Human beings could be just a fluke of nature. Like the dinosaurs and just like all things on this planet. They come into being and then dissolve. Religion comes out of a high density of people trying to answer questions that are not answerable. Why are we here? What is the point of life? What happens when we die?  These are very unsettling questions. All kinds of civilizations have come up with answers to these: Greek Mythology, Egyptians, Native Americans, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Indigenous people before they get imperialized, Hindus, and Buddhists. If all these people have come up with different answers to these very questions then it is proof that religion is invented. Where would all these answers come from if it was not invented? A specific religion can put to rest where they came from simply by saying they came from God. Can we really trust the word of people 2,000 years ago? Not to say these people are not trustworthy, but instead that we just do not know what happened back then. Parts of stories get left out. History books are written by victors. Things happen.

This thread is an expansion of the conversation I’ve been having with Peter Wilkinson.  We have been engaged in the typical left v. right debate of biblical interpretation (non-literal v. literal). Can we find a purple (red+blue) view of God.

The reason I’m pushing this is because I feel our Christian metaphors are a stumbling block to spreading Jesus’ message.  I think that the key for an open source theology would be to figure out how speak theology without metaphors or at a minimum with different metaphors.  I’m not sure it is possible but I wonder what theology would look like if we could make that adjustment.   I have a feeling that often the rejection of Christian theology may be a rejection of the metaphors rather than the actual message.  Maybe letting go of our attachment to these particular metaphors could be the key to an explosion in the Christian movement.

I tend to lean towards the historical/narrative approach to the Scriptures as opposed to a fundamentalist/literalist approach.  I’ve read alot of McLaren, Wright, Newbigin, etc.  This topic is covered by these authors and others, but I was wondering what people have read/are reading that deals with this topic more specifically? 

It makes sense to continue the conversation with Danutz about the scripture and the supernatural in a separate thread.

Why would anyone write a gospel of Jesus and not have it line up with the prophecy that everyone was familiar with?

I wonder, to be honest, where the debate about the canon of scripture is leading. Whatever reservations we may have about the process, I don’t see any prospect of the canon being revised. It is simply part of our religious heritage that the church at a certain point chose to validate a particular list of books as normative or authoritative on the grounds of apostolicity, catholicity and orthodoxy (I cribbed this from an MA paper I am currently marking). So I make the following comments on the assumption that there will always be a canon of scripture and that it will probably be the canon that we have now. This is simply my protest from the margins.