Hi Russ.

Not missing a thing by the look of it. I had this reluctance, still do actually, to joinging in with OST, partly because of what I saw as the tendency of such debates to treat every post as if it were trying to be definitive. That’s my cultural divide, nearly everything I’ve done here is trying to be evocative. I’m not saying, and it would go against the grain perhaps to say ‘this is it’ when what I mean is ‘here’s one’.

I was trying to give an example of how, by standing very closely alongside one writer, we can get to a point of view which can affect access to earlier texts. And yes, if you stand closely beside Peter there is a different view, especially from the roof of Simon’s tannery, but that’s a very different story.

I am wondering how singular the creation story was. And consequently if the task of analytical thinking through deep history might not give us an ‘it’ that turns out to be just ‘one’. The story of the story, I admit, is as interesting as the story in the story. Partly because I suspect that the story of the story is the most likely way we are going to be able to embrace and live from that story today.

Some examples might help, all pretty practical. It is from the story as we have it that I take much that I need to work with artists in exploring their creativity, and especially creativity as a process of engaging with God spiritually and practically. From the story as it stands I can also explore with ex evangelicals in particular what it means to love the world. In the same way, as a creative, I can stand within the story that I have received and question the various relationships with the world demonstrated by industry, by technology. And from this that I can, with others, wonder if God will permit us to bring death to it through poison. With this I can explore, perhaps in company with Brian Walsh, the connection with the Native American experience of creation.

There are many more examples. All of them rather distinct from the task set in the True Myth thread (which is why I started a separate one).

That’s why, when it comes down to it, I think we can push the pendulum away from its extreme position on inerrancy and start to explore inspiration again. For me it is that ‘all scripture is inspired and is useful’, so very useful, so strong, such a centre of gravity, such a marker. I have in mind a model whose source I cannot remember. It was a study on orthodoxy and its nature. In one model orthodoxy was drawn as a circle, within the perimeter of the circle was all that was orthodox or correct, outside was all that was error. In the second model was a large dot, from this dot came dozens of wiggly lines. The point being that in the second model, anything that lay in direct connection with the core, contained the core and was faithful to it. It was a model of orthodoxy as a series of journeys, not as a territory.

And it looks much as I would imagine OST to look!

If I could find out how to attach images to a message it would make it much easier, for me to explain.