Hermeneutic Proximity
I recently saw some comments from a man who was criticizing the short historical suit in the Protestant hand, and urging a greater respect and deference to "those who followed on from the apostles, with a hermeneutic proximity that we can only envy and access from afar..." I'm pretty sure he was talking about the Early Church Fathers there, and while I agree that characteristic Protestant ignorance of the Fathers is lamentable, I can't imagine a less convincing appeal.
Okay, on the one hand, all honor to the men of the early church who had to deal with persecution, fresh converts from pagan idolatry, and crazy heresies and schisms. They did an amazing job of holding things together and maintaining an orthodox, unified church. Give thanks.
On the other hand, they practiced a freestyle and improvisational kind of argumentation and hermeneutic that may have answered the need of the day well enough, but in a large percentage of instances, does not hold up at all. I mean, whether Catholic or Protestant, if you tried to preach today like Justin did about the horns of the unicorn prefiguring the cross, you would get well-deserved counsel of concern from your bishop.
Enviable hermeneutic proximity?
Okay, on the one hand, all honor to the men of the early church who had to deal with persecution, fresh converts from pagan idolatry, and crazy heresies and schisms. They did an amazing job of holding things together and maintaining an orthodox, unified church. Give thanks.
On the other hand, they practiced a freestyle and improvisational kind of argumentation and hermeneutic that may have answered the need of the day well enough, but in a large percentage of instances, does not hold up at all. I mean, whether Catholic or Protestant, if you tried to preach today like Justin did about the horns of the unicorn prefiguring the cross, you would get well-deserved counsel of concern from your bishop.
Enviable hermeneutic proximity?
Labels: early church fathers
posted by Keith | Wednesday, November 09, 2011
1 Comments:
Not to mention that three hundred years is a long freaking time. It might seem like not all that long from the vantage point of two thousand years, but it is *still* along time. We don't have all that much "hermeneutical proximity" to the 18th century, for example, and we have far better record-keeping, linguistic tools, and historical discipline than anyone in the fourth century did.
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