Doctrine of Scripture (2): Necessity & Sufficiency

http://www.lakeviewchristiancenter.com/messages/2011/10/16/doctrine-of-scripture-2-necessity-sufficiency/

Doctrine of God (3): Attributes of Lordship

http://www.lakeviewchristiancenter.com/messages/2012/02/19/doctrine-of-god-3-attributes-of-lordship-2/

Falsies for Green Berets

http://www.stripes.com/news/army/soldiers-don-fake-belly-breasts-to-better-understand-pregnant-troops-exercise-concerns-1.168786

Are Miracles Real?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-s-keener/miracles-in-the-bible-and-today_b_1274775.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

Are the Laws of Logic Propositions?

http://www.proginosko.com/2012/02/are-the-laws-of-logic-propositions/

Once Upon a Time

Jeremy Pierce recently did a post on the TV series Once Upon a Time:

http://parablemania.ektopos.com/archives/2012/01/once-upon-epist.html

I’d like to develop this in a different direction. I didn’t see the show when it first aired. But from what I can tell, the core of the story involves a vengeful evil queen who curses the fairy tale characters by banishing them from the enchanted forest to modern Storybrooke, Maine, and afflicting them with amnesia. The action alternates between their prelapsarian life and their postlapsarian life.

The evil queen’s chief antagonist is Rumplestiltskin. Both he and the queen wield black magic. Rumplestiltskin is a Mephistophelean character who finagles Faustian bargains with other characters. However, he’s also a tragic character who wasn’t always evil. And he’s conflicted. Because he wrote the curse which the Queen used, he himself is immune to the curse. He remembers everything. Still, he seems to be trapped in this postlapsarian world.

A challenge for the evil queen is some characters begin to remember their former life. They have flashbacks. And there’s also a book of fairly tales that tells the real story behind the illusory world of Storybrooke.

It’s nice to see Robert Carlyle in a juicy, psychologically complex role. It’s also nice to see Jennifer Morrison so spunky and ravishing after the rather demure and mousey part she had in House. But I’m afraid Snow White is a wet blanket.

However, my aim is not so much to comment on the TV show, but to consider how you could work similar elements into a parable of the Fall.

The evil queen would be the “god” (or goddess, as if were) of this world, who blinds fallen characters to reality by casting a spell (2 Cor 4:4). They’ve been banished from the Garden. They live in exile.

They’ve forgotten who they are. They’ve forgotten where they came from. They’ve forgotten their prelapsarian origins.

However, a book is discovered (i.e. the Bible) which tells the backstory. The deluded characters attack the true story and defend their spellbound illusion. Under the spell of the evil queen, they are charmed by The Origin of Species. They mistake the evolutionary fairy tale for reality while they relegate the true story to a fairy tale.

However, the Comforter has broken the spell and lifted the curse under which some characters labored. They begin to remember their true identity. They begin to remember where they came from. They begin to remember their former, prelapsarian existence. Although they remain stuck in the illusory world, they now know it’s just an illusion. They believe the book. And they share their insight with other characters. 

Richard Belcher on Historic Adam

http://www.reformation21.org/articles/did-adam-and-eve-really-exist-a-review.php

Publish or perish

Is peer review a requirement of good science?

Further Thoughts On The Moral Aspect Of Near-Death Experiences

I've written about the moral dimension of near-death experiences (NDEs) in the past. I recently received the following comments in an email:

Read more »

“Christ Alone” in Earliest Christianity: No Development Required

Was there ever a time in Christianity when something was believed, as Vincent of Lerins might have stated it, “always, everywhere, and by all”?

Darrell Bock, in “The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities” (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishing, ©2006), makes the following observations about Walter Bauer’s contribution to the study of the early church fathers:

Two methodological emphases of Bauer have stood the test.

 1. In their desire to refute these [early heretical] views, the church fathers overstated their own case and sometimes were inaccurate about what was taking place, especially when it came to treating all heresies as coming from a singular root, whether it was back to Simon Magus or calling most of these movements Gnostic (Wisse 1971; Beyschlag 1974). Scholarly consensus exists on this point (Harrington 1980).

 This observation about the fathers should not be exaggerated. A check of Irenaeus against the sources of views he challenged reveals that he described those views accurately. Many of the details of views noted in other fathers also stand corroborated. …

 Nonetheless, Bauer’s questioning produced a more careful assessment of the fathers. His call to view the sources from the church fathers in light of their polemics and to listen to proponents from both sides describe and present their views was a necessary historical corrective.

