On the one had a person can talk about their own personal view of whether a text is clear to them (eg “it’s clear to me”).

But on the other hand, we often speak of clarity as a property of the text itself. In saying “the text is clear” we often don’t just mean that we personally find it clear, we mean we think that the text itself is clear and that everyone else should see its meaning clearly. This would seem to treat clarity as if it were an objective property like weight, length etc, which it obviously isn’t. But it seems, neither is it an entirely subjective property - in normal usage, a text could be ‘clear’ and yet a particular individual might ‘wrongly’ think it was not.

Thinking about what makes us say that a text is clear or unclear leads me to believe that it is a aggregate value of all subjective views. ie if everyone agrees on what it means, and thinks it is clear, then it is. Equally if everyone disagrees on what it means, and doesn’t think it is clear, then it isn’t. The degree to which a text is clear seems to depend on an aggregate of the extent to which interpreters have agreed on its meaning and the extent to which they thought it was clear. Possibly also, the degree to which they had studied the text would also need to be taken into account by the aggregation function, and also I suppose their degree of comprehension of the language/culture in which it was written would need to be assessed. Possibly Nathan can supply us with some graphs…

Given such a definition of the ‘objective’ clarity of a text, it seems to follow that if lots of people who have studied the text have come to lots of different views about its meaning then the text itself is not clear. Equally, particular individuals might see it as being clear-to-them. Obviously the existence of God is not clear to most people and hence lacks objective clarity, yet some people’s experiences or mindsets make the existence of God clear-to-them.

I was a ‘flexitarian’ (i.e. part-vegetarian) for maybe 5 years before I (this year) chose to go fully vegetarian. I see no problem with it; maybe you shouldn’t *label* yourself vegetarian when you’re still eating meat, but I think people choosing to eat less meat is a good thing.

We have this cultural phenomenon of middle ground being unacceptable, and only extremes being legitimate choices, which I think is crap. Less meat is better than more meat, but it doesn’t *necessarily* stand that no meat is better than some meat. (I kinda think that’s the case, but that’s beside the point.)

And it seems contradictory to me to say that modern academic scholars have differing views because of the Bible’s lack of clarity, and then to turn around and claim that you happen to have come across the correct view.

In Christian history we have: Moral Exemplar, Ransom from Satan, Christus Victor, Recapitulation / Theosis, Satisfaction, Penal Substitution, Governmental etc. From modern academic scholars on Paul we have: E.P. Sanders - mystical spiritual participation in Christ; NT Wright - “historicized” Penal Substitution; Chris VanLandingham - Christus Victor and Moral Exemplar; David Brondos - Narrative moral transformation, Pilch and Malina - Satisfaction. Stephen Finlan - Theosis.

When so many different Christians, and so many modern scholars can study the same writings and come to such fundamentally different views, I have to conclude that “clear” is the one thing that Paul’s writings / the bible isn’t. While I would say the correct interpretation is clear to me, that’s only because I have spent about many years studying the subject, not because I think the text itself is particularly clear in general.

I actually think eating less meat has had a positive effect on me, physically.

I’ve also cut right back on coffee, i.e. I don’t drink it regularly - maybe two cups per week.
That has made the biggest difference - no more headaches if I’ve not had a coffee for a while, and no bouts of drowsiness that I used to get all the time.

Healthy is good.

I don’t think the issue is about whether we use our minds or don’t use our minds. Of course I think we should use our minds in understanding God’s truth.

The issue is whether the assumption that independant human reasoning is definitive in our understanding of the Christian faith is compatible with that same faith. Is it compatible with the teaching of Jesus and the apostles, their attitude to the scriptures, and the very nature of the gospel as an authoritative word of grace to humans enslaved to sin, who have no hope of discovering the truth about God apart from his gracious self-revelation? I’m suggesting there is a fundamental contradiction in your position, and that the way of discovering spiritual truth taught in 1 Corinthians 2 is inherent in Christianity itself if its consistency is to be maintained.

But that’s another discussion altogether I guess!

Peace,

Scott

And God has empathy.

Scott, have been thinking how I may answer that without writing a thesis. Basically, I’ve cut it down to one paragraph

I understand where you’re coming from, but I don’t hold to your basic assumption, that we should take the bible as inspired. I perceive the bible to be important, but I make use of my human faculties, and hold ‘human wisdom’ to be important. Ultimately all we know is through human experience, and so we have to use our minds to come to any conclusion. You have come to one conclusion, and I have come to a different conclusion, but we have both used our minds. If we cannot use our minds, we cannot know anything. And obviously there is more to it than that, but I think that’s probably the most fundamental difference in our arguments.