This is the continuation of a dialog between "OnceAWesleyan" and me under the comment section of the previous post.
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Question: Where does the biblical worldview come from?
OAW: The mind of God, by the procession of the Holy Spirt as He runs along the tracks of Scripture. It's called conversion and ongoing sanctification. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. Be not conformed to this World but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. Conversion and then progressive sanctification is what changes our Worldview so that our interpretations increasingly reflect the mind of God.The existence of the God of the Bible and the verity of His Word thus becomes the axiomatic presupposition upon which our Worldview rests. God is the necessary pre-condition for intelligability but it is a pre-condition that only God can give in conversion.
ME: It gives me no end of joy to see a Calvinist point to "experience" as the authenticator of the right presuppositions with which to approach the Bible :-)
I accept the strong possibility that there are clear presuppositional leanings a person will likely have after conversion that they might not have had prior to conversion. But I have two or three serious questions (and here I will not say I represent my tradition):
1. Since among those I would consider genuinely converted we find countless different understandings of the Bible, we are forced to a) deny most of them a true conversion or b) consider the conversion presuppositions very broad indeed.
2. I think I can follow the reasoning of the Reformed epistemologists. They seem to be using the same sort of "microreason" that people use every day in all sorts of different contexts, from blog discussions to scientific laboratories to choosing jello. These are rules of logic like a=a, if a=b and b=c then a=c, and so forth. The difference seems to be in the presuppositions, what possibilities are allowed (e.g., are miracles possible? can someone rise from the dead?).
3. There are points where this microreason and experience seem overpowering over the most faith-filled unless they are highly unstable mentally. So if I believed God was telling me that I had to believe that my car was purple to be saved, could I? If I tried would I not find myself on a path to lose my faith?
My point is that there is some level on which the reasoning of the converted and the reasoning of the unconverted seems to be the same basic micro-reason and experiential reasoning. I can account for Reformed epistemology simply by saying the presuppositions are different without saying the reasoning is different.
Wesley, who for good or ill was at least in part a child of the Enlightenment, saw this basic ability to reason as a product of God's prevenient grace. God has partially fired up the engines of all humanity's fallen natural image so that we can micro-reason correctly.
Now I'm sounding very modernist here, and there are a number of "after-modern" footnotes I think, but this line of thought seems to "work."
OAW: In the end, there are only two Worldviews.
ME: What do these each look like specifically?
Question: What is the source of this authoritative worldview?
OAW: The B-I-B-L-E Yes, that's the book for me.I stand alone on the Word of God.The B-I-B-L-E
ME: My problem is that my micro-reason has looked into the ancient context of the Bible and noticed a few things about the thoughts in the Bible. I see that Paul says he was taken up into the third heaven. I notice that the Testament of Levi pictures three heavens. I see that God separates waters in Genesis and puts the stars in between the waters. I see that the Enuma Elish has a creator God separating waters at the beginning of creation. I see Paul saying that husbands are the heads of their wives and then notice that Aristotle said the same thing a few hundred years before.
In short, I notice that the individual biblical writings seem to be in a dialog with their own worlds, that they share many worldview elements with their individual worlds. My micro-reason pushes me to wonder whether I do the same thing and often read these words quite differently than the original audiences did.
Take the vapor canopy theory of scientific creationists. A "literal" reading of Genesis places the stars between the waters above and the waters beneath. Is not then the vapor canopy reading an example of a modern scientific worldview directing the line of thought of a fundamentalist?
Question: Are you really going to suggest that in coming to Scripture you do so without biases that affect your conclusions on what counts for evidence?
ME: No, of course I have biases too. I advocate a "faith seeking understanding" model. But I would go insane if I had to continue to hold to various beliefs in the face of overwhelming "naughty data" that didn't fit it. It won't help my PR to mention Bultmann at this point, but there seems to be some truth (to put it in my words) to the idea that we can't rationally use cell phones, lap tops, and believe the Space Shuttle really flies and then arbitrarily reject the micro-reason that has brought these things in some other area of our thinking.
In these thoughts I only speak for myself, not for the Wesleyan Arminian tradition. Wesley's Enlightenment element is probably fair game for inner critique, even if I personally like it.
P.S. Quite funny isn't it, the Wesleyan argument for cognitive integrity, the Reformed person arguing for the importance of an experiential basis...
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7 comments:
I think it's funny how you sometimes jump right into a post without any introduction of what you're doing . . .
. . . but overall nice discussion.
I would still like to know how you answer the question (with regard to hermeneutics): If you can "explain away" a passage of scripture by relegating its relevance to ancient worldviews, then how do you know you are "explaining too much away"?
Perhaps this is my own question. It is somewhat based on a slippery-slope fallacy, and is especially curious as regards a contemporary interpretation of the Christian's understanding of things like "wives, submit to your husbands."
Do you retort with something like: "Why don't we all reintroduce the practice of the holy kiss? or baptism in the name of 'Jesus only'? vel cetera?"
The fundamentalist goes nuts, the premodern listens carefully, and the modern and his descendants claim to 'listen insightfully' (or do they explain away?).
