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Ask to join- Portion of 3 controversial post: 1. Personal opinion only: As a long-term user of Logos/Verbum, I don't disagree with your facts but I prefer a more relaxed response. Logos has its roots firmly planted in Evangelicalism American variety which uses a short historical outlook, a truncated Bible, and historically aberrant theology. The majority of Christians world-wide have legitimate complaints regarding the narrowness of the Logos views - not just Catholics and Orthodox of both kinds, but Quakers, Anabaptists,. . . Early on, Logos struggled to incorporate a Catholic Bible and dealt with outraged users when the possibility of alternative canons was exposed. They solved this problem by creating Verbum for Catholic users. Verbum has slowly developed tools more acceptable to Catholics but still relies heavily on Logos for product development. For problematic elements such as the survey of theology, the major events in church history, the timeline, for now one has to accept the American Evangelical bias and do what we can to expand the market so that economic forces create change in Logos - change beneficial to many "neglected" theological traditions. We must also accept the reality that most groups, Orthodox, Catholic, or Protestant have vocal minorities that are outraged when anything other than their personal beliefs are visible. We cannot expect Logos/Verbum to present the Truth - what we can expect is accurate information but not necessarily balanced information. 2. No, it means historically aberrant theology i.e. theology that meets one of the following criteria not attested as orthodox or heretical in first millennial Christian thought not explainable as an accommodation of early Christian thought to new concepts/vocabulary dependent upon concepts not available to early Christians or the peoples they witnessed to. Put more succinctly historically aberrant theology is theology that stumps scholars of the history of ideas. I used the term, rather than examples, to avoid insulting any Logos Users. Everyone will assume examples that do not include themselves. 3. American Evangelicalism is currently rather different from Evangelicalism worldwide. There have been several books suggested recently that deal with the topic. I did not want to appear to be including groups I know little about. "short historical outlook" It is a relatively recent development for American Evangelicals to show an interest in the early church fathers and to tie their theology back to the historical roots of Christian doctrine. In Logos, this takes the form of sparse history from 400-1400. In real life, it takes the form of conversion to ACELO churches from Evangelical churches of college students interested in history. The outlook is also "short "in the sense of the geographic expanse of the historical events chosen. The history in Logos emphasizes Europe and America, post 1500, white events. I suspect but have never done the analysis required to prove it, that there is a distinct bias towards reformed theology. It is also "short" in the breadth of topics lacking resources such as McGinn's multi-volume of history of mysticism, the ecclesial history e.g. the line of Coptic Popes, the teaching of the faith via the arts . . . "truncated Bible" is simply noting that for years tools were built only for or first for the Hebrew Bible canon rather than the Septuagint canon. Yes, I personally think of it as "truncated" as a response to the erroneous belief that books were added at the Council of Trent. I used the term here to connect to the OP as a Catholic aware of the short comings. I personally frame the canon debate in terms of whether the "Old Testament" is to be understood as a Christian or as a Jewish text. "historically aberrant" literally means things outside the norm of historical development. Sorry, but to me that is the obvious meaning. Unfortunately, I cannot give examples without alienating a number of people who hold beliefs not attested to prior to 1800. But I was specifically omitting doctrines such as the non-Trinitarians whose beliefs I do not accept but whose position has roots so deep as to date to the early Church. Dave Hooton: Do you have a plain English statement that really conveys your opinion of Logos' roots? I prefer not to enter into a tirade on the shortcomings of the grammatical-historical criticism as a model for Bible study and how expecting deep understanding of the nature of language of the average Bible reader is hermeneutical madness. Personally, what I consider to be important is to recognize the Logos biases, accept them, and take them into account when using the tools. That is what I do with books, sermons, lectures, ... and was trying to convey to the OP. His observations are accurate but based on false assumptions of what Logos presents. My point was: MJ. Smith: We cannot expect Logos/Verbum to present the Truth - what we can expect is accurate information but not necessarily balanced information.
- An example which will upset many people is solo scriptura. Sola scriptura is a natural development in history. As more is written the need to rely on the oral tradition for scriptural interpretation and rubrics decreases. Reaching the point where scripture overrides Apostolic tradition is a logical evolution. Whether or not it is correct, it is not aberrant. On the other hand, solo scriptura is bound to the new sense of individual and the new technology of the printing press and a social expectation of broad literacy. From a Logos search, I believe solo scriptura to have arisen in the last 150 years as a reductionist view of sola scriptura. I would content that this is an aberrant historical view. See chapter 8 of Mathison, Keith A. The Shape of Sola Scriptura. Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2001.
