Hermeneutics

This is the final installment of my Advanced Workshop essay on the place of Joshua and the conquest narratives in a Christian faith.

Now, after completing the suspicion and the retrieval of Joshua, I offer some thoughts on the ethical dimension of Ricoeur's hermeneutic, before concluding the essay.

So now that you've got the essay in it's entirety, what do you make of this exercise with Joshua? Does this help in reading Joshua within a Christian faith? Do you think this is a valid reading? Do you have any other suggestions or reflections?

Please leave your comments. This is a very important issue and it would be good to keep some discussion going on the questions raised.

Here's the next installment of my Advanced Workshop essay on the place of Joshua and the conquest narratives in a Christian faith.

Today I conclude the retrieval process, and propose ways in which Joshua itself might actually be appropriated as Christian scripture.

I will be interested to see what you make of this retrieval, and whether anyone has any alternative suggestions for appropriating Joshua using Ricoeur's hermeneutics.

Today is another installment of my Advanced Workshop essay on the place of Joshua and the conquest narratives in a Christian faith.

So far we have looked through the suspicions of Joshua from the point of view offered by Ricoeur's hermeneutics of suspicion, examining the way symbolism is used in the text to offer us a world view. We've also critiqued the text by exposing the text as an instrument of power and domination, and taken to task the ideology that the text proposes.

Today we begin on the track of retrieval, using the full power of Ricoeur's hermeneutics to look at ways of progressing from the first naïvety through the suspicions and beyond into the possibilities of retrieving the text and discovering a second naïvety.

I hope you find this discussion helpful, stimulating and enjoyable. Ricoeur is crucial for any contemporary discussion of hermeneutics, for engaging with the Bible, and for thinking about how to retain faith even though everything one believes in is questionable.

Please leave your comments and reflections.

Today is the next episode of my essay on appropriating Joshua and the conquest narratives as Christian scripture.

This section completes the process of suspicion by drawing on socio-critical reflections and ideological criticisms of the text. In doing so, we examine more fully the difficulties with living with Joshua as a part of the Christian Scriptures.

Comments and thoughts are most welcome.

This is the third installment of my Advanced Workshop essay on the dichotomy between Joshua and Jesus, conquest of enemies and love for enemies.

Today's excerpt covers Ricoeur's hermeneutic of suspicion, examining the methodology and Ricouer's use of Freud, Nietzsche and Marx to examine not the history as event but history as narrated and decipher the world evoked by the work. I also look to apply this specifically to the text at hand, the conquest narratives of Joshua.

You may like to remind yourself of the title and introduction to this essay. Comments please!

Today is the first day of my Advanced Workshop essay on appropriating the conquest narratives of Joshua as Christian scripture. As with the essay on the question of the ecological bankruptcy of Christianity, I'm going to publish the essay in episodes, so today is the introduction to the essay.

The introduction sets out the challenge of reconciling Joshua with Jesus, and indicates the structure of the essay, so you should be able to see what will be published over the next few days.

As always, comments and reflections are very welcome.

Ok, after leaving the poll open for several days now it seems that the next essay should be the one on reading the Joshua conquest narratives as Christian scripture.

The more I've talked to friends about doing this essay, the more I've discovered that people find Joshua a real sticking point with Christianity. How can a God of love apparently order genocide? How is it possible to have a cosmic God who sends the rain on the 'good' and the 'bad' who simultaneously appears to discriminate on the basis of race? How is it possible to have your ultimate destiny determined by the accident of your birth?

Christianity is stuck with the conquest narratives in Joshua as part of their Holy Scripture. So, are there any ways to read Joshua as 'Christian scripture' in a way that doesn't do a disservice to the text, that recognises the violence in the narrative, but still maintains 'Christian' perspective (however that might be defined!)?

Well, I believe there are, though it's not easy, especially if, like me, you've been steeped in an Evangalical worldview for much of your life. There is much to question and many presumptions to examine and often get rid of in order to work with the narrative.

This Advanced Workshop essay required me to use specifically the hermeneutical tools of Paul Ricoeur, often referred to as the hermeneutics of suspicion and retrieval. The essay title is...

First installment of my essay tomorrow.

Only just noticed this, but on the 27 February the Board of the UK Evangelical Alliance issued a statement on the Atonement. The statement was issued as a subsequence of the joint Evangelical Alliance/London School of Theology Symposium on the Atonement held at the London School of Theology from 6-8 July 2005. The symposium was called as a result of the furore that surrounded the publishing of The Lost Message of Jesus by Steve Chalke and Alan Mann.

The EA Board's statment explicitly asserts that penal substitution is affirmed in the EA Basis of Faith and requires that members of the Alliance 'should assent to the Basis of Faith annually, and should do so with integrity.'

Such a draconian demand may cause some current members of the Alliance with concerns about the centrality and significance of penal substitution to question whether they can indeed assent to the Basis of Faith.

We've got our next table talk tonight for the community here in Birmingham. 16 or 17 of us are going to be getting together over some delicious Indian food and plenty of fine wine to thrash out the vexed question, what is truth?

Here's the questions that we're going to use as the basis for our discussion, for what they're worth...

• Is there any form of objective truth out there?
• What is the difference between ‘absolute’ and ‘objective’, between ‘subjective’ and ‘relative’?
• What, if any, is the biblical understanding of and approach to truth?
• What is the nature of the impact of our context on the way we perceive the world?
• How is an ‘interpretive community’ involved in forming an understanding of truth and in responding to the consequences of that understanding?
• What is truth?

Peace church is a way of thinking and understanding; it is a particular focus and response to being a Christian community of faith. It is built upon the complete centrality of Jesus as the incarnation of God’s character and thus the source of all true values.

One of the most significant themes in the Bible is encapsulated in a simple Hebrew word: Shalom.