 2. The examination of evidence by geographical region was an important insight. Ideas move across time and space in different directions at different speeds. Sometimes they reflect a variety of cultural factors, with some of those factors being unique to a given region.

My view always has conformed with Bock’s statement here. Whether it’s Clement or Ignatius or Justin or any of the other early church fathers, yes, they provide valuable information, but no, we ought not to take everything they said as if it were gospel.

Still, there was a time, during the period of what is called “earliest Christianity”, when a Christian doctrine was genuinely “believed always, everywhere, and by all”.

In his work Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, ©2003), Larry Hurtado explores the notion that “devotion to Jesus as God” was not only characteristic “always, everywhere, and by all” of the earliest Christians. But such devotion, he said, was “noteworthy phenomenally early”, it appeared with “unparalleled intensity”, and it appeared even in the midst of an “exclusive monotheistic environment”.

In his Introduction, Hurtado writes:

The indisputable centrality of the figure of Jesus in early Christian devotion is the premise for this book, and my aim is to offer a new historical description and analysis of this remarkable phenomenon. Indeed, the key distinguishing feature of the early Christian circles was the prominent place of Jesus Christ in their religious thought and practice. There certainly were plenty of other religious groups worthy of note in the Roman period, and even some that shared a number of important features with early Christianity. … But despite the similarities with other religious movements and groups of the Roman period, all the various forms of early Christianity (whatever their relationship to what came to be known as “orthodox” or “catholic” Christianity) can be identified as such by the importance they attached to the figure of Jesus (pgs 1-2).

Roman Catholics are fond to boast that they have “the fullness of the faith”. But during the era of the Apostles, “the fullness of the faith”, the “faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people”, “the good deposit that was entrusted” to the church, consisted in precisely one thing.

Hurtado says, “For several reasons I contend that Christ-devotion is an utterly remarkable phenomenon [given its situation in the ancient Jewish and Roman worlds], and that it is also the result of a complex of historical forces and factors. Here are some major features that justify us in seeing early devotion to Jesus as remarkable":

1. It began amazingly early, and was already exhibiting signs of routinization by the time of the letters of Paul (i.e., by ca. 50 C.E.), which means that the origins of cultic veneration of Jesus have to be pushed well back into the first two decades of the Christian movement.

 2. Devotion to Jesus was by no means confined to this or that conventicle but seems to have spread with impressive rapidity across the Christian movement, though there were also variations in its expression.

 3. Although at a certain high level of generalization one can draw some comparisons with other Roman-era groups and movements, we have no full analogue in the Roman world, which makes the task of historical explanation particularly difficult (the more so to the degree that historical “explanation” is seen to rest upon analogy). To cite one key matter, we have no other Roman-era example of a religious movement with similar ties to the Jewish religious tradition of exclusivistic monotheism and with a devotional pattern that involved so thoroughly a second figure in addition to God.

 4. Devotion to Jesus was central in early Christian groups and of enormous significance for the historical development of Christianity (pg 7).

Lord willing, I’ll explore some of the ramifications of this in future entries on “earliest Christianity”. 

An Overview Of Some Research Findings On Near-Death Exepriences

Here's a post by Nancy Evans Bush summarizing fifteen things we know about near-death experiences, especially experiences that are negative (hellish).

What are Cardinals?

In the light of the recent expansion of "the college of Cardinals", Elizabeth Lev a writer from Zenit.org has provided a brief history of the office:

"Cardinal" comes from the Latin word "cardo," meaning hinge. The term was used in the early church to describe priests who could be transferred from assignments and parishes. In a world where most priests stayed put in their parishes for life, as stability after the break-up of the Roman Empire was a priority in the church, these mobile priests were precious multi-taskers.

Theses "hinges," moveable but always anchored to the pope, began to serve as senior advisors to the papacy and gradually became the cosmopolitan group of men known as cardinals.

But Medieval Europe saw the Church increasing hemmed in by secular powers, in particular by the Holy Roman Emperor, the most powerful man in the world of that age.

The role of the Holy Roman Emperor had been established in 800 as a protector of the Church's person, property and liberties, but by the 11th century the emperor interfered regularly in Church matters, even appointing bishops, and he expected to have a role in electing the Roman Pontiff.

