How Do We Know, What We Know?
On one of the blogs I read, the Jesus Creed, this question was brought up, "How do you 'know and understand' in areas where you are not an expert?" This is sort of a corollary to my posts on "How you look at God's word" so I thought I would write a few posts about it and see if anyone had any thoughts they might want to share. How many of us read Greek, Hebrew, or have real expertise in 1st century Roman and Jewish culture?
I certainly don't know Greek or Hebrew and know just a smattering of the culture of that time,so what am I to do? What I do know is rarely from primary sources, meaning I didn't learn it from the original. I usually depend on others whose knowledge and understanding I respect. This where the tricky part comes in who do I respect and why?
How about you? More next time.
I certainly don't know Greek or Hebrew and know just a smattering of the culture of that time,so what am I to do? What I do know is rarely from primary sources, meaning I didn't learn it from the original. I usually depend on others whose knowledge and understanding I respect. This where the tricky part comes in who do I respect and why?
How about you? More next time.
posted by Johnny | 10:57 PM
2 Comments:
Good point Johnny. I heard Scott McKnight speak in October and really appreciate his thoughts.
I get the question you pose often--however it is usually directed at me. When I try to expose a text and discuss Greek or Hebrew I hear--"If we have to know the languages then God is too distant from the common man..."
My take is that Christianity is driven by faith in God and human leaders. The Jehovah's witnesses ignore any person with an advanced degree in religion and assume they are all corrupt. However they blindly trust the Watchtower Society which displays some of the worst methods of interpretation and translation I have ever seen. I notice that we are like this at times.
Christian scholarship is built on faith and trust. We believe that those more educated are walking the same journey of faith and have to believe that they approach the text with humility. We also believe that scholars also question each others conclusions and their arguments and discussions are meant to find truth rather than error.
I also feel that this is why we should encourage those intellectually gifted Christians to learn and study. We need to present a faith tradition that welcomes knowledge and questions rather than hiding from them.
Just my thoughts.
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