David Bentley Hart: belief

Transcript context

…What’s the most important thing you learned about the New Testament by translating it? That we’re fools if we think we understand it. But even though I knew this, more than ever, I came to appreciate the sheer diversity even in the first generation of Christians. This is not a unified text. It doesn’t reflect a unified theology. What it reflects is many different reactions to an event of extraordinary mystery and power for those who are writing about it. At least, especially when you’re dealing, say, with the Pauline literature, which is very early. In the gospels, two are drawn from earlier strata of Christian literature. Some of the later stuff, like Second Peter — there you’re already well into a period of hardening factions. I think the thing that I came away with is that every attempt to ground absolute doctrine, fixity of dogma in the text is an absurd project because it’s simply not there. It is not that kind of book. It is not an index of propositional content. What was the most difficult word of importance to translate?…

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