Tempocentrism refers to thinking one's own generation is always right and understands God better than past generations. Some theologians claim Paul did not fully understand the Gospel, but that modern scholars do. However, these theologians have not experienced the hardships that figures like Paul endured. Cultural biases also influence biblical interpretation - pre-World War II German theologians decided they could determine the true meaning of the Gospel based on recent advances, similar to how some Germans decided on the fate of Jews and others. The Bible says Jesus came at the right time, and more sophistication or education was not needed for his arrival.
Tempocentrism refers to thinking one's own generation is always right and understands God better than past generations. Some theologians claim Paul did not fully understand the Gospel, but that modern scholars do. However, these theologians have not experienced the hardships that figures like Paul endured. Cultural biases also influence biblical interpretation - pre-World War II German theologians decided they could determine the true meaning of the Gospel based on recent advances, similar to how some Germans decided on the fate of Jews and others. The Bible says Jesus came at the right time, and more sophistication or education was not needed for his arrival.
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Tempocentrism refers to thinking one's own generation is always right and understands God better than past generations. Some theologians claim Paul did not fully understand the Gospel, but that modern scholars do. However, these theologians have not experienced the hardships that figures like Paul endured. Cultural biases also influence biblical interpretation - pre-World War II German theologians decided they could determine the true meaning of the Gospel based on recent advances, similar to how some Germans decided on the fate of Jews and others. The Bible says Jesus came at the right time, and more sophistication or education was not needed for his arrival.
Copyright:
Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
Posted in Common Heresies | Thursday, November 18th, 2004 | No Comments
Trackback Tempocentrism (thinking our own generation is always right) causes some of the same problems as ethnocentrism. It makes the mistake of assuming that Bible teachers know more about God than Bible characters. Really. There are teachers who claim that Paul just didnt get it, but that we know better now. All this without the inconvenience of being tested in Arabia, stoned, shipwrecked, flogged, or visited by the presence of Jesus.
Even our approach to interpreting the Bible is colored by our time period. Before World War II, German-speaking theologians decided that recent advances in science and scholarship qualified them to finally decide what the Gospel really meant. (As I recall, other German-speaking people in that same time period decided their intellectual status qualified them to make a few decisions about the final fate of the Jews, Gypsies and Slavs). The flaming spiritual experiences of earlier Christians was as unreal to them as the spiritual experiences of underground Christians are to us. Talk about naivete. To slightly paraphrase Sheldon Vanauken, these theologians guiding principle was the mind of the infinite God is not unlike that of a German theologian. The Bible says Jesus came in the fullness of time (Galatians 4:4). The world didnt need to become any more sophisticated, any more educated, to become the right place for the Messiah to be born.
Cultural universal A cultural universal (also called an anthropological universal or human universal), as discussed by George Murdock, Claude Lvi-Strauss, Donald Brown and others, is an element, pattern, trait, or institution that is common to all human cultures worldwide. Taken together, the whole body of cultural universals is known as the human condition. Evolutionary psychologists hold that behaviors or traits that occur universally in all cultures are good candidates for evolutionary adaptations. [1] Some anthropological and sociological theorists that take a cultural relativist perspective may deny the existence of cultural universals: the extent to which these universals are "cultural" in the narrow sense, or in fact biologically inherited behavior is an issue in the "nature versus nurture" controversy.
Idloculture Idloculture ls deflned us u system of knowledge, bellefs, behuvlors, und customs shured by members of un lnteructlng group to whlch members cun refer und employ us the busls of further lnteructlon ( Flne 1979 : 734). Termed by Gury Alun Flne, ldloculture respeclfles the content of culture by focuslng on the level of smull groups und the soclul lnteructlons thereln. Developed before the soclology of culture gulned populurlty ln the dlsclpllne und ut u tlme ln whlch mucro, structurul, polltlcul, und economlc upprouches were domlnunt und culture wus seen us u vugue, umorphous, fructured, lndescrlbuble mlst ( Flne 1979 : 733), ldloculture mukes the culture concept useful by focuslng on emplrlcully observuble group lnteructlons us the locus of culturul creutlon. To reground culture ln group lnteructlons, Flne druws from the symbollc lnteructlonlst trudltlon und reseurch on group dynumlcs. Whlle the ldloculture concept respeclfles culture ut the group level, lt ulso ldentlfles the process through whlch elements become u purt of un ldloculture. To become u purt of un ldloculture, un ltem must be Known, Useuble, Functlonul, Approprlute, und Trlggered (KUFAT). An ltem must be u purt of u known pool of buckground lnformutlon. If the ltem ls not known by ut leust two group members, lt cunnot become u stuble busls of ongolng lnteructlon.