Stuart Murray, Biblical Interpretation in the Anabaptist Tradition

Pandora Press, 2000, 277 pgs.

Summary: Stuart Murray (1956-  ) is an Anabaptist theologian who has been a church planter and a director of  Spurgeon’s College church-planting program in London. He has a PhD in Anabaptist hermeneutics.

Biblical Interpretation is my favorite sort of book. It’s historically grounded but presents the argument that the past may serve to assist if not correct the present. The author is at his strongest when he is describing and analyzing the historical Anabaptist interpretation methods with one exception to be noted below. His use of Anabaptist sources is a fascinating consideration of the general attributes of Anabaptist hermeneutics in response to Roman Catholic and Reformed polemics from about 1515 to the mid-1600s.

Much of Murray’s arguments about the contours of Anabaptist hermeneutics can be collapsed into the fact that the Anabaptists he embraces (i.e. the non-violent ones) took a first thought reading of the Sermon on the Mount and made it their fundamental method for understanding the life of Jesus and the rest of the Bible (74). Some Anabaptist even lacked the Old Testament to assist them in understanding Jesus’ historical context (109).

Murray puts it this way, “The Sermon on the Mount seems to have acted as a further canon within an already Christocentric canon” (79). So in the early Anabaptist tradition the significance or use of a passage in developing doctrine and practice was dependent on its perceived agreement with the “radical” reading of the Sermon on the Mount.

The hope of the Anabaptist was “to avoid the dilution of Jesus’ authority by reducing his commands to generalizations hedged about with exceptions and qualifications” (79). The canon within the canon worked itself so that Paul was understood through the first thought reading of the Sermon on the Mount, the Old Testament was marginalized if not ignored along with church history. And all of this is duly noted by Murray.

At the same time the overriding task of the book is to encourage present Christians to consider the positive attributes of this system as a response to modernism. Murray believes that modernism or the historical critical-method is derived from “Reformed hermeneutics” (10), and so he has come to the conclusion that a modified form of the Anabaptist method would be edifying for the church as a rejection of modernity and Reformed theology.

The author summarizes on page 90: “Furthermore, operating with the Gospels (a narrative genre) as the primary canon within the canon, rather than with the propositional and doctrinal focus of the Reformers, has positive implications for hermeneutics. In particular, it encourages practical application and personal discipleship rather than intellectual discussion. It fosters an encounter with the Lord of Scriptures rather than with the text alone. It also goes some way towards bridging the gap between the biblical and contemporary horizons by involving the reader in a story, a genre which contains many transcultural elements.”

It is Murray’s attempt to bridge from the Anabaptist past to the present that things start to break down. In the section on the uniqueness of “congregational hermeneutics,” the weaving about and caveats suggests if not requires that he is overreaching the historical data: “We find no extended discussion of this role within Anabaptist writings and relatively few explicit references to it” (157). “It is not easy to discover how widespread communal hermeneutics was, how firmly it was established, or how long it survived” (165). “[T]hese principles sometimes lead to the development of hermeneutic communities” (177). “Designating the congregation as the locus of interpretation may not have been uniformly practiced by the sixteenth-century Anabaptist” (249).

Back formation would also explain how sixteenth-century leaders like Meno, Munzter, and Hubmaier can be described thus: “Congregational hermeneutics required an understanding of the leader’s task as guiding rather than dominating, acting as facilitator rather than sole participant” (163). It’s difficult to reconcile the words “guiding” and “facilitator” with Meno’s The Blasphemy of John of Leiden or Munzter’s Sermon to the Princes or The Prague Protest.

Since part of Murray’s hope is to foster an Anabaptist hermeneutic as a positive response to modernity, it would appear that he has read back community consensus as a hermeneutical and epistemological principle. But I am at a loss as to how judging “any interpretation by its usefulness to the congregation” (176), departs from either Machiavelli and Hobbes’ utilitarian hermeneutic or Nietzsche’s will-to-power for congregations, or for that matter Lenin’s principle that it is useful to break eggs to make an omelet.

The author’s goal of encountering “the Lord of Scriptures” is laudable. The difficulty is that as the congregation discusses “practical application and personal discipleship” through the Gospel narrative they develop propositions:  “Jesus loved social outcasts.”  And then they apply this insight by creating an ought statement: “We ought to love social outcasts.” Also, a proposition. Perhaps, some in the congregation might ask: “Why should Jesus’ non-violent example be given priority over Che or Muntzer’s example?” The traditional Christian response is the proposition: “Jesus is Lord.” But then we’ve slipped right back to the “propositional and doctrinal focus of the Reformers.”

