This is PART 1 of main section of the blog. 

 

The intention here is to gather all of my particular reflections on the metaphysics of the exegetical act (Excuse the ten-dollar phrase!).

 

For this reason, I am most interested in the question of "priors" in so far as Holy Scripture demands a kind of Biblical Theology from the on start once we ask ourselves, "what is the Bible?" 

So, what do I mean by "priors"?  I mean those constraints, unavoidable and given, that are in place even before we begin to read Holy Scripture.

 

Here, I list five hardly exhaustive but still serviceable list of priors to give pause to a "Bible only" approach to the study of Holy Wit:

 

(1) Heresy as a Scripturally and Historically attested reality (Thus, every "heterodoxy" necessitates an "orthodoxy" by which unsound doctrines are to be judged as such), since heresy is Biblically cited, it is thus not unproblematic to dispense with the whole notion of "orthodoxy" or "doctrine" and what that involves in the name of being "Biblically centered" (whatever that means).

 

(2) Christian Doctrine (a necessity from Prior #1) is connected to but not reducible to Scripture (i.e. Scripture alone is not adequate to defending doctrinal propositions of any kind, even that of the "Bible alone" anti-theology theology).  This is because Scripture does not present itself as doctrine per se.  The purpose of Scripture is for God to reveal Himself through History.  From the burning bush on Sinai to the theophany of Christ's baptism in the Jordan and beyond, that is the primary intention.  The teachings of Christianity (as a type of religion) are simply not disclosed in such a systematic way by Scripture alone.  This is different than saying many of the teachings of Christianity are based in Scripture.   But "equal to" and "based upon" are not the same thing.  And, such choice terms (e.g. "based in", "derived from", etc.) interest me here immensely.

 

(3) Scripture is not simply a single text or a "monolith" but a complex library of distinct genres, authors, and periods, and such historicity cannot be swept away by a broad appeal to "Divine Authorship", "Inerrancy", etc., even if true, if the purpose of these appeals is to ignore these distinctions and historical meanings in convenient attempts to sidestep these and other inconvenient priors.

 

(4) There are different "senses" of Scripture such that one passage requires a metaphorical treatment and another a literal one (so, in a different but related sense as #3, Scripture is not a hermeneutical "flat file" or "simple" but requires something external to determine what sense applies and where, i.e. Tradition).  In fact, the pressure for a Tradition is historically attested in every organized form of Christianity including that of the "Bible Church" phenomenon as a whole.  Pastors too go to seminary, I have been told, even if that seminary is "online."

 

(5) Canonicity further implies that there are different versions of the Bible; thus, the "Bible alone" cannot be said to exist (rather, this or that version of the Bible is said to concretely exist).  Selecting which Bible is "legitimate" has, in short, nothing to do with the Bible itself (i.e. does the King James Version speak about its superiority versus other versions? No, it does not.); rather, this selection speaks to a more particular set of priors of a confessional or denominational persuasion than can be listed here.  The Bible fits that persuasion just as often as a given version informs any changes to that persuasion.  The priors listed here are "formal priors" in so far as they obtain regardless of what one believes.  Picking a version of a Bible because it lacks Maccabees and thus a concrete reference to the doctrine of praying for the dead, for example, is not a formal but a "material prior."  I will only occasionally go into material priors if and when it seems worthwhile to illustrate the "private language" argument's relevance for the individualistic approaches to Holy Scripture.  My focus is instead on the formal kinds because I only have so much time in the day to commit to this topic (however foundational it is).

 

Bringing to attention "priors" in this sense to the exegetical act emphasizes the background knowledge, assumptions, and preferences at play (whether we acknowledge them or not) that speak to what the Church has historically termed the reality of "Tradition" in general and "traditions" in particular (PART II...)

Again, I phrase this approach as a kind of Exegetical metaphysics because I am interested in exegesis as a highly contingent act vs. a common sensical "straight forward" unconstrained beginning of sorts where neither history nor communal elaborations of Holy Scripture appear to matter in the least.  That kind of slapdash individualism, the hallmark of modernity in religious matters, is something I want to push against.  

 

More to come!