I wrote a review on Spinoza’s Ethics a while back. I was so
disappointed in it that I didn’t even finish it. This could be considered
unfair and someone made some scathing comments on my inability to comment
adequately or fully understood the philosophy. My disappointment stemmed from
the introduction I had to Spinoza from the author Durant as well many general
statements from a variety of sources. Durant promised that if I gave it my full
attention, I would love the work. Others have agreed. Others also rarely
discuss his dependence on their being a perfect being, called God. Most mention
that he is a pantheist but few deal with how he reconciled his pantheistic
philosophy with his religion.
Bertrand Russell, in History of Western Philosophy is quite
clear about all of this and praises Spinoza for both writing a well thought out
piece like Ethics and for living its precepts. He also notes how unacceptable
his conclusions are for today’s mind. In his time, his biggest problem was
being called an atheist. Many find him interesting for this very reason and I
think fail to see that he wasn’t one because they are too enamored with how he so
confounded the authorities of his day.
That he forwarded not only philosophy, but the human
condition is unquestionable. That he still has something to offer to the
discussion of ethics today is less apparent. That he lived a life free from
argument and handled adversity well is evident. That we should all apply his
philosophy and do the same for no other reason than it worked for him is to
make a choice with no basis. That we should even suffer through a comprehensive
study of his works and attempt to fully embrace his mathematical system of
precepts and corollaries is doubtful. Bertrand flatly states that you
shouldn’t.
Whereas Durant suggests three passes through Ethics, Russell
suggests skimming the ideas Spinoza has about how the mind works and focusing
on his summaries and applications. Spinoza felt that a person could, just by
sitting and thinking about it, come to conclusions about how human beings
function and how the universe is structured. By doing that, you may come up with
something that is internally sound but it will most likely also be wrong. With
the limited science he had to work, Spinoza did an amazing job, but we have
significantly more science available to us today and if you have to choose,
your efforts would be better focused on the more modern.
The very first article I read about HR933 explained the
legal language and explained how “The Right” is getting a good laugh out of the
“The Liberal” reaction. I can’t find that article now because it is buried in
what I think is an over-reaction. Before you take a side on this one, do some
research.
Fueled by sites like “Infowars” and “NaturalNews”, fear
mongering is rampant over the Farmer Assurance Protection Act. It has been labeled
the “Monsanto Protection Act” and claims are everywhere of how it “slipped
through”. I’m 5 pages into Google and can’t find one article that is not
inflammatory. It seems to be the worst kept secret in Washington. Even sports fans in Arizona have noticed it.
If you want to give in to the fear, here are 5 TERRIFYINGfacts. Fact 1 is just unsubstantiated claims and the rest are how
government currently works. We should be changing how government works, but
screaming about this bill is not going to accomplish that.
If you haven’t seen the Act, here’s a simple summary, “What
it says is if you plant a crop that is legal to plant when you plant it, you
get to harvest it,” Blunt told Politico. “But it is only a one-year protection
in that bill.”
My biggest problem with this is those who are against it are
assuming that farmers are stupid. They assume, and sometimes say it outright,
that farmers are slaves to Monsanto. Not so. Farmers are running a business.
They can choose their suppliers. If they suspect a product is going to be
difficult to market, they aren’t going to plant it. This provision says that one
judge can’t stop a farmer from cultivating the food that they planted. It says
the FARMER can REQUEST that they bring their crop to market and the Secretary
of Agriculture has the final say, not a federal court judge. It says the
Secretary will REVIEW and ANALYZE the case.
To believe that this is terrifying is to believe that our
government would authorize the harvesting of poison after they have seen
sufficient evidence of the poisoning. Not one of the articles I read stated any
specific poison or gave any links to data explaining exactly what is so
frightening about GMOs. One article alluded to “unintentional” proteins. I’m
not defending GMOs, corporations or factory farmers, I’m only asking for
reasons to be so alarmed.
