Hebrew Student
Puritan Board Freshman
Hey Everyone!
I was wondering if someone here can help me with this. I have been doing work on dealing with Hyperpreterism for some time now, and I have been dealing with the strange hermeneutics of the Hyperpreterists. Now, I am a follower of Gary DeMar’s ministry, and the other day I found this article by Steve Schlissel on body piercings. Now, don’t get me wrong, I certainly think there is a problem when you end up looking like the man in the picture! However, the hermeneutics that Schlissel used were, to put it bluntly, very odd. He started by calling the penetration of sexual relations “piercing,” and pointed to instances outside of marriage where [he thinks anyway] the marital act is said to be humbling because of something in the act itself. He then connects this act to the piercing of Christ on the cross, and points out that Christ humbled himself to death on a cross. His conclusion is that piercing is inherently humbling, and, since women are created subordinate to men, women can wear piercings, but men cannot, since men are not to be “humbled” in this way.
Well, I was concerned about this hermeneutic, because I see a similar hermeneutic from hyperpreterists all of the time. So, I wrote a response to it pointing out that, although I agree with the conclusion about being careful to not pierce ourselves so as to look like metal man, I believe that the way in which Schlissel arrived at his conclusions is suspect.
The next day, Gary DeMar did his daily show, and was talking about hermeneutics:
[video=youtube;wV3IYE8k_kw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV3IYE8k_kw[/video]
On his show, he recommended a book by Peter Leithart called Deep Exegesis. In the program, he talked about literary interpretation, and some of the basic ideas found in pragmatics, and I thought that what he was saying was generally true. However, the next day he did a program where he applied the ideas in Leithart’s book, and I was absolutely dumbfounded:
[video=youtube;zwG44rzLCmk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwG44rzLCmk[/video]
He goes to Matthew 2:15, and deals with the fact that a passage about Israel is being applied to Christ. He argues that Christ is an antitype of Israel, and is, in a certain sense, the new Israel. This fact is really not contested very much, since this is not the only place where Matthew compares what happened with Christ to what happened with Israel. However, then he, in a bizarre fashion, and apparently following Leithart, argues that the Israel that existed in the current day was the new Egypt! I thought that was rather bizarre since both Israel the nation, as well as the ideal Israelite, Jesus, is coming from a physical place called Egypt in both texts. He also mentioned James Jordan, and one of his bizarre interpretations of scripture. There is someone who is involved in dealing with hyperpreterism who relies heavily on James Jordan. He has a lot of strange beliefs, though. For example, he agrees with the hyperpreterists when it comes to the text that talk about the coming of Christ. However, he gets around hyperpreterism by literary types. His exegesis is really bizarre. However, he has recently written a book on hermeneutics, and Peter Leithart has endorsed it.
Now, I started looking into Peter Leithart’s book Deep Exegesis, found that it was on Amazon, and also found that there were sample pages you could read. Trust me, this is the first book on hermeneutics I have ever read that has sheet music on the last few pages. Also, some of the people who had read it said that he goes after historico-grammatical hermeneutics, and there were many people who had read it who were actually assaulting historic-grammatical hermeneutics in their comments. I also found an article where someone was just ripping on Peter Leithart for his belief in the Federal Vision [which made me think of this thread]. I also found out that other people like Eric Redmond were endorsing this book as well. The combination of the assault on historic-grammatical hermeneutics, the fact that this is the same [or very similar] methodology to that which hyperpreterists use, and the recommendation by folks like Gary DeMar and Eric Redmond made me quite uncomfortable.
Now, don’t get me wrong, literary criticism has its place in exegesis. However, my concern is that this is an overreaction to the simplicity of exegesis in modern day evangelicalism. We need to consider literary features of a text, but do so in the context of the other aspects of language, alongside syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. If you don’t exercise that caution, I have found that you can use this hermeneutic to prove practically anything you want, as the hyperpreterists do in order to prove that Christ returned in A.D. 70.
The interesting thing is that all of the people who seem to be the crafters of this hermeneutic are part of the Federal Vision [Steve Schlissel, James Jordan, Peter Leithart, etc.]. First of all, I was wondering if someone could give me some information to understand exactly what the Federal Vision is, but secondly, is this hermeneutic crucial to the case of the Federal Vision? The paper I linked to cited Peter Leithart as denying things such as justification by faith alone, and it seemed really dangerous. Also, is there any reason why this particular hermeneutic is so wrapped up with this movement?
I am very concerned because I see this same type of hermeneutic wrapped up in hyperpreterism [which I believe to be heresy], and how the possibilities are endless to the manner of things which could be proved by this hermeneutic. Hermeneutics is something where, if you don’t get it right, the Bible becomes putty in your hands. You may get lucky [as Steve Schlissel did], and come to a correct conclusion, but, eventually, you will come across something fatal.Also, when the hermeneutic is endorsed by well respected teachers, it becomes even more dangerous. I was hoping someone who has dealt with this before can point me in the right direction in terms of getting all the background, and thinking clearly on this issue.
