The Bible in Modern Culture: Theology and Historical-Critical Method from Spinoza to Käsemann

Pro Ecclesia ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 376-377
Author(s):  
Roy A. Harrisville ◽  
Walter Sundberg
Keyword(s):  
Modern Culture ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Critical Method

Yin-Yang (Yijing) and the Bible

2021 ◽  
pp. 200-218
Author(s):  
Claudia von Collani
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Old Chinese ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Christianity In China ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Critical Method ◽  
Chinese Religions ◽  
Catholic Mission ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
The Way

Chinese religions, philosophy, and especially Confucianism constituted a great challenge for the Catholic mission since its beginnings in China in early modern times. This essay looks at the way the missionaries, especially the Jesuits, made several attempts to solve the problem. Niccolò Longobardo s.j., for example, refused to use Chinese terms for the Christian God, dismissing them as insufficient or atheistic. Most Jesuits, however, advocated for terms such as Tian, Shangdi, Tianzhu, and Taiji for God in China. The Mandate of the Vicar Apostolic Charles Maigrot m.e.p., prohibiting the use of the Yijing and Taiji as the Chinese name for God, became a great challenge for Joachim Bouvet s.j. in developing his Figurism. With this system, he found complements for Christianity in China and created a new theology combining Eastern and Western ideas. These efforts were stopped by the prohibition of the Chinese rites and by the historical-critical method for reading the old Chinese books.

The Fundamentalist Menace

2021 ◽  
pp. 241-254
Author(s):  
George M. Marsden
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North Carolina ◽  
Academic Freedom ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Focal Points ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Scopes Trial ◽  
The Bible ◽  
William Jennings Bryan ◽  
The University

Nothing did more to strengthen determination for academic freedom than the fundamentalist attacks of the 1920s. In opposition to Darwinian evolution, fundamentalists found an issue that combined their alarm over the secular direction of modern culture, their reverence for the Bible, and populist appeals. William Jennings Bryan was especially effective in promoting these concerns. A number of states, especially in the South, adopted legislation banning teaching of evolution in schools. States became focal points for controversy. That is illustrated at the University of North Carolina, where, after a major controversy, antievolution forces did not prevail. Bryan helped trivialize the issue with his populist appeals at the Scopes Trial. The antievolutionist argument that if Christianity was not taught in schools, then neither should anti-Christianity be, effective earlier against Jefferson, pointed to the problem in the twentieth century of maintaining a bland blend of Christian and secular thought.

Jacques Ellul's Innocent Notes on Hermeneutics

1979 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 268-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald R. Ray
Keyword(s):  
The Bible ◽  
Critical Method ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Jacques Ellul

The work of Jacques Ellul as interpreter of the Bible is a warning to the guild of professional exegetes that the historical-critical method can become a technique for mastering the text without being mastered by the subject of the text.

Riley's Empire: Northwestern Bible School and Fundamentalism in the Upper Midwest

1988 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-212
Author(s):  
William Vance Trollinger
Keyword(s):  
Upper Midwest ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Scopes Trial ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The World ◽  
Protestant Denominations ◽  
Bible School

In the 1920s a loosely united band of militant conservatives launched a crusade to capture conrol of the major Protestant denominations. These fundamentalists staunchly affirmed the supernatural character and literal accuracy of the Bible, the supernatural character of Christ, and the necessity for Christians to separate themselves from the world. Most often Baptists and Presbyterians, they struggled to reestablish their denominations as true and pure churches: true to the historic doctrines of the faith as they perceived them, and pure from what they saw as the polluting influences of an increasingly corrupt modern culture. But by the late 1920s the fundamentalists had lost the fight. Not only were they powerless minorities in the Northern Baptist and the Northern Presbyterian denominations, where the struggle for control had been the fiercest, but many perceived them as uneducated, intolerant rustics. The Scopes trial cemented this notion in the popular consciousness.

Friedrich Schleiermacher on the Old Testament

2009 ◽  
Vol 102 (3) ◽  
pp. 297-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul E. Capetz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Friedrich Schleiermacher ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Critical Scholarship ◽  
Critical Method ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Historical Investigation

In the nineteenth century the unrestricted application of the historical-critical method posed an unprecedented challenge to inherited Christian notions about the Bible. While this challenge was eventually to be felt most acutely in the study of the New Testament (nt) once the distinction between the “Jesus of history” and the “Christ of faith” had firmly established itself, traditional viewpoints on the Old Testament (ot) were actually the first to be called into question. As a consequence of historical investigation, it became increasingly difficult for theologians to claim that the gospel is already taught in the ot. Regarding this matter, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) made a bold proposal. He argued against the canonical standing of the ot on the grounds that it expresses Jewish, not Christian, religion. For him this conclusion was the unavoidable result of the advancing critical scholarship that was undermining the christological exegesis used to defend the church's claim to the ot against the synagogue's counter-claim to its sole rightful possession. Opposing such “christianizing” readings, Schleiermacher broke ranks from Christian theologians and championed the side of the Jews in this historic debate. His only predecessors in this regard were Marcion and the Socinians, although his proposal for relegating the ot to noncanonical status was later endorsed by Adolf von Harnack.

Three ‘Intentions’ to Respect

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald O’Collins, SJ
Keyword(s):  
Reception History ◽  
Faith Community ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Critical Method ◽  
Multiple Meanings ◽  
Biblical Texts

The inspired books of the Bible should be interpreted integrally. This involves respecting not only the ‘intention’ of the human authors who composed the sacred texts (the intentio auctoris), to the extent that this can be established, but also the ‘intention’ of the readers who take up the texts (the intentio legentis) and the ‘intention’ of the text itself (the intentio textus ipsius). We must respect what the original authors wanted to communicate but also acknowledge the insights of subsequent readers and the multiple meanings that emerge from the texts’ reception history. The historical-critical method, which studies the genesis and authorial meaning of our biblical texts, is necessary but insufficient. Where it lapses into an exegesis that separates itself from the faith community and purports to be impartial and ‘objective’, it may yield some specific results but hardly valuable insights into the inspired Scriptures as a whole.

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