Gregory A. Boyd (1) (1957–)

信仰是怎麼一回事？當一個人排斥基督信仰時，心裡的癥結是什麼？
本書的作者是一對父子。爸爸對信仰抱持的態度是死硬不信，兒子卻是個「護教學」的博士教授。兒子為了和老爸談及信仰真諦，面談溝通無效的情況下，採取了信件溝通的方式，本書就是父子在三年內往返的三十封信。 爸爸在每封信中都毫不留情的提出對基督信仰的犀利質疑，兒子也針對問題予以說明。問題有時尖銳，有時感性，兒子的回答都至情至性，婉轉有條理，令讀者讀來有一份過癮的感覺。 此外，讀者隨著他們父子一起探索信仰真意的當兒，也會禁不住沉浸在濃郁的父子之情中，是一本感性與理性交織而成的書。 對渴求了解人生信仰的朋友而言，這本書值得一讀。… (mehr)

I was finally able to finish this 2 volume time! Boyd argues for a compelling hermeneutic that allows Scripture to be read without God being directly behind violent passages. In brief, since God is fully revealed in Jesus on the cross, any passage that presents God as other than having this self-giving character must be reinterpreted. He applies this interpretive lens to multiple stories in the OT (and even some in the NT).

Here are his 4 principles:

1) Since God is fully revealed in Jesus on the cross, any act attributed to God that doesn't match this character is an accomodation. God let's himself be misrepresented (as he does on the cross too).

2) Judgment in the Bible is God withdrawing his protection and letting sin reap its own consequences.

3) We are in the middle of a cosmic conflict, and there are spiritual beings and forces that oppose God and work to harm people.

4) God gives gifts/abilities that agents can use semiautonomously , meaning that humans can misuse supernatural gifts (akin to misusing our natural gifts/abilities).

Overall, while I'm still working some of this through, I find Boyd's case compelling. I also find that he is able to retain the authority of Scripture, while offering defensible interpretations of difficult passages.… (mehr)

There were lines in this book that were impactful, but it was also repetitive. I loved the reference to Our Town and the idea of praying with open hands, palm up to stay present in the moment.

“I realized that my trivial, self-centered mental chatter about the past and future — like a dark cloud block in the sun — had kept me from seeing the glory of God that surrounded me every second of every day.”

“The important question, therefore, it’s not what you believe. The important question is what you believe to do, moment-by-moment, on the basis of what you believe.”

“You may be so accustomed to living in the past and future that you find it difficult to notice how much of your thought-life is spent there. You’ll probably find that most of your past and future oriented thoughts revolve around you and are centered on your attempts to feel worthwhile and significant. When we live perpetually hungry in the flesh, we spend a great deal of our thought-life savoring past experiences or possible future experiences that make us feel worthwhile and significant.”

“God’s love compels us to do the things Jesus did and live out the things Jesus taught. Instead of merely learning about the Kingdom, we begin to sacrifice our time, energy, and money to feed the hungry, house the homeless, welcome outcasts, and befriend prisoners.”… (mehr)

This is such a frustrating book. On the one hand, Boyd does an excellent job of laying out how violent events in the Old Testament often have other, underlying, implicit things going on which are not at first obvious. On the other hand, Boyd delves into some straight universalism and white-washing of the Old Testament portrayals of God. That said, his chapters where he interprets stores like the Red Sea Crossing and Elisha summoning bears to kill a bunch of kids are top-tier in their approach to the scripture from a culturally-contextual point of view. The simple fact of the matter is that the Old Testament was written in the context of other Ancient Near-Eastern myths and religions, and it often interacts with those myths and religions in interesting and non-obvious ways. Today we have so sanitized and westernized the Bible that we miss half of the cultural subtext and therefore grossly misrepresent what it says.

Any book, when separated from its cultural context, may be made to say whatever you want. Furthermore, any book, when properly place into its cultural context, may not always say what you expect or think it should.

Boyd attempts to put the Bible in its context, but then chooses his own feelings over the more obvious answers. And for a book which aims to interpret all Biblical violence in light of Christ on the cross, it is very odd and annoying to me that Boyd never deals with Jesus cleansing the temple or the prophecies of his return where he slaughters armies. It's a case-in-point example of cherry picking and hoping the audience doesn't think about those stories because they're inconvenient to deal with.

Was Jesus pacifistic? Yes. Would Christians today do well to be more pacifistic and like Jesus? Absolutely. Does Boyd make a good argument for God's preference for pacifism? I think so. But when the pacifistic character of the sacrificial Christ is our interpretive lens (and it's a good one, to be sure) for all scripture which seems to contradict this character, what do we when the sacrificial Christ himself acts in violence? Reading this book will not answer this question because Boyd never deals with it.

Also, Boyd is so wishy-washy on whether or not scripture is inspired as to cause eye-rolling. How can the scripture be both inspired and (in places) inaccurate? But Boyd is certain this is the case, since anytime violence is attributed to God it is the mistake of the author (based on their worldview). So was the author inspired or mistaken? Can they be both? How does that work? If the author was wrong about this (pretty fundamental) understanding of God's character, then what else might they be wrong about? Boyd never addresses this (and, to be fair, such is outside the scope of his book), but it leaves a gaping hole in his book that is otherwise well researched, sourced, and (at times) even well reasoned.

As an apologetic text, this book is somewhat successful (only somewhat). It also opens the gate to a better cultural understanding of the Bible, which is highly helpful, even if a significant portion of what Boyd writes is only half-baked or entirely unbaked altogether. But it is so fundamentally uneven and annoying that I can in no way recommend it as anything except a bibliography of better books and papers on the same subject matter.… (mehr)