@DanODay We've never met, so you wouldn't know this, but I do not interpret scripture through the lens of tradition. Since I do not, your claim is false.
@Jas31 my point is that no one comes to the text free from bias. Even if you do not intentionally consult history and tradition when interpreting scripture, you likely have some preconceived notions of what certain passages mean and what scripture teaches.
Even if you intentionally attempt not to do so, it is impossible to escape the lenses given to us by our culture and place in history. This is when consulting the past is helpful to see what others have said before about given passages. I would define any and all of this as tradition.
@DanODay RE: "It is impossible to escape the lenses given to us by our culture and place in history"... says who? Also, why would consulting the past provide a clearer view? In your argument, the folks in the past would be trapped within their own lenses.
@DanODay I agree that we all have biases and preconceived notions, and I agree that it is helpful to see what others have said (not just in past ages, but also in the present). I just think it would be better not to claim that 'we all interpret through the lens of tradition', or that 'it is impossible to escape the lenses'. That's not true.
@MonikaMichael I deleted it based on your flag and complaint and a quick review showing objectionable content. A quick moderator intervention seemed warranted. On further review it seemed like the main objectionable bit was part of an answer, not the question itself and could be avoided while still dealing with the topic.
I decided a better approach would be to edit out the worst bits so that the content shown is much more presentable, then leave it up to the community whether or not they want that content around at all. There are lots of folks with the ability to cast delete votes if it still considered detremental to the site.
@MonikaMichael for what it's worth I agree with what Caleb did. I didn't love the deletion (although I did agree with it), and I think that keeping the content visible, while fixing the objectional content issue was the the better route.
Further edits on both the question and answer are welcome. One thing that sets SE apart is that the community has the power to turn questionable content into quality content. Likewise if they cast a bunch of delete votes, I'm happy to respect that choice. As a moderator I am here to help enforce things for the benefit of the community, not just project my own standards.
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What I don't see now (post edits) is a reason to step in and take unilateral action. Moderators are exception handlers, and we can step in and set precedent for how to handle content when the community isn't taking action. In this case it seems the community IS taking action, so I'd rather leave them to do their job.
I think wax_eagle gave an excellent review of the general principles at work here in his answer. Just quickly for the record, here is the thinking behind my actions.
First, I weighed in with an answer. I really do think the OP might have been trolling (their trail of comments makes me think they...
@DanAndrews It's fairly low quality, doesn't show a lot of effort, and it makes an odd distinction that didn't make sense to me. That's why I voted it down.
I agreed with the rationale already stated in the comments, which is why you don't have an additional reason from me.
@DanAndrews The voting isn't a reflection of question validity/invalidity. That would be an issue for close votes. Whether valid or not, it just doesn't show any research effort and personally I don't think it's particularly useful. Those are both valid reasons for downvoting.
@DanAndrews ? there are plenty of questions about the religion have stayed open, and are quite valid, show me something that is closed that shouldn't have been?
I am tempted to cast a close vote as "not a real question" on the grounds that it is overly broad and not reasonably answerable in its current form. Unless you'd take "42" as an answer. What exactly are you trying to learn from asking?
I was looking for a simple answer about salvation. If a person is saved as a Christian, converts, is he considered saved. Which the accepted answer does a good job answering.
I just don't think that the question should have been downvoted for asking the question.
I'm not sure how much research a person should do when looking for other people's view point.
@DanAndrews how much research does it take to make a good question on SO? What do you see as sort of our "what have you tried?"
To me, our "What have you tried?" is basically just adding a bit more background information, "why do you need to know?", "what are you trying to learn?"
@DanAndrews If the accepted answer is what you were after, the least you could have done is word your question to more specifically ask what the VARIOUS views on this matter are, what the names of the doctrines are, who holds them, etc. The way you did it, you invite popular vote wars which are already starting in other answers. Throwing out disputed topics in hopes of arriving at a "true" answer on a topic is not something this format does well, hence my vote as "not useful".
@DanAndrews but that's what we want. We want you to direct what answers you get. You wouldn't ask an SO question without telling us what language you are speaking.
Okay, I can agree to disagree with the intent of my question. I was looking for... basically the accepted answer (so I must have asked it correctly to get it). But I understand that it doesn't fit what you want in a question.
This is a discussion started by this questions:
Are the gifts of the Holy Spirit still active today?
