MJ. Smith

in

Discussions Allowed: Book critiques

A year ago

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.