If you don't understand what "accretion" is---how can you understand Bible?

by Terry 32 Replies latest jw friends

Terry

Morality, in order to be anything, cannot be everything.
It cannot be both good and bad.
A Standard must be definitive. Borders and Boundries define exactly where IS is.
What is the Bible?
The Bible, it must be understood, is NOT the product of a single mind with a single standard.
Scripture accumulated a great many mind's standards over a long stretch of time...yet always presented AS THOUGH it were the single mind of Divinity at work.
What is "accretion"?
It is the process by which a story describing "events" becomes layered by each telling with additional interpretive nuances until the changes are more plentiful than the original facts.
The "standard" of Morality (Bible) is so twisted by retellings of diversely interpreted events broken free of original contexts--there is no soundness to it.
To the man of Faith who is chastised never to rely on "human understanding" the idea of logical curiousity applied to bible morality is out of the picture!
The danger is real that the Faithful person absorbs chaotic nonsense and STRONGLY BELIEVES it is perfect and wonderful BECAUSE it is from God.
I live in the Southern part of the United States. Did you know that the telling of "facts" about the Civil War in the South is practically devoid of racial underpinnings as a "cause" of the War Between the States? It is offered as a conflict over "States Rights" instead of the issue of Slavery!
Only in the last decade has a dramatic effort been made to change how Southern textbooks tell the story.
This is what I'm talking about. By recasting the Event in a new context the "morality" issue is blurred and muddied beyond comprehension.
When a Northerner and a Southerner argue over the Civil War they are talking at cross-purposes immediately. They do not even possess the same "facts".
So too with the scriptures!
What is a JEW? God's "chosen people" or "christ killer"? Depends on which books of the bible you are reading and in what context! JOHN depicts Jews as the murderer's of the son of God who cry out "Let his blood be upon us!"
Jehovah's Witnesses have recontextualized JEW into "spiritual Jew" which is nothing Jewish at all--just a fuzzy metaphor for Gentile who accepts Paul's theology without thinking.
The language of accretion cannot be used to parse GOOD or BAD and certainly not useful for teaching MORALITY.
One final point.
God cannot be injured; only humans can be injured.
Therefore, treating MORALITY as something which pleases God and does not injure His Standards is ludicrous.
Punishing wicked people doesn't HELP God. Forgiving wicked people doesn't HELP God. God needs no help.
Brace yourself......
On what basis would GOD have dealings with inferior creatures incapable of perfect behavior?
Only by LOWERING HIS PERFECT RIGHTEOUS STANDARDS!
Isn't this the nonsensical foundation of GRACE? The innocent (Jesus) is punished and dies while the guilty sinners are pronounced righteous!
INJUSTICE from a JUST God??
Total immorality.
Why?
It is the result of accretion. A story worked out over thousands of years with all contexts removed and presented AS THOUGH God is doing it.
In other words: poppycock.
The only way the tellers of the story of Jesus could make a Jewish Messiah WHO WAS PUT TO DEATH into a useful heroic standard was to
come up with a make-shift explanation for his demise!
Paul, who never met Jesus (and only claimed to have encountered the dead/alive Jesus) has all the "answers".
Paul's letters came first. Then, the attributed "Apostolic" writings later.
How it all sorts out is weirdly contrived and confusing.
THE TRINITY?
Some writers saw Jesus as a human. Some saw him as a demi-god. Some saw him as Divine or God himself.
Accretion gives us what?
A confused jumble!
The New Testament (by accretion) gives us at least 3 different understandings AT ODDS with each other!
And you wonder why so many people disagree?
ACCRETION is your reason.
Bottom line?
What Truth does the bible teach?
NO SINGLE STANDARD OF ANYTHING!
http://books.google.com/books?id=1dK4Ay-bhbcC&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=what+is+accretion+in+theology?&source=bl&ots=IMIR6pjU5k&sig=PkhyoXCXjGT1gRr5QZlOGpHdltw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=bqVXT8X4KIautwfu4_XvDg&ved=0CEIQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=what%20is%20accretion%20in%20theology%3F&f=false
cofty

Very good point Terry. The biggest single mistake most believers make is to try to find a coherent theology in the bible, your "accretion" theory explains it very well.
N.drew

"God cannot be injured; only humans can be injured.
Therefore, treating MORALITY as something which pleases God and does not injure His Standards is ludicrous.
Punishing wicked people doesn't HELP God. Forgiving wicked people doesn't HELP God. God needs no help."
Very good logic.
james_woods

Glad to see you started a new thread on this, Terry - it really is an important doctrinal/theological issue.
The interesting thing is that it completely explains all the seeming contradictions in the scriptures - but is still going to be anathema to a true-believing bible fundamentalist.
I was reading Einstein's book "Relativity" the last few nights. He makes a parallel point of logic - giving simple illustrations ( a train traveling along a track ) - he points out several obvious contradictions to Newtonian mechanical physics. (just like the biblical moral contradictions)
Then, he points out in simple terms how relativity makes all these contradictions dissolve comletely! And, he rather humorously points out - why would science try to resist a theory which solves obvious contradictions???
The same could be said about Terry's accretion theory - once you let go of the nonsense that all the current biblical cannon was penned by the direct guiding hand of one soure - god himself.
Terry