It should also be noted that much of Murray’s critique of Reformation interpretation lacks footnotes to primary source documents. The footnotes are almost exclusively to modern secondary sources such as Rogers and McKim or McGrath. Unless, I am badly misreading the Reformers, for instance Whitaker’s Disputations on Holy Scripture, Murray’s reliance on secondary sources has led him into some misunderstanding of Reformed hermeneutics and the development of the historical-critical method.

Detriments/Benefits: A helpful overview of Anabaptist’s hermeneutics, but it requires some “deconstruction” of Murray’s historical narrative and his reading back of post-modern community hermeneutics into the Anabaptist community.

Recommended as an interesting first discussion of historic Anabaptist hermeneutics. Helpful for understanding post-modern takes on Christianity by neo-monasticism and the like.

K. B. McFarlane, John Wycliffe and the Beginnings of English Nonconformity

1952, The English Universities Press, Ltd., 188 pgs.

Summary: A brief, unflattering and unsympathetic overview of Wycliffe’s history and doctrine and the Lollards. As an example of his analysis:

The feverish but ill-directed activity of the last half-decade of [Wycliffe’s] life, the confident assumption of infallibility in the face of diminishing support, the bad tactical judgment that robbed him of even minor success may all be accounted for as symptoms of that high blood-pressure from which he died (72-73).

Benefits/Detriments: My mind is divided as to whether the book should be considered Catholic or Epicurean propaganda.

Interesting only in its brevity, general historical accuracy of the dates and persons, and information on the Oldcastle rising or Lollard Rebellion of 1414. (Oldcastle was likely Shakespeare’s model for Falstaff, but McFarlane doesn’t mention this.)

Utterly devoid of humor, human interest, or sympathy for anyone not burning heretics.

Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1963, pgs. 206.

Summary: Karl Barth (1886-1968) made a stringent effort to pull Christianity out of the liberal malaise caused by theological compromise with the Enlightenment tradition. The book contains a series of lectures given by Barth at the close of his academic life in Basel and then in the United States.

The book is divided up into four sections: the place of theology, theological existence, the threat to theology, and theological work. Each section is then subdivided into four chapters. It’s tightly organized and intentionally vague in some places while narrowly focused and defined at others.

Barth has recognized the dangers of Christians compromising with Enlightenment and Post-Enlightenment (a.k.a. post-modernism) thought. The way he escapes the conclusions and corrosive effect of modernity is by grounding his theology in the existential experience of the theologian through the Spirit and the Word.

The Word is usefully vague for his purposes. It seems to be Jesus Christ himself who has participated in the giving of the Bible. The word of God or the Scriptures is the place where the theologian meets the Word of God through the Spirit. But the Bible is neither all of the Word of God or God’s perfect revelation to man.

The existential vagaries continue: “Faith is the special event that is constitutive for both Christians and theological existence. Faith is the event by which the wonderment, concern, and commitment that make the theologians a theologian are distinguished  from all other occurrences which, in their own way, might be noteworthy and memorable or might be given the same designation” (100).

At the same time, when Barth’s goal of bridging between aspects of Enlightenment thought and that of the Bible requires a decisive break, we get Latin distinctions from scholastic theology:  “the theologian will stick to the fact that the theologia archetypa and the theologia ektypa, as well as the theologia paradisiacal, or comprehensorum, and the theologia viatorum, are two different things, and that his problem and task can only be the latter, not the former of these concepts” (114).

Benefits/Detriments: The general tenor seems to be, Don’t like the church? Call it a “community?” Having trouble explaining why scientific humanists that control the academic institutions disagree with the historical accounts in the Bible? Trust the Word of God and the not all the word of God. Need to guard against the corrosive nature of modernity? Here’s a Latin distinction.

Mendelssohn is recorded as having complained to Kant about Jacobi’s critique of materialism that it was a “strange monster that sported Goethe for a head, Spinoza for a torso, and Lavater for feet” (Jacobi, Main Philosophical Writings, McGill-Queens’s University Press, 1994, pg 66). In Barth’s case we have a strange monster that sports Kierkegaard for a head, Erasmus for a torso, and anachronistically Billy Graham for feet.

