Biblical Critical Theory
A capacious grasp of the biblical storyline will also equip Christian students, pastors, and laypeople to think biblically about the whole of life and defend the faith in the face of hostile attack more fully and more deeply than even the best prepared suite of individual arguments.
The rhetoric of out-narrating is helpful in clarifying one
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As a flavor of what I mean, here are some examples:
- Language, ideas, and stories: the biblical concept of covenant, or repeated narratives embodying the "first shall be last" motif
- Time: the rhythm of promise and fulfillment
- Space: the biblical idea of God as the ruler over all space, not like one of the localized gods of the ancient world
- Structure of
Christopher Watkin • Biblical Critical Theory
Figures of the Bible and how we experience things “as” something.
One of the crucial pennies to drop in the minds of those who find their way to faith in their adult years is often the realization that, if there really is a God such as the Bible reveals him to be, then he is smarter than I am and his judgement is more reliable than mine: if he and I differ on a matter, and if he is really God and I am really a
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Either God is who He claims to be or I have to be god on my own and we have seen how that goes - not well.
Interesting side thought. This sort of assumes that there MUST be a god, the question is who do we place in the role. Even self-proclaimed agnostics have to have *something* as a god.
"When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it" (Gen 3:6). There are two echoes in these verses. The first is an echo of Genesis 1. Eve "saw" that the tree was "good" for
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The relationship between God and his creation also marks another way in which the Bible provides a distinctive account of reality. Western thought has long wrestled with the distinction between the transcendent and the immanent. Something is transcendent (from the Latin transcendere, meaning "to climb over," "climb beyond," or "surmount") if it
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First, it should present a positive agenda, not just a tool of critique. It will not just analyze contemporary society but provide a vision for its future flourishing and renewal. Second, it will present a challenge to customary and fashionable of thinking. It will not merely take whatever happens to be the current flavor of the month in
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What about digital culture with AI, VR, etc. it feels like we are on the precipice of an entirely new culture and content driven by FYP which I’m confident will not default to biblical engagement?
Richard Pratt explains the relation between divine sovereignty and human responsibility:
God's control of things is not contrary to the responsibility of man. It is the very foundation of it. If God were not in control He could not hold man responsible. Man is accountable to God because God is sovereign; he should obey God because God is in control
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Our responsibility is to God because God is sovereign.
The pathos of this situation is that of the two gang leaders in the video of Michael Jackson's 1982 hit "Beat It."22 The sworn enemies meet on a street corner and fight each other, their left hands tightly bound together and their right hands wielding knives. Unable to make peace and unable to and unable to walk away, they must fight to the death.
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Because God remains transcendent, his immanence is an immanence of involvement with the world, not of identity as the world. In short, God is simultaneously "over all and through all and in all" (Eph 4:6)."