Emerging thoughts about emerging theogical thoughts

Andrew - just a few questions for you before breakfast. Strange that the system crashed while I was trying to download this yesterday.

1. Would ‘self-conscious continuity with the people of God’ include the people of God throughout history, and their reflections on the meaning of the biblical faith?

2. Does (2.) assume that Jesus lives now, in communion with his people? In other words, his significance is more than simply historical? Or does ‘lordship’ inhere exclusively in the principles he gave his people to live by?

3. Does narrative priority include reflections on God’s ontology, and how this emerges from and influences the narrative? (I think for instance of David and the psalms, and their meditations on God’s being; the interaction between God’s holiness and our unholiness on a personal as well as corporate level - central sections of Romans, and much of the epistles).

4. What is the difference between text and historical narrative? In the bible, the text provides the historical narrative doesn’t it? This might also raise questions about canon: which version of biblical history/text are we talking about? Why some not others? If others, what grounds do we have for taking those as in any way authoritative, and not the biblical version? (Or the other way round).

5. Should we also be consulting the experience of the Spirit as well as reading scripture? Sometimes scripture encourages us to do this - eg Peter’s experience in the house of Simon the tanner - which was formative for his views on Torah observation. It’s arguable that a great deal of biblical interpretation can and should be conducted in the light of the faith community’s experience of God outside the text. It’s also arguable that the text also, in some ways, stands over the life of the faith community.

6. Total agreement!

7. Does this have a bearing on my question in 5.?

8. & 9. Agreed, whilst suggesting that not all the contributions of modernism are distortions (eg the place modernism gives to reason in the interpretation of scripture); ‘broadly but not slavishly postmodern’ seems a good qualification - though here again, the precise application of this qualification raises further questions.

10. What governs ‘integrity’? Is there any approach to scriptural understanding that does not include some distortion or deception? Being accountable, and prepared to modify a point of view in the light of better arguments might be included here, but above all, what is the place given to the Spirit’s role in interpreting scripture? A ‘Christ-centred’ interpretation of scripture, especially the OT, might be the most partial of all interpretations - taking us outside the realm of intellectual interpretation to the experience of God in our lives. Very risky - but isn’t that what the NT does in relation to Christ?

11 - 15. Agreed.

Not nit-picking - just asking some questions - that’s if you or anyone has persevered this far with the post.