Primado and Karma Mazapine...
I have recently spent several hours reading dozens of pages of articles regarding the whole ordination of women debate from the Canadian Mennonite Brethren Conference. I basically read all the articles linked on the Canadian MB page and several other articles on other sites from some of the authors. After doing all my reading, I have come to a conclusion:
Somehow, under the guise of pleading hermeneutical humility, we've come to make allowances for poor scholarship and sloppy exegesis. We wear incompetence like a badge of honor.
I just had to get that off my chest. I'm very tired of the typical Mennonite 'postmodern exegetical humility' card that selectively trumps one text at the expense of another or attempts to bind the hands of any exegete from attempting to derive a single intended meaning from the scripture. Anyway, I've got other things to do right now and a rant right now, on this topic, would most certainly get me in trouble. Until Next Time,
The Armchair Theologian
posted by The Armchair Geek at 10:31 PM
2 Comments:
okay, so you don't like the research/scholarship behind the topic thus far . . . so, what's your take on the topic then?
7:00 AM
Okay...you got me red handed Caro. I cannot make blanket statements about stuff and not back them up. My take on the topic is this:
1. The Scripture is propositional revelation with an actual meaning.
2. That meaning, though difficult to exegete at times, is discernable.
Through various songs and dances rooted on postmodern philosophy, both points 1 and 2 are under attack.
Now I won't say that the whole debate would be over if we give those assumptions as hermeneutical starting points...not even close. People can still choose to either twist or simply reject any data. I'm not nieve enough to think that if everyone had a PhD, everyone would have the same understandings.
My take on the topic is that we've been slain by a completely anti-christian philosophy that has snuck in the back door.
Reading Doug Hiedebrecht's articles would be entertaining if they weren't so discouraging. The whole concept of 'hermeneutics of humility' is a rhetorical tool to misdirect the reader from the simple notion that "we should not have a concrete reading of a disputed text"...and the only reason for this is THAT it is a disputed text. Now we can NEVER have Cartesian certainty, but the argument based on a lack of Cartesian certainty is just a smokescreen to keep someone from having a solid opinion on whatever suits the critics' fancy.
I mean, if I do the biblical, exegetical, contextual and historical work, I'd better arrive SOMETIME at a fairly comprehensive and coherent position on the meaning of a text. The whole "because people disagree on this, we shouldn't take a firm stand on it" position is something that gets my goat, and tremendously at that.
I remember when I was young and we could simply say "well, what does the Bible say?" and then we'd do that. It's a popular idea to complain that such a view is too simplistic, but I only ask "on what basis must the bible be indiscernably complex?"
God gave us a personal revelation in language, which is propositional by it's very nature. He obviously wanted us to learn SOMETHING...Sheesh. I won't rant anymore.
Did that answer your question or did you have something else in mind?
12:13 AM
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