From: mib@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Michael I Bushnell)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Liberal vs. Conservative
Date: 1 Sep 92 07:42:21 GMT
Organization: Free Software Foundation, Cambridge, MA

In article <Aug.17.03.05.52.1992.15902@athos.rutgers.edu> mangoe@cs.umd.edu (Charley Wingate) writes:

   >>But one might assert that, while there are specific defects, in
   >>*essential* matters the text is correct.  This is a much harder
   >>and more substantial position which, at the same time, is
   >>connected more loosely to the word of the text.

   >I am not sure what you mean by "correct."  If however you mean
   >"true" in the way RexLex does, I must humbly disagree.  If on the
   >other hand you mean that the "text we have today" is substantially
   >the same as "the text as originally written" that is a possibility
   >that will be more or less true depending on the text under
   >consideration.

   I was deliberately vague at this point because this is plainly an
   object for discussion and debate.  However, I will clarify it to
   the extent that "correct" implies "what the text is trying to
   impart is actually true".

There is a subtle problem here.  You have artfully dodged the
question.  The text isn't trying to impart anything, because the text
is not sentient, and can't try to impart anything.  But if you define
correct as "what the author is trying to impart is actually true",
then something happens, which is very important.  Instead of a
disembodied text, we now have an embodied author.  If we asked Paul
what he thought of modern issues of controversy, he would not simply
hand over the text of the epistle to the Romans.  What *Paul* was
trying to impart in Romans was written to the Romans in the first
century AD.

This is obvious with some parts of the letter.  It is not appropriate,
for example, to ask "what is the text trying to say to me" in
reference to Romans 16:1.  ("I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a
deacon of the church at Cenchreae.")  I don't see any deacons named
Phoebe, so I can't obey.  But even if there were, this would be
irrelevant, even if the woman in question were actualy from Cenchreae.
The text is simply not talking to me, in the direct sense.  But then,
1 Corinthians 5:11 ("But now I am writing to you not to associate with
anyone who bears the name of brother or sister who is sexually immoral
or greedy, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber.  Do not
even eat with such a one.") comes into similar doubt.  Paul is not, in
fact, writing to me, he's writing to the church in Corinth in the
first century AD.

In the normal sense of the words, then, Paul isn't trying to impart
*anything* to me through those letters.  His intentions were limited
to his context.  Just as I don't have in mind readers centuries from
now reading this post and trying to figure out what I'm trying to
impart to *them*, Paul didn't have *us* in mind, trying to figure out
what he was trying to impart to *us*.  

God, on the other hand, did have us in mind in the Scripture, but this
is more subtle.  Unless one subscribes to a theory of verbal
inspiration, which I do not, and I'm quite sure you don't either, then
what God is trying to get across to us might be very different from
the surface meaning of the text, and Paul's intentions in the text in
question, the "what the text is trying to impart" that you allude to,
might differ from God's intentions for the same text.

--
Michael I. Bushnell             |		Benedictus qui venit
+1 617 625 4518 (H)            -+-                       in
+1 617 253 8568 (W)             |                      Nomine
mib@gnu.ai.mit.edu              |                      Domini