Anybody see any other problems with claiming that pre Calvin exegesis is better that grammatico histrical exegetical attempts to establish the author's intended meaning.

The Superiority of Pre

The problem I see is that multi-level exegesis can't be checked against Scripture and therefore the results one derives from such a process cannot be shown valid by good and necessary consequence from Scripture. Thus any conclusions arrived at won't be confessionally binding.

__________________
In Christ's love and service

Mr. Tim Cunningham,
BMus. (Trombone Performance), University of Toronto
Dip. CS, Regent College, Vancouver
Member, First Baptist Church
Vancouver, BC
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"I once sat in darkness, and waited for the moon to rise.
I once sat in darkness, and waited for the sun to shine.
I once sat in darkness, when all the light I'd waited for was gone.
Then Jesus came, and now the only true light, ever, shines in me."
– John Deacon -

1) The article doesn't mention Calvin, although it does mention Luther, although not in a highly critical way.

2) I'm not sure if you meant to quote the actual title which refers to pre-Critical exegesis...

3) The criticism in the article is that the critical method has proved reductionistic. I understand him to be saying that:
the renaissance humanist effort to rein-in faults of Medieval exegesis has been carried through, just as thoroughly as the medievals, to rampant subjectivism.

4) Religious men like Luther and Calvin saw themselves having significant continuities with the best of Medieval tradition--and the humanists, and the church fathers--and not in stark contrast to it as some have tried to say.

5) Our ability to see the Redemptive-historical thread in Scripture IS a fundamental "layer of meaning" that is not strictly text-dependent, in the naked sense of that term.

6) This particular tension regarding the proper exegesis of Scripture is as old as the Alexandrian/Antiochean exegetical question going back to the days of the church fathers. Consistently, the church-macro has, for whatever reason, affirmed the propriety of some sort of "spiritual" sense to the text, and has rejected (sometimes by anathemas) the reduction of Scripture to a purely "literary" document.

7) The "quadringa" (with all its faults) WAS an earlier attempt to assert just the controls you are desirous to see imposed on any quest for the "spiritual" meaning of the text. I think that "Covenant-theology" is another, and a far better one.

8) I'm not sure whether human wisdom will ever devise a "tool" that is good enough to make the quest for the "spiritual" meaning PERFECT. But, neither does the GHM provide the perfect tool for ALWAYS getting to the precise human-author's meaning. There is always ambiguity, however slight, in our efforts.

9) This is the MAIN reason why Historical Theology is indispensable to the Scriptural exegete. We have an obligation to seek the mind of the Spirit in his body, the church. It is possible we could be correct, along with a minority of the church (over its long life), rather than the majority. But even then, isn't it better to know and affirm that?

Anyway, that's my response and reaction. I think there are excellent points to take away from the article, even if I don't agree with every point of the thesis.

__________________
Rev. Bruce G. Buchanan
ChainOLakes Presbyterian Church, CentralLake, MI


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