Diarmaid McCullough on the KJV

Jim West posted this link to an ABC radio interview with Diarmaid McCullough on the significance of the King James Bible. McCullough, who Jim describes as "the finest general Church Historian presently working," has authored works on the Reformation and the history of Christianity that are widely regarded as the best available.

One of the interesting comments McCullough makes is to call the eighteenth century revision of the KJV, which is the one in print today, a Disneyfied "fake-up." Egad! So no Myrtle, your 1611 Bible isn't; all those KJV-only freaks take note!

Pluralism Sunday

Beltane in Edinburgh... more Presbyterians?

Trust John Shuck to keep his readers apprised of Pluralism's very own Sunday observance this weekend. Just goes to show that not all Presbyterians are totally depraved, at least outside of Dunedin.

But - Gott im Himmel! - Pluralism Sunday at Elizabethton, TN is also marked by 'the pagan festival of Beltane - "bright fire" or "fire of Bel." Bel was the Celtic sun god who was in his glory during the light half of the year. In the old traditions, this feast day celebrated the new growth and fertility of the land and all of its inhabitants.'

Gasp! Not only a pagan festival but a fertility festival to boot! Almost (but not quite) as bad as bunnies and eggs at Easter! I'm breaking out in hot flushes as I type this. John, cobber, you could single-handedly provoke hortatory sermon material in certain Christian communities to last the year round...

The Pied Piper of Calvinofascism

This just makes me angry, so I won't offer much of a comment, except to say that this person is an esteemed figure in the Reformed ghetto of the evangelical community, and obviously living in an entirely different century to most of the rest of us. God help any woman who takes his advice - just go tell the "leaders" in your church - seriously!

The ultimate orbiter?

The penultimate orbiter?

Rob Bell's Love Wins is... a winner.

If this was the coming face of evangelicalism, there'd be hope for the church's survival. I've seen it in two Auckland Christian bookshops this week, one very mainline (Church Supplies in Ellerslie) and one fringe fundamentalist (the Adventist Book Centre in Manukau.) May the Force be with you Rob.

That said, every book has its flaws. This one has a fantastic malapropism.

"Are we the ultimate orbiter of what can, and cannot, exist?"

Sic, sic, sic...

And it slipped through the editorial fingers of both HarperCollins in the US and Collins in the UK?

Weird.

Another Stark Quote

"[Apologists] are sophists, in a world crying out for prophets. Prophets speak the truths that no one wants to hear, which also happen to be the truths that everyone needs to hear. We cannot move forward until we find the courage to confront our problematic texts, the courage to be brutally honest."

Stark on Apologetics

"Contemporary popular apologists tend to look for any way to salvage the text, no matter how unlikely or untenable the argument. They'll use scholarly sources selectively, or pounce on one scholar's argument and run away with it, without any concern for the fact the vast majority of scholars haven't been persuaded by it. They're not interested in what's plausible, only what's "possible," if it serves their immediate purposes. They trade in eisegesis, wild speculation, and fanciful interpretations, reading into the text what isn't there, indeed, what's often contradicted by the very passages they cite...

"But they seem oblivious to the real harm they're doing. Not only are they giving permission for Christians to be dishonest with the material, they're reinforcing delusions that disconnect well-meaning Christians from reality...

"These apologists are perpetuating an insular Christian culture, giving well-meaning Christians permission to switch off their brains and their consciences and go about their business, pretending everything is all right. The apologists don't care to convince those struggling on the margins of faith - they're preaching only to the converted, only to those who are looking for easy answers to questions others are asking them, but which they aren't asking themselves."

Thom Stark, Is God a Moral Compromiser?

Stark crunches Copan

Oh man, a book-length three hundred and seven page book review! As announced on Religion at the Margins, here is the ultimate rebuttal to Paul Copan's cosy and creative contextualising of the Canaanite genocide (links below). And nobody could bring the passion to the task that Thom Stark does. This guy is like a rottweiler, and while I'm no fan of canine rottweilers, a Canaanite rottweiler is another matter entirely.

In case you missed previous episodes, Copan is a scholar who thinks the nasty genocide stuff in the Old Testament is much overstated. Yahweh is no moral monster, because, um, well, who knows... Maybe because it'd upset the theological, doctrinal and devotional applecart. The task at hand then is to explain away the indefensible. Copan is, on this matter, of the same view as New Zealand Reformed apologist Matthew Flannagan. The task restated, dear reader, is to put your mind at rest, and to salve your tender conscience lest it be disturbed by the blood and screams of dying children murdered at the command of God.

Thom is the author of the brilliant The Human Faces of God, which while coming from a committed Christian perspective, refuses to make excuses for the texts of terror. It is an honest eyeballing of the evidence. An overview has been presented here before. The review, like the book, is approachable by an interested non-specialist, so while the length may be formidable, the content is anything but. Here's Thom's opening paragraph.

I am a Christian. Sure, not by fundamentalists’ standards, but I’m a Christian nonetheless. I say this at the outset because I don’t want my intentions to be misunderstood. In critiquing Paul Copan’s apologetic defenses of our frequently morally problematic Bible, my aim is not to turn anybody away from the Christian faith. In fact, I am critical of apologetic attempts to sweep the Bible’s horror texts under the rug precisely because I believe such efforts are damaging to the church and to Christian theology. After having read and critiqued Paul Copan’s latest apologetic effort, I am obliged to say that I can only recommend this book to atheists who are looking for a good book to give to their Christian friends to show them what’s wrong with Christianity.

Ouch!

Anyone who has been seduced by the arguments presented by the genocide deniers badly needs to download Stark's review. If you have an eReader that handles PDFs, that could be a nifty way to engage with this amazing review.

Links:
Thom's brief introduction on Religion at the Margins.
The Review in PDF (all 307 pages).