Our culture is so fixated on dying and going to heaven when the whole Scripture is about heaven coming to earth.
Traditions tell us where we have come from. Scripture itself is a better guide as to where we should now be going.
There's all the difference in the world between humbly saying "I want to find more light from Scripture than we have yet had" and saying "I'm going to prove the rest of the Church wrong and do something totally new!"
Such debates [about the nature of Scripture], in my view, distract attention from the real point of what the Bible is there for. Squabbling over particular definitions of the qualities of the Bible is like a married couple squabbling over which of them loves the children more, when they should be getting on with bringing them up and setting them a good example. The Bible is there to enable God's people to be equipped to do God's work in God's world, not to give them an excuse to sit back smugly, knowing they possess all God's truth.
Scripture is, at its heart, the great story that we sing in order not just to learn it with our heads but to become part of it through and through, the story that in turn becomes part of us.
I'm very eclectic, musically as in other things! But also to frame the hearing and knowing of Scripture within a context of worship, which is what Anglican liturgy does, just seems to me such a very complete and compelling thing.
I really don't care too much what the different later Christian traditions say. My aim is to be faithful to Scripture.
My aim has been to expound Scripture and to expound Scripture in such a way that I do not set one Scripture over against another.
I am also very excited by the way in which we can see Paul wrestling not only with his Jewish world and its scriptures but also, by clear implication, with philosophical and political issues that were 'out there' at the time. The thing is that for Paul this is all part of the same larger, whole vision of God and God's purposes. Watching how everything comes together is an intellectual treat of the first order - as well as a spiritual and practical challenge to me personally and to the church.
I have always taken the view that sometimes war may be justified, as police action can be justified, to protect the weak and vulnerable (a major preoccupation in scripture). But this is an old and difficult question and very wise people take different views.
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