Context and Consistency

by DT 22 Replies latest watchtower bible

  • BurnTheShips
    BurnTheShips

    Hi DT.

    I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to come up with any consistent theology from the Bible.

    The Bible was never intended to be a theological summary. To make it so is to misuse it. It was a book belonging to a community that already had a theology, an oral tradition, and a doctrine. Scripture wasn’t intended to be an instructional tool for converts. It was never a how-to manual. Not one book of the Bible was written for non-believers. The Old Testament books were written for Jews, the New Testament books for people who already were Christians. Just looking at the New Testament you won’t find one book that spells out the elements of the faith the way catechisms do or even the way the ancient creeds did. Those 27 books were written for the most part as provisional documents addressed to particular audiences for particular purposes.

    Butn

  • hillary_step
    hillary_step

    Pop-Tart,

    The Bible was never intended to be a theological summary. To make it so is to misuse it. It was a book belonging to a community that already had a theology, an oral tradition, and a doctrine. Scripture wasn’t intended to be an instructional tool for converts. It was never a how-to manual. Not one book of the Bible was written for non-believers. The Old Testament books were written for Jews, the New Testament books for people who already were Christians. Just looking at the New Testament you won’t find one book that spells out the elements of the faith the way catechisms do or even the way the ancient creeds did. Those 27 books were written for the most part as provisional documents addressed to particular audiences for particular purposes.

    You have been reading again haven't you. ;)

    HS

  • BurnTheShips
    BurnTheShips

    Hitlery_GooseStep.

    Maybe you should duck when you see my pop-tart goo coming. ;-)

    You obviously have nothing more to trade lately than pathetic little barbs. You are boring me.

    Burn

  • hillary_step
    hillary_step

    Pop-Tart,

    You obviously have nothing more to trade lately than pathetic little barbs.

    On the contrary, I am serving the needs of the online community by identifying the pretentious little phoney in action. As to information trading, well, I do give important posts some time as my history evidences, but trivial pronouncements by a confused religionist will certainly not attract much attention from me except for boring "little barbs". :)

    HS

  • BurnTheShips
    BurnTheShips
    the pretentious little phoney in action.

    How so? Please explain.

    by a confused religionist

    Really? Explain!

    Burn

  • BurnTheShips
    BurnTheShips
    I'm planning on making this the subject of a separate post.

    Please do!

    Burn

  • Doug Mason
    Doug Mason

    BurnThe Ships,

    You wrote:

    The Bible was never intended to be a theological summary. To make it so is to misuse it. It was a book belonging to a community that already had a theology, an oral tradition, and a doctrine. Scripture wasn’t intended to be an instructional tool for converts. It was never a how-to manual. Not one book of the Bible was written for non-believers. The Old Testament books were written for Jews, the New Testament books for people who already were Christians. Just looking at the New Testament you won’t find one book that spells out the elements of the faith the way catechisms do or even the way the ancient creeds did. Those 27 books were written for the most part as provisional documents addressed to particular audiences for particular purposes.

    I thought it was so good that it should be repeated. Good sense.

    Doug

  • Octarine Prince
    Octarine Prince

    Circumcision was supposed to set the Jews apart, but they were not the first, nor the only people to regularly implement this practice.

    The Egyptians did it, for example.

  • cognizant dissident
    cognizant dissident

    It may be true that the books of the Bible were not written as a theological summary, but when they were canonized by the early Christian church that was exactly their intention. These are the books that were chosen as representative (summary) of the word of God (theos) and it was necessary for Christians beig converted/baptized to accept this "word of God".

    Also, some of the books of the Hebrew Scriptures, that contained the law covenant for the Israelites could definitely be compared to cathechisms with their many rules and rituals for daily living. They were very much intended to be a summary of all the laws of God that one must obey on pain of death. And any foreigners who wanted to enter amoung the Israelites was forced to submit to them also.

    Cog

  • WTWizard
    WTWizard

    One way to look at the Bible is that it is nothing more than a chronolog of man's development into conscious thought (of course, most of Genesis is myth). This runs through the whole Bible, old testament and new. The New Testament, as well as Jesus' ministry, was merely an attempt to speed the process up. The apostles were bicameral at the outset, and Jesus offered the gift of conscious thought. He used parables to facilitate this process.

    Now, Paul comes along and misinterprets it all. He errantly takes it literally, and starts writing as if the Bible was meant for use as a guide book. This was an errant viewpoint, but an innocent error. He was trying to help out, but took the wrong approach. Now, something like 300 years later, St Augustine starts a cult that would be known as the Catholic Church. He picks the books out of all that is available that will support this new cult, and discards everything else. That is where we get the 66 books of the Bible today. And that leads down into the Dark Ages, where the masses do not get to see the whole Bible, or even the part that was selected.

    Sometime after the Renaissance, King James sets out to make the Bible public. He has access only to the 66 books that the Catholic church preserved. All the original errors are preserved faithfully, as well as a few transcription errors (you are always going to have those). But even so, this is enough to set off independent Bible study groups. The Protestant denominations come from these. As Paul's innocent errors and the omissions of many of the Gnostic texts are still there, the religions are still not perfect. But it does undermine the stranglehold the Catholic church had, forcing them to become more mainstream.

    Now, we reach 1840. About this time, someone independently studies the Bible, but with the purpose of exploiting it to control masses of people and swindle them of their money. This becomes a cult that will eventually spawn the Mormons, the Adventists, the Millennial Dawnists, and Jehovah's Witlesses. This person is not doing this to reach the roots of truth, but to exploit people. Of course, the person doing this claims to be searching for the truth at the roots. And, so does each of the splinter cults that come from this.

    Anyone viewing the Bible in this sense is bound to see why all the religions have such mysticism and make little sense. The Catholic teachings do not seem to make sense because of Paul mistakenly taking the Bible literally and St Augustine's efforts to use it to manipulate people. Protestant denominations vary because they started from independent truth-seekers with slightly different viewpoints. And the cults like Jehovah's Witlesses and Mormons started because of a scam where the founders studied independently with nefarious purposes. Hopefully, that will shatter a few myths and help people to understand what exactly the Trinity means.

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