When we genuinely come to believe that persons are prior to principles – then from the beginning, our question is not “What is it” (as philosophy has traditionally asked), but “What must be done?” (210)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
But what, generally, are we looking for when we read scripture? The “saying” or the “said”? The person or the principle?<\/p>\n
We usually read scripture as if it were naive philosophy and ontology, looking for the principle of principles, for the theos<\/em> [i.e., the metaphysical foundation] that stands behind what we are reading, asking constantly the question “What is it?” – even when we want to ask the question, “What must be done?” We are taught to read scripture that way from our births, both inside and outside the church. That way of reading scripture is something we share with many, especially the majority of those in the evangelical, charismatic, and other conservative Christian traditions. Like the image of good traditional philosophers, those who read scripture in this way take the gospel to be a set of doctrinal propositions that one is to learn, and they take the scriptures to be a record of those principles and propositions behind which the “theological” gospel hides. When we read scripture this way, it is as if we assume that God is simply unable to lay out clearly and distinctly, in an ordered fashion, the principles he wants to teach us. With amazing hubris, we assume it is our job to do the work he was unable to do, the work of making everything clear, distinct, and orderly. (211)<\/p><\/blockquote>\nNo wonder those lessons from the Gospel Principles manual seem so boring. We’re looking for the wrong thing.<\/p>\n
Understanding what<\/em> your wife said is not the same thing as listening to <\/em>her.<\/p>\nYou’re reading the scriptures? Good.\u00a0But stop looking for the gospel and start listening for God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are persons and there are principles.\u00a0The gospel is about the former rather than the latter. Granted, there are gospel principles – but the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15599"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15614,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15599\/revisions\/15614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}