Thanks,
This is helpful. Please continue to post on this subject
Scott, I added an intro.
The expression "explain away" is of course loaded, even though I understand what it is getting at. But it's connotations are of someone trying to get out of following the Bible. To me this is a question of discerning God's will correctly. The Pharisees might have accused Jesus of trying to explain away the sabbath laws or Paul as explaining away the covenant rules on circumcision.
I think the situation is actually the other way around. Almost every word of the Bible (allowing some slack for prophecy) is enculturated (incarnated) in the sense that it made sense against the ancient worldviews of its first audiences. But "cultural" in my sense here need not be pitted against "timeless" in that some aspects of all cultures are common. So the fact that Aristotle and Paul agree on husband headship doesn't necessarily mean that this is not God's desire for all times and places. Maybe Aristotle had it right.
But ultimately I think the "consensus of the church" has, even for orthodox Protestants who deny it) and always is the true arbiter of Christian understanding of the Bible. The NT alone was not able to arbitrate between Athanasius and Arius.
My (well known) positions...
OAW, great response. Do you mind if I put it up as the main post tomorrow morning. It is extensive enough to warrant its own full identity. I'll leave this one up for today for others to post. Then tomorrow you can be the main show. Then on Monday I'll post a response to your post.
Does that work?
To discuss this side point:
OAW: "Then you are wrong for not being either Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic, and the Reformation was wrong because it broke from the consensus of the Church and the Wesleyans were wrong when they broke away from the Anglicans, and what's more if the Church ever decides that Arius was right you'll be wrong for disagreeing with that if you do."
ME: But I would not identify either the Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholics as constituting the consensus of the church--this is the universal, "invisible" church to which I refer. And I believe the original meaning of Scripture stands as an important potential corrective to points where the collective church is moving in tangential and unprofitable directions (thus the Protestant Reformation was an important corrective many of whose main points even Roman Catholics have acknowledged over time).
You do raise the key issues in my hermeneutic--when do we know that a consensus has arrived on any issue? Are there periods of time when the consensus is wrong (like on the necessity for bishops to be celibate at AD1000).
OAW: "Surely the Church has a ministerial role in interpreting God's word but you are suggesting that the role should be magisterial. This is most un-protestant."
OAW:I am not suggesting that any visible church body has a magisterial authority over the meaning of Scripture (thus I am not Roman Catholic). I am suggesting that verses like Colossians 1:15, especially in the light of Jewish background, probably know nothing of distinctions like that Christ was "begotten, not made" or "eternally begotten of the Father." In fact the church of the fourth century moved away from the "Middle Platonic" logos approach to Christology (as John 1 may generally presuppose) in part because it played too easily into unorthodox conceptions of Christ's relationship with God the Father.
I believe that in the next fifty years we will see an increasing rapprochement between Protestantism and Catholicism, as we have already seen happening in the writings of people like Mark Noll, Greg Jones, Stephen Fowl, etc... And I believe it will take place along the lines that I am suggesting here.
OAW: The point of Sola Scriptura -- a point without which the Reformation could not have transpired -- was not to correct the direction of the church catholic.
Besides you are caught on the horns of a dilemma here. You have already said that it is the consensus of the Church that determines the meaning of the text, but here you are appealing to an 'original meaning' of Scripture that can be appealed to even in defiance of the consensus of the Church.
One of the most crucial points in my understanding is the realization that the words of the biblical text "alone," taken apart from a specific context--indeed of any text--are liable to multiple meanings and connotations. 25,000 different denominations, dozens of commentaries that interpret individual texts different, make the point all too painfully.
I believe texts can have fixed meanings when they are read against concrete contexts. The question is thus what the appropriate context is against which to read the words of the Bible. When we read them against their original contexts (as best we can with what knowledge of the world they say they addressed--"to those at Rome"), we have original meanings. These are slightly different meanings and connotations from what Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and Wesley understood them to mean when they (without even knowing it) read the words from where they stood in the flow of Christian history and tradition (admittedly Calvin gets the prize for understanding the original meaning the best of these four).
In my opinion, Wesley (although he thought he was interpreting sola scriptura) might better be described as interpreting "prima scriptura" (using a phrase Gary Cockerill at Wesley Biblical Seminary coined): scripture first.
Because of the dynamics I mentioned above, the idea of "Scripture alone" is not even possible, for without the addition of a context we have no certain meaning yet. But it further is not what those who say scripture only actually do, for they (without realizing it) have an orthodox subconscious in the mix. The NIV is a wonderful example of this in process. So many of the translations are seriously questionable, yet very appropriate from the standpoint of evangelical "orthodoxy."
But I would say that some of the most bizarre cults and denominations have resulted from individuals who claim to follow "Scripture only," while themselves ignoring the common understandings of Christian orthodoxy.
My thoughts...
I'm glad that I'm forced to think about this now, since it's a huge epistemological deal with truth and theological source and method . . . even though sometimes the whole 'problem' makes me want to run to a corner and cry. These are important questions that have to be addressed and answered by those proclaiming God's truth to his church and world.
whoa.
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