I posted here about my concern over the guest speaker from Columbia Theological Seminary that was scheduled to speak at my church today. I thought that it was only fair to find out what she had to say before jumping to any radical conclusions. Unfortunately, my fears were validated. In a nutshell, she essentially took a blowtorch to the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. In a series of lectures on family values she declared that there are several ways in which to understand family values from a biblical perspective and indicated that these various ways create a contradiction. At one point she declared that Paul's letters to the Corinthians were very "convoluted." She also said she hoped Jesus was wrong about there being no marriage or giving in marriage at the resurrection. Oh, lets see...what else? She further claimed that both Paul and Jesus thought celibacy was superior to marriage.
There are two more lectures in this series, one tonight and one tomorrow afternoon. Based upon what was said in her sermon during morning worship, I anticipate that she is setting the stage to justify alternative lifestyles, like homosexuality and same sex marriage. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely believe in equal rights in the workplace and etc... regardless of sexual orientation. I also believe that as Christ's church on the earth, we are to preach the truth in love. At the same time, the church must not redefine morality to make it more popular.
So, now I am not sure what to do. Do I stay and take a stand for the truth? Or, do I leave in order to preserve my mind from unsound doctrine?
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I would do my best to talk to the pastor before the next session.
I didn't attend the session tonight. I probably should have, but I didn't. I did email the pastor a little while ago. Here is an excerpt of that email:
Pastor ____,
As a member of First Presbyterian, I want to express
my concern over the information presented by _________ during her lectures today on family values.
Specifically, I am concerned by the statements she made during the afternoon session regarding the Bible.
By calling Paul's letters to the church at Corinth "convoluted," and asserting that there are three
essentially, contradictory ways in which to interpret family values, Dr. Johnson is suggesting that the
Bible is not, in fact, the inerrant word of God. When we read the bible, must we listen for the word of God, or is it in fact, the word of God in its entirety? If
the Bible is, as Dr. Johnson suggests, a product of the culture in which the writers lived, how can we trust its teaching with any assurance? When we read Paul, are we reading Paul the man, or Paul as he was carried along by the holy spirit? When we reach a
difficult passage that seems to be in tension with modern values, how do we reconcile that? Although we
live in a time where moral relativism is on the rise
and postmodernism seems to be the ideology of the day, are there no longer any concrete truths we can rely upon?...
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