Context is our perpetual hobgoblin, isn’t it? Even when we rigorously hold to it within a text, the zeitgeist, the personality of the author, our own biases slip through our fingers and we find ourselves extrapolating and ignoring what we should not. This is what, in large part, makes the D&C so valuable as a commentary on earlier scripture, though that too recedes from us.

Well, I suppose I tagged this post ’self-deception’ for a reason… we succumb to it too easily. The dual challenge of seriously trying to live a Christian life is to see how far one has come and remember how far one has to go.

Jay

Dear Dr. Williams,

I have read with great interest your recent article, “What is Wrong with the Church?” at http://bibleinterp.com/articles/Jay_Church_Essay_Church_1.shtml Although not a formal student of theology, I have done some writing and a lot of reading on Christian theology and ethics of late. You raised an interesting question about the creation of a Jesus to serve the institutional needs of a corporate church that coincides well with some recent thoughts I’ve been having on the nature of our relationship to the Godhead or Trinity. Since reading Karl Barth’s Epistle to the Romans, I’ve been facing the fact that we create a false god with whom we interact, an ‘avatar’, in your language, that merely validates the basic path that our life has already taken. In an analogy to the Father of what you wrote of the Son, Barth wrote:

Our relationship to God is ungodly…. We assume that He needs something: and so we assume that we are able to arrange our relation to Him as we arrange our other relationships. …We confound time with eternity. …Secretly we are ourselves the masters in this relationship. We are not concerned with God, but with our own requirements, to which God must adjust Himself. …And so, when we set God upon the throne of the world, we mean by God ourselves. In ‘believing’ on Him, we justify, enjoy, and adore ourselves. …Under the banners of humility and emotion we rise in rebellion against God. We confound time with eternity. That is our unrighteousness. …God Himself is not acknowledged as God and what is called ‘God’ is in fact man. By living to ourselves, we serve the ‘No-God’ (p.44).

In response to your essay and considerations of Jesus’ practical ethic of Christian action, and in response to your challenge for dialogue, I’ve written my take as a Latter-day Saint student of Jesus’ teachings. Certainly I’ve drawn different conclusions than my Protestant fellows, and indeed than you did, but I hope it may serve as a useful voice in the conversation, and it may be of interest to you. Thanks for your take as we swim in these deep waters.

Sincerely,
Neal Davis