The Corvalis Advocate notes that all farming, since the
beginning of the Agricultural revolution in the Fertile
Crescent, has been altering the environment. Monsanto seeds aren’t
flying everywhere and changing everything. I know of only one case of a farmer
being sued by Monsanto, and that farmer deliberately plowed around a small
patch of Monsanto seed in his fields to encourage that seed to spread. In other
words, he wanted it to crossbreed with his existing corn and improve his
yields.
If liberal, caring, organic loving people give in to this
kind of discussion, we only contribute to the lowering of the standards for
reasonable discourse. Liberalism accepts that no single person is always right.
It puts the value of listening above the values of giving witty retorts and
crushing your opponent with rhetoric. It looks for evidence, not conspiracy.
Much has been said since this last election about how the
Republicans have come unmoored from their traditions, and that is no doubt
true, but it seems to me that liberals have also lost their foundations and are
giving in to the dichotomous thinking and thoughtless speech habits of those we
denigrate. Perhaps a review of our history would be helpful.
Bertrand Russell wrote History of Western Philosophy during
World War II. He covers every important philosopher and some non-philosophers
from the Greeks up to his time. One of the more interesting chapters is The Rise
of Science in the 17th century. He points out that before that time,
the great philosophers of the Middle Ages like Aquinas or Averroes or Erasmus could
have conversed with Aristotle and Plato. The language barriers would have to be
overcome, but conceptually they were still on the same level. After Copernicus,
Kepler, Galileo and Newton,
when philosophy and science diverged, the gap widened, and the ancients would
have been clueless about things that are now taught in elementary school.
Russell commends Copernicus for being bold enough to question
Ptolemy, who said the sun revolves around the earth, and dedicated enough to
collect the data and do the math to explain why he was doing that. These two
forces; making bold hypotheses and the dedication to gathering empirical
evidence led to modern science. You can apply this to just about every internet
discussion ever, whether it’s aliens are coming or Obama is a socialist or that
that bunny costume is cute or creepy.
Bold hypotheses are made, usually with no evidence. When
challenged, the discussion turns to the openness of someone’s mind, how they
laughed at Columbus
and other useless statements. If the hypothesis is challenged, the response is
to defend the right to state a hypothesis. If the evidence or lack of it is
challenged, the challenger is accused of any number of thought crimes. If an
attempt is made to explain the scientific method, science itself is attacked for
being an entrenched bureaucracy of gatekeepers uninterested in any original
ideas.
All of us were born into the world that has already absorbed
the way of thinking that we call “modern”. Russell, Wittgenstein and Popper
worked this out for us. They did it so well that we don’t bother discussing
their arguments anymore. Just like we don’t need to understand Tusi’s couple or
the stellar parallax to explain how we know the earth revolves around the sun
we don’t need to regurgitate a definition of critical rationalism. Everything
is fine until someone breaks the rule that you can have an idea but you need
some evidence if you want others to go along with it.
Either part of that rule could be broken. Encouraging
innovation is important. Allowing people to explore crazy ideas can be useful.
Even when someone is wrong, we don’t want to suppress their creativity. Part of
that encouragement of creativity should also include the hard work of bringing
an idea to fruition. An idea alone does not have much value.
With so many important inventions in the last couple
centuries, we have come to put a lot of emphasis on the idea people. It’s
easier to remember that brilliant breakthroughs lead to progress than it is to
remember all the testing, all the mistakes, all the tedious gathering of data
that went into making that breakthrough a reality. Too much hero worship and
not enough acknowledgment of the grunt work in my opinion. Ideas and innovation
should be encouraged, but a crazy idea should still be called crazy and
whatever other judgments between the extremes of crazy and brilliant should be
considered, based on evidence.
I just happened to be reading a few other things on this topic, so I thought I'd make a qiuck post that related to the spirit of the day.
