Sunday, December 14, 2008
Conniry #18: T/F on Israel's & Church's take on truth
18. We observed that when Christianity in the modern West drew from its cultural cate-gories it was actually being quite consistent with the way Israel and the church have historically embraced the ever-developing revelation of God’s truth in the world. Be prepared to answer a true-or-false question on this subject.
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Christianity in the modern West has drawn from its cultural categories is actually most consistent with the way Israel and the church have historically embraced the ever-developing revelation of God’s truth in the world. Gerald R. McDermott accurately observes that both Israel and the church drew widely from contemporary culture as they described their experiences and formulated doctrine. Gerald McDermott points out several instances in both Hebrew and New Testament Scripture in which the biblical writers made judicious but liberal use of the cultural categories of the day. He quotes Andrew Walls as saying that Christianity is in principle “the most syncretistic religion in the world.”
ReplyDeleteCardinal John Henry Newman set forth seven tests of true faithful development:
1.Preservation of Idea. That is, a religion may undergo many changes over time, but such development, to be true, must fulfill, not belie, its destiny.
2.Continuity of Principles. While doctrines expand according to various factors, the life of the doctrines, if they are to remain true, must consist in the law or principle that they originally embodied.
3.Power of Assimilation. While principles stimulate thought, an idea keeps it together. Such development necessarily entails an eclectic, conservative, assimilating process, a unitive power that enables Christian doctrine to speak to contemporary issues.
4.Early Anticipation. If a given idea is viable, it develops according to the principles on which it is formed. The development may be construed as a natural consequence of the idea itself: “. . . such early or recurring intimations of tendencies, which afterwards are fully realized, is a sort of evidence that those later and more systematic fulfillments are but in accordance with the original idea.”
5.Logical Sequence. Although it may appear accidental how a given idea develops within particular minds or communities at different times and in different places, yet on the whole, a gradual, orderly, logical sequence can be adduced.
6.Preservative Additions. A true development may be understood as one that conserves the course of development that went before it. In other words, it is an addition that illustrates, not obscures, corroborates, not corrects, the body of thought from which it proceeds.
7.Chronic Vigor. In contrast to corruption that brings about the demise of an idea, true development is distinguished by its capacity to preserve an idea: “and thus duration is another test of a faithful development
Newman concluded that “developments of Christianity were but natural, as time went on, and were to be expected; and that these natural and true developments, as being natural and true, were of course contemplated and taken into account by its Author, who in designing the work designed its legitimate results.”
Knowing all this, we should be able to do a t/f...