As portrayed here the system is insufficient—especially its epistemology. Barth has insights about the Scriptures and the world that should be weighed, but the system is both too flabby and too distinct to be of any lasting value. I suppose one could maintain a relationship with Christ through this framework, but I am not sure of the point. It’s too strong to satisfy the academy and too weak to not be in jeopardy of disobeying Revelation 22:19.

Perhaps helpful for a mature Christian considering the vocation of professional theologian or for a student of historical theology.

Richard A. Muller, Holy Scripture: The Cognitive Foundation of Theology in Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: the Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725

Vol. 2, 2nd ed., Baker Books, 2006, 537 pgs.

Summary: A carefully researched overview of the development of the doctrine of Scripture within the Reformation and through the Orthodox era.

The Reformers by grounding their theological system within Scripture alone were completing and formalizing the exegetical insights of men like Andrew of St. Victor (d. 1175) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). The insistence on Scripture alone also created a more precise definition of inspiration and more carefully fencing of the canon. The men who completed the codification of inspiration within Protestant doctrinal statements were the Reformed Orthodox.

The Orthodox’s task was polemical—against the Socinians, Catholics, and Anabaptist—and churchly within their own communions. This led to the careful development of the following hermeneutic in general agreement with the Reformers:

[A] fundamental emphasis on the unitary character of the literal sense, the recognition of allegorical or tropological meanings only when they belong to literal intention of the passage itself, and the control of typology by means of the hermeneutic of promise and fulfillment . . .(521).

Having carefully exegeted the entirety of Scripture, the Orthodox then organized the texts into doctrinal categories and then defended the doctrinal categories with proof texts:

The methodological link between text and system, both in the initial formulation of the locus out of the exegesis of the text and in the gathering of [proof texts] for the sake of pointing the theological system toward the text and grounding it on the authority of Scripture, was the technique. . .of drawing logical conclusions from the text after the basic exegetical work had been completed. The assumption of the Protestant exegete was that properly drawn conclusions carried with it the same authority as the text itself. While, in the general sense, Scripture was the [the principle cognitive foundation of theology], in the more specific and proximate sense, the individual [texts, topics, or seats of doctrine] provided the first principles of theology in the oldest sense of the identification of theology as a [form of knowledge] (520).

The collapse of Orthodoxy as an academic and state church movement occurred under the development of a materialistic hermeneutic as introduced by the modern Epicureans and individual writers like Descartes (1596-1650) and Spinoza (1632-1677).

Benefits/Detriments: Massively erudite.

Exemplar Quotes:

An inspired text can—more easily and predictably than an uninspired one—point beyond itself and its original situation. When the human author of the text is an instrumental cause and God is identified as the [primary author], the historical situation of the human author cannot ultimately limit the doctrinal reference of the text (254).

[T]he ultimate and therefore perfect archetype theology is identical to the divine mind—all other theology is, at best, a reflection of this archetype, a form of ectypal theology. Ectypal theology in the human subject (in all systems of theology!) is not only finite and reflective but also limited by human sinfulness and by the mental capacities of the theologian. The human author of theology, thus, has little intrinsic authority. If theology is to be authoritative, its source (other than the mind of the theologian) must carry authority with it. That source cannot be the divine archetype, but it must stand in a more direct relation to that archetype than any utterly human effort: the doctrine of the inspiration leads, therefore in many of the orthodox systems, directly to the doctrine of the Scripture (261).

Boethius, trans. Victor Watts, The Consolation of Philosophy

Penguin Books, 1999, 155 pgs.

Summary: Written by the Christian Boethius (c. 480-524) just before his execution by bludgeoning. It is a mix of prose and poems in a dialogue between Lady Philosophy and himself about free will, the sovereignty of God, Fortune, sanctification, and the role of reason in theology.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of Boethius’ writings on philosophy, logic, and Plato and Aristotle to Medieval and early Renaissance theology and philosophy. He clearly articulates the medieval belief that the world was round and almost infinitely small in comparison to the universe (41, II.vii) and takes an Augustinian stance on the freedom of the will (118).

Benefits/Detriments: Often times both Christians and scholars in general step in to a conversation that’s been going for a long time without going back and carefully reviewing how the conversation has unfolded. In the same way that a group of friends might laugh at someone mentioning “the Dairy Zone,” because of a shared experience, so the study of theology and philosophy have a developed vocabulary and history. Boethius is one of the key components of the later conversation in the Reformation and modernity, and he needs to be read to fully participate in the conversation. He helps us understand why Machiavelli’s Prince is so blatantly anti-Christian and to grasp the significance of Reepicheep’s comments to Eustace about the wheel of Fortune in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

I agree strongly with his philosophical method: “we should draw closer to everyday language to avoid the appearance of having moved too far from common usage” (112). His solution to the problem of God’s sovereignty and man’s free will is very helpful and I think ultimately true, as I currently understand his argument. As Philosophy summarizes, it is “unfitting if our future is said to provide a cause of God’s knowledge” (137).  Touché—semi-Pelagians and Pelagians everywhere!

