The text - divinely inspired?

27th September blog

Returning to my recent blog “hype(ertext) of biblical authority.” I will return to the hype of authority.

I am fascinated and with the young reader's take on the psalms in particular Psalm 23. Brought up on the psalms I often changed the lyrics to suit my age/situation/need at the time. I love this image of psalm 23 young reader can add to Holder's HIP HOP interpretation.

Does the image jeopardize a sense of divine authority? No for the kitten some sense of authority is lurking - fear, confidence, arrogance?

Unlike the Scripture the psalms became a tool on which the psalms spoke for us rather than to us. This gave us a deeper understanding of the meaning of life in God's world and the psalms still speak to me out of the depths of my experiences.

So Psalms are not just words to God also words about God and it teaches us about God; and in a way who God is.

So, when we read the psalms seriously and ask God to speak to our hearts through its inspired teachings, we begin to realize that God does indeed speak with divine authority through God's word, the Bible.


When we speak of the deconstruction of psalms and its ability to perhaps jeopardize divine authority I want to ask if there is such a thing as supreme authority?

Let me ask this another way. Is there such as thing as a supreme authority that governs Church life and Christian action and if so, what is it?

Mmm...believing scripture is authoritative for the church is not a point for which I wish or feel I have to argue. I simply observe that it is true and has always been so. There are of course those who wish to abandon the notion of Scriptural authority at the theoretical level and probably plenty Christians for who scripture does not function authoritatively in any very indefinable way. The deconstruction of meaning might be highly threatening to the church as a community whose identity is rooted in a reading of an authoritative text.

The authorty of the Bible whatever we may think of it will convince no-one who does not grant it such authority.

Now many Biblical texts are ambiguous and capable of more than one iterpretation and no interpreter is infallible. But I don't think for one moment the Bible is impaired by this. So why not embrace the Hip Hop version of psalm 23.

Reading the Bible as Scripture then, is never a mere matter of handling texts and the relationship between texts. It is above all a matter of being in the presence and open to the handling of the One who in some sense is the final author of its message because "He" is the one whose story it tells and it is as we know him.

And as we dwell in God's presence and have God dwells in us then what we see and hear what he is saying and showing us through it. At this point hermeneutics fall short.

Reading Laurie's argument on "why the web will win the culture war"...made me sit up whe he mentioned "surfing mimics a postmodern deconstructuralism perspective by undermining the authority of texts"

Immediately this got me to re-reading the young reader's post Friday 08/09 where she agress the authorty of the text lies with the surfer.

Derrida deconstruction strategies have a way of undercutting the "master text," which reflects Laurie's exposition of his basic technical tools. One way or another Derrida's oeuvre is an exploration of the nature of writing in the broadest sense as difference. To that extent writing always includes pictographic, ideographic, and phonetic elements.

Hypertext has a ring of similarity when you note what Derrida says "writing this way is not always pure and as such challenges the notion of identity and ultimately the notion of the original. It is neither entirely present nor absent but is the trace resuting from its own measure in the drive toward transparency."

Is this not what we tend to do with hypertext structure of text.
First search for the written text by another and adopt a kind of secondary role before the primcay of the text.
Seconed, turn the primacy text into a source of new inspiration and creativity like conneting frames, hyperlinks, with a web of of associations and connections. Now the reader no longer simply interprets but becomes a writer in his/her own right.

Keith Carley in his response to Psalm 8 de-constructed and wrote this psalm

O God of depths and heights of infinite expanse and every place
Your glory is seen in all things
In gentle persistent growth unnoticed by humankind
In diversity prodigious that takes place in my soil,
Your glory is displayed to those with eyes to see.
How foolish humans are to assume your ways are as conflicted as their own.
To think you deal with enemies as they do
Your love surrounds those who appose you
For your justice always come with mercy
And new beginnings

When I look at the sky, how wonderful the whole creation is
you care for sparrows, feed lions
And still have time to care for human beings!
The warring of those who think themselves superior
Makes a place of horror
Their weapons seem to threaten all life
In greed they force growth or poison it
destroying forests, I can never re-place in their life times,
Must I die that they might learn the outcome of their foolish foolishness
What arrogance they think you have put them in charge
Yet they depend on their fellow creatures
For clothing, labour, food, for air and water
When they pollute in ways thou now percieve only dimly
You never willed them to be conquerers
Rather partners in the unfolding of your beauty
They have not learned the lessons of exodus and exile
And taught so well by their monarchs
That subjection brings resitance,
Which you bless with liberation.
yet still you care for them
O God of depths and heights of infinite expanse and every place
May your glory be seen by all things.

Point of departure - inspiration must surely be the views of the last generation of evangelicals. It is they who keep the issue alive.

Te atapo - the dawn