Yes, fundamentalists would consider me a liberal regarding scripture and creation. I don’t support the notion of inerrancy of the Bible — a position that is so easy to disprove it’s hard to know why it’s still so widespread (I plan at some point to write about this).

But on the other hand, liberals don’t approach the Bible for exegesis, rather they apply eisegesis, based on a preferred praxology, generally influenced by the politically correct concern du juor. The result is a God who is pissed off by harm done to the environment by evil corporations and by Republicans who do things like vote to restrain the growth of welfare programs and labor unions.

And these concerns are far, far more important than the attitude and virtue of believers in community. A true liberal only reaches for their Bible when they can use to club a fundamentalist over the head.

Personally, I think the Bible is very important — indispensable for doctrine, teaching, judging, and example for believers and their community (the church). It’s like their constitution. I teach Sunday School, and one of the hallmarks of my class is lots of scripture.

Fundamentalists are authoritarians, but in a way most people don’t stop to think about: They don’t trust priests.

Both Hebrews and the first epistle of Peter, as well as other New Testament verses, ascribe the priesthood to believers — that is, no longer do we need an intermediary to God the Father who offers sacrifices and petitions on our behalf, for Christ is the High Priest and the ultimate (final) sacrifice who serves in that role since the cross. We can come directly to God.

Protestant theology makes a big deal of priesthood of individual believers. It’s a key difference between Protestants and Catholics. How big a deal?

A few years ago, I did independent contractor work for a non-profit trying to persuade Southern Baptists at their annual meeting to take a specific action and issue a particular public statement about it. The Southern Baptists go so far in proclaiming their support for this doctrine that they refuse to call themselves “delegate,” a mere representative sent by a church, but rather they refer to their office as “messenger” — independent agents, each directed or commissioned by the Holy Spirit. (Of course, on those occasions when they bitterly disagree, who has the Holy Spirit? Better not to ask such questions, I guess.)

But their concern with enforcing a fundamentalist hermeneutic “fundamentally” betrays a deep distrust of the priests. Failure to interpret the Bible the same way they do is heresy. This is how they keep people in-line — something that’s just as important to them as it is to the Catholic magesterium they so disdain.

So what does that make me. Liberal or conservative. I prefer to call it, “correct.” LOL.

I think what you write is informative and great — and I especially don’t mean this as an insult — but your theology strikes me as moderately liberal Trinitarianism, similar to Rush’s. I think it can be said of you, that your theology is “a compound of the orthodoxy and heterodoxy of most of our Christian churches.” If I were to convert to Trinitarianism, it would probably be something like yours, NOT Calvinism or hard core fundamentalism.

Which is the reason why the apologists of religion-based morality fall at the very first hurdle; for more than one and a half millennia the Bible has been used to debate every moral and ethical dilemma under the sun, both for and against. Its validity as a source of moral absolutes is after all that time distinctly unconvincing.

Even assuming religion and the Bible were necessarily the same (which they are not), this statement is, “distinctly unconvincing.”

Obviously, the Bible has, and still retains an impressive weight in the area of morality. Why is this obvious? Because for one and a half millenia, people have been acting as if the Bible was important.

This importance, even according to this quoted statement, knows no bounds. For it has been used, “both for and against.” In other words, both sides recognized the authority of it, and strategically sought to appropriate it.

But logic would tell us that mutually contradictory opinions are very, very unlikely to both be true. Thus, at least one of the positions — the “for” side, or the “against” side — is almost certain to be wrong. It still remains, despite one’s personal exhaustion witnessing such debates, that one interpretation can have tremendous moral importance and benefit.

Additionally, it is not logical or fair to blame an object for the how it will be misused — whether that tool be gold, guns, matches, drugs, or spiritual texts.

But the Biblical text anticipates misuse — misappropriation of truth for the pursuit of political power over others. A book could and should be written about this subject. But the best example from the text is found in the Ten Commandments, when God commands that His Name was not to be used in vain. And that’s exactly what “Organized Religion” (O.R.), generally does.

O.R. and the Bible are NOT the same. O.R. is so frequently the misappropriator of truth for the pursuit of social control, that we can almost expect it. And the bigger O.R. gets — the more tied it becomes with other institutions of power and prestige — the more likely it is to seek corrupt interpretations of scripture (all the better to serve its power lust and passion for both profit and prestige).

The misuse of the Bible is a very powerful and dangerous force. The Founding Fathers were wise to separate Religion and State. And we are using sound judgment when we continue the debate regarding the proper application of the Bible.

A brief perusal of the passage you link to in “Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical,” does not indicate that Rush was proof-texting. Rather, he builds a compelling case, using one piece of Biblical evidence and then another. So I’m not even sure why the word “proof-texting” shows up in this blog post. I don’t think he was cherry-picking evidence.

But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the, “story of the woman caught in adultery,” as it’s generally labeled, was an example of proof-texting by Mr. Rush. I’ve seen and heard the line, “Let him who is without sin…” used cavalierly even in this modern era. What if Rush was proof-texting using only this single passage to make his case against the death penalty — or even against the existence of an eternal hell?

Well, I’d point out that in Benjamin Rush’s era, Biblical textual-critical scholarship was still in its infancy. But it has advanced tremendously since then.

Scholarship has uncovered that the story of the woman caught in adultery is likely apocryphal — but that doesn’t make it any less valuable. Let me explain.

John’s Gospel was probably composed after the other three gospels were written. And of the four earliest codices available, the “woman caught in adultery,” doesn’t show up in three of them, and is appended to the end of John’s Gospel in the other codex. Mind you, it still shows up very early in church history. But it appears to be an interpolation.

John’s Gospel has, in the eyes of some scholars, the look of being written by a committee. Whether that’s true or not, it is the most “philosophical” — even abstract — of the four. So this story hardly seems out of place.

And modern scholars still include the story of the woman caught in adultery in the text — unlike the “Johnanine Comma” found in John’s first epistle. Why one and not the other?

That indicates to me that, even as early as the 2nd Century, the “spirit” of the gospel was as important as the actual words of the gospel. Apparently this story was important enough to impose on the text (and, by the way, the possibility still remains that it’s historically accurate, derived from the same oral tradition that likely sourced the written Gospels). Further, that we continue to accept it as an important guide today — even a favorite passage to many — indicates that it is still “canonical.” That is, it is completely consistent with the character of Jesus Christ as portrayed in all of the Gospels — proper for instruction, training, and doctrine.

I’m no fan of proof-texting (I hate the practice, actually). But even if I was, given this passage’s likely-apocryphal status, I would not build an entire doctrine, let alone a theology, upon it. But this Biblical tale is, in my mind, a piece of such a puzzle, and I would consider it valid as such