Hyper-Inductivism: The Heresy-Hugging Hermeneutic

PART TWO

Hyper-Inductivism in the Home
Many people are unaware of the fact that the verse numbers contained in modern translations of the Bible were added during the Middle Ages and were not part of the inspired text in the autographa. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad they are in there. They make Scripture location and memorization much more efficient. But coupled with the decline in systematic thinking in the West, the elevation of the ideals of political liberalism to the status of theological virtue, and the invention of the printing press (again, happy), the versification of Scripture became pandemic. Have you been to a small group Bible study anywhere in America lately? Personally, I would rather just call it a day and watch Oprah. At least then I would be exposed to people who know that they're coming from a New Age perspective. We sit around and talk about what this verse "means to me...or you!" Sorry--got a little too fascist on you there. A garden variety example should help illustrate:

The most recent example of this I have heard regards 1 Thessalonians 4:17, which of course is the famous rapture passage. Full Preterism (the position that all of the prophetic events including the second coming of Christ, judgment of the earth, and resurrection all occured in the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD) teaches that this text is a first-and-only-resurrection passage, and that the resurrection of the righteous is purely spiritual, including the "spiritual body" refered to in 1 Corinthians 15. The way they explain our meeting the Lord "in the air" is that the Greek word for "air" is aer, which often has the connotation of spiritual presence as opposed to spatial. Of course the bare fact that words such as aeroplane and aerodynamic comes from this word need not concern us, much less that the English word "air" is simply a modification of the Greek. Moreover, no other context is allowed to speak on the matter, unless of course we begin with the assumption that everything had to have happened prior to 70 AD, including the writing of the book of Revelation (which, while possible, also does not settle the matter). The point is not that the hyper-inductivist is not allowed to have his assumptions. We all have ours. But because he sees his exegesis as pure induction, he is blissfully unaware of his storehouse of presuppositions. He is all the more suspect to impose them than the one who is working with a systematic-exegetical peripheral vision.


Hyper-Inductivism at the Seminary
Two more elaborate positions have emerged in recent generations and are guilty of this same sort of folly. Open Theism and The New Perspectives on Paul both utilize a more snobbish sort of hair-splitting at the leaf level, and ommit all more systematic-deductive checking as the imposition of dogma onto the text. But the important thing to see is that both of these systems of exegesis are systems! They both assume things about the whole of the textual material that inform their handling of this or that piece.

The fundamental assumption of the Open Theist's system is that narrative and prophetic portions of Scripture about the activity of God must be held as normative as any didactic proposition concerning one or many of the divine attributes. They must assume this, or else, they would not use the texts that they do to demonstrate that God's knowledge of the future is shaped by the action of free moral agents. When the more classical theist points out that these texts are instances of anthropomorphisms (divine activity communicated by analogy to man--anthropos--thus making it easier for the reader to grasp), the classical theist is accused of being arbitrary or dismissive for the sake of his system. The Open Theist should not be suspected of the same. He is merely dealing with the text. And after all, there are passages in the Bible which have "the Lord God walking in the garden" [Gen. 3:8], or that He "came down to see the city and the tower" [Gen. 11:5], or saying to Abraham: "now I know that you fear God" [Gen. 22:12], or dealing prophetically with Israel, the Lord says: "If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it" [Jer. 18:7-8]. Now passages like this do seem to suggest that God either relates to the creature in such a way that His perspective is shaped by them, or, at least that the future events that these particular creatures cause are not things that are known by God.