When discussing a conspiracy theory, or the value of religion, or an alien abduction with someone I am often confronted with a statement about how "open minded" I am. The nicest way this was presented was someone who said they "allow more in" and thus are more likely to come across something with value. I can't quite work out the math on that one, given the amount of time it can take to develop an internally consistent reality that supports the latest theory.
A brief definition of this "you're not open" idea was given recently by a psychologist. He started working with a group of other psychologists to learn some new ideas, but soon found their ideas were completely wacko. When he questioned these so-called teachers, they questioned his open-mindedness. What they were calling "open minded" he called gullibility. They were asking him to accept their ideas without questioning them even though they went against everything he had learned.
Saying "you're not open minded" is really two logical fallacies wrapped into one. First, they considered their ideas special. They were above the normal scrutiny that other ideas are subject to. This is known as "special pleading". Then, they attacked the person doing the questioning. There is something wrong with him that does not allow him to see the truth as they do. There is something wrong with his mind. This is an "ad hominem attack". What is especially cruel about this is the way it is delivered in a calm and calculated manner, as if the attackers, the believers, the ones with the special knowledge, are talking to a crazy person who needs to be treated as if he is about to crack.
"Open minded" means you are receptive to new ideas and you are willing to listen to someone's argument. It does not mean that you have to believe the argument or that you shouldn't question it. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, that does not mean that everyone else is entitled to adopt it. Some ideas are even dangerous. We wouldn't send children to a Ku Klux Klan summer camp and tell them keep an open mind. A reasonable opinion has some sort of basis, some facts that collectively support it, although there may be missing pieces or untested assumptions. Those facts can be checked and the assumptions can be tested.
If you have an opinion on the origin of the universe, I can't check your math. I can't even understand the math. If you're using math. If you're not, then I can't check if the world is really resting on the back of a turtle either, or whatever it is you're proposing. So for some things, I'll keep my mind open until more data is available.
Here is an argument from someone
who felt the scientific method of arguing was unfair. He said arguments between
atheists and theists can’t even get off the ground because the atheist demands
the following:
1) Since the theist is the one making the claim, the burden is on him to
prove it.
2) The only acceptable proof is Scientific Evidence.
This might seem like a reasonable expectation but in fact it is an
impossible one, by definition. It’s sort of like the following:
1) Only boys are allowed to play in this
basketball competition.
2) The only acceptable proof that girls are good at basketball is evidence that
an all-girls’ team has ever won this competition.
The misunderstanding here is what constitutes a fair playing
field. Theists think it is perfectly fair to say that something that was
revealed to them after a prayer, is valid input into the discussion. Or that
“my pastor told me” constitutes a statement of authority. The problem is, even
the statement “a study was done and its conclusions were…” doesn’t count as
“fair”. The study itself could be flawed. Even a well done study doesn’t prove
anything, it is just more evidence in the spectrum of finding the truth.
But it isn’t necessary to understand the details of how
scientific evidence is evaluated or how science has improved its
self-correcting mechanisms over the last 100 years. All you need to do is look
at the commonly known history of the Western world. In that history, the Greeks
started figuring out the size of the earth and how the planets moved and how to
treat the sick. Rome
then collapsed under the weight of its own politics. The books written by
Ptolemy and Galen continued to be used in European Universities for 1,000 years
with very little improvement. Just about any malady might be treated by letting
out some blood or trying to balance your humors. None of it was effective.
Advances in technology were made very slowly because if you
experimented with an idea or questioned something that the priests said, you
could get branded as a heretic or a witch. These offenses sometimes carried the
death penalty. Under that system, a system analogous to the all boy’s
basketball competition, science managed to get a foothold and eventually won.
Under that old system, when Christianity lost a competition,
as when they lost Jerusalem
to the Muslims, they played by their rules. They returned to Jerusalem with a bigger army and slaughtered
the Muslim citizens and took it back. This could have gone on for centuries if
it weren’t for the people who started looking for a better way. Of course
conflict still does go on, but with a lot less slaughtering. I make no claims
that science has solved all of the problems of the world, or that it won’t be
replaced by a better system in the future.