It should be noted that the "establishment" of "the role of the Holy Roman Emperor" was a premeditated scheme. And the pope was the schemer. But nevertheless:

The papal election was already heavily controlled by Roman nobles, who divvied up the papacy among themselves from reign to reign, interspersed with periods of antipopes and devastating infighting and extremely long election periods.

A few reform-minded Frenchmen and Germans managed to muscle into the throne of Peter and on Easter of 1059, Pope Nicholas II issued the papal bull In Nomine Domini, in the presence of 113 bishops gathered in Rome at St. John Lateran. This bull put the election of the pope into the hands of the cardinals who would be assembled in Rome, and was the equivalent to a declaration of independence.

The Church distinguishes three types of cardinals. The title of "cardinal bishops" is officially only held by six cardinals who are titulars of Rome's seven suburbicarian dioceses. They are the most senior prelates of the Church and provide immediate service to the pope. These seven dioceses, outside of Rome proper, include Ostia, Velletri, Tusculum and Palestrina -- the former strongholds of Roman nobles who once controlled the papacy. These "sees" are assigned to the longest serving and highest ranking officials, who have always been required to be bishops, whereas, historically, priests and the lowest ranks of clergy could also be elevated to the rank of the red hat.

More recently, Blessed Pope John Paul II decreed that all cardinals are required to first be bishops unless especially permitted by the pope. Two of the new cardinals, Fathers Ries and Grech were just ordained bishops, while Father Becker has obtained permission to be exempted to maintain his Jesuit promise not to strive for any dignity in the church.

This really seems funny because only the pope can name Cardinals anyway. Why bother with the extra "permission"?

The "cardinal priests" are the most numerous in the College of Cardinals. The name alludes to the original parish priests of Rome, from the earliest 25 titular churches of Rome. Even as cardinals, they did not receive episcopal ordination as there was already a bishop of Rome. They were however all ordained priests. The number soared over the centuries and now the cardinal priests are drawn from leaders of large dioceses and curial officials. Almost all the new cardinals will be cardinal priests.

"Cardinal deacons" are meant to mirror the seven deacons of the papal circle. Their task originally was to run the many Church ministries in the city, known as the diaconia. These men could be merely "tonsured," inducted into ordained ministry but not as priests. Today cardinal deacons are often those who have passed the age of 80 (the voting age in the conclave) or one who has not been ordained a bishop. Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, who was never made a bishop, was the cardinal deacon of St. Giorgio in Velabro, one of Rome's most ancient diaconia.

Pope Paul VI added a special provision for the patriarchs of the Eastern Catholic Churches to be raised to the cardinalate with his 1965 motu proprio Ad Purpuratorum. Four bishop cardinals were named from the Coptic, Chaldean, Syrian and Maronite rites, and are ranked after the six senior suburbicarian sees.

Titular churches

The early structure of the College of Cardinals reflected the earliest Roman Church with its parishes and diaconia and major satellite dioceses. But as Europe stabilized and flourished from the Atlantic to the Baltic, the Church began to seek collaboration beyond the confines of Italy. By the 12th century, the College of Cardinals had grown to include men from all over Europe. These non-residents of Rome were given homes in the Eternal City in the form of "titular" churches, so as to hinge the most far-flung dioceses to the See of Peter. The first were the earliest basilicas of Rome but have since expanded. Now there are 150 titular churches out of Rome's more than 300.

Elizabeth Lev teaches Christian art and architecture at Duquesne University's Italian campus and University of St. Thomas' Catholic Studies program.

Living in glass houses

christthetao

Dr. Avalos: You neglect to point out that Vitz' book is a response to decades of similiar, and less nuanced, psychological critiques of theism by atheists.  Nor, I think, is Vitz attempting merely to "distract attention" -- he's a psychologist, why shouldn't he study psychology?  I think he's probablyy onto something, in the case of Freud -- who can hardly complain -- even if his overall claim seems only occasionally explanatory, as I admitted in my Amazon review years ago.   

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2012/02/is-richard-dawkins-liar-doctor-jim.html#comment-442781446

Dr. Avalos: You have this habit of replying to Christians, without putting what you're responding to in the context of attacks on them, which exhibit the faults you allege of the Christians far more strongly.  We've seen this again and again.  It is not what I would call the best scholarship, which sets critiques in fair context, and criticizes both sides by the same standards.  It's like blaming an aged widow for hitting a man in a park with her purse, without mentioning that he was trying to mug her.  

