Saturday, September 9, 2017

The collision of theology with God

Update: I no longer agree with the statement I made here 7 years ago, that "Gentile Christians have the NT commandments to obey. Jews and Jewish Christians have both the OT and NT commandments to obey." Instead, I believe that all people have to obey the words of the Lord Jesus, which are recorded mainly in 5 Bible books, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the Revelation. Please see my Translator's Preface to The Christ Family Bible.
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Humility, and tremendous caution and honesty when making truth claims, are necessary in all sciences, and yet most of all in theology, whose subject both is entirely unique and warns credibly that He is willing and able to limit, severely, the scope of theology's knowledge. When theologians start talking as authorities, disaster is usually not far off. Evidence of this is plentiful: one can look first of all at the record of theological councils (which have tended to create schisms, rifts, between people otherwise inclined to fraternity) and university theology (whose onset coincides with the age of a continuous avalanche of schisms). If one is willing to look, more controversially, at the personal life histories of people influenced by theologians, far more heart-rending evidence appears readily. This is because theologians have as a rule 


(a) ignored the warnings of the Old Testament and the New Testament that universal human understanding of these texts is blocked; 

(b) ignored the OT and NT warnings that human understanding of these texts is granted divinely as a consequence of human obedience;

(c) therefore engaged in scientific / theological discourse without the necessary limitation (that only people who are actively working to obey God could possibly have sufficient comprehension);

(d) therefore made theological claims that are not just untrue, but easily deceive because they travel with the accoutrements of credibility. 

How can you avoid a run-around away from theological truth into the various rocky shoals? According to the OT and NT, the safe path is to fear God and obey God's commandments. Gentile Christians have the NT commandments to obey. Jews and Jewish Christians have both the OT and NT commandments to obey. 

Is it obvious what these commandments are, and how to obey them? Not for the rebellious-at-heart. Both the OT and NT clearly state that the rebellious-at-heart are not going to be able to understand God's Word. 

So, who translated your modern-language version of the Bible? People who are rebellious at heart, or people who put obedience to God first and foremost? If rebellious people have tried to translate the Bible, which has most certainly happened, they will produce abominable translations where for example the commandments will likely be impossible to follow. The common mistranslation of Matthew 5:28, where hearers are told that if anyone looks at a woman in order to lust after her has committed adultery, is perhaps the most common example of bad translation misleading readers to think they cannot actually obey the commandments of the NT. The logical and doable commandment here given in the Ancient Greek, recognized by scholars for more than 100 years, is that a person must not look at a married woman (someone else's wife) in order to lust after her (cf. the dictionary by Moulton & Milligan under the word γυνή, the Swedish 1917 translation, etc.).



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