Well. I suppose the switch to WordPress has had the unfortunate effect of consigning all the past comments to the blog to the big bit bucket in the sky. This is particularly unfortunate as I have, on occasion, posted in reply to these comments. Still, I think I have generally quoted these comments when doing so, which means these posts shouldn’t be rendered completely unintelligible. Or, they’ll not become even more unintelligible than they were before anyway.
Apart from this (minor) bother I think I am rather happy with WordPress, kudos to Donncha for the effort he has expended in getting it running. The change of scenery has reminded me that I should make use of this more often. Keep vigil, my loyal legions of fans, for I shall return. with posts aplenty in my wake.
Update: Well. It seems that the comments have all reappeared. I can only assume I have the ever-helpful Donncha to thank for this.
[...] I’ve had great fun working out the last few paragraphs but now I have to start dialoguing with that Corkonian clown Bob down at Yarr!. Bob’s problem is that he is influenced by a writer and artist called Francis Schaeffer who made a big impact in American Evangelical Christianity. Schaeffer didn’t like Barth and one of the big reasons is because Barth did not believe the Bible is inerrant. One shouldn’t be surprised nor dismayed that there are so many tiny debates raging in theology. Theologians did give rise to the idiom about how many angels can dance on a pinhead after all. What should surprise and dismay you is how fiercely these debates can rage. Inerrancy is one of the fierce debates. Inerrantists believe that the Bible is without error. The primary problem with this, for me, is that the Bible is read by people who are filled with errors. (We could have a theological in-joke here with an alternative to the “tree falls in a forest and no one hears it” riddle with “a book without error that is never read is…”) The Bible doesn’t come in the form of a manual or a FAQ or a catechism. It is almost entirely narrative and so you can only get the right answers by asking the right questions. Inerrancy seems to me to be an irrelevant battlefield destined for pitiful failure or at best, phyrric victory. [...]
[...] Don’t ever leave me free to spend a few hours browsing the web with no responsibilities. Word vomits like this are the inevitable result. In the previous entry I wrote about orthodoxy, inspired by the Corkonian clown Bob. He had written about Karl Barth. To understand Barth’s impact on the Christian world, we have to tell a story. [...]