But three obvious (hopefully) things must be said in reply--1. Didactic propositions in Scripture do hold sway over narrative or prophetic portions because the didactic genre, in any form of literature, is meant to convey straightforward information about the essence of a thing, while historical narrative is concerned with phenomenological record and the prophetic genre is shoruded in highly poetic and symbolic import. This does not make these two genres less literal; much less does it make them less real or determinative on our doctrine. It simply means that they will be determinative in a less immediate way; 2. The didactic teachings in Scripture--both in completely didactic genres (i.e. the epistles) and in collected propositions in the other genres (It must be understood that narrative, prophecy, and poetry can all contain strict propositions)--do in fact teach that God knows all things [Jn. 21:17, Job 36:4, 37:16, Ps. 139:16-18, Heb. 4:13, 1 Jn. 3:10] and ordains all minute details from beginning to end [Mat. 10:29-30, Eph. 1:11, Col. 1:16-20], and that this is indistinguishable from the meaning of His divine identity [Is. 46:9-10]; and 3. If the handful of isolated, supposedly ignorance-teaching, texts really do communicate what the Open Theist thinks, then either these other texts do not teach that God knows all things, or, the Bible holds to both of these two mutually exclusive propositions, in which case, the Bible is in error. Hence, the Christian worldview collapses. But we are not to think such things, as nothing of what I just said could possibly arise out of a concern for biblical texts, but is purely a case of we knuckle-dragging "fundamentalists" imposing our domga and systems upon the text!

Now to this other little high-browed fad, courtesy of our favorite high-browed ancestors, the Brits--and specifically, the Anglican bishop, N. T. Wright. The work of Dunn and Sanders doesn't concern me here, both because I consider their work to be openly skeptical and materialistic, and secondly, because another weapon of choice for the NPP is to distract us with the intelligensia version of a Chinese fire drill--"You can't really pin down a 'New Perspective' school or voice or model. They all come from such different angles and have different conclusions about different aspects of Pauline literature." Don't fall for it! Here's one thing they all have in common: They have given us the most brilliantly conceived system (you'll live) yet of avoiding the most obvious central meaning of Paul in order to do what all humans--simple and smart--always want to do, to represent themselves before God on the ground of their own inherent worth. I do not find this very new or particularly brave. Kudos, though, on making it painstakingly nuanced enough so that we cavedwelling doctrine-mongers at the local hut can't alert our indifferent brothers and sisters to it without looking like a short-bus full of conspiracy theorists from the Reformed Trekky convention.

Now what is the NPP and in what way does it employ the heresy-hugging hermeneutic? At its core, Wright claims two things that he and his groupies feel that the Reformed tradition has either missed or distorted: 1. Paul's usage of the word and concept of justification refers not to one's getting made right with God via a legal declaration by free grace; and 2. the historic doctrine of forensic justification via the imputation of Christ's righteousness is not intended anywhere in the New Testament. Indeed, the word "impute" is not mentioned. For a detailed argument against the first idea, read Guy Prentiss Waters' book Justification and the New Perspectives on Paul, and against the second idea, John Piper's smaller book Counted Righteous in Christ is a must read. I hear that Piper is currently writing a refutation of Wright on the larger scope of justification. That will be enjoyable to read. Hyper-Inductivism comes into play in three main ways: the examination process of the dikaioo (justify) word group, the argument against the "imputation" language via its relative absence, and the introduction into the Second Temple Judaism context--which, while one would think would be seen as a deductive category, seems to be held in high esteem because the Qumran/Midrashic texts that are drawn from are still contemporary texts that lend credence to the idea that these guys are simply engaging in cool-headed, indifferent scholarship.

Instructing people in this hermeneutic is a bit like training monkeys to fetch land mines or fly in space shuttles. Very impressive, but not the real thing. Dress them up if you like, but they are still not learning to be rational in a comprehesive sense. As is the case with the professor at the university, we aim for a very narrow specialization that may wow, intimidate, and the like, but at the end of the day, it is a paper-thin garnish in lieu of the more difficult and necessary task of allowing Scripture to interpret itself. And in order to do that, you have to allow for more and more context; and that takes time, sweat, skill, deductions, and, yes, maybe even the help of a couple of dead white guys who spoke a little Latin. It turns out that doing theology systematically (if one's deduction is consistently arising from what the Bible is actually saying) is to do it humbly. A humble theology just will be a systematic theology--always asking: "But what does the whole Bible have to say about this immediate inference?"