Once science showed that it could compete, that it could
answer questions that religion could not, that there were ways to settle a
dispute without threats of violence to your opponent, they also changed the
rules of the competition. Instead of continuing with a system that allowed
whoever won to set the rules, they started working on a system that is fair.
They said you could use something that was written 1,000 years ago to show your
idea was correct, but you could also question it. If you say you have a cure
for something, then you simply need to demonstrate that it works. Saying that
it works because it has always been done that way was no longer acceptable.
Some ideas are complicated. The results are not immediate.
Demonstrating them is not so simple. Evaluating them requires experience with
similar ideas. The system of reviewing evidence and getting funding to even
create the evidence is complicated. It’s difficult to evaluate the system of
how we evaluate things, let alone evaluating the thing itself. But we are
comparing this to the old system where you needed the approval of a hierarchy
of men who elected each other and promoted each other based on their approval
of each other and their adherence to the ideas of those who approved and
promoted them. There may be flaws in the current system but it is a system
where you can demonstrate why you think your idea is true, using reason and
evidence. That is what I consider fair.
There are professors, there are scientific journals, there
are hoops to jump through and requirements to be met, but there are no more
witch burnings. There is corruption, there are cliques and networks, but there
are review boards and competing networks that work to break up those log jams
and clean up the problems. When I hear of people complaining about their scientific
papers not getting published or their ideas not being listened to, I almost
always find out it is the merits of the idea that are lacking, not the merits
of the methods that are evaluating those ideas.
I can’t know everything. If I were alive in the 13th
century, I might have noticed that blood letting was not very affective, and
the herbal medicines of a woman living in the forest were, but today, I’m not
able to evaluate all the current potential cures for cancer. If were ever to
get cancer, I would have to rely on others to help me decide on my treatments. At
some point, you have to decide who to trust. For now, I’m going with the people
who are certified by a system that uses evidence, not the non-witch burning
people.
Karen Armstrong has been going around for a few years now claiming that St. Augustine said, " If
a Biblical pasage seems to teach hate and violence, you must give it an allegorical
interpretation and make it speak charity, even if this distorts the meaning of
the original author." Now, Armstrong is notorious for misquoting ancient theologians to support her theme but it doesn't matter. I did verify that Augustine supported the idea of allegorical interpretation and that he generally supported a peaceful interpretation of Christianity. So, close enough. What Armstrong really misses is that St. Augustine would have been the 1% of his day. There was no Occupy movement then, there was no protesting against the 1%, it was just the way it had always been and it was assumed it would always be. Besides, the 99% couldn't read. Augustine would have had no idea that one day people like me and Armstrong would be reading him. He was addressing other Christian leaders and I doubt he intended for them to say that they were distorting the original authors. What's important is, we can read now. Armstrong claims to be addressing the rest of us, but when she gets slippery with facts, she does us all a disservice. More important is that I have never heard this from any minister or pastor. I suspect that people like Greg Boyd, from last week's blog are aware of what St. Augustine said and thought and wrote. If Boyd is not aware of it, then he is a poor theologian. If he is, but thinks it means he should lie to his parish and provide them with an interpretation that distorts the original authors without telling them, then he is deluded. If he thinks he can come up with an interpretation that is peaceful and compassionate but stays true to the original authors, then he is crazy.
I don’t shake my fist at the radio as much as I use to.
Partly because I’m listening to Podcasts so I can turn off what I’m listening
to at anytime. If it is the person doing the show that bothers me, I can email
or comment on the show and get some satisfaction. The ones that still disturb me are
the commenters. They are harder to reach, too anonymous, and they are legion.
Particularly the ones that repeat the mantra, “you won that debate because you
were debating a fundamentalist who doesn’t represent the true interpretation of
the Bible.”
So here I’ll straighten this out, once and for all.
