DH: "It may very well be this shared light and dark dimension between the text and our today that allow for a contemporary pertinence and value."
I disagree. I think that the bible has the good and the bad is because it was written by man. There is no need to paint a portait of the negatives of humanity. Why would there be? To remind us that we're all 'sinners'? If the bible were a truly divine book, it would omit the bad and remind us to repress it.
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Ch. 6: Arguments from Design
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Interbane
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DWill
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Well, yes, but how then does or can the bible serve as scripture, as something to be devoted to if it has no moral center, if even its "author" acts immorally? It is, at nearly every step of the way, a book that exhorts us to act by its example. It seems impossible to me to view it as somehow instructive through all of its failings.Dissident Heart wrote: The Bible portrays a complex portrait of a complicated humanity: malicious, brutal, murderous and genocidal...as well as tender, kind, just and loving: there are few capacities of intellect or emotion that are missed in the Biblical narratives. The shadow regions of self-destructiveness and injustice are not hidden or whitewashed: they are encountered althruout the text: in major and minor characters, the powerful and the oppressed....even God participates in deeds and thinking that result in horrific consequences: and exhibits a passion for justice and peace. The same contradictions and confusions that cloud our lives today- cloud the Bible as well: nor can we escape our contemporary delusions when examining that ancient text. It may very well be this shared light and dark dimension between the text and our today that allow for a contemporary pertinence and value. It is precisely in its ugliness that we get a mirror of our own hatred of beauty: and, in its passion for justice that we get encouragement to remember our desire for human rights and dignity.
Let's go over to the threads on chapters 7 and 8 on the OT and NT if we're going to start a discussion on the bible.
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Dissident Heart
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DWill: Well, yes, but how then does or can the bible serve as scripture, as something to be devoted to if it has no moral center, if even its "author" acts immorally?
Interbane: If the bible were a truly divine book, it would omit the bad and remind us to repress it.
I think both of your responses are interesting insights into your own theologies and how they influence your theories of divine design. Both, it seems, expect a particular kind of God who can only behave a particular kind of way. Your kind of God could not have created a world such as this, nor produced a scripture like the one we're discussing.
Likewise, both of you have a particular idea of the purpose of scripture and how it should be understood and applied: a real, genuine, authentic scripture would not look like the one we're discussing.
Interbane: If the bible were a truly divine book, it would omit the bad and remind us to repress it.
I think both of your responses are interesting insights into your own theologies and how they influence your theories of divine design. Both, it seems, expect a particular kind of God who can only behave a particular kind of way. Your kind of God could not have created a world such as this, nor produced a scripture like the one we're discussing.
Likewise, both of you have a particular idea of the purpose of scripture and how it should be understood and applied: a real, genuine, authentic scripture would not look like the one we're discussing.
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Interbane
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Actually, I subscribe to no theory of divine design, or any ultimate design, or even any ultimate beginning. The question is open to me, and I'm sure it will remain open until I die. The collective knowledge of our species is not great enough to answer such questions. When I speak of the bible as a divine book, I speak within its fictional framework. If it truly had any divine influence, why does no part of it fall outside the explanation that it was written by man? There is nothing that I see that is impressive. There is no incredible wisdom that scholars at the time couldn't have come up with on their own. So when you mention authentic scripture, if you mean that this entails divine influence, we have no need of that hypothesis! 
If the scripture appears plausibly and likely all to be written by man, why would you think there is a god involved? Because the men who wrote it said there was?!? They lived thousands of years ago in the time of fairytales and magic, you should do better justice to your skepticism.
If the scripture appears plausibly and likely all to be written by man, why would you think there is a god involved? Because the men who wrote it said there was?!? They lived thousands of years ago in the time of fairytales and magic, you should do better justice to your skepticism.
