After talking with Corrie, husband of Dawn and Jaz husband of Leslie, about the excerpt from McLaren's book that I quoted in my previous post, the comment was made "That's great for describing the mysterious things of the Kingdom but has terrible implications for ethics."
Thoughts?
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11 comments:
How so?
The thought being that ethics then would become relative and there would be no sbsolute truth.
tell me more about your definition of absolute truth?
jesus shocked a lot of people with his understanding of the laws absolutes. could it be possible that we have adopted a snobery in regards to truth?
not saying there are not absolutes... but how we treat everyone in regards to what we believe to be truth has sometimes... been.... shady?
i dunno.
i'd like a clearer understanding of what it meant by absolute truth?
also.
ethic in regards to applying biblical truth to life?
ethic in regards to truth and life?
etc.
ps.
HI PAUL AND WANDA! thinking of you guys. coffee sometime?
Paul,
I think you will need to explain to me how this thinking would then make ethics relative?
I obviously see a problem with relative ethics but am fuzzy on the correlation here??
like a poem whose meaning only comes subtly and quietly to those who read slowly, think long and deeply, and refuse to give up?
It does give the vibe of something that might not be absolute. Just read the excerpt again thinking in terms of ethics, and if someone was concerned with ethics then they might think McLaren is saying that (as poems are) interpretation is different with each hearer. I would generally say that with the Bible, interpretation is standard but application can be different with each hearer. That's not a rule I read somewhere, I'm just trying to define how I feel.
Hmmm...yeah, I kind of see your point Paul. It does seem to be saying that the message of Jesus isn't so much the message of Jesus as much as it is the message of our own ponderings of the message of Jesus. If that makes sense?
On the flipside, and maybe to McLaren's defence, maybe it is only through these slow deep meditations of scripture that we would actually gain a real interpretation of Scripture? And maybe, conversationally, the real interpretation is what corresponds closest to reality of the 'interpretur'?
With any writing or poetry there are some things that are obvious and some subtleties that take a deeper look. It seems that in Jesus case this would make ethics relative, but actually solidify them through solid understanding. Do you think that is realistic?
If we keep a man-centred view of how the word of God is received, we most certainly find ourselves moving toward relativism. It's true that Jesus was not blatantly advertising everything he was about so that everyone could get it easily. However, I'm not convinced that that means he was speaking in such a way to encourage individuals to come to their own conclusions about what he said, or that the true interpretation was to be found in what was closest to the reality of the interpreter.
If we view it from a more God-centred perspective, things fit better. God takes the initiative to reveal his truth to people. So that the salvation is truly a gift and not of our selves, Jesus is not doing the mass-marketing thing but, instead, knowing all those that the Father has given him, he speaks so that those with God-enabled ears to hear do so.
The truth is never relative. The interpretation is as Jesus sees it. The ethics don't change.
Good thinking Derwyn. Our subjective, even meditative interpretations of scripture often fall short of the true potency of the message. I am big on dialogue, and so was Jesus, as we all know, so as we dialogue with scripture, we need to respond to Jesus' dialogue with Pharisees, with his disciples, and with sinners. As close as we can get to a broad absolute ethical truth is to say that Jesus is a living ethic. He made ethical decisions based on his knowledge of absolute truth (as a member of the Trinity, he would have had a pretty good view), and then called us to imitate him. The deliberate following of Jesus involves making deliberate ethical decisions in line with Jesus' view of absolute truth (not ours). Read the Bible as poetry if you want, in the end you will still be faced with making real ethical choices based on the real life of Jesus as the representative of a real absolute truth.
I'm not so sure that the correlation between the Messianic Secret and ethics is justified. McClaren is talking about Jesus' presentation of Himself, which, say, in the Gospel of Mark serves a very specific purpose. He isn't talking about law, or the nature of truth, or the concept of absolutes, rather, he is talking about the way truth is grasped. This does not relativise the message, all McClaren is saying, as far as I can tell, is that whole truth about something (or Someone, in this case) is not always immediately apparent or able to be immediately grasped. Neither does this diminish the truth in any way, but complex ideas take time to be assimilated; in fact, sometimes we cannot even 'see' a thing until, paradoxically, we know something about it. This phenomenon is known as the hermeneutical circle.
Think about it, how can you know the meaning of a word until you know something about the object or concept to which the word refers? A word is simply a meaningless jumble of letters until its meaning is understood, but you cannot know its meaning unless you know what the word is referring to! And, if we go even further back, you must first have language before anything can be understood - but how can you acquire language if you don't already understand language? The answer is, SLOWLY - in a piece-meal fashion, the building up of layers of knowledge over a lifetime. Think about how a child begins to learn and use language: by starting with very simple words whose meanging can be understood by pointing to immediately accesible objects ("tree", "book", "food") and gradually moving to less immediately apparent ideas ("angry", "air", "sorry"), and finally, into adulthood, we can grasp (or at least wrestle with) terribly difficult concepts via language ("love", "forgiveness", "justice", "chemistry", "Trinity", "evil").
Is coming to an understanding of the meaning of Jesus and of the gospel any different? Think about the way we teach children in Sunday School, we start with stories, simple ideas, and gradually, we move deeper into the fulness of that knowledge as we mature. This is why the task of theology is a never ending one. Who can grasp His infinte wisdom? Who can measure the depth of His ways?
Sorry for the long post!
Great dialogue!
Just a reminder that "Truth" is one of the four things (that I can see) which Jesus/God claims to BE not DO. In other words, "Truth" can only find it's definition in God - God is Truth. Therefore a dynamic relationship with God is a dynamic relationship with Truth... and it equips us to ethically approach a changing world. This is less about doctrine and more about being intimately aquainted with the person of Truth. Having said that, I'm all about this relationship helping me establish guidlines to live by. But someone I respect told me that as he gets older - he finds that there are less and less things he would describe as "absolute fundamentals". I'd have to echo that.
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