Let's start by saying what I hope we all know: that Christians are very much divided on this issue, and no single viewpoint is going to be a complete answer.
As of now there is one answer attem...
@MonikaMichael You say it's legal, but I see no license information. (Free Software / Open Content licensing is something I'm a bit geeky about.) cf. LegalTorrents.com, which is very explicit about its license model.
This morning I spent a solid two hours clearing out a whole mess of flags, comments, and suspending users for inflammatory and unconstructive remarks.
Four days after ashes999 posted his plea for tolerance, this is just getting worse: we are seeing intolerant and outright rude and incendiary com...
@TRiG Impossible. We all bring influences / traditions / perspectives to our interpretation of the text. So do you @Jas31 :) What you need to do is learn to deal with them. Find people different enough that can help you see them, and decide whether they are good ones or not. Trying to deny that you bring anything to your reading of the text actual discredits your interpretation.
@MonikaMichael Besides the licencing issue noted by @TRiG, they have a really strange policy about what content they will post. They only allow posts of teaching from a modern dispensational perspective. They take ac couple of other odd stances for a torrent site too.
@Caleb That is not what I said - please re-read my comment. I agree that we all have biases, preconceived notions, etc. I do not agree that we all interpret through the lens of tradition. Also, I do not agree that it is impossible to escape the "lenses given to us by our culture". My views are very, very counter-cultural. Also, I have "escaped" a number of "lenses" throughout my pursuit of a sounder hermeneutic.
@Jas31 You'll have a hard time convincing me you've figured out how to do interpretation without some amount of tradition and culture as a lens -- although I do believe you when you say you've escaped some of them and that your hermeneutic is the better for it.
@Caleb So you would agree that it is not "impossible" to escape lenses given to us by our culture?
I think what @DanODay was claiming was disjunct from the truth. Semantics are important, and I think if he simply meant "we all have preconceived notions which we need to learn to deal with" he should say that. He made an assessment of "everyone" which does not describe me, and I was attempting to point that out in order to clarify where the truth lies relative to the topic he was discussing.
@Jas31 I would agree that one by one we can recognize, mitigate and even choose to oppose them, but I would disagree that it is possible to completely escape cultural lenses. I've lived in foreign cultures for most of the last decade, speak another language fluently for daily use (I started spending time on SE first to keep my English up to speed) and am frequently accused of having "gone native". And yet I still keep finding layer after layer of ways that my culture still shapes my thinking.
@Jas31 Roughly. Each one can be delt with, but it's impossible to recognize and deal with them all. The more somebody insists that they have, the less likely it is that they really are. Somebody who insists they "just believe what the text says" is likely wearing some of the biggest blinders made.
@Caleb I think I understand the philosophical argument you're making, but am having trouble connecting it with reality. When I am attempting to interpret a passage of Scripture, I am very intentional about understanding the original meaning and not applying my own meaning to the text. This is aided by a consideration of the customs of the time, the other teachings of Scripture, etc. If I allow my "traditions" to taint my view, it is certainly unintentional.
...but to say it is "impossible to escape" the lenses of culture when interpreting a passage seems ... I don't know... arrogant? Certainly by the power of the Spirit this is possible, if nothing else.
I think we would agree that "everyone reads the text with preconceived notions", for what it's worth. Although I wouldn't want to jump to the conclusion that all preconceived notions are bad, or that it is impossible to escape a given preconceived notion. I suppose it would probably be impossible to escape all preconceived notions, though.
But I don't think preconceived notions are the same as the "lenses of tradition and culture". Maybe your preconceived notions came from other Scripture.
Perhaps some examples would help clarify my point.
Example 1: Based solely on what I have read in Scripture, I believe God made everything around us exactly as described in Genesis 1. This is about as opposite of the "lenses of culture" as you can get these days.
Example 2: Based solely on Scripture, I do not believe in "tithing" as it is understood today. This is about as opposite of the lenses of church culture as you can get today.
...prior to this I had a very strong belief in "tithing". What changed? I studied the Scriptures, and the word of God set me free from the lenses of tradition.
I would agree that we are all affected by culture in some way, but I do not think that it is impossible to escape the influence of culture when interpreting Scripture.
Example 3: I used to believe the "baptism in the Spirit" was different from "receiving the Spirit" based on my church culture. However, after more careful study of Scripture, I now believe they are the same event.
