You just have to read Oliver O'Donovan's lecture on the Authority of Scripture, which riffs on The Jerusalem Declaration - including this:
'We shall be obedient to Scripture to the extent that we have learned and acted upon what Scripture has said of them. But Scripture does not provide us with the concrete act itself, which we must perform right now. Devising that act is precisely what practical thought does, and devising it faithfully to the norm is what obedience is all about....Obedience is never predetermined, it has always be thought through and sought after.'
I was also taken by this 'Theological Vision for Ministry' published by the Gospel Coalition. Their confessional statement is rather dull: but this 'vision' actually takes it all somewhere, addressing (among other things) epistemological and hermeneutical issues with an honesty and self-awareness rarely seen. It is still a creature of the American context, however...
Oh, and I killed a baby, by the way...
4 comments:
Thanks for the reminder - I was waiting for a month for O'Donovan to give his lecture, and then forgot about it.
Thanks very much for the O'Donovan link, Michael. I know it's a standard point, but beyond his concision and incisiveness, I continually marvel at how eirenic OO'D's writings are. He's an example on so many fronts.
As to the Gospel Coalition (about whom I'm ignorant): isn't the vision of a coherent "postmodernism", read as relativism more-or-less, a teensy bit Nineties? Elsewhere, much as I appreciate the intent of moderation, they seem a bit over-taken with the idea of balance between competing perspectives.
I'm not meaning to dismiss the whole thing by any means: there's a lot of value in this, and I particularly liked the straightforward statement at III.2, "For the common good". I'm more ambivalent about V: I want to cheer openly at the integration point in V.4, but then its predecessor V.3 feels rather like box-ticking; I suppose that there may be others with the opposite reactions.
In their context, what are they looking to deny with the polemic against "religion": American religiosity? I've noted this sort of argument being re-stressed here lately, where frankly I'm unclear on what the legitimate target is.
On the squirrel: I know I've pushed Mary Midgley before, but she's really quite helpful on matters like the relevance of emotional reactions, and the interdependence of emotions and reason.
(Placeholder comment: forgot to subscribe to email with my post just now.)
How wonderful to hear someone speak of epistemological and hermeneutical awareness.
I have been so aware in the last few years since returning to Australia that epistemological humility undergirds any hermeneutcial self-awareness. I confess I wonder if the lack of the first leads to a neglect of the second in some learned Christian circles here in Australia.
Polanyi is one of the earlier persons to bring this to light. May we all become shaped by him rather than the pervading influence of Kant.
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