Vitz makes the reactionary and limited character of his argument clear: "There seems to be a widespread assumption, throughout much of our intellectual community, that belief in God is based on all kinds of irrational, immature needs and wishes . . . To challenge the psychology of this viewpoint is the primary concen of this book." (Faith of the Fatherless, 1999, Preface, xiv)  Seems fair to me. 

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2012/02/is-richard-dawkins-liar-doctor-jim.html#comment-442824461

Salva veritate

I'm going to comment on this post:

http://drreluctant.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/types-or-comparisons/

Additionally, it is a reason why one ought to be cautious about embracing the notion that the NT reinterprets the OT.

Since I haven't embraced that notion; since, as a matter of fact, I've been arguing the opposite, the cautionary is a red herring. For some reason, Henebury keeps trying to shoehorn my argument into a different argument than the one I'm actually using. Perhaps he keeps reverting to the default argument because he has more experience dealing with the default argument, whereas he doesn't have ready-made rebuttals for my actual argument.

Better places to go would be Jer. 30:1-10; 31:1-14, 21-16; 32:37-41; 33:14-26.  These show again that there is no typology and “territorial referents” are constant.

i) I’m citing passages that present a new Eden or new Exodus motif. For Henebury to cite other passages that may not contain that motif hardly negates my appeal. The absence of a given motif in one passage doesn't cancel out the presence of a given motif in another passage.

ii) If, on the other hand, he thinks a passage like Jer 31:1-14 also contains a new Eden motif, then that's more supporting material for my position, not his.

Steve’s “typology” of recapitulation is not there. 

Where is "there"? Not there in the passages I cited or the passages he cited?

He has brought it with him.

No, that's right there in the text.

Yes, but motifs don’t equal types.

i) I never said a motif qua motif is a type. It depends on the kind of motif. I specified the kind of motif I have in mind: a new Eden or new Exodus motif.

For reasons I've give, that's a type/token relationship.

ii) However, even at the generic level, a motif is a recurring pattern, which dovetails with typology.

In the verses he cited Israel was said to be “like Eden.” (Isa. 51:3).  All that was being done was that a comparison was being made.  The same is true of Jer. 16.  The comparison with the Exodus is one of a greater (future) migration to the promised-land. 

That’s a strange criticism. In the nature of the case, a type/token or type/antitype relation is a comparative relation, involving analogy rather than identity. Tokens exemplify the type; they are not identical with the type.

Likewise, one token is not identical with another token. Rather, tokens are similar to each other inasmuch as they instantiate the same type. Repetition with variation.

Likewise, in a type/antitype relation, the type is both like and unlike the antitype, or vice versa.

In both cases, we're dealing with a relation between two or more things. In the nature of the case, you can't have a relation if it's one and the same thing–salva veritate.

I'll have more to say momentarily.

If we start seeing a “New Exodus” motif as a typological signal to deny the return of Israel to its land in fulfillment of its covenants, we are not doing it because Jeremiah instructs us to do so.  No, it is because the motif is a necessary hermeneutical vehicle to arrive at the desired theology.

Which misses the point. In the new Exodus motif, the Jews return to Eretz-Israel. However, they don't return to Israel from Egypt. Rather, they return to Israel from Babylon. So there's a shift in the territorial referents.

Likewise, in the new Eden motif, the Jews return to the Eretz-Israel, except that Israel typifies Eden. That’s what makes it a homecoming. So land has already acquired an emblematic significance, where Bible writers can substitute one territorial referent for another.

So says Steve.  But in the passages he quoted Eden stands for Eden in comparative illustration of the renewed land of Israel.  There isn’t any need to see types and shadows.

I haven't used the term "shadow."

If I say that the smell of the American Northwest is like the smell of northern England, I don’t have anything like a type in mind.  Neither do I require others to create a typological grid in which to fit my words.  If an OT prophet recalls Eden or the Exodus to illustrate another work of God in the eschaton, we are not to jump to the conclusion that he is speaking typologically.

Except that, as I pointed out, it runs much deeper than similes or incidental imagery. Rather, we're dealing with one of the master plot lines of Scripture: banishment and restoration.

The original Exodus and the new Exodus are both variations on a common theme. The fundamental constant is the underlying exemplar, and not the differing ways in which that's exemplified. 