It simply saddened me....the day the thought first entered my head that "undeserved" kindess is still UNDESERVED.
I sat up straight. I'd always concentrated on the "gimme the benefit" portion of that doctrine and conveniently overlooked the UNJUSTness of it.
Remember how the attributes of God were elegantly stated as LOVE JUSTICE POWER and WISDOM?
How can JUSTICE be sacrificed? How can LOVE be lowering one's standards? Where is the WISDOM in chucking every eye-for-eye and tooth-for-tooth law out the window after making it obligatory? How is the POWER to simply summarily act without a firm standard in any way righteous?
Grace is Injustice. Plain and simple.
james_woods

Human ideas - evolving ideas - about what God wants or does not want from one time to the next, one human writer to the next...
bikerchic002

Love it Terry! I just had to logon to tell you this is spot on and explains so simply what I've tried to explain to myself and others for a very long time.
Just saying....
~ Kate
Terry

I suppose you could say this is the Law of Parsimony at work. The simplest explanation that accounts for all the facts is the right one.
1.The reason there are so many opinions about what the Bible means is because it already contains so many opinions.
2.The reason the Bible appears to contradict itself is because so many contradictory ideas are presented AS THOUGH no contradictions exist!
3.The reason certain doctrines are incomprehensible is because different and contrary views are built into them over many tellings and adjustments.
4.Each time a story is told, the New Teller wants to make it come out "right" and simply adjusts just enough of it to make sense to himself and his audience. Then, the next Teller does the same,,,each decade and centuries later as taste and understanding changes and changes and changes.
The Doctrines of Jehovah's Witnesses have changed over the last hundred years, have they not?
What does the Society call these CHANGES? Do they not refer to them as "adjustments"?
You see, it is Pious Fraud, because they don't intend to lie. They intend to MAKE IT WORK even if they have to change it! Change distorts.
By changing it they build in the dissonances in layers and layers by accretion until the THEOLOGY doesn't stand up any more.
At that point AUTHORITY steps in and DEMANDS you believe and obey it!
This is what happened with scripture.
Event. Descriptions. Tellings. Adjustments. Doctrine. Over and over again.
PRETENDING IT IS GOD makes the reader or Teller want to make it WORK.....and so....they adjust into it just enough "editorial" comment for it to "make sense".
What do you end up with?
A "message" that is garbled that makes everybody start guessing.
Once AUTHORITY steps in and freezes the interpretation you get RELIGION!
If you didn't click on this before, please do so now and scroll to Page 43 Biblical Inerrancy and READ:
http://books.google.com/books?id=1dK4Ay-bhbcC&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=what+is+accretion+in+theology?&source=bl&ots=IMIR6pjU5k&sig=PkhyoXCXjGT1gRr5QZlOGpHdltw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=bqVXT8X4KIautwfu4_XvDg&ved=0CEIQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=what%20is%20accretion%20in%20theology%3F&f=false
Shawn10538

In my college history class, the question of what caused the civil war was always answered as the issue of States Rights. This is correct. Slavery was just one, and the main, sticking point of States Rights.
The North and the Soth were competing companies with different economies. The North was more industrialized and concentrated on manfacturing diverse products. There was more steel industry. More factories. Labor was paid labor at a very low rate for nskilled labor. Some say that the slaves on Southern plantations lived much better than lowly factory workers in the North.
The South had agriculture, cotton etc. Their labor was spplied by slaves. The North was losing political power to the South since the 3/5 compromise. The political interests of the South were different than those of the North. By freeing slaves the North stood to gain more inflence politically. The South wopuld be wopunded greatly in their economy if suddenly the slaves were let loos and they had to pay for their labor. The South wanted their States Rights to back them up and keep slavery legal. It was abot money and labor and indstry, not slavery as a moral ill.
The abolitionist movements really had little effect on the whole matter until tyhe North saw them as a partner in overthrowing the South. The majority of people back then had no problem with slavery at all. It was never a moral issue. The using of moralistic rhetoric by politicians at the time was just a convenience to get the political power to overcome the South.
So, was the civil war about slavery? No. It was one of the details in ther middle of a much larger fight. Bt to answer the question what caused the civil war, States Rights is a much better answer than slavery. It's not jst Southern textbooks that say so. Anyway, is there any such thing as a Southern text book? Text books are mostly printed in New York and have national distribution. When school districts choose textbooks (and colleges) I don't think there is a category that allows you to choose between southern and northern textbooks. I've never heard of that.
I know this was not the point of your thread, but States Rights, even though it is not a comp[lete answer either, is, again, a much better answer than "slavery."
Terry

As a sidebar only--we should perhaps start a new topic CIVIL WAR.
But, to address your statement let me say this.
Your statement is Authoritative and possesses FACTS. However, you are undoubtedly aware a great many scholars will take the contrary view that it is essentially SLAVERY that divided the country to the point a war had to be fought and that State's Rights really means a State has the Right to declare SLAVERY IS OKAY.
Now, I cannot dispute to advantage with you. I just wanted to take this issue and demonstrate how CONTRARY VIEWS can both contain partial pictures of the True Facts. When both sides are presented, however, as though there is only ONE TRUTH and ONE P.O.V. we get into big trouble.
The Bible has been put together AS THOUGH there is only one absolutely TRUE point of view---ALTHOUGH contrary points of view are contained!

If you don't understand what "accretion" is---how can you understand Bible?

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