Saturday, May 15, 2010

Philosophy of the Bible- Video

Today I've found a video by Gordon J Glover, titled "The Evolutionary Creation Video". This 9 minute piece basically combines the modern scientific consensus (Big Bang and Evolution) with the timeless story of Jesus revealing himself to humanity and cancelling the sin of the world by reconciling people to God the Father.

I title this "Philosophy Of The Bible" because the point made so clearly by Glover in his accompany blog post is that we need to challenge the presuppositions around how we look at the Bible and what we expect from it.

For example, would it have made sense for God to have told Moses that E=MC squared, or would it make more sense for God to reveal things that people in that day and age needed to hear...? If you look at history and it's development, it's clear that in every age and culture, people's needs are different, EVERYTHING, in fact, is different.

I feel there are major difficulties in the way many conservative Christians read the Bible- how they approach it. I would bluntly summarise some of the problems as: lack of regard for context and history, minimal attempts to consider the implications of other fields of knowledge, a lack of integration between what we know about the Bible itself and how this might relate to our understanding of it, and a small picture outlook (as opposed to a Big Picture outlook). All of this leads to a unrealistic and occasionally absurd understanding of inerrancy and a general lack of thoughtfulness when approaching the Bible. I found Scot McKnight's book Blue Parakeets to be very helpful in exploring these issues, and it's a topic I enjoy thinking about and discussing so it will receive significant attention on this blog, I'm sure. Glover's video is superb, but it was the food for thought he provides around what I call "Philosophy of the Bible" that captured my attention.

See the blog post and video here:

http://www.blog.beyondthefirmament.com/video-presentations/the-evolutionary-creation-video/