Recommended for pastors reading the scholastics, students carefully reading Lewis’ fiction canon, and as an introduction to the primary source documents of Christian philosophy for late high school students and up. It should be read with Augustine’s Confessions.

Anthony C. Thiselton, The Two Horizons: New Testament Hermeneutics and Philosophical Description

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980, 484 pgs.

Summary: A brilliant overview and critique of the philosophical description of hermeneutics from Heidegger (cf. review s.v.), Gadamer (1900-2002), and Wittgenstein (1889-1951). Thiselton includes brief overviews of Kant and the secondary writers that influenced the authors. He also reviews the work of the major interpreters—critical and admiring—with a close summary and critique of Bultmann (1884-1976) as the most public synthesizer of Heidegger’s thought.  The theologian Panneberg (1928-  ) tends to reside in the background providing Thiselton his epistemological foundation. Thiselton then argues for the acceptance of portions of Heidegger and Wittgenstein’s insights as corrected by Panneneberg, Gadamer, and others as a part of New Testament hermeneutics.

From Heidegger he draws the recognition that the writers of the Bible had different horizons from ours and that we must be aware of the horizons or pre-understandings and the authors’ as we approach the text. Panneneberg’s insight that the part cannot be known separately from the whole allows Thiselton to avoid the passive relativism of Heidegger. He clearly finds Wittgenstein’s descriptions more useful in Christian hermeneutics than Heidegger.

The most important insight that he draws from Wittgenstein is considering the “logical grammar of a concept” (386, italics in original). Logical grammar occurs in three classes. Class one are universals: it is always the case that A=A and Romans 4:4, “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due.” Class two are statements that are “a foundation for research and action” (392, italics in original) and they are rarely questioned by those within a particular language context. These are the hinges, nails, or “the scaffolding of our thoughts” (ibid). And can be illustrated by Hebrews 6:18, “it is impossible for God to lie.”

Finally, class three which are “linguistic recommendations, pictures, and paradigms” (401). “[T]hey concern the elucidation and the application of concepts, and are not statements about the world” (Ibid, italics in original). Contextual class three statements also turn on “institutional facts” (402), such as God’s relationship with Abraham as revealed in the Bible and assumed by Paul in Galatians 3:7. These statements also provide the picture or our attitudes towards the thing being discussed.  The pictures essentially function as the orientation of thought towards something and includes attitude—for instance, Muslims’ picture of Crusaders, Communist of the middle class, the middleclass towards Bolsheviks.

As we study the text of the Bible, the three classes allow us to consider the difference between James 2:24, “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone,” and Romans 3:28, “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” If Paul and James are both speaking of class one statements, then we have an absolute contradiction, because the two universals cannot both be true. And then to decide if there is an apparent or formal contradiction between James and Paul, we must correctly identify the type of statement and the place it holds in the mind of the authors.

Thiselton summarizes his understanding of the James/Paul conflict this way: “James is not merely attacking an inadequate view of faith, but is also giving what amounts to a fairly sophisticated and positive account of the logical grammar of his own concept of faith. James is neither merely attacking someone else’s view of faith, nor is he merely saying that faith must be supplemented by works. He is saying that his concept of faith would exclude instances of supposed belief which have no observable backing or consequences in life. In other words, whereas in Paul we see an internal or grammatical relation between faith and justification (because faith is entailed in the very concept of justification for Paul), in James we see an internal or grammatical relation between faith and works, because the very concept of faith entails acting in a certain way” (424).

Both Paul and James' “concept of faith would exclude instances of supposed belief which have no observable backing or consequences in life” (cf. Rom. 6:1-2). Here is the universal that is true in all contexts for both James and Paul. The issue for James is that a “faith” lacking “observable backing or consequences in life” cannot include justification because it is not true. And for Paul true faith cannot exclude justification. There’s no contradiction between the two men but the complexity of faith and the different context being addressed leads to the apparent contradictions.

