Father Dempsey Rosales-Acosta [FD] | Biblical Scholar and Pastor, St. Agnes
Dr. Rosales-Acosta is an associate pastor at St. Agnes Catholic Church in Midtown Manhattan, NYC. He holds a degree of Science of Exegesis in Scripture by the Pontifical Biblicum Institute (Rome) and a doctorate degree in Biblical Theology by the Pontifical Gregorian University (Rome). Combining the pastoral and scholarly research in his 15 years period of ministry in Rome, Italy, had been regularly asked to speak and dictate biblical courses in Venezuela, Spain and Italy. At the present moment he also helps as a consultant of the American Bible Society at the Presidential Liaison and Roman Catholic Ministry’s Department, and he is the author of the book The path to see like Jesus.
Alister McGrath [AM]| Theologian and Author
Dr. Alister McGrath was a research scientist at Oxford University before he became a theologian. He holds doctorate degrees in the fields of molecular biophysics and theology. He is presently Professor of Theology, Ministry and Education, and Head of the Centre for Theology, Religion and Culture, at King’s College, London and is involved in theological research and the professional development of clergy from a range of Christian denominations. As a former atheist, he regularly engages in debate and dialogue with leading atheists, and is presently researching the iconic role played by Charles Darwin in atheist apologetics.
Brian McLaren [BM] | Author and Activist
Brian D. McLaren is an author, speaker, activist, and networker among innovative Christian leaders. In 1986 he founded Cedar Ridge Community Church, an innovative, transdenominational church in the Baltimore-Washington region. He recently left the pastorate to devote full time to writing and speaking. Time Magazine listed him as one of the twenty-five most influential Evangelicals in America. He has appeared on Larry King Live, Nightline, CNN, FOX, PBS, and many other national media. Brian’s books include, The Secret Message of Jesus, Everything Must Change, Finding or Way Again, and A New Kind of Christian among many others. A New Kind of Christianity will release in 2010.
Tim Keller [TK]
*Disclaimer: I was fighting hard to keep up, so these are as close to exact as I could get… again, my interpretation of what I heard… so just know that!*
When we think about the term inerrancy, is this something that has existed through all of the different ages of the church? Why is there so much focus on it today?
AM – Christians have always insisted that the Bible is reliable. It’s trustworthy. To say it’s inerrant is to admit it’s errant. The real issue is that we have to interpret. We might have inerrant text but we may have an inerrant interpretation. We’ve got to work out how we take the text and do something with it.
Terms like inerrant mean one thing to some and another to others. How does our reading an interpretation of Scripture… how should it inform how we think of our current context.
AM – We’re looking backwards and forwards and asking what the text is saying. How does the narrative of Scripture align with the narrative of today. Our danger is replicating what worked yesterday. How we use the bible needs to be examined.
BM – It’s a problematic word. The problem is in most churches if you don’t use the word you will be fired. The word is litmus test for saying you belong. All that comes along with the word is that people who use it the most make the least distinction between the text and interpreting what it means. Interpretation is a complicated thing. People who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible successfully defended the practice of slavery by using the Bible. The gap between what the Bible says and how we use it is huge. We undermine people’s confidence in anything we say about the Bible if we don’t acknowledge the complexities hat come with interpretation.
What are our reliable sources?
TK: If they see us wrestling with the text and being as fair as possible with it we show them that we are taking the text seriously.
You need spiritual humility. As a sinner, we’ve got our prejudices. We’ve got to be really, really careful with being too quick about saying, “this is what its says.” If people seeing us wrestling with it and being spiritually humble, they will follow. Spiritual humility along with a clear interpretation is what has taken me through.
FD – Every time we talk about inerrance, the issue of authority comes up. What is always fantastic is that God always has a pattern of behavior that we can discover in the revelation of Scripture. God used human instruments to manifest himself to the world. We need faithful interpreters of the message.
We’ve seen the abuse of scripture to promote ideologies, thoughts, campaigns, etc where people pick and choose scripture to make their case. What’s an appropriate way for a Christian engaged in the public space to use Scripture?
