Towards a New Theology Part ONE of SIX

Towards a New Theology   Part ONE

Each New Year, our minds generally drift towards starting things new.  We make New Year’s resolutions, we endeavour to see things from a new light, we start projects etc.  But what about looking at our faith in a new light?  What about re-examining our scriptures from a new light?  I am among those people who have gone through various experiences in my life which has caused me to step back and re-examine my faith and the scriptures on which it is based.  I have looked at scripture from a new light.  For me, it has revolutionised my faith, and my relationship with my God.  It has caused me to see creation, and all that it is in it, in a new light.  It has caused me to read the Bible in a new light, making it come alive to me in a way I never thought possible, but at the same time, causing me to question so much of traditional Theology.

As a young person and then as a teenager I never doubted the interpretations I was taught about scripture in Sunday School, Junior Soldiers, and Corps Cadets.  Sure I had questions, but I would generally dismiss them as proof of the mystery of God.  Then later as a young Cadet in The School For Officer Training in Bexley North, Sydney, I was taught that we must put things into context.  Find the context for what I read, and place it in that context.

The more I studied, the more I began to realise that much of traditional Theology comes from a perspective of assuming the Bible was written in a vacuum, and then reading the Bible in that same vacuum.  Worse still, we interpose our influences onto what we are reading, believing it was specifically written for us and us alone.  In the Social Sciences, we refer to that as ‘Death of the Author’.  If we assume that God is the Author (or even the inspiration) of the Bible, then in reading the Bible in a vacuum, we have killed God, and thereby killed our faith and our religion.

Part ONE of SIX

Graeme Edward Randall
Former Officer
Australia East
Residing in London UK