Benefits/Detriments: I once asked a scientifically minded friend about the mathematics behind an inverse universe. (“For each point in the universe, measure its distance r from the centre of the earth and move the point along the centre-to-point line to a new distance 1/r.” Byl, God and Cosmos, 206.) His comment was, “I think the math works, but it gives me a headache to think about it.”  I find myself in a similar situation—I think the philosophy and theology works, but I lack the background in many of the primary and secondary sources.

Having stated this caveat, I know of no better academic overview and critique by an apparently evangelical Christian of Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Bultmann. Most of the author’s appropriations from philosophy seem to be helpful. I am a bit apprehensive of Thiselton’s use of Wittgenstein, but I’ve never interacted with Wittgenstein’s writings. I can say the same of his use of Panneneberg, but a bit more emphatically given Panneneberg’s theological outcomes.

It seems to me that many of the philosophical insights of especially Wittgenstein are merely corrections of past philosophical missteps within the Enlightenment tradition. Wittgenstein and Heidegger are both attempting to work within a shared and failing philosophical tradition which is falling apart as the truth of things presses in on it through the observation and criticism of other philosophers. (Both philosophers, especially Heidegger, see themselves as overturning the current system, but I am not convinced it is as fundamental as they believe.)  They’ve found some fixes to the leaks, and Thiselton has borrowed some of the elements to defend or allow Christianity. Yet, the older theologians have already done much of this work from a different perspective but with essentially the same outcome. The tools Thiselton provides are helpful but substantial only within the Enlightenment system and the heirs of Enlightenment.

If there is a weakness to Thiselton, it is statements like this, “We cannot put the clock back to the era before Kant” (441). Kant’s insight that we could not “leap outside the confines of our finite or ‘historic’ existence” (27).  What Heidegger and Kant apparently mean by this is there can be no sharing or very limited sharing between Paul and the reader, God and reader, and this is simply not exhaustively true. And I doubt that Thiselton believes it is true in the sense of Heidegger or Kant.

I can’t change Paul’s “world,” or his historic existence but Paul can change me. Paul’s horizons are stable and traceable, but my world, my ‘historic’ existence is open to Paul or whomever I am willing to think with. The text changes me, because I come to the text willing to think with the author of the text. I can walk towards the author’s horizons; Paul cannot leap towards me, but he and all great authors anticipate the reader’s limited world, the diverse worlds, and work to fuse the horizons. So Paul writes, “You will say to me then, ‘Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will’” (Rom. 9:19), speaking to a reader who does not share his understanding of realty, and he is taking steps to correct it.

To continue expanding beyond the confines of this book review, all reasonably thoughtful authors recognize the two horizons and fight against it. Moses is constantly cajoling and arguing with the Jews that they must remember God’s breaking into history and that their understanding of reality must not revert back to the confines of materialism (cf. Deut.1:27-28) or paganism (cf. 4:3-4;), and that the means of maintaining God’s description is through the text (4:9-10; 6:6-7). And our critic Einstein tells us, “If however the reader despairs of the business of finding his way through Spinoza works, here he will find a reliable guide” (Spinoza Dictionary). Einstein is telling his readers, “My suggestion is that you listen to Spinoza first; see if he speaks to you clearly, and if he doesn’t then fall back on this dictionary. But Spinoza is important so be willing to struggle to understand him.” Moses and Einstein anticipate their readers' needs and their limits and then provide them recommendations and commands.  They don’t share the philosophical language and baggage of Enlightenment hermeneutics, because they are simply doing it.

Good readers and good writers anticipate and work with each; the reader anticipates the difficulty of the author’s life situation and abilities and reads accordingly. And the authors anticipate their readers. (And I have said nothing of the Spirit that teaches us.)  The study of hermeneutics has the potential of sharpening good readers, perhaps moving a mediocre reader to the good category, but it also has the potential of destroying a good reader and reinforcing the arrogance and errors of the bad reader. The Two Horizons offers to sharpen good readers, correct bad readers, and perhaps challenge the mediocre reader, and in general Thiselton achieves a positive contribution as a Christian within the Enlightenment tradition.

The book is written at a post-graduate level and assumes at least a graduate level knowledge of modern philosophy and theology.

Marjorie Grene, Heidegger

Bowes and Bowes, 1957, 128 pgs.

Summary: A brief and devastating critique of the philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and existentialism in general. Heidegger somehow managed to be an unrepentant Nazi and the philosopher of post-modernity. His early training was as a Catholic and his dissertation was on the medieval scholastic Duns Scotus.