- I appreciate this information. After a quick look into these terms, I would agree with your conclusions. Based on a brief review of the search results of my Logos library, "sola scriptura" seems to be generally accepted in Evangelical traditions, while "solo scriptura" is not.
- "We cannot expect Logos/Verbum to present the Truth - what we can expect is accurate information but not necessarily balanced information." - I agree 100% "Logos has its roots firmly planted in Evangelicalism American variety which uses a short historical outlook, a truncated Bible, and historically aberrant theology." - This is a difficult statement, and I am not completely sure what you are intending to communicate. Are you saying that Logos has its roots firmly planted in a variety of Evangelicalism that uses historically aberrant theology, or are you saying that Evangelicalism in America uses historically aberrant theology? If you are saying the latter, it should not come as a surprise that many people in the forums would take direct offense to this statement, as they identify closely with Evangelicalism in America and at the same time would not consider their theology to be historically aberrant.
- I just read The Religion of Whiteness (which I had been calling American Secular Religion) which was incredibly sad because of the numbers. I have watched the Catholic Church in America become nearly apostate as ROW infiltrated not only the pews but the hierarchy. Anyone interested in discussing the book. Note it is not in Logos but has been suggested. I was most interested in the defensive mechanisms, especially willful ignorance, which I had observed but never quite figured out the mechanics for. As for the selective use of Scripture -- I suspect we have all seen a lot of that. The case studies of the Remnant were fascinating but not as poignant as the story an elegant black female professor told one Good Friday in a ecumenical service. The professor had been a member of the hosting mainline Protestant church for nearly 30 years. For most of that time, she met for Friday coffee before work with 5 white women whom she believed to be her good friends. Then came the Friday in which she proudly announced that her grandson had been accepted into Harvard Law School. The first reaction was a "friend" responding, "isn't it nice they have affirmative action". The professor was devastated because she was an academic, her husband was an academic, her grandson had graduated with honors from Stanford, and they still thought ...he's black, he must need affirmative action because no black gets admitted on merit.
- None of the reactions (Amen, Like, Praying, Agree, Praise the Lord!, Stand firm) are adequate for this. That is just sad.
- After ten years, I am trying again to see if we can get a serious book discussion going. The books I chose will lean towards apologetics, hermeneutics, and worship simply because those are the areas I can easily annotate. When (and if) it the discussion aspect is fruitful, others may have permission to add books of interest to them. For the first book I have chosen Vadney, Victor. The Arrogant Journey: Hermeneutics and Church History. Abilene, TX: Desert Willow Publishing, 2012. link The Arrogant Journey | Logos Bible Software This is chosen because most of the critique revolves around the author's presentation/argumentation rather than the hermeneutical principle itself. It is a good example of how I read critically. First, I read the text adding notes where I especially like how a concept is present, where I find the text confusing or incomplete, and where I believe the author to be factually incorrect or logically flawed. Then I go back through my notes, add information for clarity or history, consolidating notes where appropriate etc. I have shared the notebook TheArrogantJourney collaboratively. Please choose a different icon than I have used for notes you add and mark your additions to existing notes. I expect most back and forth will occur here rather than the notebook. The book I am working on annotating next is a bit more mainstream: Rhodes, Ron. Reasoning from the Scriptures with Catholics. Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2000.
- As to your first question, I do not see your presentation as a fair description of the situation. I think history plays an important role in the development of theological belief systems, and I think most Protestant scholars (of which I am NOT) would agree. I agree with the importance of the first three axioms, taking care to note that the first has priority. In other words, 2 and 3 are important, but only if they do not contradict 1. I know, I know, here's where it gets messy. Who determines if a contradiction exists? I may have to leave that as a rhetorical question for now.
- Basically, Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would preserve the Gospel message in the Church through the Church as a whole ... the whole Church can never go astray although parts of it may. The way this has played out historically is arguing to consensus in councils - regional and ecumenical. Interestingly, the Mennonite retain a version of this by arguing to consensus at the congregational level. In short, 1,2, & 3 can never disagree; when they appear to, it's time for a council to figure it out collectively. Where things fall apart is when individual judgment replaces collective judgment.
- I like the general idea of what this means, but I see it working out differently in this messy world. For example, consider indulgences. You have Peter in acts absolutely disgusted by the idea that the gifts of the Holy Spirit could be purchased by money, and then you have the church saying that forgiveness can be purchased by money. In my mind, this represents a contradiction centered around the value of money. I do see plenty of contradictions throughout history that I don't think only exist because of individual interpretation. I agree with your statement that Christ promised to preserve the Gospel message through the Church, but I think the majority can go astray (wide is the way that leads to destruction), and God chooses to use individuals like Martin Luther to preserve that message in the Church.
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