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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
Paul regretted some things he wrote in
his letters. He did not write with a
pompous sense of creating infallible scripture.
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Preview and Summary: Paul's writings reveal an ordinary man, an ordinary Spirit-led man, doing his best to discern the mind of God. We find no hint of arrogant presumption that he was producing "infallible" writings.
Sometimes Paul had to play "the heavy" in order to settle social problems; and, at times, he regretted certain things he'd put into writing - how very human.
But, in none of this do we see Paul acting as local cult-leader, so impressed with his own words. He certainly did not view himself as inerrant; which is why he corrected and changed his views, as new information warranted.
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Bishop Spong on Bible-study materials:
Question: Is there a good Bible-study book you would recommend for a group of lay people to use that is not agenda-riddled? I am looking for one that looks at the Bible within its cultural and historical background in which each individual book was written and leaves room for an open-ended discussion of the universal ideas that are inspired in those texts.
Answer: From your question I get a picture of the kind of Bible study you might have endured in your lifetime. A “Bible Study book” is almost always the product of an evangelical-fundamentalist mentality. The reason I say that is that the phrase a “Bible Study Book” assumes that one can embrace in a single study-guide a minimum of 66 books, not including the Apocrypha, that were written over a period of about one thousand years (ca, 1000 BCE – ca.35 CE), by a variety of authors, and in at least two different languages.
A study group wishing to use such a book will tend to do so only for the few weeks that the group will meet. A class organized this way simply does not plan to engage the Bible seriously. One should not expect anything good or significant to come out of such a study. Most Bible studies in churches using that kind of material, amount to little more than the corporate pooling of common ignorance, which is then undergirded by a study guide that would embarrass almost every biblical scholar in the world. Given that format, my conclusion is that there is no such thing as a single volume Bible-study book.
There are, however, thousands of volumes on the individual books of the Bible written with competent scholarship by competent scholars that will take you through and into the meaning of each of the books of the Bible. The problem with most of these books, however, is that they were not written for the average reader and thus are considered too difficult, too complex, and even too involved for most people. Groups using such books get discouraged quickly...
~John Shelby Spong
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