One Independent Baptist Pastor who's Church I attended a few times said he prefers to say he takes The Bible seriously rather then literally. But that's being disingenuous, Allegorists believe they're taking Scripture seriously, in fact they argue we're not when we treat it like a Fantasy Novel.
And I'm not actually the most absolutely hyper literalist Christian anyway. So I do somewhat struggle with how to define how I view Scripture.
Then Digibro who I follow for Anime reasons started a serious of videos categorizing the way different people think, both real and fictional. The third video is the one to finally inspire me to make this post, it kind of presumes you saw the prior two longer ones but if your not interested in an hour of Digi categorizing every Anime character he cares about then you can skip them, the third one is only about 15 minutes.
How Anime Character Think
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1ndTCR4aKg
Updating and Explaining
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSyGye7D2ao
Lexical vs Impressionistic Thinking
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt60-Hf1Duk
[Update: You'll now have look for those on the InternetArchive.
They have been reuploaded on YouTube including a channel called The Neurotypeline, who have this Playlist. Also Digi now goes by Trixie since she came out as Trans.]
Now what I'm about to say is perhaps not where you thought I was going, but hyper Allegorical approaches to Scripture like those popularized by Origen and Augustine are in fact a highly Lexical approach. It comes from thinking a certain word or string of words must always be saying the same thing or being said for the same reason.
Take for example when InspiringPhilosophy argues that because in many later Bible narratives someone goes to sleep before they have a dream that turns out to be a divine symbolic vision. Then Adam going into a Deep Sleep in Genesis 2 must mean what follows is merely a symbolic vision. When it seems to me far more obvious that God is putting Adam to sleep for the same reason any doctor puts a patient to sleep before performing an invasive surgery.
Some who you can argue are way more "Literalist" then I am are perhaps also hyper Lexical in their own way. But once you decide a certain term must always be being used consistently, it's far easier to force an allegorical approach to an obviously literal passage then a literal approach to an obviously symbolic one.
Still the "Law of first mention" is an example of a highly lexical fallacy used by Christians of all camps.
Interpreting The Bible highly Lexically is a problem since obviously God is a more Impressionist thinker, He can communicate Lexically since the first words ever spoken were His words, and His Son is called The Word. But He also existed before Words and I believe always wanted His message to be able to transcend the original language it was written in.
My Impressionist approach to Scripture can even allow me to view some entire books as fictional narratives that didn't necessarily actually happen, like Job and the Song of Songs.
But the general Impression of The Book Genesis is that it's telling us the actual origins of Humanity and Civilization and then more specifically The Israelite people. That doesn't mean it's not also teaching important lessons, but they are important because they literally happened, it's documenting Humanity's first mistakes so we of later generations can try to learn from them.
The Hyper Allegorists are indeed perhaps also very Linear in thinking, you see contrary to how they often try to paint literalists, we are not denying the deeper truths that matter regardless of if it actually happened or not. No most people labeled Literalists are the ones who understand a passage can serve different purposes at once. Origen however was a bit more Lateral minded then his descendants.
Revelation is a book where no interpretation is free from some level of seemingly picking and choosing when to take it literally and when not to. No one actually believes Revelation 13 is saying the world will be lead to worship Satan by a pair of Kaiiju. But it's equally silly to then turn around and take nothing literally when the intent of The Book is still clearly that it's telling us what will happen in the future.
My Impressionist understanding of The Bible's meta-narrative is that the TNAK's prophecies of a future Temple or Tabernacle are fulfilled in The Church being The Temple of God, if that conflicts with taking certain passages literally even though they seemed literal at the time then so be it. However I also believe we are a Temple still under-construction.
Part of why is because it is equally my Impressionist understanding of The Bible's meta-narrative that The Resurrection of The Dead is a physical bodily Resurrection, and so we are His Tabernacle already but we won't be a complete Temple until all Flesh is Resurrected. Getting lexically lost in certain details of 1 Corinthians 15 is where the justification to Spiritualize The Resurrection comes from, but the closing verses finalize what the Impression is supposed to be.
And that leads me back to Universal Salvation and how we tend to discus it. The clear Impression The Bible is trying to give about God's Character is that He is Love in 1 John, that His Love endures forever as the Psalms repeatedly claim. That He is not willing that any should Perish as Matthew 18, 2 Peter 3 and 1 Timothy 2 make clear.
So who even cares if the word "Eternal" is a technically accurate translation in Matthew 25 or not. When we remember that the Chapter Divisions weren't there originally so the start of Matthew 26 is indeed the close of that narrative, even that story in it's own Context is ending on The Impression that Jesus is about to take this Eternal Judgment upon himself.
It is the doctrines of Annihilation and Endless Torment that are dependent on the same Lexical obsessions that create allegorist heresies. Yet we ourselves get bogged down in Lexical exercises trying to argue with them on their terms.
My own mind has too many Lexical tendencies, so on these blogs I will probably continue to employ Lexical methods in how I argue my views. But the starting point should always understand that God is an Impressionist. So the point of what's being said is more important then the details.
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