Monday quote

The truly wise man is he who always believes the Bible against the opinion of any man.

R. A. Torrey (1856–1928)

Monday quote

Through all of this of course, underlying it is his grace. None of us ever earn his goodwill by the fact we live by his word. But although that is true, none of us can live in his grace unless we live by his word.

Trevor Geddes

Determinism debate

Source

Monday quote

The bigger the government, the less the citizens do for one another. If the state will take care of me and my neighbors, why should I?

Dennis Prager

Proof-texting in cyberspace

Allen and Swain write on the historical use of proof-texting. While proof-texting is maligned by some, the Bible uses proof-texts, and in ways that some would fault non-biblical writers for doing the same. Good reasons exist for the way biblical authors quoted:

if we are to appreciate the way Scripture uses Scripture to prove a doctrinal point, then we must appreciate the larger hermeneutical frameworks within which citations are employed, the original (historical and literary) contexts within which proof-texts are found, and we must also possess a certain canonical sensitivity to how biblical motifs and themes unfold in the history of redemption, and, perhaps most importantly, how Christ is understood to be the climax of that unfolding historical development.

They distinguish between the citation techniques and the hermeneutical considerations at play: the quote may not be the (full) explanation. In other writings, reference to Scripture may be shorthand to not only the scriptural context, but commentaries written by the author and even others on the passage cited. Consider Aquinas,

The quotation of a biblical passage in the Summa [Theologiae] is meant to point the reader to a commentary written by Thomas or to an exegetical tradition of which he and the intelligent reader would be aware.

The Summa covers a wider terrain than any one biblical commentary—in fact, it could be characterized as a whole-Bible commentary with its very structure being shaped by what we now call “biblical theology.” The particular biblical commentaries contain more detailed expositions of pertinent passages that are merely referenced offhand or quoted briefly in the Summa. For example, he discusses the equality of power of the Father and of the Son in two types of texts (ST 1a.42.6 and in his Commentary on John 5:19). In the article in the ST, Thomas mentions a number of other texts in John’s Gospel (5:20; 5:30; 14:31), and he makes reference to no patristic sources. When you trace those references or quotations to his commentary, however, you see extended analysis of a deep patristic tradition.

A proof-text is, in modern parlance, a hypertext.

Monday quote

In the end, the money has run out—there are just not enough taxes [and] revenues to feed government's rapacious appetite to spend money satiating voters' indulgence, envy and greed.

John Tertullian and Contra Celsum

If your right hand causes you to sin

I was teaching the pre-teens on Bible genre. Explaining how the Bible is composed of various writing styles and how this has an effect on interpretation. An example that came up was the talion in the Torah compared with Jesus telling us to cut off our own hands in the gospels. In the former situation a legal text is meant to be understood by the nature of legal genre to be literal—the possibility of fines notwithstanding.

Your eye shall not pity. It shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. (Deuteronomy 19:21 ESV)

Jesus' words are thought by many to be hyperbolic.

And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. (Matthew 5:30 ESV)

That it is hyperbolic can be noted by the fact that one does not sin because of his hand, we sin from our mind. And even if we did remove our right hand for stealing, what is to stop us stealing with our left?

The children understood all this, but what is particularly interesting is Jesus' contrast here. Why did he speak like this?

Jesus is teaching about the Mosaic Law. And the Law stipulates and limits punishments that were given for criminal offences. What Jesus does is turn the focus from what we demand occurs to others who have wronged us to what we must do to stop wronging others and God. Paraphrasing:

You know that if another (deliberately) maims someone's hand he is to have his hand maimed; well if you are sinning with your hand cut your own hand off. You remove a man's eye for causing blindness; remove your own eye when you sin with it.

Jesus is using what they do know about the Law to make them realise their own shortcomings. They know about cutting off the hands and plucking out the eyes of criminals, Jesus forces them to focus on how they were using their own hands and eyes.

Monday quote

There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there is never more than one.

C. S. Lewis