Why are mainline churches theologically bankrupt? One reason is that Clergy, for decades, were nursed on scholarly commentaries featuring the sort of biblical interpretation illustrated below...note, as you read, the a priori philosophical decision made by this author regarding miracles and how it shapes/twists his reading of Jesus calming of the storm in Matthews Gospel. Note also how his uttery made up evidence-free counter scenario is preferred over the actual evidence of the first century account...this sort of thinking was and is considered scholarship in most mainline seminaries...It should be observed that certain types of mind must have miracles in order to make a religion credible. They find the supremacy of God over Nature not so much in His power to maintain Law as in His power to supersede it. If He created the world order, if He be indeed its King, He must prove His regal authority by occasional interference with it, by the temporary suspension of Law. Such minds must have miracles, or they cannot believe, and if miracle be lacking it must be provided. The result is a tendency to read a miraculous element into events which are in themselves capable of normal explanation, and to find a miracle where none necessarily exists. The world into which the gospel first came was almost entirely of this type and the two narratives of the raising of the daughter of an official which have been compared with one another may suggest how the process was - without thought of deceit or misrepresentation carried out. It may be that the nature miracles are to be explained on this ground. Men in a panic may very readily exaggerate the danger of a sudden squall and believe themselves to be in immediate peril of drowning without adequate cause. The sense of security induced by the calmness and faith of such a personality as Jesus may well produce such a revulsion of feeling that the mind passes over to the opposite extreme and sea and sky seem at once to be calm. In other words, the miracle of the stilling of the storm may have been a complete change in the minds of the disciples rather than in the actual state of the weather...(Theodore H. Robbinson M.A., D.D., The Gospel of Matthew, 1928 pp.84-85). You see, fishermen born and raised handling boats on the Galilee, swoon and panic at the slightest swell, unable to tell the difference between a deadly storm and an insignificant squall...but fortunately for modern-thinking clergymen and their congregations, early 20th century professors of Semetic Languages at University College Cardiff are able to correct them.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 16:15:17 +0000
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