Dr. Grene thoroughly and competently shows in what sense he asks and answers some important perennial questions about human existence or existential experience, and how he fails completely to do anything significant in ontology. His greatest contribution seems to be located in taking Kierkegaard’s Christian existentialism and attempting to make it an atheist system.

Heidegger defines the human experience as: “facticity; being-always-already-in –a-world; existentiality: being always in advance of itself in essential relation to its own possibilities; forfeitures: distraction by the insistent claims of everyday moods and everyday interests and everyday companions, are the essential aspects of human being. But the three aspects are not separable. They form, as we have seen, one unified structure. It is to this single, indissoluble nature that Heidegger gives the name Sorge, cura, concern or care” (26).

This existence is not an authentic existence as it is currently framed; the only way that it can become a good-faith existence is if the human being in the contemplation of death recognizes himself as alone and responsible for his current condition. In this solitude, he is faced with his relationship and responsibility to Being and must recognize his absolute freedom.

The above summary paragraph is basic existentialism.  And I am summarizing a summary—Heidegger is much more interesting with lots of pedantic protests of authenticity and full of dashes and transliterated German. The problem as Grene notes: “It is a doubly self-centered philosophy: a philosophy of the individual centered in his own responsibility to become himself, of man in his own unique relation to his own Being. It is a philosophy in which the concept of the person is all-important, yet it can give us no account of any reaching out from person to another. It is a philosophy which birth and life and death are all important; yet it admits no kinship between man and any of the other things that are born live and die” (58). All of nature, humans and the cosmos, are merely a tool for the individual to discover himself and his relationship to Being.

The issue is not merely one of the egoism of the system, but the scheme only functions within a simplistic understanding of the human experience: “by singling out the act alone by which a man faces his own freedom, the existentialist isolates part of the total situation which cannot be so isolated. It is true that it is ‘I’ who have always-already-chosen the values by which I live. But I have chosen, not created them; if they were not some sense there to be chosen, if something did not compel to choose them, they would not be values at all. . .Every act involves at the least some references to values which, beyond itself, make a claim on the agent and perhaps, at least indirectly, bind him to other agents or to those affected by his acts” (54).

Once Heidegger has established his foundation for analyzing the human experience, he then turns to Being-in-itself or being as it is. And at this point he gets what should be described as silly or incoherent, but so many people take it seriously, we must trudge on. The authentic person is the person who has overcome the “enframing” of Being which was foisted on the West by Aristotle. Heidegger’s proof of this is simply, and he openly admits, reading back his own conclusions into history (cf. 105). When the authentic man overturns the “enframing” he can then “shepherd being” (110) through the mystical process of writing poetry and reconnecting to our pre-Socratic state.

A closing quote from Ms. Grene: “And it may be that Heidegger, in turning away from [Kirerkegaard’s concern about] finitude, is turning again to religion of a sort. . . And always he is a petulant and over-anxious self-apologist: concerned to tell us that this high, unintelligible search is all he has ever undertaken—that what he did achieve he never intended or achieved at all. Were it not for his arrogance , it would be a tragic story; the tragedy of an artist who has destroyed his own work (125).”

Benefits/Detriments:

An assessment of Heidegger is important because he is one of the foundational thinkers behind “post-modernity.” Heidegger has influenced biblical theology and hermeneutics through Bultmann and the proponents of the emerging church.  Dr. Grene’s assessment of his work is particularly important to Christians, because she, as a secular philosopher, accurately portrays Heidegger as a teacher of evil and sophistic or bad philosopher.

Heidegger is only helpful as a catalysis for better philosophers. His efforts to get behind Socrates terminate in returning to pre-Socratic Greek religion and the poets “inspiration.”  On a practical level there is little difference between traditional Greek religion and Hinduism. Heidegger is as much an apologist of a westernized Zen Buddhism as he is a legitimate philosopher.

Existentialism as taught by Heidegger is a handful of critical and interesting thoughts on the human experience combined with some nonsensical observations on Being and a corrosive attitude against both philosophy and Christianity—perhaps even against language and reason. He has a missionary zeal for the incoherence of traditional religion (Greek/Hindu) as “enframed” by poetry. He is not the friend of good science, good philosophy, or Christianity.  Dr. Grene comes to these conclusions as a philosopher with no religious loyalties.

Grene’s critique is accessible to the thoughtful reader with some background in philosophy. I would suggest it for college pastors working with artistic and philosophically minded students and undergraduates with an interest in philosophy.

