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Comment on(,) Adventism

Whew! Finally. The. Semester. Is. Over.
Work.
Research papers.
M. A. thesis.
Doctoral apps.
Blogs.
A short film.
Holiday parties.
All done.  Now I am going to go get this holiday shopping done, sit
down to good meals with relatives and settle by the fireplace with
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel.
Props to the folks holding forth on the Florida conference policy on
who gets to teach a pastor’s children and the wider issues of Adventist
education. Also, origins is always a hot issue with
Adventists due, in part, to the common understanding that each
Adventist doctrine is linked and equally authoritative. On this, I’d
like to point your attention to Emyth’s comment on how Comp. Lit and
Literary Criticism
shift the debate between literal readings of
scripture and the scientific method. The reason that it is essential to
understand how texts and interpretations function is because hermeneutics helps
to move the conversation from one of fear over losing belief to one of
understanding how truth emerges within communities. If you’ve read the excerpt from Bull and Lockhart’s
2nd.
edition of Seeking a Sanctuary: Seventh-day Adventism and the American Dream in the current Spectrum, you’ll see that
they get this emerging critical tool for Adventist understandings of our
history, our hermeneutical methods and our mission. As more and more
Adventists come to see our shared beliefs, not as testing truths that
conform to metaphysical reality, but rather as community-formed habits
for action, the binary collapses between those who trust more in
literal science or scripture and instead grows beyond into a fearless
engagement with doctrine not as explanation for phenomena, but as
shared ethos. We move from proof texts to ethics, we shift from
prophecy for proof to prophetic politics. Thus, we don’t need a literal
creation to prove the Sabbath, we keep the Sabbath to understand what
being created means – as a community and as an individual.
 
 
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