To get us all on the same page, I’ll refer to a debate about
the slaughtering of the Amalekites featuring one of the podcasters at
Reasonable Doubts. These guys are good. They take on respected theologians and
support their arguments with data. The debate actually was aired on UK radio on a
show called “Unbelievable”. Also a great show with a balanced approached. The
Reasonable Doubts podcast included the follow-up comments read on on-air and
some summary by the atheist debater, Justin Sheiber.
Here’s an important point: the only reason that people like
Justin Scheiber make logical arguments against God is that there are people out
there making illogical arguments for God. These arguments cause problems for
individuals, governments and cultures. It is usually a fundamentalist/inerrant
type of believer that agrees to engage in these debates, but it wouldn’t matter.
They just happen to be the types who would try to defend obviously abhorrent
actions of God. It is not the fault or the problem of those making the logical
argument that other, more liberal debaters, don’t step up.
It wouldn’t matter partly because the believers are already
arguing amongst themselves. It is very common to hear the kind of follow-up
emails, tweets and letters that came to the “Unbelievable” show after the
debate about the Amalekites. Those listeners were hoping for something better, but
instead they got a guy who came out and said he believed the Bible as history
from the get go. I can feel for them and I cringed right along with them.
What most of them did not supply is a counter argument; most
simply said that the guy on their side, the believer side, presented a poor
argument. I agree with that too. They then go on to say there are better
arguments. I felt that way once. I attempted to develop that counter argument.
I’m now convinced there isn’t one. Justin is right, it’s sick. If you are worshiping a being that directed those actions, there’s something wrong with
you. If you worship that being because of other things it did, and you just
didn’t know about these parts, that’s excusable, unless you are reading this,
then you are no longer off the hook. If you are trying to compartmentalize
these actions or hoping that someone can explain them or justify them, stop it.
One of the comments after the show did supply a pastor and
even a specific sermon and book that just came out. This is where you can find
an example of Christians arguing amongst themselves. I looked up an earlier
book of his, “Letters from a Skeptic” and perused the comments on Amazon.com.
Most of the negative comments attacked his theology. That is, they were happy
that the skeptic in the book was convinced by the letters that Boyd addressed
modern theological questions, but they didn’t like that he redefined God to do
it. And, as this reader review points out, the so-called skeptic was very open
to deistic ideas in the first place, and he had a weak scientific background,
so the entire exercise has very little value.
So the question is, do we have a new emerging theology? Is
there one that can reconcile the God who commands armies to the one who loves
all his children? People clinging to the old agree that this theology is new
one and they say it does not speak to the all-knowing all-powerful God that
they know. This is as much a split as was Christianity from Judaism or
Protestantism from Catholicism. The new does not seek the blessing of the old.
It criticizes it just as Jesus criticized the Pharisees and Luther criticized
the Popes. It posts its theses in public and invites you to read the scripture
yourself and decide. And just like Luther and Christ, it claims the connection
to the same old scriptures. It just knows them better and understands God
better and is giving a better, more modern interpretation, or so they say.
If the emerging theology did not claim to be connected to
the original story of the creation of the universe it could not make any claims
about the uniqueness of Jesus. At the very least, it would have to disclaim the
genealogy in the gospels that connects them. It would then need to provide
reasons for disclaiming that and not other claims and the whole mess would
start to crumble. Everybody knows this is happening.
To prevent the house of cards from falling, some have pointed
to the fundamental cornerstones and said you must believe these or you’re out.
They have returned to the repetitive claims of the end of times. Others are
attempting to build new structures and scaffolding to hold up the old. Neither
will allow the teachings of Jesus to compete in the full marketplace of ideas,
because that would make the pastors and theologians redundant. That would
require they support their philosophy with logic and that sounds like work.
