The White vs. Camping debate
A churchian and a date-setter had a great debate on Iron Sharpens Iron, here and here. I'll go with the date-setter on the subject of churchianity and with the churchian on the subject of date-setting, but what everybody who has commented on it seems to have missed is how it demonstrated how ridiculous most all debate formats are. A casual conversation between the two, with the moderator simply allowing neither to filibuster or talk over the other would have accomplished a thousand times more than the inane three minutes to one then three minutes to the other accomplished.
* * *
Where are the adults, by the way? I keep using this example: imagine if Loraine Boettner had a radio show. Or imagine if R. C. Sproul had had a conversation with Harold Camping. Can you see how it would be different? Why are these juvenile types pressing themselves forward like this?
If not juvenile types you get shallow academics.
At least Camping sounds like an adult. But the date-setting thing is a bit self-indulgent, Harold, don't you think?
We're called to be watchful, not to pick a date on a calendar. If you don't think you'll need oil in your lamp until May whatever, 2010, you won't have oil in your lamp when He comes like a thief in the night.
8 Comments:
Camping is beyond self-indulgent. He is insane. He's off in his own little world, not only with regards to dates but Christology as well.
The 3 minute intervals were a good precaution to restrain any nuttiness on Camping's part. It was a bit stilted, but so what? You cannot have a 'casual conversation' with a hermeneutical solipsist like Camping.
Oh, and by the way (if you are GR) if you check out White's blog, he did pick up a copy of "Hazardous Materials" despite the efforts to stop him. Why would someone who's right be so afraid of White's analysis?
I'm not GR, though I'm complimented, and also completely perplexed, you'd think so. I'm not sure she'd be complimented though, considering my style is a bit different from hers. She's a little bit, shall we say, more controlled, in the face of a rather great amount of provocation.
And I think the story of her not wanting White to get a hold of her book is ridiculous on the face of it, from several different angles. Talk about self-indulgent and insane...
Camping, by the way, conflates what the Bible says about Christians being aware of the signs of the times with actual date-setting (which the Bible counsels against). Personally I see time itself, aspects of time, as playing a role in the second coming that most people never think about. It's silly to think in terms of a specific calendar date when it is something that effects all of time, all of the current Age. It's a harvest for all of the Age, in the fullness of time.
notice White kept emphasizing on understanding the Author's (eg Paul, John) original intentions to understand the meaning of the verse.
Where do you read that in the bible? Is there verses to back it up?
The Bible says the all scripture is inspired by God. And before you start creating an alibi for that, make sure you have the whole Bible backing your statement.
I've said before that when your hermeneutic tells you that the hermeneutic of the apostles was 'wrong' you need to revise your hermeneutic; and too often I hear Christian scholars self-identified as Reformed basically say that the apostles' use of Old Testament Scripture was, in so many words, 'wrong.'
This is part of the sterility and shallowness of Christian academics. Of course they will fire back with wild accusations and examples of 'reading anything into the text'. That is their only defense.
They're a shallow lot. Just look at how far Calvinists of the 15th and 16th centuries were willing to go compared to modern day self-identified Calvinists. You can 'see' the increase in shallowness and man-fearing and pulling back from subject matter deemed 'controversial' or 'dangerous' or just fit for mocking nowadays like spiritual warfare, like practices Jesus Himself teaches such as watchfulness, etc., etc. No Reformed academic has anything interesting to say on such subjects because they don't know anything about such subjects. They don't know spiritual warfare, for instance, because they've never feared only God and not taken the worldly path of least resistance. They cling to each other in their Villages of Morality far off the Way where spiritual warfare takes place, not to mention Christian development.
Now watch, despite my comment prior to this one they'll accuse me of defending date-setting. Did I mention they are as dishonest as Romanist apologists?
understanding the Author's (eg Paul, John) original intentions to understand the meaning of the verse ... Where do you read that in the bible? Is there verses to back it up?
AAAAARGHH!!!! If you don't use that method, then how can you tell a true from a false interpretation? Of course the Bible doesn't say that. Why would it have to? It doesn't say that you have to learn to read in order to understand the text, but that's obvious, isn't it? Unless you want to reduce the Bible to a kind of I Ching. A kind of diving rod that you believe God uses as a conduit to give you private messages.
I do not consider this a 'wild accusation of reading anything into the text'. It *IS* reading anything at all you want into the text.
Just answer that one question. If there are 2 contradictory allegorical interpretations, then how would you decide between them, *without* abandoning the allegorical method and using the GHM???
The Bible says the all scripture is inspired by God. And before you start creating an alibi for that, make sure you have the whole Bible backing your statement.
Why must it be either or? Why can't it be both-and? The Bible is inspired by God *and* communicates what the original authors thought it communicated. It's what the original authors taught people! Are you saying that Christianity is a 'time-capsule' religion? That it is essentially different from what the first apostles taught and wrote, now that Mr. Camping dug it up and opened the box for us? Please!
've said before that when your hermeneutic tells you that the hermeneutic of the apostles was 'wrong' you need to revise your hermeneutic; and too often I hear Christian scholars self-identified as Reformed basically say that the apostles' use of Old Testament Scripture was, in so many words, 'wrong.'
I admit stuff like Hos 11:1/Mt 2:15 is problematic, but nothing's going to be solved by turning the Bible into the I Ching.
Hos. 11:1, and Math. 2:15 isn't problematic. The nation of Israel is a type of Jesus. This is a good example of the shallowness of academics in their approach to Scripture. You call those passages problematic, but anyone who can read with anything other than a tin ear can see the obvious meaning.
Christian academics tend to be shallow regarding their exposure to and understanding of literature to begin with. C. S. Lewis wrote an essay on this very subject regarding biblical scholars and their shallowness vis-a-vis literature in general (Elephants and Fern Seeds, or something like that).
Christ will come as a thief in the night for the LOST, not for the saved(see First Thessalonians 5:1-7).In the major judgments of the Bible, the children of God always knew the timing: Noah knew when the flood would come... Abraham and Lot knew when Sodom and Gomorrah would be destroyed... Jonah knew when Nineveh would be destroyed (unless it repented)... Daniel knew when Jerusalem would be overwhelmed, because God told them (Amos 3:7). The elect of God today now know that the end will arrive in 2011. It is true that Jesus said no man knows of that day or hour, but that does not mean that no man CAN know, if God reveals it to him, just as God says that no man is good (by nature), but God can MAKE him good by saving him. God no longer speaks to his people directly, as he did before the Bible was completed, but through careful study of the Bible.
Post a Comment
<< Home