Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Why I'm catholic

Theology should be catholic, not in the Roman sense of according magisterial authority to the official tradition of the institutional church, but rather in recognizing what we might call the ministerial authority of the consensus tradition of the church as it is extended through time and space. Catholicity is the antidote to the tribalism and parochialism that infects Christian thinking that never leaves its ghetto. When each interpreter lives in his own house the result is a destructive factionalism ("I am of Piper"; "I am of Dobson"; "I am of McClaren").

Kevin Vanhoozer, "Lost in Interpretation? Truth, Scripture, and Hermeneutics" (Journal of The Evangelical Theological Society - March 2005)

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