The trouble with this way of speaking is that it ends up converting eschatological Israel into non-Israel, denying them the promised-land; the Jerusalem temple morphs into the church; Zadokites into Christians; the throne of David is another name for the throne of God, etc., all because types must be produced for certain theological views to be sustained.  It is question-begging.

i) I'm hardly begging the question when I argue for my position.

ii) If anything, Henebury is begging the question. It only "denies them the promised-land" if he assumes the very issue in dispute.

iii) I wouldn't say the temple morphs into the church. Rather, both church and temple prefigure God's presence with his people in the world to come (Rev 21:3). God dwelling with his people is the type, of which the temple (Exod 29:44-45) and the church (2 Cor 6:16) are tokens.

If the basic plotline wasn’t similar there could not be a comparison made.

Which misses the point (see above).

This is precisely why one ought never let a type in until one knows what any passage is saying, and so whether any type has warrant.  There is no such warrant in Steve’s passages from the Prophets.  Types are tethered to theologies, and are therefore apt to promote Eisegesis.  If one is not careful, every stubborn covenant promise will be made to bend because it has been burdened with the label “type”, ready to perform in the way described above.

i) Henebury hasn't presented a counterargument in this paragraph. Rather, he's treated the reader to a dismissive and tendentious characterization of my argument.

ii) What also comes through in his response to me is that his own position is driven by what he deems to be the unacceptable consequences of the opposing position. He begins with the (allegedly) unacceptable consequences, then works back from that starting point to devise a hermeneutical system which will avoid the unacceptable consequences. So the whole exercise is aprioristic.

Steve will strongly disagree with me, but what I see is a “theological function” borne by the motif, being read into the OT.  The “theological function” is wrought from the particular interpretation of NT passages. 

He's tilting at windmills. He keeps attacking an argument I never use. Does this reflect an inability to adapt to an argument he's not used to?

Since Israel does not yet bear a comparison to Eden we must look for a future fulfillment.

i) But in context, the "future fulfillment" wasn't a golden-age millennium at the end of the church age, but the postexilic period (c. 5C BC).

ii) Of course, it's quite possible to view the new Eden motif as having future counterpart (future to us), but that would commit Henebury to a typological view of land.

And it can so easily become a wax nose.

It's just a fact that theological motifs in Scripture are subject to development.  

New Cardinal Dolan seen as papabile (candidate to be pope)

The Main Act of the Day

Yesterday, Benedict XVI presided over a “day of reflection and prayer” in which 133 cardinals took part, as well as the 22 new inductees in the church’s most exclusive club.

The main act of the day was a speech on the new evangelization by Dolan, who delivered a vintage performance emphasizing the need to present the Christian message in a positive light, and to avoid demonizing the secular world...

There was also more evidence of a boomlet around Dolan this morning in the Italian media. Il Messaggero’s Vatican writer, Franca Giansoldati, published a piece on the consistory under the headline, “Among the 22 new cardinals, a new papabile breaks out: the American Dolan.”

Papabile is the Italian word for a candidate to be pope.

Dolan Addresses Pre-Consistory Prayer Day

Cardinal-designate Dolan was chosen by the Pope to address the group for today's Day of Reflection and Prayer on the vigil of the consistory.

The New York archbishop recommended the following seven pointers:

1) Remembering that even those who boast of their secularism have an innate longing for the divine; the first step of evangelization must be to keep the quest for God alive

2) "Be not afraid" -- confident, without being triumphalist, since it is the power of God who sends his people to evangelize 

3) Knowing that the new evangelization is not about presenting a doctrine or belief-system, but a Person, whose name is Jesus

4) Nevertheless, this Jesus is the Truth. Hence, evangelization is linked to catechesis

5) An evangelist must be a person of joy -- someone who smiles

6) The new evangelization is about love -- the love of God made concrete in service

7) Finally, martyrdom. A reminder that the Church is now peopled by those who are suffering persecution for their faith, and that these martyrs give impetus to the new evangelization

The Pope Creates New Cardinals

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204880404577231083036216226.html

ROME—Pope Benedict XVI elevated 22 churchmen—including Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York and Edwin O'Brien, the former archbishop of Baltimore—to the rank of cardinal during a solemn ceremony, adding new blood to the exclusive circle of men who will one day elect the next pope.

The cardinals knelt before the pontiff as he crowned each of them with a crimson biretta, symbolizing the blood of martyrdom. The pontiff further bound the churchmen to him by assigning each a so-called titular church to oversee in Rome, where the pope is the local bishop. 

"The new Cardinals are entrusted with the service of love: love for God, love for his Church, an absolute and unconditional love for his brothers and sisters, even unto shedding their blood, if necessary," said Pope Benedict, speaking beneath the dome of St. Peter's Basilica.

