Interpretive maximalism

A sequel to this post:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/08/house-of-mirrors.html

1. It turns out that there are some influences feeding into the interpretation. One source is Mary Coloe's analysis of temple imagery in John's Gospel. Certainly the Fourth Gospel is interpretive history. And the new temple motif is significant. 

However, when she talks about the "artistry" of the narrator and "theology presented in narrative form", that's a very literary analysis of the text, where it shades into pious fiction. Where it owes as much to the creative imagination of the narrator as it does to a historical core. 

History no longer controls the development. As a consequence, it undergoes legendary embellishment. Like the Dracula mythos, which has a kernel of fact, but is far removed from the historical Dracula.

2. Another source is James Jordan's "interpretive maximalism". I remember it from Chilton's fanciful commentary on Revelation. I'm afraid it also reminds me of Harold Camping's ill-fated concordance-style hermeneutics.

I'd mention in passing that Jordan has had a major impact on Peter Leithart and Alastair Roberts–although not, perhaps, in quite the same ways. The hermeneutic is magnetic to high-churchy liturgical types.    

Is every deal in Scripture important? Sure. But that doesn't mean every detail has symbolic import? 

Ironically, that demeans the value of the ordinary, the mundane. But natural goods are genuine goods. They don't require a higher justification. 

Take wine. In some contexts, wine is a theological metaphor. But in general, wine was a staple in the Middle East due to the scarcity of safe clean drinking water. We devalue the good of creation when we insistent that ordinary things aren't good enough in their own right. That they must be signs, that they must point to something better than themselves to warrant their existence. That shows a certain disrespect for God's handiwork. But it's just wine–what a comedown!

Every lamb isn't the pascal lamb. Every cloud isn't the pillar of cloud. 

Even though the world is a "sacramental universe," many things, like the growth of plants, organic functions, human gestation, &c., are good in their own right, are what they are, and in most instances, have no referential dimension. They can be turned into metaphors–that's the stuff of poetry–but butterflies aren't flying poems.