Peter Kazmaier

I recently had an opportunity to visit a friend of mine to listen with him to a lecture on the provocative topic of whether or not the Bible is beneficial and therefore should be kept or  deleted. Having listened to the lecture and wishing to write about it, I find myself in a quandary. On the one hand I owe the speaker good language since she traveled a fair distance to present her talk and she delivered her presentation with an amiable demeanor. Still I will have little good to say about the lecture, so taking a cue from C. S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man, I propose to simply call the talk “The Lecture,” and I will call the speaker Docilla so that I can confine my comments to the content. So what was my reaction to the talk?

First let me deal with the provocative topic: should the Bible be kept or deleted? I suppose this statement may be provocative hyperbole for “is the Bible still relevant or is it irrelevant?” However I received no clear indication that the title was not meant literally so let me talk to the title from point of view that “delete” really means delete. There are many book ancient and modern which I do not think either edifying or helpful, but that does not mean I would like to see them deleted. Even a badly written book can serve as an example on how not to write. Books that I believe wrong-headed or advocate destructive behavior can still raise important questions. My love of books, my desire for freedom, and my personal commitment to try to find the truth about important questions make me hesitant to destroy any book. Given my perspective, it was a surprise to me that several in the audience (perhaps 3-4 out of 25) had voted for deletion of the Bible. It was a surprise because I had great difficulty reconciling their view that the Bible was such an extraordinarily dangerous book that it ought to be deleted with my own investigation of the contents.

So what about the lecture itself? Had I given the lecture, I would have discussed the history of the Biblical texts and the scholarship surrounding the early manuscripts, the use of the texts by the early Christians and the eventual collection of the sacred Christian writings into the New Testament canon. I would have then gone on to compare and contrast good and bad behaviors that have come out of the application of the principles in these writings from the earliest days to the present.

Docilla did very little of this. It was impossible for me to understand where she stood on these basic questions or even to glean the key facts about the archeological and textual evidence for the historicity of the Bible from her lecture. Furthermore she spent a disproportionate amount of time on extra-biblical writings such as the gospel of Thomas.

Much of the talk centered on the theme that one cannot interpret the Biblical text (or any text I suppose) unless one has the right metaphor to unlock the meaning. I don’t deny that metaphors can be useful in gaining understanding. A metaphor is useful because we can take something concrete and use it to help understand something that is abstract. Yet much of what she described extracted arcane conclusions out of New Testament writings while ignoring what seems plain and straight forward.

On reflection, The Lecture was not a lecture at all, but rather one long story. I’m not completely sure if the story was a work of fiction or non-fiction and perhaps in the mind of Docilla that distinction is not very clear. I suppose there are many benefits to Postmodern thinking that treats everything as a story. But if our passion for story makes us lose sight of what is true and false, I think we have lost a great deal.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

It was about a year ago when a friend of mine asked what I thought of Peter Joseph’s movie, Zeitgeist . Zeitgeist is a movie that has been viewed by more than 50 M viewers and has propagated by viral marketing (i.e. one viewer after another emails the link to their friends because of its startling and controversial message). The movie itself is divided into three sections. The first part claims that Jesus and his life is a “recent” version of an astro-theological myth that has been replayed many, many times in the past. The second part claims that the 9/11 catastrophe was orchestrated by the United States, and the final portion makes claims about an international banking conspiracy.

Now let me say at the outset that I watched part 2 only once and never watched part 3, so I have no comments to make on these. So what are my thoughts on part 1?

(continue reading…)

I just finished Robert Jordan’s The Eye of the World , the first book in his Wheel of Time series. I must say I enjoyed reading it very much.

"The Pattern presents a crisis, and at the same time a way to surmount it. If I didn’t know it was impossible, I could almost believe the Creator is taking a hand." ~Moiraine the Aes Sedai

Now I never did figure out why, in this book the Creator would not take a hand. But still this was an exciting read and also it put me into an environment and mindset that is alien to me. (continue reading…)

Lawhead has woven fiction with history in this masterful account of the life of Saint Patrick of Ireland. I looked up the historical account of Patrick in Kenneth Scott Latourette’s A History of Christianity and with some embellishments not in the historical account, Lawhead has given a wonderful and entertaining account of Patrick’s life. Patrick was a self-centered scion of a rich Roman family living in Britain. Although his grandfather had held a respected position in the church, Patrick lived a wild life leveraging his social status and wealth to get what he wanted. This all changed when an Irish raiding party captured and shipped him to Ireland as a slave and he found himself as a shepherd helping another long time Christian slave called Madog herd sheep in an isolated Irish valley.

(continue reading…)

When I read history books, I expect the information to be factual and as accurate as the author can make it. But I also look for books that avoid two major defects. The first is the propensity of the author to debunk a particular point of view. And the second is a tendency for the author to disparage a perspective based on chronological snobbery. (continue reading…)