by rusmeister » January 5th, 2009, 5:25 am
I think so, yes.
For me, life experience (joining the Navy, seeing the world, learning different languages and cultures) taught me the unreasonableness of concepts like "the King James Bible is the only Bible" and eventually Sola Scriptura. I saw the impossibility of one man's being able to know and interpret anything on his own, even if he committed all of his life to it. It's not nearly enough to know ancient Greek, Latin and Aramaic (although how many of you know even one of those languages, let alone all?). You need to know and understand the culture as well - how were marriage and divorce understood; what is the concept of family and household, what was the normal average wage of a workman, and every other question of life. It is true that one man could eventually answer many of these questions correctly. But 1) doesn't that make him a (n imperfect) authority figure and 2) where does that leave the average Joe who doesn't know all of that stuff? It turns into a kind of gnosticism, where the person who knows the most is most correct, has the best chance to really "be saved", etc... (I speak in terms of understanding Scripture - I know that Protestants believe that simple people can be saved)
But again, I learned by living in foreign places that the very bases of reality are different, and assumptions that we make in our culture and take for granted simply are not true elsewhere. Thus we blithely depict nativity scenes taking place in a western stable, little realizing that what passes for stables in those Middle Eastern parts are actually caves in the hills. Or again, we depict a young Joseph (about the same age as Mary) because we assume that if a couple gets married, they are probably both young, the same age, and plan to have children together. And that's very true - in OUR culture. Anyway, the examples are legion - I'm just pointing out what has been pointed out many times before - to tell a person to read it for himself, and interpret for himself what ancient texts from faraway lands mean, and perhaps refer to some clarifications from a wise and learned man, and then make all-important theological decisions based on those interpretations, is insane and a sure path to disagreement over interpretations, and ultimately, schism. Hardly a unified body of Christ. It results in, well, what we have today. A complete mess.
The great wisdom that everyone has a good grip on today is that people are not to be trusted - that they are by nature corrupt, and so we reject the error of blind faith in any authority that happens to come along; and so in our age we commit an opposite error- to reject all authority whatsoever except ourselves.
"Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one."
Bill "The Blizzard" Hingest - That Hideous Strength