In all of these examples, I started with an incorrect view, but was willing to have my views changed by the word of God, so when I went to the Scriptures to study it more, I was able to escape the lenses of tradition and culture and learn the actual teachings of Scripture.
@ElendiaStarman Eh? I was saying "baptism in the Spirit" is the same as "receiving the Spirit"... are you asking about something different?
@ElendiaStarman Ah, ok. Well, I believe there is one baptism (spiritually speaking). I believe the baptism in water is a symbolic, commanded activity to illustrate the spiritual baptism that has taken place.
@ElendiaStarman Yes, that is what I was describing here
@Jas31 You think that's the opposite to the lenses of culture? Really? It's certainly opposite to all available evidence and reason, but it's hardly opposite to culture.
(And getting hung up on the importance of Genesis is a fairly modern phenomenon.)
@TRiG lol... did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed or something? Are you still upset about my joke? (I deleted it btw, and sorry if it was offensive.)
@Jas31 Pointing out spelling errors is fine. Calling me a heathen is inaccurate (I don't follow northern European Paganism), but not actually offensive, as such (unless you intended it to be offensive, which I doubt).
@Jas31 So no, I am not now, nor never was, upset about that. No need to delete it.
I'm not offended, and I'm sorry if I came across that way.
I was just being my normal snarky confrontational self.
I find this to be a little bit of a loaded question; it makes a broad assumption that I don't fully agree with. But let me illustrate:
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus...
I neatly avoided the question of cultural lenses, if I do say so myself. :-P
@JonEricson Man, I'm never going to recover from that question!! It was a sincere question, but asking it there was like covering myself in blood and jumping into the tiger cage at the zoo... :p
@Jas31 I really think that is the key to the whole enterprise: being open to Scripture changing you.
@Jas31 Sorry about that. Over on BH, we need to strike a delicate balance between a dedication to understanding the Bible and a dedication to any particular doctrine. It's a work in progress.
@JonEricson The thing is, I wasn't suggesting that principles which are not drawn from Scripture are any less useful or true, but for some reason everyone who reads it seems to think I'm implying that every principle has to be explicitly stated in Scripture.
I was really only trying to ask about one subset of the principles of Hermeneutics - those which are explicitly taught in Scripture.
It's sort of like asking "how is Jesus presented as the Christ in the Gospel of Matthew" - the question does not imply that the Gospel of Mark is less valid.
If you have any suggestions for rewording it, I'm wide open!!
@JonEricson I didn't read the whole thing yet, but the opening assessment that it was a loaded question was incorrect.
Also, while I did appreciate your acknowledgement of the principle in John 20:30-31, this is one I use regularly, and my question wasn't implying anything to the contrary.
Worth considering: the major sectarian divisions in Judaism (that exist today) are ironically much more recent than those in Christianity or Islam, so people who identify with the recently-formed sects depend to a great degree on the literature and tradition established before the divisions. The difference is not one of different lines of tradition but of different approaches to that tradition. With C and I, there are centuries' worth of entrenched traditions with fundamental differences.
@JonEricson I suspect the Rabbinic Judaism that grew up in the wake of that destruction papered over a lot of cracks. There were a lot of different sects and groups, weren't there? But how much do we actually know about them? There's the Essennes (sp?), of course.
To be honest, it's more of a cultural question than a religious one. Then again, it's hard to draw the lines. General rule of thumb: drawing on a rich cultural heritage and centuries of Christian thought to create challenging and thoughtful art: bad. Sickly sweet junk that makes Jesus sound like your boyfriend: good. So it goes. — TRiG9 mins ago
Take a pop song, any pop song. s/baby/Jesus
So won't you please (Be my, be my Jesus) Be my little Jesus (My one and only Jesus) Say you'll be my darling (Be my, be my Jesus) Be my Jesus now, whoa-oh-oh-oh...
This is a discussion started by this questions:
Are the gifts of the Holy Spirit still active today?
Let's start by saying what I hope we all know: that Christians are very much divided on this issue, and no single viewpoint is going to be a complete answer.
As of now there is one answer attem...
I find this to be a little bit of a loaded question; it makes a broad assumption that I don't fully agree with. But let me illustrate:
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus...
The Upper Room
The Upper Room