Meet Erik DiVietro, aka 'That Liberal'
My name is Erik DiVietro. I am the pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Merrimack, New Hampshire – a congregation formed from two congregations in 2010. I have been a senior pastor since 2004.
My testimony is brief and simple. I was raised in the church, professed Christ at an early age and then turned on him because I equated him with the mess I observed in Christianity. During college, I yielded to Christ and turned back to him. To this day, I consider myself an atheist who cannot get past Jesus. If it were not for Jesus being the extraordinary God-man of the Gospel and the testimony of His Spirit through the written Word, I would have no problem rejecting the Christian faith.
Because of Jesus, I embrace the fundamentals of the faith – that he is the Living Word and that the Written Word was inspired to bear witness of Him. Jesus is everything, and to me that is not just a cliche.
I graduated with honors from Boston Baptist College in 1998 and received a Master of Arts with high honors from Masters’ International School of Divinity in 2006.
My father is the somewhat prominent Textus Receptus scholar Kirk DiVietro who is responsible for the Logos Bible Software digital editions of both the Stephanus 1550 and Scrivener 1894. He is also a permanent member of the Dean Burgon Society and is actually hosting the 2010 DBS meeting.
I was raised in the King James Only culture. While I have tremendous respect for my father and his exceptionally well-reasoned positions, I found that most KJVO people do not approach their position with anything even approaching objectivity. Sadly, many who claimed to be men of God would use misinformation, incomplete statements and revisionist history to support their position.
I consider myself a post-denominationalist. I believe that the church needs to embrace its diversity rather than to fight over who is right and wrong. While affirming the basic fundamentals, I believe that it is necessary for the church to step away from their polemics and semantics and reframe the fundamentals in a broader context.
My primary areas of writing are in history and language. I do not consider myself a textual scholar but I do like to think that I have a pretty good grasp on the sweep of history and the matrices of the Church in its development. Although I focus mostly on ancient history, I have spent a lot of time recently studying the Middle Ages and the Church’s development there in an attempt to understand the matrix from which modern western Christianity has emerged.
My style of writing is often a broad blend of different disciplines. We like to say that I paint with a broad brush and then sort the details out later. I tend to ‘think grey’ – in other words, to challenge presuppositions at the core. This is sometimes irritating to others; and I apologize in advance.
There are several words I use quite often:
- MATRIX – this is the ‘womb’ in which an event or idea occurs. It involves culture, language, world view and a multitude of other influences. There are three broad matrices through which the church has filtered – the ancient, the medieval and the modern. Each taints our perspective, so I have a tendency to highlight the matrix from which certain thinking emerges.
- SEMIOTIC – this the study of the meaning of words (semantics is the study of the USE of words). When you’re dealing with a subject like the King James Bible, you are often crossing semiotic matrices and the discussions get very messy.
- MYOPOGESIS – interpretation of the Scripture without consideration of the matrix you are in and the matrix it was written in
- HISTORIOGRAPHIC – this is the study of the writing of history. For example, Eusebius of Caesarea wrote for Constantine’s court. Josephus wrote for Vespasian’s court. This influences their perspective and the way they wrote their histories.
I’ve very glad to participate in the KJVODEBATE blog, and I hope to be a help to everyone who visits here.
Welcome aboard, Erik.
[...] through Bishop Wright’s newest book. Erik introduces himself to the former KJVO community. Very surprising. Dr. Mariottini has a post which you should read today, especially considering today. Fr. Stephen [...]
I’m likewise glad, Erik. You will stretch our horizons which is always a good thing.
Oh, I should mention something about my position on the English translation.
I have a very high reverence for the KJV, although I wish it had a better name because it was neither King James’ Bible nor was it Authorized in the sense that most people use the term.
The KJV was the last translation of the Greek and Hebrew which forced the English language to conform to the text rather than trying to get the text to conform to the English language. In that sense it has never been surpassed.
I generally use the English Standard Version 2007 when reading in English although our church has the New International Version (not even on my top 10) in the pews, so I preach from it. I think the ESV is the closes thing to a successor of the KJV that has been done. It is far from perfect (and I would argue the KJV was also far from perfect) but it maintains the beauty of the language while striking a readability balance.
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