The Scripture

Posted (binsar) in Christianity, Theology on February-13-2008
The scripture is the message about God. It is not of God because it is actually a story about God. It is a story telling about the relation between God and human. It tells the story of relation and confession about God rather than a precise historical event. Relation has something to do with love and events. The event of God’s revelation that took place in the past must be told to the next generations.

One cannot make a stress on different relation, objectivities, and events. It is far more complicated than talking about the other. It is also not more than an information of God, telling about God in such a way that He Himself present to us. Therefore, there has to be truth, not in a scientific way, but that it is really happens. However, the truth as such does not mean that the Bible is book of ethics or some sort of a historical book. The Bible is not the book of ethics. Ethics and religion is not the same. Looking at the Bible as a book of ethic is a reduction of the meaning of the Bible itself. The Bible must be read precisely the same way with how the first congregation read the bible, which is the paradigm of story telling about the mighty acts of God.

The Scripture is a message about his acting. It is transcendence and incomprehensive because it exceeds all our knowledge of a divine being. God is different from our being. This is because we know God somewhat from the nature and more convincing from the Scripture. The Scripture is the narrative tradition of God’s acting that was written down in order to avoid stories being changed over the time. This information of God is comprehensible from the Scripture. We are somehow able to explain his being in the language of the story, but fully aware that it is not the real him. It is just our reflection of the divine and it is true because we know him that way, but we must keep in mind that it is not the only true image of god. Our language is incomprehensive to describe God. The paradigm of interpreting this story is the paradigm of confession. The framework of doing this is that we are within the same Church.

The Scripture has a convincing character in itself. Nevertheless, we cannot come to the knowledge of God unless we read the Scripture – the whole Scripture as a whole. God is coming to the world through events, and we have to read the Scripture to understand his action. We should start from transcendence way of understanding him and not start from ontological being. We should also relate our confession to the community of believer, since the story is always told within the framework of the community.

Every speaking about God from above is always coming from the transcendence world. Our language about god is always human ontological language, which makes it incomprehensive. Precisely because of that every words that we speak about God, his presence and acting, is actually from below – but not in the way that we can grasp him for our own ends. Ultimate being is in this world, but not in the way of our language. He is here through Jesus. This act is where he reveals himself. We should start from the event of the cross. The core of events of God’s presence in the world is in Jesus Christ. The way of knowing god is about knowing Jesus. It is not a matter of before and after the time line. We can relate events after and before Jesus with the presence knowledge of God. Other events can point to God’s presence as well if we put them in the frame of the revelation and salvation of God through Jesus Christ.

The task in doing theology is to unmask theologies that think they can comprehend God, to be critical to those who claim to have the full understanding of the Scripture. Scientific theology is to be critical on the designs that have been made already. If we put him in our framework, he is just nothing because we can explain God. Because he is unexplainable, it made him comprehensive. Theology is scientific if it is on critical science. However, God is not in the same ontological meaning with human being. As long as you can explain god ontologically, it is precisely not theological. People that have an ideology that has divine traits and claim to have the power and authority to do what they do should be unmasked. We must unmask all kind of idolatry. The task of theology and ethics is that we must unmask the people that legitimized their idea of a legitimated divine authority invested in them to do their actions.

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