Among the new cardinals, 18 are under the age of 80, making them eligible to vote in the next conclave and bringing the number of voting-age cardinals to 125. In refreshing the ranks of the Roman Catholic Church's princes in a ceremony known as a "consistory," Pope Benedict drew mainly from the Roman Curia, the Vatican government, and from Italian dioceses.

That move reinforces Europe's influence over Roman Catholicism's leadership as the church struggles to retain prominence on the Continent, its historical home. The consistory raised the share of Italian cardinals eligible to vote in the next conclave to about a quarter, up from 22%.

The meaning of meaning

Dr. Paul Henebury and I have been debating the respective hermeneutics of dispensationalism and covenant theology. Henebury keeps appealing to the “plain sense” of the text. I’ve already indicated that Henebury needs to explicate the locus of meaning. That there are several potential candidates for the locus of meaning.

Since he hasn’t picked up on that as of yet, I’m going to do a separate post on the issue in which I go into a bit more detail.

1) Sense

2) Reference

i) In Frege’s classic example, the morning star and the evening star both denote the same referent (Venus), yet they don’t mean the same thing, for they signify Venus in two different respects.

So we need to distinguish between intension and extension.  Another example is the distinction between Clark Kent and Superman.

ii) This distinction is especially germane to prophecies and promises. For prophecies and promises have future referents. We must therefore distinguish between the meaning of the prophecy/promise and the future rewards or events to which they refer. 

3) Authorial meaning

If (3), then that breaks down into two respects:

a) The intention of the human author

b) The intention of the divine author

i) In the classic theory of inspiration, Scripture has dual authorship: God is the primary author while the human author is the secondary or instrumental author.

ii) This, in turn, raises the question of how divine and human authorial intent are coordinated. On the one hand, these cannot diverge. For God inspires the authorial intentions of the human author. The human author is the medium or vehicle, who says precisely what God intends for him to say.

iii) On the other hand, these do not coincide, for God, unlike the human author, is omniscient. God is conscious of textual implications which may escape the human author. God is conscious of how the audience will understand or misunderstand the text.  God is conscious of how this particular text will contribute to a larger picture.

In that respect, an inspired text has a kind of foresight than an uninspired text does not.

iv) Authorship also breaks down into two other respects:

c) The actual author

d) The implied author

The implied author is the authorial persona which the actual author presents or projects in the text. The text reveals something about the author who produces the text. In principle, the author can manipulate his image.

e) The editor

Some books of the Bible are anthologies. The Psalter is a good example. In that case, a given Psalm not only means whatever it meant to the individual Psalmist, but it also contributes to the collective meaning of the Psalter, based–in part–on how the editor(s) arrange the Psalms.

4) Audiencial meaning

If (4), then that breaks down into the following respects:

a) The actual audience

b) The implied audience

c) The intended audience

i) The implied audience is the audience whom the author has in mind. The imagined audience. He is writing with them in view. He takes their understanding into account. Writes in a way that ought to be meaningful to them. Communication is a two-way street inasmuch as the writer (or speaker) is trying to have an effect on the audience: make the listener/reader believe, feel, or do something. So that’s contingent on how he expects his words to be taken by the audience.

ii) A writer usually says less than he means because he relies on the cultural preunderstanding of the audience to fill in the gaps. It’s like watching a science fiction movie or a movie about vampires and werewolves. Because the director is working with a stock genre, the audience is expected to understand the conventions of the genre. Exposition is unnecessary.

Not “expected” in the sense that a viewer necessarily understands the conventions, but that he’s responsible for understanding the conventions. That’s up to him.

iii) The implied audience overlaps the actual audience. But the (human) author has no direct control over who will actually read the text. Although he targets the actual audience, he can’t determine who will or won’t read what he wrote.

iv) But over and above the actual or implied audience is the intended audience. In the case of uninspired writing, these are roughly synonymous–but in the case of inspired writing, they need to be distinguished. For instance, although Paul, in 1 Corinthians, is addressing his remarks to the Corinthian congregation, the truth of what he says isn’t relative to the Corinthian congregation. Much of what he says is true irrespective of who reads it. It isn’t bound to the specific circumstances of the Corinthian congregation.

v) This also figures in the divine authorship of Scripture. God inspires Scripture for the benefit of posterity. Not merely for the immediate audience, but the people of God in all generations.

