The beginning is always today.
Mary Wollstonecraft
I take issue with Wloostonecraft's quote. I'm sure it was meaningful in context. And it may have some value of itself. God's mercies are new every morning. But everything has a background, a history, and I don't think that we will ever succeed if we are divorced from the past. Every story starts in the middle of something.
2 comments:
Every story starts in the middle except that one that starts off with "In the beginning..."
It reminds me of the kind of naivety we see in Christian culture concerning the past. When we approach scripture, we only see God and our reading. We expect God to teach us and transform us from scripture alone.
But when we limit ourselves, we don't realize what has already been accomplished. For two thousand years, Church leaders and theologians have wrestled with many of the big questions that we struggle with today. We are simply repeating the debates and conversations that have occurred time and time again.
I think that a strong reading of past works is critical for a truly in depth understanding of scripture. Think about it... The Old Testament tells a tale of how God's truth was revealed over time to a people. We can see writings since Christ's time similarly. They may not be "canonical", but they highlight the struggle of God's family in the last two millenia... so we shouldn't leave it out and, for the sake of a less cliche phrase, we should not "reinvent the wheel".
Post a Comment