The greatest weakness of this work is that it deals very little with Heidegger thoughts on language or hermeneutics which tends to be the portion of his work which is most readily absorbed by Christians. The foundation of his hermeneutic is exposed, but not the later rhetoric and development.

C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature

Cambridge Publishing, 1964, 231 pgs.

Summary: Lewis gave a series of lectures at Oxford on the cosmological model or the understanding of reality as it was generally understood in the Medieval and Renaissance period. The textual source of the model was the Bible and classical sources synthesized into a single mostly non-contradictory system. Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and the others all participated in building the model through the writings of men like Pseudo-Dionysius (c. 500) and Boethius (c. 480-524). Lewis defends the later two as Christian writers.

It must be stressed that the model is not anthropocentric or even Terra centric if correctly understood. Instead the model was “anthropoperipheral.” “Earth is in fact the ‘offsourings of creation’, the cosmic dust-bin” (63). The weighty and the gross, the dross, descends to the center: in the intelligible universe, “the Earth is the rim, the outside edge where being falls on the border of nonentity (116). The earth was widely understood as round and insignificant “as a mathematical point—puncti habere rationem” (83) through the work of Boethius.

It is of particular concern to Lewis that the reader understand not only the model of the medieval period but of modernity. Lewis believes that the modern model is a spoilt model in the sense of arrogance and ignorance of the past. It provides a hermeneutic which keeps the reader from enjoying the full richness of the Medieval and Renaissance works. Throughout The Discarded Image he offers an illustrations of the two models:  “In modern, that is, in evolutionary, thought Man stands at the top of stair whose foot is lost in obscurity; in this, he stands at the bottom of a stair whose top  is invisible with light” (74-75).

The difference is something like this: the modern man is in the process of becoming something better, but the medieval person was journeying towards someone better. The modern man looks into the heavens as if the universe were infinite; medieval man’s universe was “unimaginably large, was also unambiguously finite. And one unexpected result of this is to make the smallness of the Earth more vividly felt” (99). The modern man feels the angst of potential chaos and meaninglessness, but the medieval man found a well-ordered and stable model. In the older model the “human imagination has seldom had before it an object so sublimely ordered as the medieval cosmos” (121).

A further difference is in the issue of the human past; modernity, and to a lesser degree post-modernity, turns on what Lewis calls “Historicism: the belief that by studying the past we can learn not only historical but metahistorical or transcendental truth” (174-175). The modern turns to history to discover the process by which we are becoming. He judges the past as muted and lesser. The medieval man turned to history to see himself actualized to his full potential:

Medieval and nineteenth century man agreed that their present was no very admirable age; not to be compared (said one) with the glory that was, not to be compared (said the other) with the glory that is still to come. The odd thing is that the first view seems to have bred on the whole a more cheerful temper” (184-185).

Lewis closes with a brief consideration as to why the medieval model passed away; and his answer is extremely important for Christians to grasp:

There is no question here of the old Model’s being shattered by an inrush of new phenomena. The truth would seem to be the reverse; that when changes in the human mind produce a sufficient disrelish of the old Model and a sufficient hankering for some new one, phenomena to support the new one will obediently turn up. . .The new Model will not be set up without evidence, but the evidence will turn up when the inner need for it becomes sufficiently great. It will be true evidence. But nature gives most of her evidence in answers to questions we ask her. (221-223).

The basic and most fundamental change between the modern model and the older model was an issue of axiomatic truth. (The difficultly with axioms is that they are considered self-evident truths from which we infer other truths. They are defendable, but rarely provable.) When the axiom moved from “‘all perfect things precede all imperfect things’ to one in which it is axiomatic that ‘the starting point (Entwicklungsgrund) is always lower than what is developed’. . .” (220) then the old was replaced with the new.

Lewis’ cosmological plea concludes with this: “I am only suggesting considerations that may induce us to regard all Models in the right way, respecting each and idolising none. . . We can no longer dismiss the change of Models as a simple progress from error to truth. No Model is a catalogue of ultimate realities, and none is mere fantasy” (222).

Benefits: Any reader attempting to understand the contributions of Medieval and Renaissance literature (art, science, theology, and philosophy) will find this a helpful guide in defining the model behind the inferences.

