Josiah C > Recent Status Updates

Chapter 4, getting into the lives and teachings of the fathers, gets much better.

Pretty eh so far.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised with this content thus far.

Stanglin gives a very helpful illustration in chapter 7. Modern exegetes examine the Bible like a scientist examines a cadaver, very technically. Pre-modern exegetes examined the Bible like examining a spouse on a honeymoon. Both are examining the same body, i.e., the Bible, but their different methods give them information that is useful in different senses and for different ends.

Stanglin argues that the historical-critical method of interpretation does not even require that one believes the Scriptures are inspired. Stripping the Scriptures of their spiritual/allegorical/mystic sense leaves the work of exegesis to reason rather than to the Spirit.

Strangling argues that while the Reformers do
employ humanist hermeneutical methods and take a step toward the modern historical-critical methods of exegesis, they still have much more in common with medieval and patristic exegetes concerning the use of allegory, the mystic sense of Scripture, etc.

Stanglin argues that the differences between the Alexandrian and Antiochene schools of interpretation were negligible and that they both would find the modern historical-grammatical method of interpretation immature and absurd.

The Church Fathers understood the Christocentric Old Testament hermeneutic of the Apostles to be a model for the church’s hermeneutic, the rule of faith being the guardrails of interpretation. The idea that the Apostles have exclusive authority to interpret the Old Testament Christocentrically is a post-enlightenment modernist idea.

The Church Father’s understood Jesus’ interpretation of the Law as fulfilled and at times spiritualized to be the original intent of the Law. Barnabas believed the Jews misunderstood food laws, and that they were never meant to be obeyed literally but spiritually.

Wilson points out that the error of Christian white supremacy in the American south was that they absolutized their present moment. It was wrong, but not invalid to note that Europeans were more advanced than Africans. However, to conclude that Africans were inferior was to forget that just a few centuries earlier, before the Gospel took root in Europe, the Europeans were more pagan than Africans.

Piowtrowski argues that the Old Testament is christotelic, the New is christocentric, and the Testaments together are christological.

Piotrowski follows the Davidic line through the Old Testament in ways that absolutely blow your mind to pieces.

Calvin called premillennialism a childish fiction hardly needing refutation.

Chapter 6 on Critical Race Theory is wild. Basham shows that that SBC, especially it’s seminaries, and the IMB, mostly due to the leadership of JD Greear are beyond compromised in this area. Greear is cited seeing to it that 2/3 of the IMBs missionaries are women or black simply by virtue of their gender or ethnicity as well as supporting excommunication of church members who wouldn’t vote in black pastors.

Basham is a prolific writer and an excellent journalist. She gives well documented and researched examples so far of large so-called Evangelical orgs like the SBC, ERLC, Evangelical Immigration Table and their leaders compromising truth and taking money to do so.

Being halfway through, this is the most biblical and practical handling of purity for men I’ve read so far. One of the reasons it is so good is because Wilson pulls no punches. For this reason, he says in the intro that women should only read the book with the permission of their husbands and I think that is wise. He speaks specifically and reveals how dangerous all kinds of lusts are.

Origen was the first to view Gen 1-2 as allegory. He believed that there was a pre-cosmic fall of souls and that Gen 1-2 was an allegory describing that fall.

Garris shows that Christianity is distinctly patriarchal and makes an argument against women elders and deacons in chapter 4.

Garris argues in chapter 3 that the complementarian movement started in the 80s and represented in Piper and Grudem’s “Biblical Manhood and Womanhood” was a compromised and inconsistent position from the start. He shows that their interpretations of key texts in 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Corinthians 14 prohibiting women only from holding the office of an elder and from interpreting prophecy are novel and wrong.

Garris shows from 1 Corinthians 6 that effeminacy, or to be a soft man, is sin that leads to hell. He also gives sound exegesis of 1 Timothy 2:15, showing that while women are justified by faith, it is a faith that produces femininity, childbearing being the pinnacle of feminine function.