• Archive of "Hermeneutics" Category

    Separating Theology And History?

    June 15, 2010 // No Comments »

    Someone passed this quote along to me the other day from a book review J. Greshem Machen wrote in the 1920’s. Still has something to say to us today perhaps.

    The entire book is really based upon the pragmatist assumption that religion can be separated from theology and that a man can obtain the values of the religious life apart from the particular intellectual conception which he forms of his God. This assumption leads in the first place to an artificial treatment of history, which altogether fails to do justice to the real complexity of human life; and it leads, in the second place, and in particular, to the reconstruction, contrary to all evidence, of a primitive Gentile Christianity which shall exhibit just the type of nontheological religion which the modern pragmatist desires.
    J.Gresham Machen, “Review of Arthur Cushman McGiffert’s The God of the Early Chrisitans” (1924) in Selected Shorter Writings, edited by D.G. Hart, 499-50.

    Posted in Hermeneutics, History, theology

    What you need to know to understand the Bible…

    July 18, 2009 // 1 Comment »

    martin-luther1“No one can understand Virgil in his Bucolics and Georgics unless he has been a shepherd or a farmer for fifty years. No one can understand Cicero in his letters unless he has been involved for twenty years in the life of a state. Let no one think that he has tasted Holy Scripture unless he has for a century ecclesias gubernarit and has been responsible for the Church.”-Martin Luther

    Posted in Bible, Hermeneutics, History