From the pen of Barth...

This is what Barth says concerning the Scriptures:

The prophets and apostles, even in their office, even in their function as witnesses, even in the act of writing down their witness, were, as we are, capable and actually guilty of error in their spoken and written word. (Dogmatics, I, 528-9)

If God was not ashamed of the fallibility of all the human words of the Bible, of their historical and scientific inaccuracies, their theolgical contradictions, the uncertainty of their tradition, and, above all, their Judaism, but adopted and made use of these expressions in all their fallibility, we do not need to be ashamed when He wills to renew it to us in all its fallibility as witness; and it is mere self-will and disobedience to try and find some infallible elements in the Bible (Dogmatics, I, 531).

The men whom we hear as witnesses speak as fallible, erring men like ourselves. . . . We can read and try to assess their word as a purely human word. It can be subjected to all kinds of immanent criticism, not only in respect of its philosophical, historical, and ethical content, but even of its religious and theological. . . . Each in his own way and degree, they shared the culture of their age and environment. . . . The vulnerability of the Bible, i.i., its capacity for error, also extends to its religious or theological content. There are obvious overlappings and contradictions. . . . Therefore, whether we like it or not, they did not speak a special language of revelation radically different from that of their time. . . . It seems to be weakened, and therefore robbed of its character as witness ot revelation, by the fact that it has so many "parallels" (Dogmatics, I, 507-9). Emphasis Added

Founding Member Pictures

I think each of the founding members should get their picture taken while sitting in Dr. Clearwaters' inner sanctum.

Book of the Month

First, I was able to access the blog.

Second, maybe we should do a "Book of the Month" as a way to stay active in our communication with each other and help us think. John Stott did this with various members of his church as a way to see how they thought through life. The books they choose varied from fiction to theological.

LibraryThing

If any of you have your libraries catalogued on LibraryThing (and you should), we can easily add a search function to the sidebar. I love learning how to do something new.

Introduction

This blog offers a good deal of flexibility. It is my hope that as we progress, we might harness more that it has to offer.

To begin with, we all agree upon the rules. This is to be a private discussion among friends. Our goal is mutual growth through both encouragement and criticism. The initial community is small. It will grow by invitation only. Any member can invite anyone else at any time. However, all initiates must be willing and able to further the discussion. They should have something of value to contribute. If a new member proves to be harmful to the discussion, the member who originally invited the offender will be responsible for removing the offender from the group. This should create a certain feeling of responsibility as to whom we invite. Anyone within the group can post or comment in any way. Our discussions should be broad. Finally, always assume that anything written was done so with charity. The medium of a blog is not conducive to profitable discussion because so much is lost when not conversing face to face. Therefore, in the absence of a personalness to our conversations, assume the best.

Let the discussion begin.