Tuesday, February 26, 2008

A Grand Epic?

So Sunday night I preached the first in a series titled Passion - this week, it was a Passion for Truth and I was exploring the scriptures as a source of truth. I was heavily influenced in my approach to John 1 by NT Wright's view of the Bible as a story which gains its authority from the power of the whole story of Creation and Redemption as an extension of God's own authority. I hope I haven't done an injustice to his thoughts in paraphrasing it like that!



Meantime I came across this article by Scot McKnight - he has a blog which I read a lot (check out the side bar). Scot McKnight is professor of religious studies at North Park University in Chicago and the author of the upcoming book, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible. The article has now been followed up with an online version of a quiz which allows you to test how you actually approach the reading of the scriptures.

Take the test! I tested as a low-end progressive with a score of 70 (its starts at 66). According to the test, the Progressive:

"...tends to see the Bible as historically shaped and culturally conditioned, and yet most still consider it the Word of God for today. Following a progressive hermeneutic, for the Word to speak in our day, one must interpret what the Bible said in its day and discern its pattern for revelation in order to apply it to our world. The strength, as with the moderate but even more so, is the challenge to examine what the Bible said in its day, and this means the progressives tend to be historians. But the problems for the progressives are predictable: Will the Bible's so-called "plain meaning" be given its due and authoritative force to challenge our world? Or will the Bible be swallowed by a quest to find modern analogies that sometimes minimize what the text clearly says?"

Love to know where you come out...bound to be some heretics out there!

10 comments:

Geekery said...

Yeah, go ahead, take the test, waste you time trying to understand the questions, answering the best you can. Then hit submit and wait. Then after a little while you get taken to a new page WITH NO RESULTS!

Maybe the blank page is supposed to reflect my understanding of the Bible and encourage me to spend more time listening intently to sermons at church?

;o)

Anonymous said...

I got a score of 71.

Anonymous said...

... or it could be a problem with your Mac, Jonathan ;)

Geekery said...

thanks Frank, love you. Might be Firefox?

Anonymous said...

Dunno. I did it in Firefox.

Have you tried again?... though it would be frustrating trying a second time and having the same problem.

The internet can be such an unpredictable beast sometimes. :(

BJ said...

You're 1% more liberal than me...

Shall we start a contest working out what Rhett's score will be?

Anonymous said...

ummmm... my guess is 64. ;)

Rhett said...

Hey! you got it!

Yes, it makes sense. I think I am slightly more conservative than ou guys. But 64 is still very close to becoming progressive.

I'm honestly glad I didn't come out as conservative or progressive!

Steve Goble said...

I agree with everyone. I got 69, in Firefox, and no, I didn't understand all the questions either...

KarenH said...

The questions were thought-provoking and I came out as a conservative.