CTS Part Two

I will try and translate what I'm studying this week at CTS. This morning's session was excellent. I wrote so fast I thought my index finger was going to fall off (I like to write as opposed to type when taking notes . . . I type so fast that my brain gets out of sync. However when I write, it slows me down a bit).

Here were some highlights from today's lectures and discussions. I'll save the nerd stuff for other conversations.

"Every family/church has their own genre (story). And when your genre (story) comes colliding with someone else's--be it marriage, church leadership, preaching--you'd better be aware of the stories around you."

"The Bible, just like the humans who wrote them under God's influence, is complex. Therefore, just as we move beyond judging people for their complexity, we must move beyond judging the Bible and move into a living, breathing relationship. We must allow the Bible to critique us. To ask questions we would not dare ask if left to our own devices."

On the Bible: "There are no answers in the back of this book, only long standing schools of interpretation."

"Every spiritualization is rationalization," (regarding the Christianity that allowed Nazi Germany to exterminate Jesus's people, the Jews).

"There is a profound difference between history and memory. Memory is the way in which we remember history. So, in reality, perhaps history and memory aren't all that different."

"When we read the Bible we're always asking ourselves . . . 'What is God saying and doing?'"

"Von Rad (noted OT scholar) was the only professor in the theology department at this university not to join the Nazi Party. Because of that, students refused to take his courses. The Confessing Church (led by Bonhoeffer et al) therefore sent students to take Von Rad's lectures lest the the university terminate Von Rad. So the moral of the story . . . just because you have a small church doesn't mean you are not doing God's work. Don't base everything upon popularity."

"We are all selective fundamentalists. That is, we all choose which parts of the Bible we read and which parts we do not. Therefore, a healthy reader will confess to this problem, help others to see their own participation in selective reading of the Bible and courageously move forward to let all of Scripture serve as our guiding force."

"The texts calls us to more freedom than we are ready to have."

We spent the last hour of class going through Dr. Brueggemann's approach to interpreting the Bible. He's just written a new book about it so it was fascinating to learn up close from one of this generations great thinkers/writers.