Prolegomena

1)  The reasserting position is truly hreatened by the problem of relativism, thus the reference to other texts to establish points.  Some texts, A, are already established, a priori, as true [and thus irrefrutable]; others, texts B, false.  Texts A must be agreed with on every point; texts B are unreliable. 

1a) The worldviews outside these texts are, for the reasserting position, intrinsically relative.

2)  The liberal position is that there are some values that may be shared, but are both irreducible and contradictory; say liberty and equality.  Individuals make these decisions in the public sphere, and the consequences are rarely perfect.  This holds for scripture: liberals find that the plain text reading of scripture may contradict, in part because of human frailty and comprehension.  This is not a practically, or pastorally, insurmountable problem.

3)  Christian tradition believes in the unity of truth.  Some Christians believe that secular truth may also be true; scriptural truths and secular truths cannot contradict.  Not all Christians believe this.  Liberal Christians avoid the contradictions between 2 and 3 by recognizing the limits of human comprehension [overcome, practically, by grace].

4)  Scripture includes all necessary truths about knowing God's Word, Jesus.   Following Donald Davidson, however, the same sentence, and the same word may true in some ways, but imprecise in others.   Scripture, in this sense, does not contain all Truth.  For spiritual truths, put away your Deepak Chopra.  For truths about anatomy, however, read Gray's.

5)  Conservatives imply that tradition is unified and static; liberals argue that this is not how tradition was meant to be used, nor is it like this in any observable way.  If tradition were unified, arguments would seem incredible, like arguing if the letter "a" is the best way to convey the sound of "a."  As there is an implicit discussion about tradition, it is by nature alive and plastic.

5a)  Although tradition is not unified and static, people desire it to be so.

6)  Liberals do not believe that anything goes, nor do they ignore all scripture.   Conservatives believe that if you change rules, there are no rules; if you deny the credibility of a single verse, then it is all irrelevant.  This view is a bias, not empirically true.  Many liberals clearly believe that Matthew 24 is the guide for salvation; that the beatitudes and the Lord's prayer are demands upon Christians; That Paul's letters accurately convey the challenges of living in a Christian community; that the Levitical Codes purpose is to promote Justice; and that the Sabbath should be kept.  I believe them because the bible resonates with my intuition of truth, which is a gift from God.   

7)  The bible may not convince all those who read it.  The reader must have some disposition to be called by scripture to experience its power.  Logical arguments may not convince either; Christianity cannot be reduced to logic, even though logic may assist in the interpretation of scripture.

8) Scripture offers the foundation to which we orient our own lives; as we believe in a forgiving God who blesses us and wants us to be joyful.  Although we crucify others, we are called to build friendships rather than rivalries.  Scripture is more like a friend than a rulebook or a parent; it is a body, not a robot; it is Gods gift to encourage our imaginations for a just, peaceful, and free world. 

9) An individual's conscience is a gift from God, but it can only be known through a linguistic utterance and further discernment within a Christian community, which may be two or three faithful Christians.

Comments

[Caelius Spinator]

Excuse me, if I am not exactly coherent. I've been wearing my climatologist hat all day. But I find one omission in your otherwise fine series of theses (?), which I suppose works best under header 9. The reliability of two or three Christians gathered together is guaranteed by Christ on the grounds that He will be present. I find in so many discussions about the authority of Scripture that the faith depends on the absolute truth of the Scripture or the absolute reliability of long tradition of interpreting the Scripture, or else the whole system falls apart. In my life, I've found that it is communal and sacramental relationship with Christ (more so) and my individual relationship with Christ (less so) that defines what is immutable and essential to the faith, the rock to which I cling.

What worries me about the reasserters is that I hear from them too many of the power-anxious criticisms of enthusiasm that you hear from folks like Calvin rather than any assertion of our communal and sacramental relationship with Christ through the Holy Spirit and its relationship to "what the Spirit is saying to the churches." Like the Shar'iah of Islam, the reasserters seem to be telling us that the gate is closed or mutter something about a careful discernment of spirits.

Now I read a little pneumatology (Quaker and Pentecostal) now and then and have experienced enough to think that careful discernment of spirits is good judgment. But I suspect no one really knows how to do it. What I do like is the Quaker assertion that what is truly sacramental relates to the world and changes it for the better, something which Episcopal theology gradually has discovered (or re-discovered) during my fairly short lifetime.

So let me propose some amendment to 9) concerning the basis for community discernment... and then propose

10) If we are commanded by God to do anything, it is to be in a relationship of filial and fraternal love with Him and his good gifts: the universe, Scripture, and our fellow creatures and to avoid relationship with anything that would corrupt and destroy those gifts rather than avoiding relationship with those who have been corrupted.

[David Huff]

Conservatives believe that if you change rules, there are no rules; if you deny the credibility of a single verse, then it is all irrelevant.

Which is as classic an example of the Fallacy of the False Dilemma as you are likely to come across.

Another thing which strikes me is how extremely well connected to reality that all the "liberal" positions are, which are listed above (as in "how the World and human society actually work") .

Had an old friend who once described sanity as how well correlated your personal world view was with reality ... ;)

[Jim, Sr]

Good stuff. But I'm still trying to find a way of loving "them" without giving them a label. I know it's possible, but the Way hasn't been opened yet to my blind eyes.

[nathan]

"10) If we are commanded by God to do anything, it is to be in a relationship of filial and fraternal love with Him and his good gifts: the universe, Scripture, and our fellow creatures and to avoid relationship with anything that would corrupt and destroy those gifts rather than avoiding relationship with those who have been corrupted."

The problem is who gets to decide which of the things we observe/practice are the good gifts and which are the corrupted? Isn't that what this whole thing is about?

"Conservatives believe that if you change rules, there are no rules; if you deny the credibility of a single verse, then it is all irrelevant.

Which is as classic an example of the Fallacy of the False Dilemma as you are likely to come across."

Perhaps it's because people are looking at it from the position of "how convincing would it be to me if I was an ardent mistheist?". I sometimes find myself doing that. If, for example, much of what the Israelites said was just their culture speaking and not God, even though YHWH is written to be saying it, how can we trust anything the Israelites wrote?