BM: We have many layers to this struggle: the struggle in our own lives, our churches and denominations, and the struggles there are big. Some churches give women freedom and others don’t because of their interpretation. We view gays differently. We are worried about inerrancy but not worried about being racist. We allow ourselves to be spiritually formed by corrupting ideas. When we bring it into the public sector we’ve got problems. We’ve got people who aren’t following the same script we are but we expect them to. The way that we read the Bible would bring us into public spheres in different ways. We are silent on the issue of healthcare or the environment and extremely vocal about gay marriage and abortion. Different Christian communities are going to live out their interpretation of the Bible in public space in different ways and some will gain influence and others will lose it. We have to find the logic, reasons and publicly accessible concerns so we can enter into public debates. Scripture forms us, but we have to engage using the language of people.
AM: It’s about the personal assimilation of the values we read in Scripture that form us and lead us to act in certain ways. It’s embodied in us and we carry it into situations in certain ways. We can read Scripture and believe it’s true but live it as if it’s not real. The way we read should demonstratively be seen in what we say and do. We need to rediscover the true ethics where we are shaped and molded as people. Where we are shaped by God’s grace and molded to act and think in these ways. Scripture is not a text at distance but a resource that transforms and energizes us internally.
Are there unique challenges in post-Christian world context?
TK: If people don’t see anything about our behavior that makes them hungry, we have more to blame in ourselves, not the Bible.
AM: People are rootless and are looking for a story they can align themselves with. They want to be a part of a bigger picture. They are in exile looking for a home. We need to make the connections. When people see them it changes thing.
FD: People are hungry and thirsty to get to know God. Sometimes, they have doubts about the structure of the church, but the essence of looking for God is amazing. It drives people to struggle. We’ve got to make the text alive.
BM: We have to recover good preaching.. bringing the Bible as a text, not as a hammer to get people to submit to our agenda, but as a resource to bring people into a transforming relationship with Christ. When the text is allowed to speak to us and no one is controlling it, it brings us together to think about things we’ve never thought about before. There’s great value getting people interacting with God’s word together.
Is there any fear to letting Christians come around the text together and discover what it is saying to them as a community without a leader or a pastor directing it?
AM: There’s a real issue here. When I preach there’s a danger where I’m saying, “don’t read the Bible, you just need to listen to me.” The preacher’s job is to encourage people to read Scripture, to discover things. The best approach is to give people an invitation to find what you are discovering. We have a corporate responsibility where we are all contributing. Preachers are to lead the way. Preachers have accountability to the scripture and the preacher has accountability to the congregation. We are all priests. Preachers are the catalysts of discovering God’s word for the corporate body but it’s also a corporate responsibility.
TK: Believers want direction when it comes to studying the Bible. There’s room for both. They will show us things we don’t see. But there are things we need to give them direction in it.
The idea of Scripture becoming a commodity… hot pink Bibles, Bibles on our phones, magazine-style Bibles, etc. Is there anything sacred about a medium? Should it go forward in any way possible?
BM: We think things are sacred because we are familiar with them. I hardly ever working with a paper text, I’m always working online. This is changing. There are strengths and weaknesses to it. We are in a strange time in a new time of literacy. A literacy that involves reading digitally. We are also moving to an increased orality… where the telling of the stories of the Bible is important. This is a significant opportunity for preaching. It’s not something that’s just on paper but what is heard.
How are you seeing Scripture alive and well where you are at.
AM: People always need help reading, understanding, and applying Scripture… that’s what these new commodities are trying to do.
TK: I think if the Bible is preached and taught in an interesting way, all generations respond. New generations like great stories, the Bible is full of them.
FD: Scripture was born out of the oral tradition. Faith came through the ears of the people who were listening. We have the text, and the text came out because it was a need to faithfully preserve what was communicated orally. When we make the text alive again, orally, we’ll engage our society. We live in a society driven by mass media that is powerful and we have to be able to use that to make the same message more effective.
