From Ecclesia Reformanda-http://www.ecclesiareformanda.org.uk/

The Maximalist Hermeneutics of James B. Jordan

R. S. Clarke

Abstract

James B. Jordan's maximalist hermeneutic seeks to read the Bible in a way that allows the depth and richness of its meaning to be discerned. The relationship between special and general revelation is important, as the world teaches us how to understand the Bible, and the Bible shows us how to interpret the world. The reader of the Bible should learn to be sensitive to all its literary tropes, in particular its rich symbolism and typology. Controls on this maximalist hermeneutic are not found in externally imposed rules but in theological and ecclesiastical traditions which themselves derive from the Bible.

Stuffing people in corrugated boxes and climbing up on them

EXHORTATION

PIGEON HOLES AND BOXES.... A friend of mine mentioned to me how sometimes others can put us in a box of their assessment of us and then keep us there. I think I agree with him, sometimes that does happen.

Do you feel like this has ever happened to you? Someone else sized you up entirely to quickly without even really getting to know you? Most of us have probably felt this way at one time or another. And why, why do we do this?

I think we do this because we want to make things easier for ourselves and our egos. If we can put someone in a box as it were, or in a nice compartmentalized pigeon hole, then it gives our sense of mind a nice tidy way to manage people. It's just too much work and energy in sizing up folks to allow for little mysteries and questions of other's character to let dangle around in our minds. It's too messy that way. And we don't like not being able to figure someone out. (Of course it doesn't help if we don't allow people to get to know us by keeping others guessing with riddles.) but we'll get to that in a second.

For now, can I encourage us to not feel the need to one-up each other? To stack up all the people that we have put in nice 4x4x4 boxes so that we can in turn climb up over everyone to be "King of the Hill." We desire to do this because we make up for what lacks in our own discipline by pushing the other down and exalting our superiority over them. "Yeah, she's pretty, but I'm taller." "Okay, he makes more money than I do, but let's face it, I'm more intelligent." "Alright, alright, (our mind tells us) he's a better athlete than I, but I know the intricacies of what is really cool." "She's better than me at sewing, but I could do that too, if I wanted to, I just don't." We search for excuses to justify ourselves better... "My intellect is sharper, I'm more beautiful, I'm more creative, at least I don't do THAT! and that is why I am a little better than him, a little better than her. Only in Christ of course....." Right....... isn't that how it goes my brothers and sisters?

Instead, what needs to happen, is we need to take that evil competition and boasting and put that in a box! Don't be selfish and make others have to do complex character riddles to know you. We want others to seek us out like lost treasure, but we aren't as willing to seek after others.

Brothers and sisters, do not do this. Replace the desire to position yourself more righteous with the greater desire to be humbled by one another and to be each other's best supporters, your neighbor's best fan. Stick up for one another, give the benefit of the doubt because the people around you this morning are YOUR people,

This is one clear way we can increase in love for one another more and more, as Paul says in I Thess. 3:12

This reminds us of our need to confess our sins,

Annelise Pipkin!

Ripping out a page in my Bible that I don't like

Yes, I confess. I don't like a certain page in my Bible. I don't agree with it theologically. I ripped it out. I feel so much better...

It was the page that tends to divide and space out psychologically the OT from the NT, the blank page that says, "New American Standard Bible-----------------------The New Testament"

thanks Foundation Publications for trying to lay things out clearly so I can read better, but we already have enough problems with not seeing the organic unity of redemptive history and the centrality of the Torah for the 1st Cent. context.

Other People

If I was a good writer and one of the chosen few, "Other people" is the article I would have written for the cultural magazine called "Credenda Agenda." Hopefully the latest Credenda will be accessible via the web before too long, but don't count on it as the Credenda before last hasn't even been promoted to the web yet. credenda.org is their website but you'll probably want to just sign up to get it at Christ Church 208.882.2034

But, the article is fantastic...Good job Toby. Peter Leithart's "Making Room" goes hand in hand with it too, excellent.

Lost femininity

I saw a purple Chevy today hiked up on its axles. On the mudflaps were the silhouettes of a naked male in silver. This is a sad and ironic example of a woman who truly has given herself over to a masculine problem with sexual lust in a masculine way. Whether she realizes it or not, her message is saying, "I have no femininity, I lust for men just like men tend to lust for women. To me, this is a very low position for something so glorious as a--woman... To be so degraded in one's sexuality that she would adopt the very form that degrades her very sex... Some man out there in her life, ought to be shot in the thigh..

But then, maybe what looked like a woman in the cab, maybe was a man.

Billy Sunday

I'm not fond of Billy Sunday, but this was good,

Jesus was "no dough-faced, lick-spittle proposition" but "the greatest scrapper that ever lived." Sunday (apparently my words) offered followers a "hard-muscled, pick-axed religion," not some "dainty, sissified, lily-livered piety."

Thomas Wentworth Higginson "Saints and Their Bodies" cited in Kimmel, Manhood in America.

Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth.