I guess I would be, and am, considered a heretic by most professing Christians. Why? Am I? Absolutely not. However, I believe the bible, that faith in Jesus is sufficient for salvation without the deeds of the law. Because of this, I have been cast out of church after church. I have had my preaching papers revoked and a letter sent to three states telling many churches not to allow me to preach anymore. But I am still at it, lol. My former pastor actually said that I hold a doctrine contrary to orthodox religion. I don’t care what they say, I know the truth that is all I need.

[...] orthodoxy and, while true and important, do not define historic orthodoxy (see my blog “Are You Orthodox or Heretic“ for more on this). In other words, the doctrine of sola fide, for example, may not have [...]

Thanks for the listing Michael. This was extremely helpful.

BTW: I agree that the Scriptures are understood Christiologically which creates a necessary hermeneutical spiral that helps us to interpret them Christiologically. But advocates of Historical Grammatical hermeneutics would not necessarily deny this in the major interpretive process, we simply would warn about this method in the exegetical process. In other words, what you are saying applies to the construction of a full systematic and biblical theology, not so much with authorial intent hermeneutics, which is the first step, not the last.

Perry, I just noticed this long response. Forgive me as I have to cut this short. This conversation has been helpful. Hopefully the dialogue can continue.

Michael,

You are quite right that we share different presuppositions. The real fun is to figure out who is the presuppositional squatter. If the apostles conveyed the full meaning then you’d think that we wouldn’t need inductive methods that do not guarantee its delivery. I think the argument against tradition is flawed for a number of reasons. First, scripture is tradition and it is just as easy to corrupt a text as word of mouth as history demonstrates. Liberals just applied the same critiques of tradition to scripture. Moreover working back inductively to the autographs fails to take into account fact that textual families were preferred or rejected by different theological traditions. Textual selection was a function of an already existing theology and not the other way around. And certainly Tertullian, Ireneaus and Vincent of Lerins give us a method to test and even if they didn’t, the positivistic notion you seem to have in mind doesn’t seem to work, given the fact that theories aren’t confirmed by facts but the other way around given underdetermination. Verificationism and falsificationism have been dead for a while.

I’d argue that many of the Reformers’ arguments against tradition are specious or based on either a misunderstanding of tradition or a false tradition in some places due to papal ambitions. The popular line for example on why Augustine didn’t get sola fide from the text because of Latin simply won’t wash in the East. There’s no Latin there and certainly the East wasn’t a bunch of papal sychophants. They chose slavery and death to papal submission. It stretches credibility to think that all of the churches that the Apostles founded failed to pass on the gospel. And the accuracy of tradition aside, the focus on independent seemingly autonomous methods of verification indicates the injection of a new tradition (humanism) and a departure from the faith and practice of the apostolic church.

From my view, I don’t see how Scripture can be worthy of your complete commitment given that the canon you work with is a function of human judgment. Protestants have altered the canon in the past and I can see no in principle reason to think that they might not do so in the future. In the last century, not a few Protestant scholars argued for the exclusion of 3rd John given its strong implicit support for episcopacy. What you have a commitment to then is the product of your fallible judgment, which cannot warrant a complete commitment. A little Humean skepticism goes a long way. In any case, this isn’t development but in principle full scale revision is always possible. If there is no infallible judgment, then no teaching, including the canon is beyond revision. That is what simper reformada implies.

Let me translate the second part. The methodology of the historical grammatical method is incompatible with orthodox Christology. Clear? As for doctrinal development, I think we mean two different things. The notion I am objecting to is something like the following. In scripture there are ideas that authors intended but weren’t fully aware of. This content is only gradually grasped by the church through rival interpretations and is codified in formal definitions. Hence there is conceptual discovery and advancement in the history of the church. It is not by accident btw that this method came about when it did. In any case, that is the notion I reject. So I am not being naïve. This is what Newman and many Protestant Scholastics had in mind. It is grounded in ultimately an Idealistic view of reality a la Plotinus or Hegel.

My view of development is quite different, which is searching for adequate vocabulary for a constant apostolic deposit. It doesn’t follow that everyone in the church had full blown access to it though. And this is why principle sees like Antioch, Rome, Ephesus and Alexandria were important because they were places the Apostles taught and ordained and passed on their teachings. This is why ecumenical councils required some kind of consent or presence by the apostolic sees together and why Rome was thought to have a higher rank, because it was founded on two prominent apostles, Peter and Paul. This is why the earliest traditions about Rome’s primacy include Paul with Peter incidentally. This is also why certain people had a better grasp of the tradition than others, the test being a demonstration of historical continuity. This is why “new” was a curse word in the early church and still is for the Orthodox.

So take homoousious. There is no advancement in conceptual understanding there over earlier “divine identity” expressed in the NT and the Apostolic Fathers such as Ignatius or Clement. Why? Because homoousious is an apophatic term. This is why all attempts, even to this day to pour in positive conceptual content into the term ends in some form of heterodoxy-witness the current debates on social Trinitarianism and now Moreland and Craig’s Tritheism (which is really modalism ironically enough.) What Nicea advances is the old thesis that deity is undefinable such that whatever the Father is, the Son is too. There can be no conceptual development if there is no conceptual content to develop. This is why the Orthodox don’t have new doctrines and Philosophy isn’t the helper of theology.

I agree that God has given a mind to everyone, but while nature can get you so far, given the intact status of the imago dei, it doesn’t follow that the mind has the sufficient power to grasp what truly matters. It seems strange that I should have to stave off Pelagianism here for someone who is Reformed. Of course, prelapsarian Reformed anthropology strikes me as pelagianism seeing that nature and grace are identical and hence the covenant of works. The Jewish leadership were quite adept ad exegeting Scripture too and yet they weren’t interpreting it Christologically and hence missed the entire point. (Jn 5:39) Consequently my approach isn’t Gnostic, but with Ireneaus, just the opposite, which is incidentally why recapitulation (Eph 1:10) impinges significantly on hermeneutics. A Christological approach isn’t “spooky” but it certainly takes into account the moral standing of the exegete and this is quite Scriptural since the Scriptures teach that the moral position of a reader determines what they can grasp. So yes, you can learn quite a bit from liberals, but you will only grasp constructions and not realities.

So I am not denying authorial intent, but rather denying that the methodology you propose is fundamentally Christian and this explains why it produces fragmentation as well as bringing back many of the traditional heresies. More specifically, I am denying that your methodology can grant you sufficient access to authorial intent. Method and Christology are not things you can separate.

Obviously the Spirit was needed to see Christ in the Scriptures, specifically the OT. Do you think the rise of the historical-grammatical method and its cousins brought about the questioning of messianic prophecies by accident? (Is 7:14) How can you understand the Scriptures apart from seeing that they are speaking of Christ? If that is Gnosticism then Jesus was the chief Gnostic and then I am happy to be called one.

As for the method and Nestorian Christology, method is not divorced from Christology. And this is as it should be, at least if one wishes to be Christ centered. Persons are prior to principles. And if you read Nestorius all by himself his commitment to a Hellenistic metaphysic which has no notion of a distinction between hypostasis and essence is quite apparent. This is why the old line about “Nestorius wasn’t such a bad guy after all” died in patristic scholarship, witnessed by McGunkin and other scholars. I don’t know if you got it from Harold Brown’s book, but not only is Brown wrong, but quite unreliable in terms of misquotations and cherry picking. In any case, Brown isn’t a patristics scholar and certainly not a specialist on Nestorius and Cyril.

I outlined above a method for interpreting apart from emotional liver shivers and humanistic and Hellenistic assumptions. But again, even if there weren’t, the product doesn’t confer truth on the method that produced it. As Nietzsche so aptly put it, false ideas can be useful too. There is no legitimate inference from, I can’t help but use this method, to, this is the correct method to use.

Hopefully I have clear some things up between us and there are some things you may find helpful in what I wrote.

Well, certainly we are coming from a different presuppositionalist base that defines the way we look at these things. But I appreciate this opportunity to learn from you.

“If the Apostles had the full vision into the meaning, then why isn’t it possible that they passed this meaning down to us? etc”

They did, both through word of mouth and Scripture. You must know that the basic argument from those of us who believe that the Scripture is the only inspired source of revelation simply comes down to the inherent difficulty with preserving accrual unwritten tradition. As well, the argument that the reformers made is very valid, if true, that tradition does contradict itself and there is ultimately no way to test to see if someone consistently accurately preserved it, especially when it comes to the nuances that inevitably arise as a result of the questions of the day.

Therefore, while we look to Tradition as a generally accurate record of much of the faith, we ultimately only have one record of first hand evidence that is worthy of our complete commitment. This is the written Scriptures.

Hopefully that helps with the first half.

You said:
“Moreover, such a dialectical development of doctrine is contradictory to the correct view of the Incarnation since it moves via method that distinguishes by opposition, a thoroughly pagan methodology. So I don’t think that the Apostles handed on a systematic theology, but they didn’t need to either. They deposited the faith with trustworthy men in major churches. So no, doctrine does not develop through controversy, unless we equivocate on the term development.”

I said: huh?

