On Paleotheology

brothers and sisters, I have spoken to all of you, and all of you have decided to embark on this quest with me.....the quest to discover the bible and word of god. the more I study theology and church history, the more I get frustrated with the bloodshed, the bickering, the persecution, and the hundreds of interpretations the bible has endured. and I see how much of that exists to this day in one form or another...particularly the bickering.

I heard a quote from tony campolo the other day suggesting that many christians have traded the bible for their interpretations of the bible. I am guilty of this. I admit, I come to the bible with many agendas and biases. and if I am totally honest, I intentionally read things I know will reinforce those agendas and biases.

after hitting many walls in my conversations with daniel, perhaps the person my theology resembles the least in this group, I feel I cannot assume anything anymore. when daniel used certain words such as soul, god, salvation, sovereignty, and death, I couldn't assume that I understood what he meant, and for both of us, it wasn't clear how the Bible defined these things. and I realized that if we were going to make any progress in our study of the Bible and our knowledge of God, we would eventually have to go back to the Bible and let the Word define our theology, and not the other way around.

I came up with the term "paleo-theology," to describe our reading of Scripture, but it turns out that I didn't' come up with the term. I found one other guy on the internet that is thinking along these same lines. His name is brother tadgh. Generally, he defines paleotheology as the study and application of ancient spiritual texts and their associated history. I think this definition is helpful, inasmuch as we to stick to the text, believing that the text itself will reveal it's meaning. of course this means that we will have to get into the hebrew and greek, which I am excited about.

a bit should be said about methodology. the methodology I have described to all of you is a reading of the bible with built-in mechanisms that curtail what's know as "eisigesis" or rather, reading what we want into the bible.

mechanism 1: we stick to the text at hand, without trying to harmonize it with texts that it is dubious the author of the text was aware of. for instance, we cannot use passages in Paul's letters to help us understand Genesis. On the other hand, it is clear that Jesus was reading Isaiah, so we could use Isaiah to understand the Gospels, but not the other way around. get it?

mechanism 2: there must be an emphasis on the original language. much of the difficulties in understanding the bible is through problems and limitations of translation and then interpretation. for instance, when someone asks what the bible says about "Hell." I first must ask what is meant by "Hell," and see if there is a hebrew and greek equivalent to the concept, and then I must consider in what context is that word used. naturally, this will raise the question about what the Bible says about the afterlife and so on.

mechanism 3: by sticking to the text and utilizing the original language, we can then, as a community, keep each other accountable and call each out when we see a creeping agenda that is outside the text. of course, we must be reasonable, and listen to each other carefully and honestly.

adam raised a good point in our conversation the other night. he asked me what justifies this pursuit when so many have walked down the same path. he then concluded that this pursuit is important because no one can do theology for you, it must be done by all of us....to stand naked before the Word of God.

our first assignment is to read the first two chapters of Genesis, in an attempt to read it for the first time....and then to write a response. the blogsite will be up by next week...but let's start the discussion through email.

so, what do you guys think about the first two chapters of Genesis????
raj