biblio*
Submitted by F.O.D. on April 01 2000 17:44:06
In reply to Honored indeed submitted by Heather on April 01 2000 14:44:42
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Did I ever tell you "bibliolatry" has become one of my favourite words? ;) I was sharing it with some (not precisely evangelical) Christian friends to other other days, and they seemed quite delighted with the phrase. They were turning it over their tongues trying to find the proper pronounciation ;) The Quaker's view makes a lot of sense. But old habits die hard. An old friend recently found my email, and wanted to test my views on Gen 1, creation vs evolution etc (a topic which, by the way, I find largely boring). I told him I'm pretty sure Gen 1 is poetry, is meant to be poetry and read as such, and that mainly settles the issue. He came back at me saying "OK tell me, do you accept the Bible as the Word of God?" Man, how did that get into it? I figure the Bible is the Word of God, and God gave us some poetry right at the beginning to put the Sabbath into context. But no, he was so entrenched in his "the Bible is the Word of God" ideology that when he said "do you believe the Bible is the Word of God" he really meant "do you believe the Bible is the Word of God and all of it is literal except for the bits I have approved as being nonliteral and poetic [which doesn't include Gen 1]". So even accepting "the Bible as the Word of God" can get confusing and you run into shades of meaning and intent. I'm increasingly experiencing the feeling that that question is a type of Inquisition. When they ask "do you believe the Bible is the Word of God?", what they're really asking is "are you a Christian?" regards, F.O.D. |
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