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Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > Theological Q&A > (No Subject)
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joneames
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 21
| Posted 4/27/2004 2:11 PM (GMT -6) |   | Helo everyone,
A person I know is claiming that Greg has missused and twisted Job, and John 9 (the man being born blind) to fit his warefare theology. I love Boyd's warefare theology, and has really helped me heal, grow, and enhance my relationship with Christ. However, I would like to answer this claim. Anyone wanna give their 2 cents?
Jon | | Back to Top | | |
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John Earp
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1715
| Posted 4/27/2004 2:18 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by joneames
Helo everyone,
A person I know is claiming that Greg has missused and twisted Job, and John 9 (the man being born blind) to fit his warefare theology. I love Boyd's warefare theology, and has really helped me heal, grow, and enhance my relationship with Christ. However, I would like to answer this claim. Anyone wanna give their 2 cents?
Jon
Hi Jon,
The burden of proof is upon the one making the allegation. That said, could you be more specific? In what way does he say Boyd has misused and twisted Job and the story of the man born blind? Without being more specific, it's really just this guy's unsubstantiated opinion. | | Back to Top | | |
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victoryword
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 181
| Posted 4/27/2004 3:10 PM (GMT -6) | | John Earp is right. We would love to hear exactly what these people's objections are (of course if they are "determinists" I can already imagine). However, the topic does intrigue me some.
God at War was one of the first books by Dr. Boyd I purchased. I was at "The Call" New England in downtown Boston about three years ago and at a certain point decided to sneak away and visit a Borders bookstore in Boston. I picked up the book and browsed through it and one of the first things that caught my attention was his comments on John 9. That was enough to convince me to buy the book because he presented a more "scholarly" view of what I believed about the book all along.
Anyway, I have a commentary titled John: The Gospel of Belief by Merrill C. Tenney, and was published in 1948 shares similar ideas with Dr. Boyd on John 9. Here are some of his comments:
Jesus' denial of sin as the direct cause of the man's blindness raised another problem. Did His statement mean that the blindness was inflicted on the man for the express purpose of affording an opportunity for healing him? If so, did it not seemingly imply that God would cause an innocent man to suffer a lifetime of poverty, misery, and scorn that He might later demonstrate divine power? Such a view seems repugnant if we believe in the goodness of God.
Tenney then goes on to deal with the difficulties surrounding the correct interpretation of the passage (one of them being how some - myself included - like to solve the dilemma by placing the punctuation in an order in the sentence that seems to bring a resolution. After all, there is no punctuation in the Greek). Tenney then brings a resolution similar to Dr. Boyd's:
The answer lies in the interpretation of the word "that" rather than in the punctuation of the sentence. "That" (hina) may indicate either purpose or result; and here the latter meaning is preferable. "That the works of God should be made manifest in him" may be regarded as expressing an opportunity rather than a destiny. Without doing violence to the Johannine usage of the grammatical construction, it may be interpreted to mean that Jesus was answering in terms of fact rather than of theory, and with a view to changing rather than explaining the blind man's condition.
Here are several other commentaries (copied and pasted from an online article I wrote on this same subject which is on my webpage);
Guthrie, D.; Motyer, J.A.; Stibbs, A.M.; Wisemen, D.J. The New Bible Commentary: Revised (Carmel, NY: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1970), p. 949, "But that the works of God might be made manifest in him. This was a possibility which was given little consideration in our Lord's day. That suffering could be used for God's glory was a difficult to believe, although it is inherent in the Christian approach to the problem. This miracle, however, is not concerned with the problem. It is aimed to show the illuminating power of Christ, not only in the physical but in the spiritual sphere. Restored sight led to a developing faith."
May, Herbert G and Metzger, Bruce M. The Oxford Annotated Bible (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 1298, notes on 9.1-41, "Suffering was attributed to sin, either of the parents or of the man prenatally. Jesus denies this and shifts attention from cause to purpose; this is an opportunity for God to act."
Meeks, Wayne A. The Harper Collins Study Bible(New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 1993), p. 2031, "He was born blind. These words are not actually in the Greek text of Jesus reply. The point seems to be not to find a cause or a purpose for the man's blindness but to present it as an occasion for doing God's works of healing (see 4.34; 5.17-21, 36; 10.32-38; 14. 10-12; 17.4)"
And here are a couple of Bible paraphrases that you might like:
As Jesus walked along, he saw a man who had been born blind since birth. Jesus' disciples asked, "Teacher, why was this man born blind? Was it because he or his parents sinned?" "No, it wasn't!" Jesus answered. "But because of his blindness, you will see God work a miracle for him. As long as it is day, we must do what the one who sent me wants me to do. When night comes, no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world." (John 9:1-5; Contemporary English Version)
Walking down the street, Jesus saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked, "Rabbi, who sinned: this man or his parents, causing him to be born blind?" Jesus said, "You're asking the wrong question. You're looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do. We need to be energetically at work for the One who sent me here, working while the sun shines. When night falls, the workday is over. For as long as I am in the world, there is plenty of light. I am the world's Light." (John 9:1-5; The Message by Eugene Peterson)
As far as Job is concerned, I would recommend reading pages 869 to 873 of the book, God's Plan for Man by Finis Dake. He gives 50 lessons that we can learn from Job. Divine determinism as taught by the average Calvinist ain't one of'em.
OV on dudes.
If your beliefs cannot be supported by Scripture, they ain't worth supporting
http://www.victoryword.100megspop2.com | | Back to Top | | |
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