Comments on The Beautiful Heresy- Christian Universalism: Thank God the Bible Contradicts Itself

Mostly I think that the biblical interpretation is...

2011-10-01T16:03:31.156-04:00

Mostly I think that the biblical interpretation is not all that easy. The most damaging approach for me was hyper-literalism. When I realized that I could read things literally without embracing hyper-literalism I got a bit freer. I could read of how God told Samuel that infants should be murdered and understand that Samuel actually believed that but I did not have to take the next step and say

"It's not a problem that we find contr...

2011-09-29T10:07:25.181-04:00
"It's not a problem that we find contradictions in the Bible unless we treat it like the "Great Big Book Of Everything"

Exactly! Great post, Brian...

Srini, I think there's a little of both. Yes,...

2011-09-29T07:17:10.043-04:00
Srini, I think there's a little of both. Yes, I took the same view you proposed to explain God visiting the sins of the fathers on the children. Make it not literal in terms of God actively punishing the children. We could take the symbolic meaning even further and say the "children" are those who follow someone. But, I think the writer of Exodus probably meant it literally

Great post, Brian. Perhaps a couple of ways we c...

2011-09-29T01:14:26.238-04:00
Great post, Brian.

Perhaps a couple of ways we could view this.

You've pointed out one of them - which is to come to peace with the realization that the Word of God may have been corrupted by men with vested interests over time.

The other is perhaps to not take the words literally. eg. the words father and children may not be meant in the literal sense of

Amen and amen! So hard to change how you read the ...

2011-09-28T16:17:55.630-04:00
Amen and amen! So hard to change how you read the Bible when it has been drilled into your head that it is a constitution/instructions for life/inerrant word, etc...Getting there, though! The Holy Spirit is helping me. :)

And here I thought I had the only copy of the Ency...

2011-09-28T15:37:45.371-04:00
And here I thought I had the only copy of the Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties. ;-)

Good post, Brian.