As an example of assisting in reading the primary source documents, some of the Renaissance theologians will strike out against Epicureanism by saying that man is a microcosm or world in and of himself. This bizarre statement to modern minds is explained on two cosmological issues: the first is that humans have all three forms of being according to Gregory the Great (540-604),“because man has existence (esse) in common with stones, life with trees, and understanding (discernere) with angels, he is rightly called by the name of the world” (153). The second is that the human beings includes the “four contraries” which “combine to form the elements—fire, air, water, earth” (169). Humans are a microcosm of the world, because we have all the possible elements of being within ourselves.

I believe that it is extremely important that Christians begin to address modern cosmology as a possible description of reality and the hermeneutical outcomes (textual and scientific). Further, we must pound away at the false narrative of the march of truth created by the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment propaganda.

Detriments: Lewis is a subtle thinker and some of his comments about history, story, and myth seem to work out in his other works as undermining the inspiration of Scripture. I don’t believe this is a necessary element of his wider teaching on cosmology. I am still trying to grasp if Lewis is using his understanding of story/history/true myth as an apologetic device to speak to the “prevalent psychology of [our] age” (222) or a personal conviction on his part. Regardless, I think his view is a dangerous misstep.

On the issue of cosmology, the Christian thinker must have some privileged elements within whatever cosmology with which he conceptualizes the universe to remain Christian. These elements must include the existence of God and the bare fundamentals of the faith, including the veracity of Scripture. The privileged elements or revealed elements require that a cosmology which fundamentally denies the Christian faith must be repulsed.

The axiom “the starting point (Entwicklungsgrund) is always lower than what is developed” excludes the possibility of Christianity. It requires either that God is evolving with the universe or that there is no God. While many of the descriptive elements of modern cosmology may be accepted by Christians, the axiomatic foundation and its corrosive effects must be guarded against. Due respect of modern cosmology ought to include an appreciation of the destructive nature against the faith and its technological advancements.

I love Lewis dearly, yet too often I find in his handling of Scripture the hermeneutic “the starting point is always lower than what is developed.” There are occasional flashes against this sort of thing—his heart likely believes better than what he understands, but let the reader enjoy and learn from Lewis with an appropriate degree of caution.

Ronald M. Henzel, Darby, Dualism, and the Decline of Dispensationalism

Fenestra Books, 2003.

Summary: The author argues that Darby’s development of Dispensational theology was due to his assuming an absolute dualism between heaven and earth. The presupposition of dualism then became his hermeneutical key for understanding the Scriptures and led to his development of an earthly people, the Jews, and a heavenly people, the church. It also enforced an absolute distinction between law (earthly) and grace (heavenly), New Testament/Old etc.

As Darby developed a theological system around this duality, he created a rubric for interpreting prophecy: prophecy must be interpreted dualistically (heavenly/earthly); prophecy only concerns the earth; the church is never mentioned in prophecy; the prophetic clock does not run while the church is on earth. Henzel notes the logical contradictions between the first statement and the second.

The rubric was flexible enough to allow Darby to harmonize a large amount of Scripture within his dualistic scheme. However in the opinion of Henzel, this dualism and his rubric cannot cope with the use of Jeremiah 31 on the New Covenant in Hebrews 8.

Henzel also argues that neither Irving or Lacunza had much influence on Darby, though they are representative of the theological currents of the day.

Benefits/Detriments: This book is the most careful consideration of Darby’s theological writings that I am aware of. (I personally have failed to penetrate his opaque style.) Henzel highlights the differences between Darby’s stringent dualism and the simplified church/Israel division of his theological heirs. The literalism found in Scofield and other more modern Dispensationalists is secondary in Darby’s writing to his dualism.

Charles C. Ryrie, Dispensationalism

Moody Publishers, 2007.

Summary: An update of the earlier “Dispensationalism Today,” it has been expanded and in many ways improved. (I don’t have a copy of the earlier work and must rely on my memory.)

The author argues that Dispensationalism springs from a normal or literal hermeneutic. “The nonliteralist is the nonpremillennialist, the less specific and less consistent literalists are covenant premillennialist and the progressive dispensationalist, and the consistent literalist is a dispensationaslist” (102). He then attempts to defend normative or historical Dispensationalism, against progressive dispensationalists, non-premillennialists, and covenant premillennialists.

The marks of a Dispensationalist are then teaching a separation between Israel and the Church and literalism.

Benefits/Detriments: The spirit of the work is generally irenic. There seems to be a lack recognition of the role of presuppositions in Dispensationalistional hermeneutics. I was amused to discover that the only systemic theology of my childhood home (besides the Scofield and Ryrie study Bibles) was by an “ultradispensationalist,” Charles F. Baker.