vi) This raises the question of which audience supplies the interpretive frame of reference.  Although the text of Scripture must have some meaning for later generations that lack all the background knowledge of the implied audience, it’s incumbent on subsequent readers to make allowance for the difference in time. It’s their responsibility to hear the text as the implied audience first heard it. It wasn’t written specifically to the later generates, to folks in their particular time, place, and situation. When we read a text from the past, we must take that into account.

vii) When we speak of audiencial meaning, this isn’t to suggest that a reader creates or imposes meaning. The reader’s duty is to understand the text. However, audiencial meaning can be a way of accessing authorial intent. What the author meant it to mean is intertwined with what he thought the audience should take it to mean. 

viii) This is especially germane to threats and promise, viz. if you to this, then that will happen. Deut 28 is a good example. God can’t intend it to mean one thing to him, but something very different to the audience. The audience should be in a position to understand what’s expected of it.

5) The narrator

i) The narrator is the surrogate voice of the author. In Scripture, the narrator’s viewpoint is generally normative. The design of the narrative discloses the narrator’s perspective.  He’s a tour guide who shows the reader what the reader will see.

ii) His narrative is an implicit commentary on the events he relates. He can obliquely convey more than he overtly says through indirect clues like irony, symbolism, foreshadowing, backshadowing, foil characters, and normative characters.

When, for instance, a character (e.g. a foil) in the narrative misunderstands something which the narrator understands, that generates dramatic irony or tension. For the audience, via the narrator, is in a detached position to appreciate something which the character, in the thick of things, fails to appreciate.

A biblical example is the book of Job. The prologue represents the narrative viewpoint. The audience thereby knows something that the characters (Job and his friends) do not.

iii) Likewise, the narrator knows how the story ends, whereas a character within the story normally lacks foresight. The characters move forward in time, discovering the future through experience, whereas the narrator is writing with the benefit of hindsight.

iv) He interprets events by how he presents events, and thereby shapes the reader’s impression by how he dispenses information. He may dispense a little information at a time, withholding additional information, to thereby generate suspense. He may foster expectations, then seem to dash them. The Joseph narrative is a good example.

v) The narrator may sometimes function as a character within the narrative, like Moses, or the beloved disciple.

vi) You can have narratives within narratives, where a character in the narrative narrates a story. Gen 24, as well as Acts 10-11, alternate between direct and indirect discourse.

6) A normative character

A narrator may also express his interpretation through a normative character, who embodies the viewpoint of the narrator. He stands in contrast to the foil.

7) Canonical context

i) Books of the Bible have a cumulative, intertextual meaning. For instance, Genesis was meant to be read and understood in conjunction with the remainder of the Pentateuch. In that respect, backward reading is valid. That’s not just an issue of (allegedly) reading the NT back into the OT. Rather, we already have that built into certain sets of OT books. They form a literary unit.

This isn’t anachronistic. Rather, we have sets of books that were designed to be read together.  And even where the human author lacks that intertextual awareness, the divine author inspired the books of the Bible to go together. To form a larger semantic unit.

ii) It’s not that a later text changes the meaning of an earlier text; rather, a later text sharpens our understanding of an earlier text. Taken in isolation, an earlier text may seem to be pretty open-textured. It could develop in more than one direction.  But later texts eliminate these alternate constructions. It’s not so much that later texts expand or add to the original meaning, but–to the contrary–later texts narrow down the range of possibilities.  In that respect my position is the opposite of a sensus plenior. Reductive rather than ampliative.

iii) And it isn’t just textual, but historical, for the history of revelation tracks the history of redemption. When initially introduced, a text may seem to be an open text, using fairly generic imagery or terminology.  What pins it down is the future itself. Historical developments delimit the possible scope of the text. History itself has an interpretive role to play in spelling out the circumstances of a generally worded, future-oriented text. Fulfillment is the definitive interpreter, and as we draw closer to the destination, we retrospectively eliminate what appear, in advance, to be alternate routes. 

To take a comparison–the future may seem wide open from our present vantage point, but when we look back on the future as a thing of the past, we can better discern how its apparent open-endedness was illusory–a symptom of our shortsighted ignorance.  Because we couldn’t anticipate the chain of intervening events by which the future was going to be realized, it seemed to be indefinite.  But most of the forking paths were never in play. 

iv) In one respect, the original audience has a superior position, because it has more background information. In another respect, a later audience has a superior position, because it has more foreground information.