Just so you know...
I do believe that God loves the whole world and sent His Son to be an atoning sacrifice for all sin, including those I committed in this community yesterday.
I ask your forgiveness for my harsh words and for my lack of clarity.
But here's the question:
Granting that genre is very important for understanding a particular passage of Scripture, I offer these questions to ponder.
1. How do you determine what the genre is? (Some particular chapters are heavily debated)
2. What can we reasonably say applies to *all* Scripture regardless of genre?
3. When does "paying attention to the genre" become "using the genre to ignore what God is saying"?
As a Lutheran, #3 is of particular concern to me. I, for example, view the Psalms a bit differently than some in this community. I think we can take the words pretty much at face value and that what we know of Hebrew poetry reinforces this position. Hebrew poetry uses certain styles and parallelisms to reinforce meaning rather than to allow detail to be ignored. It's pretty different from a lot of English poetry.
What I'm always trying to guard against is, "God can't possibly mean that because I don't like it." I tend to think that God means what he says. If we find that our theology is in conflict with what the Scriptures say, then it's our theology that needs to adjust, not the Scripture.
I ask your forgiveness for my harsh words and for my lack of clarity.
But here's the question:
Granting that genre is very important for understanding a particular passage of Scripture, I offer these questions to ponder.
1. How do you determine what the genre is? (Some particular chapters are heavily debated)
2. What can we reasonably say applies to *all* Scripture regardless of genre?
3. When does "paying attention to the genre" become "using the genre to ignore what God is saying"?
As a Lutheran, #3 is of particular concern to me. I, for example, view the Psalms a bit differently than some in this community. I think we can take the words pretty much at face value and that what we know of Hebrew poetry reinforces this position. Hebrew poetry uses certain styles and parallelisms to reinforce meaning rather than to allow detail to be ignored. It's pretty different from a lot of English poetry.
What I'm always trying to guard against is, "God can't possibly mean that because I don't like it." I tend to think that God means what he says. If we find that our theology is in conflict with what the Scriptures say, then it's our theology that needs to adjust, not the Scripture.