Saturday, May 14, 2016

There's that dichotomy again

Whereas the literal sense, history, and meaning were coterminous in premodern interpretation, in modernism they became sundered, with the result that the words of Scripture became secondary as exegetes began to seek the world “behind” the text in reconstructed events and authorial intentions, or to locate meaning in dogmatic or scientific concepts.— Reading the Way to Heaven, page 71

<idle musing>
Don't get me wrong, I love digging into the background; I'm a knowledge junkie! But too often the background knowledge can cause us to disconnect—rather than connect—that knowledge from practical application to our own life. Therein lies the danger—to which I have succumbed far too often.

I suspect the phrase, "second naïveté" is meant to address this gap...
</idle musing>

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