Biblical Truths: The Meaning of Scripture in the Twenty-first Century
They knew that scripture could speak symbolically or allegorically. In those cases, the “truth” of the text’s narratives needed spiritual insight to gather its “truth” from any possible misleading historical, literal, or scientific error. But correctly perceived, the text of scripture itself told stories that were “true.”
Dale B. Martin • Biblical Truths: The Meaning of Scripture in the Twenty-first Century
Paul’s argument in Romans is that it was God’s will all along to justify all human beings by faith, not by works of the Mosaic Law. This is proven for Paul by the fact that Abraham, the father of the Jews, was himself justified by his faith before he was circumcised and before Moses had given the law.
Dale B. Martin • Biblical Truths: The Meaning of Scripture in the Twenty-first Century
the author of Luke and Acts does not seem to consider Jesus’s death to be a sacrifice. There is no “atonement” to speak of in Luke–Acts.
Dale B. Martin • Biblical Truths: The Meaning of Scripture in the Twenty-first Century
I don’t believe we modern Christians should always be comfortable with thinking of our God as an absolute monarch. It goes against important values I insist we should still cherish, even if those values have been given to us more by modern liberalism than by traditional religion, values such as equality, freedom, and democracy.
Dale B. Martin • Biblical Truths: The Meaning of Scripture in the Twenty-first Century
“Scripture,” for Christians, is the text of the Bible when read in faith and by the leading of the holy spirit in the community of the body of Christ.
Dale B. Martin • Biblical Truths: The Meaning of Scripture in the Twenty-first Century
when I read the New Testament looking for doctrines of divine transcendence, I do so not believing that I am simply “recovering” the intention of the original human authors.
Dale B. Martin • Biblical Truths: The Meaning of Scripture in the Twenty-first Century
God, in forbidding us from substituting anything in the universe in God’s place, attempts to protect us from being harmed, not from harming God.
Dale B. Martin • Biblical Truths: The Meaning of Scripture in the Twenty-first Century
The beginning and end of Christian knowing must be the rule of love.
Dale B. Martin • Biblical Truths: The Meaning of Scripture in the Twenty-first Century
expecting to find orthodox Christian doctrine “in” the texts of the New Testament read in their original historical context is unrealistic and anachronistic.