I recently came across John Goldingay’s explanation of “Devotional Interpretation” in a section of his larger entry on “Hermeneutics” in the Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch (InterVarsity Press: 2003).

Specifically focusing on the Pentateuch, Goldingay says devotional interpretation is interested in the significance of a text “for people’s personal lives, especially their personal relationship with God” (390). This is a big reason why so many with good intentions to read through the Bible make it through Genesis and Exodus but usually give up when they reach the middle of Leviticus!

What a devotional reading forgets is that the focus of much (most?) of the Bible is on the community – Israel in the OT and the church in the NT.  Or, as Goldingay puts it: “[T]he Pentateuch instinctively thinks corporately, as modern readers do not. It thus has the potential to rescue devotional reading from some of its individualism” (391).

Copernicus’ ideas about a heliocentric universe were not published until his death because he feared the scorn “to which he would expose himself on account of the novelty and incomprehensibility of his theses.” When On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres was finally published in 1543, demand was so low that an initial print run of 400 failed to sell out.

The first attacks on Copernicus’ theory came from Protestants. In 1549 Melanchthon, Luther’s principal lieutenant, wrote against Copernicus, pointing to the theory’s apparent conflict with the Bible. It was not until 1616 that the Roman Catholic church added the works of Copernicus to its list of Forbidden Books. Even this did not result in De revolutionibus being banned but only in it being withdrawn from circulation until the theory’s status as a hypothesis was clarified (Wikapedia: De revolutionibus orbium coelestium).

Since Copernicus wasn’t famous when he died, his grave in Frombork Cathedral was unmarked. It wasn’t until 2005 that archaeologists were confident that they had located his remains (BBC: Polish tests ‘confirm Copernicus’).

Bottom line: It was Copernicus’ ideas that were rejected and Copernicus himself was never condemned or declared to be a heretic by the Roman Catholic Church before or after his death.

Wikapedia: Nicolaus Copernicus

Eschatology is not about the destruction of the earth but about its transfiguration, not about the end of the world but about the end of evil, injustice, violence – and imperialism. I think of the eschaton as the Great Divine Clean-Up of the World. It is clear, I hope, that the kingdom of God is 100 percent political and 100 percent religious all together and inextricably intertwined at the same time. It is ultimately about who owns this world and how, therefore, it should be run (p. 109).

In that regard, the video below is Dr. Joel Hunter’s musings on the question as to why social justice has become such a hot topic among Christians. Hunter, Senior Pastor of Northland Church in Orlando, Florida, has been named by Grist Magazine as one of the top 15 religious environmental leaders in the world, along with the Pope and the Dali Lama.

Catalyst Voices – Dr. Joel Hunter, “Social Justice” from Catalyst on Vimeo.