It is possible that we, the skeptics, the a-theologians,
could just stand on the sidelines and watch the two teams continue to carry off
their wounded players. The danger is, in this world of modern warfare, allowing
such battles to escalate could lead to unthinkable consequences. The
fundamentalists are making themselves the easier target, but if they win, it is
doubtful that we would have a just and peaceful world, unless you consider a
world where women are not allowed to choose their careers and homosexuals are
considered mentally ill a just world.
For the moment, we find ourselves in an uncomfortable
alliance with the emerging liberal theology. They don’t seem to want to debate,
at least not often, and we have no reason to force them into the open. If they,
on occasion, speak out against the Westboro Baptists of the world, we
acknowledge that. If they are offering classes on the true history of the
church, that’s great. The good news, when they are ready to engage us, their
lines of reasoning are nothing new.
The comment about Greg Boyd that was read on “Unbelievable”
said this is the best reconciliation of OT and NT he has ever heard. If it is,
then we don’t have much to worry about. I have examined many sermons, blogs and
books like this and find this one a little better for its cleverness and the
use of a new analogy. All of them are pretty much the same. I was unfamiliar
with Boyd specifically, but a quick check shows he has a couple best sellers, a
successful church, and he was a classmate of Bart Ehrmann.
In the recommended sermon Boyd begins by explaining that he
will not be preaching dogma, that it will be opinion, and you can wrestle with
it as you please. He opens with Colossians
2:16-17, where Paul talks of the shadows of the old laws. He relates this
to the Jungian view of the shadow self, although he doesn’t mention Jung and I
think he does a poor job of explaining the archetype.When discussing the OT, he is completely open
about how abhorrent the behavior is and berates a current pastor for suggesting
the use of imprecatory prayer (Psalm 109)
to wish death on Obama. He describes his own journey of attempting to reconcile
this schizophrenic God who saves with one hand and smites with the other.
As an analogy for how God acted, he tells how missionaries
today need to act. If they go to a village that is performing female genital
mutilation as part of their rituals and traditions they can’t simply say to
stop it in the name of God. If they were to do that, it is doubtful they would
be welcomed to stay. Missionaries today need to gain trust over a matter of
years and hope their teachings about the ways of Christ will lead to them
choosing to treat their young women better.
The irony here, not mentioned of course, is that this is a
modern phenomena required due to missionaries not having the force of a
military to back them up and enforce God’s will. Christianity is being forced
into taking these steps toward competing in the marketplace of ideas because it
is losing its power. In a remote village, they can still control the
information they are using to discern the quality of their ideas. As modern
ideas spread, this will be increasingly difficult. Greg Boyd is seeing that
trend and applying what he sees as sophisticated arguments to the bigger
questions that educated American church goers are asking. I’m sure he believes
he can head off this drive toward a world where books are considered special
based on their quality, instead of their being in the liturgy.
He applies this missionary analogy to the OT God. God was
the enlightened American (these are my sarcastic words, not his), going into
the poor village and seemingly condoning abuse of women, but he did it only to
gain their trust. As Boyd says, “God enters us” as we are, at whatever stage of
development we are, “and slowly transforms us”. Today, we should only judge
those missionaries on the results of their work. If in the end, the villagers
stop their ritual circumcisions, we should not look back and berate them for not
producing those results quicker. For God, we should judge him through the lens
of the sacrificed Christ, hanging on the cross.
He goes on to use more metaphorical language about crosses
and humble missionaries and weaves in some standard crapola about free will,
but I want to review up to here. I’m not sure if I’ll go into more detail in
the future or not. First, he has the balls to open with a statement about how
new his ideas are. He wants to say that you, the person who has given up their
Sunday morning to come listen to him, is special. You have made the right
choice about church. You’ve come to the smart, cutting edge place and are about
to hear something that very few others have heard. IMHO, what he says in this sermon is no better than any old
church or for that matter a late night TV infomercial.