The reason why I would first say that doctrine does develop is first and foremost because it did develop. The question is whether or not your system will allow such an occurrence. My does. In fact, I believe that it is rather naive to believe otherwise. It obviously does not change drastically, but our articulations of doctrine expand, are clarified, and sometimes are faced for the first time as history moves forward.

You said:
“It seems strange to me that you would divorce your method of exegesis from the work of the Spirit. etc.”

Why should it seem strange? God has given everyone a mind to be able to understand history, argumentation, and literature. While you see my method as Pelagian (nice one BTW), I see yours as Gnostic (ohhhh…what a comeback). In reality, I don’t think that there is anything in the Scriptures that is necessarily hard to comprehend from an intellectual basis. I have learned much from liberal commentators who reject Christianity. Why? Because they can understand the historical issue involved and understand the intent of the author. Again, if you don’t go with the original authors intent, you have one of two choices: 1) Practice a subjective hermeneutic and blame the results on the Holy Spirit (see this one way too often), or 2) don’t read your Bible because you may misrepresent the truth.

In truth, the Holy Spirit is needed not to understand the Scriptures on a cognitive level, but to accept its message. (cf 1 Cor 2).

Oh I don’t think it is guilt by association since it is well documented that not only was it the basic methodology of Theodore of Mopsuestia and which grounded his adoptionism, but it was also explicitly employed by Nestorious and functioned in much the same way to support his dual subject Christology.

Even if the your associations are true (which I don’t agree with about Nestorius, I am not sure he was really a Nestorian-political issue taint all of what you are implying), this does not condemn the standard hermeneutic that is used in all interpretation, not simply the Scriptures. There is simply no other way to interpret and have any degree of assurance outside of an emotional conviction. Emotional convictions are nice, but they are a dime for twelve dozen, all different, all blaming the Holy Spirit.

Good night my very intellegent brother

Kurt,

Well said, but I disagree. If the Creed is judged to be in line with Scripture, who is the judge? Sure, Scripture is the RULE, but who applies it and with what authority? Surely if Scripture were formally sufficient, we wouldn’t need words like homoousious or creeds or people like Luther at all.

Michael,

If the Apostles had the full vision into the meaning, then why isn’t it possible that they passed this meaning down to us? Your model presupposes no historical continuity or that history necessarily distorts. I can’t see that as a Christian view of time or anthropology. I think the society of people that Jesus began has continued. So I find it strange that you would indicate that you think the apostles understanding was superior and yet we are cut off from it. I suppose I don’t think that the apostolic ministry ceased and that the church isn’t specifically a human institution of like minded individuals. That is, the unity of the church isn’t the Spirit but the humanity of Christ (It’s that whole “body of Christ” thingy). And that humanity is deified so that the church per se isn’t merely human though not less than so. This is why many of the Ecumenical councils spoke of the Fathers and themselves as “inspired.”

Moreover, such a dialectical development of doctrine is contradictory to the correct view of the Incarnation since it moves via method that distinguishes by opposition, a thoroughly pagan methodology. So I don’t think that the Apostles handed on a systematic theology, but they didn’t need to either. They deposited the faith with trustworthy men in major churches. So no, doctrine does not develop through controversy, unless we equivocate on the term development.

It seems strange to me that you would divorce your method of exegesis from the work of the Spirit. It smells to me like a kind of exegetical pelagianism or at best nestorianism where the human effort and the Spirit’s activity are contiguous. Logically speaking it doesn’t follow that this if this is the only method, that it is the right one. There is no truth preserving inference from, I can’t help but think this way, to, this is the correct way to think. It also commits you to a rather low ecclesiology where ministers are nothing more than elected individuals. The Gnostics used to draw lots for the various positions every week so that people wouldn’t get the idea that those serving in the body were anything special.

Oh I don’t think it is guilt by association since it is well documented that not only was it the basic methodology of Theodore of Mopsuestia and which grounded his adoptionism, but it was also explicitly employed by Nestorious and functioned in much the same way to support his dual subject Christology. I’d recommend McGunkin’s St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy, SVS, for documentation. And inductive methodologies don’t produce certainty, at least not with respect to knowledge they don’t. So if that is what you are after, you have misplaced your hope and your argument. I don’t know what you mean by “pragmatics” but I am not a pragmatist. In any case, the reason as to why God would expect us to interpret in a different way would be the simple reason that it presupposes a false view of Jesus.

Thanks for the intelligent convo.

[...] do believe in absolute essentials. Please quit saying I don’t. Please read this blog if you want my view of [...]

Sorry guys, while I think that this is the more important thread, I am trying to keep up with the newest. Please forgive me if I don’t continue this great dialogue. Hopefully I can come back.