all what we try to convey in most translations.

    Traduttore, traditore, as the Italians say ;=)

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  3. And who should understand the vagaries of language over time better than you, Goran.

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  4. She rightly points out that there never was a time of unity of belief across the board in the Christian religion....

    I know, I know. There never was a golden age of perfect agreement. How many more times must this be said?

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  5. Many times ; = )

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