Great reflections, Chris! Your answer brings out some of the complexity and strangeness of revelation itself. I also appreciate how often you reference Hebrews. I have heard Hebrews 1:3 cited to advocate for some semi-Marcionite position without any recognition of how the writer of Hebrews relates the OT and the patriarchs to the new covenant found in Christ. The writer clearly provides new revelatory readings of scripture. Thanks for drawing that out! -Andrew
David’s question is great and the teaching of Origin regarding the hard nut is very thought provoking. I think i take a related but (possibly?) slightly different perspective. Or maybe expressed differently? What if some things humans write of God are simply untrue of God (with Christ and the leading of the Spirit as the litmus test), and this is true of both NT AND OT. BUT this very process of three steps forward and two steps back in the way we talk about God, which runs from Genesis to Revelation is very thing that makes the scriptures inspired. Christ is crucified all along the way, and we can only be confronted with that reality by the awful truth that we kill in the name of God and then say ‘it’s in the Bible’ or write Bible stories attributing our violence to God. But God undercuts us from within the text. How could we be confronted with the depth of our scapegoating tendencies (and be forgiven for it) unless we scapegoat others and then write Bible stories to justify our own violence? As i think John Behr says, we can only see our sin in the process of it being forgiven. I wonder if this is part of the way - maybe the only way that the Christ can be perceived in the story? eg, yes the story of the slaying of the Amalekites is inspired because Christ is found in the slain ones. Could this be part of what it means to move past the hard shell of our our own violence that we attribute to God in scripture? (yes, i am very influenced by Girard).
Great reflections, Chris! Your answer brings out some of the complexity and strangeness of revelation itself. I also appreciate how often you reference Hebrews. I have heard Hebrews 1:3 cited to advocate for some semi-Marcionite position without any recognition of how the writer of Hebrews relates the OT and the patriarchs to the new covenant found in Christ. The writer clearly provides new revelatory readings of scripture. Thanks for drawing that out! -Andrew
David’s question is great and the teaching of Origin regarding the hard nut is very thought provoking. I think i take a related but (possibly?) slightly different perspective. Or maybe expressed differently? What if some things humans write of God are simply untrue of God (with Christ and the leading of the Spirit as the litmus test), and this is true of both NT AND OT. BUT this very process of three steps forward and two steps back in the way we talk about God, which runs from Genesis to Revelation is very thing that makes the scriptures inspired. Christ is crucified all along the way, and we can only be confronted with that reality by the awful truth that we kill in the name of God and then say ‘it’s in the Bible’ or write Bible stories attributing our violence to God. But God undercuts us from within the text. How could we be confronted with the depth of our scapegoating tendencies (and be forgiven for it) unless we scapegoat others and then write Bible stories to justify our own violence? As i think John Behr says, we can only see our sin in the process of it being forgiven. I wonder if this is part of the way - maybe the only way that the Christ can be perceived in the story? eg, yes the story of the slaying of the Amalekites is inspired because Christ is found in the slain ones. Could this be part of what it means to move past the hard shell of our our own violence that we attribute to God in scripture? (yes, i am very influenced by Girard).
The fruit analogy from Origen is really excellent.