This is why people write comments like they do about debates
with fundamentalists. They are parroting these opening lines even though they
don’t really understand the arguments. They were told their knowledge is
special and they never checked it out. They can’t repeat the logic because it
doesn’t follow in a logical manner. But they are convinced that Greg Boyd gets
it and could explain it. They think they just need to study some more, then
they’ll be able to talk like Greg. Meanwhile, they'll just suggest you listen to his sermons. I wish more would do that study because in
the process they would find out how full of it he is.
The second thing he does is classic emerging church
manipulation. He admits the bad stuff is bad. He admits he spent years trying
to figure it out and couldn’t. He engages your intellect, the part of you that
has logically determined that there is something wrong here. He also knows you are
sitting there in his church. You must want this to work. You want the good
things about Jesus that you’ve heard about. You don’t want to be told to simply
believe it and it will all work out. You want a mechanism. He provides the
missionary work analogy; he provides the powerful images of a crucified Jesus;
he calls the OT stories that you don’t like “a negative contrast”; he says they
point to the “real” God in Jesus just like a shadow points to the real thing.
Each step seems to have some logic to it but none is any better than the
speculation of a third century Origen trying figure out what the gospels mean
with little knowledge of the context of the history of the first century.
At the end, he blasts the congregation with a list of
scriptures that seem to be as good as any scholarly footnote that would prove
that Jesus is the “real” God. He focuses on the latter half Colossians chapter
2 where Paul says “These (the laws) are a shadow of the things there were to come;”
and makes this rather bizarre statement, “The portrait of the law giving God is
wrapped up with the nationalism which is what the violence is all about, so if
one of them is the shadow, they’re all a shadow.” He gives you permission to
dismiss anything you don’t like. His cadence quickens as he rattles off chapter
and verse:
Jesus says, If you see me, then you see the father, don’t
look anywhere but the father. This appears to be some paraphrasing around John
14:19 or so.
Matthew 11:27 No one knows the father except for the son
John 14:6 I am The way, I am The truth; and Greg emphasizes “The”
and pauses to point out the singular is used here
Hebrews 1:3, the son is the one and only radiance of God’s
glory and the exact representation of his very essence
John 1:17 The law was given through Moses, but grace and
truth was given through Jesus Chirst.
Greg used “but” in this one, which seems to be a KJV
invention. Other interpretations use a semicolon or comma indicating these are
two separate functions, not one negating the other.
1 Timothy 2:15 There’s one mediator between God and humanity
and it is Jesus
He also says, “There’s one word between God and humanity,
it’s Jesus.” I couldn’t find a separate passage for this one. I guess he was elaborating
on the one above. Later in 1 Timothy there are instructions for women to learn
in quietness and full submission, which seems more “law-giver” to me, but
whatever.
He finishes with, “One saivour, one revealer.” This could be
the classic John 3:16, but hard sayin’.
He keeps repeating “Do you believe that or not” after each
one. This is a very old technique used by preachers for centuries. It is
semi-hypnotic. Then he gives the answer, just in case you don’t feel like thinking
for yourself, if we believe those passages, then there is no way to look at the OT except
as a shadow.
Of course, there are many scriptural references that claim
the Old Testament God is the one and only “real” God. Greg Boyd does not mention those in this sermon.
Deuteronomy 4:35
Deuteronomy 4:39
Deuteronomy 32:39
2 Samuel 22:32
1 Chronicles 17:20
Psalm 18:31
Isaiah 44:8
There are also passages that say faith is the only way to God, or you can’t get to
God without works, or that the end times are near, or just about anything else
you might want to say is true.
After that, he practically admits that his “shadow” metaphor
is a trick. He says he couldn’t figure out how to reconcile these passages,
then he gave up, and click, the shadow. But he’s already drawn you in with an
hour of Christian symbolism combined with pseudo-psychology and rapid
repetition, so you’re left hoping that you’ll find time to read the book when
it comes out and hammer through the details for yourself. He has convinced
himself that this trick works and he is so energetic, animated and entertaining
it just must be true. Plus he says he has an open door policy. Email him any
time and he will consider your question. He must be right if he is so
confident. Right?
