https://wthrockmorton.com/2011/10/03/american-family-association-takes-aim-at-critic-of-the-response/ A [retired] college psychology professor's observations about public policy, mental health, sexual identity, and religious issues Tue, 04 Oct 2011 23:40:53 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.3 https://wthrockmorton.com/2011/10/03/american-family-association-takes-aim-at-critic-of-the-response/#comment-53304 Tue, 04 Oct 2011 23:40:53 +0000 http://wthrockmorton.com/?p=10347#comment-53304 Interesting that Howse should talk of heresy. I think the danger of heresy is often underestimated: ‘getting God wrong’ leads to all kinds of distortions in all fields of life.
Of course, we all ‘get God wrong’; such is part and parcel of the human condition. What so often marks out a heretic (as opposed to someone who ‘gets things wrong’) is the refusal to recognize human limitations when it comes to ‘understanding God and his ways’. It is perhaps the very certainty of ‘christian’ fundamentalism that is its theological and moral undoing.
The ‘dominionist’ tendency is based on an incomplete, even incorrect, understanding of God. One of the principal functions of the Old Testament (so beloved by dominionists) is to show us how the human understanding of God is in constant need of growth and refinement (early O.T. ideas of God are actually very ‘tribal’ and ‘all-too-human’ when one thinks about it, and those very same ideas were so often the object of strident criticism by the Prophets).

]]> https://wthrockmorton.com/2011/10/03/american-family-association-takes-aim-at-critic-of-the-response/#comment-78906 Tue, 04 Oct 2011 19:40:53 +0000 http://wthrockmorton.com/?p=10347#comment-78906 Interesting that Howse should talk of heresy. I think the danger of heresy is often underestimated: ‘getting God wrong’ leads to all kinds of distortions in all fields of life.
Of course, we all ‘get God wrong’; such is part and parcel of the human condition. What so often marks out a heretic (as opposed to someone who ‘gets things wrong’) is the refusal to recognize human limitations when it comes to ‘understanding God and his ways’. It is perhaps the very certainty of ‘christian’ fundamentalism that is its theological and moral undoing.
The ‘dominionist’ tendency is based on an incomplete, even incorrect, understanding of God. One of the principal functions of the Old Testament (so beloved by dominionists) is to show us how the human understanding of God is in constant need of growth and refinement (early O.T. ideas of God are actually very ‘tribal’ and ‘all-too-human’ when one thinks about it, and those very same ideas were so often the object of strident criticism by the Prophets).

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