{"id":328,"date":"2012-06-06T18:37:26","date_gmt":"2012-06-06T12:37:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/intelligent-torvalds.74-208-171-134.plesk.page\/?p=328"},"modified":"2025-08-24T15:27:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T20:27:12","slug":"jesus-artifacts-part-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/?p=328","title":{"rendered":"Jesus’ Artifacts, Part 6"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yes, systems of theology<\/a> fail in their primary attempt and alleged purpose to sum up the Bible in a complete, universal and absolute way.\u00a0 Every theological system I\u2019ve encountered (or might invent) was based on favored passages of scripture.\u00a0 Then a logical system was constructed around this subset of Bible passages to mute the effect of other Bible passages that did not fit well into that particular system of theology.\u00a0 But, lo and behold, these muted passages from the Bible are the favored passages of another theological system and the basis of another logical structure that was used to mute the effect of the passages of scripture favored by the former theological system.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll show some examples later.\u00a0 For now, it should be apparent that if\u2014and I do say \u201cif\u201d because I\u2019m placing an enormous, perhaps an inordinate, amount of emphasis on a biological analogy\u2026if this analogy has any descriptive power to illuminate the actual usefulness of the Bible to the body of Christ, the theological systems constructed thus far are wrongheaded in the extreme.\u00a0 But, on the other hand, if one is looking for a functional body\u2014a body with cellular differentiation caused by switching-off gene suites (e.g., different passages of scripture)\u2014rather than a mass of identical cells, these same theological systems I\u2019m calling wrong and irrelevant might be preeminently useful.<\/p>\n

A preacher is not a blank slate.\u00a0 More often than not he has been schooled in one or more of the extant theological systems.\u00a0 He is less likely to emerge from his study with a sermon contrary to his favorite system than complementary to it.\u00a0 If his goal is to preach universally applicable absolute truths, he was wearing blinders before he began it.\u00a0 But if his goal is to preach absolute timely and necessary truths to a specific cell of the body of Christ, to fill specific needs and catalyze specific functions at specific times, well, those blinders might just be models of efficient design.\u00a0 Did Jesus, efficient programmer that He is, commission these theological systems as the spiritual equivalent of repressor molecules?<\/p>\n

<\/a>And so the third and final application of my would-be sermon is that I should pray for preachers.\u00a0 They are up against it.\u00a0 I\u2019m not talking difficult here, like walking a tightrope.\u00a0 I\u2019m talking impossible, like walking on water.\u00a0 And I should pray for us philosophical types.\u00a0 We\u2019re going to have to find other preoccupations than biting and devouring other believers.\u00a0 Of course, just telling us we\u2019re irrelevant failures won\u2019t change the fact that we have a philosophical bent to our minds.<\/p>\n

As for me, I think I\u2019m becoming convinced that the kind of universal absolute truth I\u2019ve searched for by parsing text will remain as elusive as the DNA-RNA-protein complex was to the deductions and inferences of Plato and Aristotle.\u00a0 Perhaps my point is clearer in the analogy.\u00a0 Here I am, a disgruntled amino acid, reluctant to join any amino acid chains and form any useful proteins until I possess an understanding of the whole DNA molecule in all its relations with every cell in the body.\u00a0 That\u2019s what I\u2019m saying, right?\u00a0 I want a universal absolute understanding of the Bible.<\/p>\n

Now, let\u2019s say for the sake of argument that the Lord indulged me and downloaded into my brain all the truth I crave for a specific moment in time.\u00a0 Let\u2019s assume that my brain did not explode or melt, and that the emotional content of that knowledge did not reduce me to a puddle of tears.\u00a0 Long before I could digest that information, write it down, publish it and be hailed as the greatest living philosopher among amino acids, the information would have ceased to be absolute or universal or both.\u00a0 Why? \u00a0Because the body to which the truth referred would have changed.<\/p>\n

Now wait a minute, one might say, not all of it!<\/p>\n

True enough.\u00a0 There are probably some basic life-maintenance functions common to every cell in the body.\u00a0 Which ones were those, amidst this massive download of information I am assuming to be something akin to a database that lists the geographic location of particular cells, hopefully arranged by some kind of functional hierarchy akin to organ systems, the specific passage or passages from the Bible with sermon and application highlights, and maybe the need or function addressed?\u00a0 Now what\u2019s not in the download is whether the preachers actually preached the intended sermons from the correct passages from the Bible with the correct applications.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t say whether the appropriate members of the congregation responded appropriately and filled the need or accomplished the function.\u00a0 And I\u2019m certainly assuming that a download accomplished in a finite amount of time does not include the historical, cultural and biographical dossier of every member of every cell in the body.\u00a0 None of this, of course, affects one word in the Bible.\u00a0 All of it affects how those words are organized, analyzed or applied in the next sermon\u2014next Sunday!<\/p>\n

Jesus’ Artifacts, Part 7<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to Who Am I? Part 8<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
Back to Exploration, Part 15<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, systems of theology fail in their primary attempt and alleged purpose to sum up the Bible in a complete, universal and absolute way.\u00a0 Every theological system I\u2019ve encountered (or might invent) was based on favored passages of scripture.\u00a0 Then … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jesus-artifacts","category-what-kind-of-carpenter-is-jesus"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=328"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27548,"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328\/revisions\/27548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}