Sun. Nov. 25 (Charlie Paris)

Charlie Paris began with a Deuteronomic history to illustrate the work of the Trinity of God in the history of salvation. He emphasized the Torah had two underlying themes in its books - that the all-powerful God intervenes in human affairs, and a record of the “lived experience” of a nation coming to an understanding of its role in the world. One must remember that the history that we read today in the Bible was first a lived experience - an oral tradition, and only later a historico-religious text. Charlie then moved to the New Testament and its oral tradition of the fulfillment of Jewish promise in the itinerant preacher that became our Christ. As with the Torah, after Jesus death, people first lived the experience of his resurrection and the creation of the early church, and only later did they begin to write down their oral traditions. As the writing occurred, so did the divergence of these believing Jews into today’s separation between Jews and Christians. But the NT is not a 1st century history book and it would be a mistake to look at it that way. It is the story of faith seeking understanding. Fron the early church fathers and mothers to modern theologians, people of faith are to bring all their intellect to bear upon the issue of faith in the triune God, recognizing that our doubts may not be assuaged, that all the Creeds in the world, though well-intentioned in delineating our core beliefs, may not completely bless us with understanding. We are to seek knowledge of God wherever we find it, and view it through the lens of our lived experience. [AP] Listen to the sermon audio MP3 recording from Sunday Nov. 25th using your browser's preferred media player.