God Bless,
Adam
I was wondering if someone here can help me with this. I have been doing work on dealing with Hyperpreterism for some time now, and I have been dealing with the strange hermeneutics of the Hyperpreterists. Now, I am a follower of Gary DeMar’s ministry, and the other day I found this article by Steve Schlissel on body piercings. Now, don’t get me wrong, I certainly think there is a problem when you end up looking like the man in the picture! However, the hermeneutics that Schlissel used were, to put it bluntly, very odd. He started by calling the penetration of sexual relations “piercing,” and pointed to instances outside of marriage where [he thinks anyway] the marital act is said to be humbling because of something in the act itself. He then connects this act to the piercing of Christ on the cross, and points out that Christ humbled himself to death on a cross. His conclusion is that piercing is inherently humbling, and, since women are created subordinate to men, women can wear piercings, but men cannot, since men are not to be “humbled” in this way.
Well, I was concerned about this hermeneutic, because I see a similar hermeneutic from hyperpreterists all of the time. So, I wrote a response to it pointing out that, although I agree with the conclusion about being careful to not pierce ourselves so as to look like metal man, I believe that the way in which Schlissel arrived at his conclusions is suspect.
The next day, Gary DeMar did his daily show, and was talking about hermeneutics:
[video=youtube;wV3IYE8k_kw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV3IYE8k_kw[/video]
On his show, he recommended a book by Peter Leithart called Deep Exegesis. In the program, he talked about literary interpretation, and some of the basic ideas found in pragmatics, and I thought that what he was saying was generally true. However, the next day he did a program where he applied the ideas in Leithart’s book, and I was absolutely dumbfounded:
[video=youtube;zwG44rzLCmk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwG44rzLCmk[/video]
He goes to Matthew 2:15, and deals with the fact that a passage about Israel is being applied to Christ. He argues that Christ is an antitype of Israel, and is, in a certain sense, the new Israel. This fact is really not contested very much, since this is not the only place where Matthew compares what happened with Christ to what happened with Israel. However, then he, in a bizarre fashion, and apparently following Leithart, argues that the Israel that existed in the current day was the new Egypt! I thought that was rather bizarre since both Israel the nation, as well as the ideal Israelite, Jesus, is coming from a physical place called Egypt in both texts. He also mentioned James Jordan, and one of his bizarre interpretations of scripture. There is someone who is involved in dealing with hyperpreterism who relies heavily on James Jordan. He has a lot of strange beliefs, though. For example, he agrees with the hyperpreterists when it comes to the text that talk about the coming of Christ. However, he gets around hyperpreterism by literary types. His exegesis is really bizarre. However, he has recently written a book on hermeneutics, and Peter Leithart has endorsed it.
Now, I started looking into Peter Leithart’s book Deep Exegesis, found that it was on Amazon, and also found that there were sample pages you could read. Trust me, this is the first book on hermeneutics I have ever read that has sheet music on the last few pages. Also, some of the people who had read it said that he goes after historico-grammatical hermeneutics, and there were many people who had read it who were actually assaulting historic-grammatical hermeneutics in their comments. I also found an article where someone was just ripping on Peter Leithart for his belief in the Federal Vision [which made me think of this thread]. I also found out that other people like Eric Redmond were endorsing this book as well. The combination of the assault on historic-grammatical hermeneutics, the fact that this is the same [or very similar] methodology to that which hyperpreterists use, and the recommendation by folks like Gary DeMar and Eric Redmond made me quite uncomfortable.
Now, don’t get me wrong, literary criticism has its place in exegesis. However, my concern is that this is an overreaction to the simplicity of exegesis in modern day evangelicalism. We need to consider literary features of a text, but do so in the context of the other aspects of language, alongside syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. If you don’t exercise that caution, I have found that you can use this hermeneutic to prove practically anything you want, as the hyperpreterists do in order to prove that Christ returned in A.D. 70.
The interesting thing is that all of the people who seem to be the crafters of this hermeneutic are part of the Federal Vision [Steve Schlissel, James Jordan, Peter Leithart, etc.]. First of all, I was wondering if someone could give me some information to understand exactly what the Federal Vision is, but secondly, is this hermeneutic crucial to the case of the Federal Vision? The paper I linked to cited Peter Leithart as denying things such as justification by faith alone, and it seemed really dangerous. Also, is there any reason why this particular hermeneutic is so wrapped up with this movement?
I am very concerned because I see this same type of hermeneutic wrapped up in hyperpreterism [which I believe to be heresy], and how the possibilities are endless to the manner of things which could be proved by this hermeneutic. Hermeneutics is something where, if you don’t get it right, the Bible becomes putty in your hands. You may get lucky [as Steve Schlissel did], and come to a correct conclusion, but, eventually, you will come across something fatal.Also, when the hermeneutic is endorsed by well respected teachers, it becomes even more dangerous. I was hoping someone who has dealt with this before can point me in the right direction in terms of getting all the background, and thinking clearly on this issue.
God Bless,
Adam
