Every now and then, on a Friday, I’ll step into the deep waters of Philosophy, ramble on about some idea and maybe even interact with something I might be reading. Most of the time, a real philosopher could probably read my drivel and speak into it offering a corrective—but for now I’ll speak from ignorance. After all, it is Friday; what better way to have fun than with philosophy. In this post I’ll answer the question “is erring human?”
I’ve been talking about how our world is really close to the world of 1 Corinthians but we don’t realize it—but I haven’t managed to show why I think that. To do that, I wanted to spend time thinking about interaction with idolatry by examining 1 Corinthians 8-10, a passage which is often misread by looking at it through a Romans 14-15 filter. In the last post we noted, in passing, some similarities and differences between the two sections; but in this post I want to do a bird’s eye view of Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 8-10.
Barring my faulty memory (and if I’m not lazy) I want to post prayers on Monday from all over Church History and then throughout the modern day, and then my own. This one comes is part of the hymn by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux which has as many as fifty stanzas.
s I said, I’m dealing with teaching that was done during this past summer and how I reformulated it, re-stated it, re-taught it, or just rectified it. This comes from the VBS we had this summer, made available from Answers in Genesis.
The Teaching and Its Problem:
Lesson 3 in the book was Eternal Life and the Intelligence of Early Man with an emphasis on man being an intelligent thinking being, which God loved, instead of a mere animal. The key verse here was Gen 6:23 and the lesson was supposed to draw from Genesis 3. But the focus, once again, was on the apologetic response to the professed belief that early man was an animal whose brain evolved.
I thought that detracted from the main chapter and verse for the lesson. So I reformulated it to focus more on what Humans do to the Image of God and what that says about God.
In the last post I made a passing comment about misinterpreting our world. It was a statement actually lifted from the interpretation of the text. When you ask a Christian about 1 Corinthians 8-10, they automatically start speaking in terms of Freedom To Do and Freedom To Act In Any Way Before the Lord.
It’s not surprising really. The language that Paul uses here in 1 Corinthians 8 is very similar to the language in Romans 14—but it is also strikingly different. So in this post I want to offer a comparison and contrast of some key terms in the chapters and how they’re used.