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WOUNDED PROPHET – A PORTRAIT OF HENRI J.M. NOUWEN
AUTHORTY AND THE GOSPEL – MORNING MUSING March 14, 2010
My purpose in writing these musings is to concentrate on issues that I think are relatively and sometimes, of absolute importance to our personal Christian lives and our churches. The matter “by what authority” demands attention. My chosen Bible translation this year is by Dr James Moffat, it was published in its final form about eighty years ago. One of the frustrating things about it, especially in the Old Testament, is his rearrangement of chapters, and the way he breaks them up. The question is; by what authority does he do this? We need to remember that he was a diligent scholar and an expert in the original languages. However, he espoused certain critical ideas (in vogue at that time) as to the sources of various parts of the Bible and these, having their origins in the minds of men were his ground of authority.
MORNING MUSING December 31, 2009. PROPHETIC VISION
The writing of this particular musing has involved a greater degree of struggle for me than usual. I began to write it on the last day of the first decade of the twenty-first century feeling that some reflections were in order. We need to view with God given prophetic vision, the events and changes taking place during the ten years we have just passed through.
MORNING MUSING December 21, 2009 MANS WAYS AND GODS WAYS
It’s Christmas time again and a childhood memory has been with me. Year by year I attended the Christmas carol service held in an enormous, (so it seemed to me), church building complete with high roof supported by lofty fluted columns. The line of a carol always drew my attention, it was, “how silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given.”
MORNING MUSING November 9,2009
This year I have been making my way through the Bible using the New Living Translation. It is what is known as a “dynamic equivalence” translation, this means that instead of the language scholars attempting a “word for word” translation they seek to gauge the meaning of the word, the phrase and the sentence and then express it in English. Obviously this implies a greater tendency to interpretation on the part of the translators can be a danger.