A mutual online friend Lauren DeMoss Benson got into an argument on Instagram this past week and the responses to her very basic and correct questions about hermeneutics were so bad I felt like I had to comment on it.
I agree with your overall point, but I do think he meant what he said about ‘head’ being hierarchical. I immediately took it as referring to Christ as the head of man (1 Cor 11:3), or of the church (Eph 5:23). It appears that he believes that undermining the authority of husbands over wives in these passages undermines Christ’s authority over men/the church. Now, why he is so invested in authority and hierarchy rather than unity and service, well, I think preservation of one’s own power over women and other ‘lessers’ seems to fit the bill.
I recently had an entertainingly stupid exchange with a man here on Substack who would make exactly the sort of claims that you call out in this article...that there was no such thing as "faithful disagreement", that the Bible meant what it said (which was conveniently what he said it meant) and he didn't have to explain himself because "real Christians" would automatically agree. He even has posts in his profile saying that the fact the SBC even debated allowing women pastors shows how "weak", "liberal" and "compromised" they are.
It's refreshing to read an article calling out the fact that language in any form is a conversation.
Hermeneutics is a fascinating inter-disciplinary topic, and probably only one out of a thousand commenters has any kind of rudimentary grasp on the complexities of meaning-making in language applied to translation in light of doctrines of divine inspiration. The vast majority are just saying ignorant stuff. My one question for these guys whose general wrongness about language and translation makes it hard to know where to even start a dialogue is “Who do you think wrote the English lexicons for your “literal” translations, smarty-pants? Oh, was it the same patriarchal boys club that did the translations? Yes, it was!” iIt “literally” means what they think it “literally” means because sexist men told them something was true. Anyone who thinks modern English speakers have access to the original language and context of Scripture because they bought a subscription to Logos or someone showed them how to pull up Bible Hub’s interlinear is deluded. No one can learn Koine Greek or ancient Hebrew from a community of contemporaneaous speakers, the only way you are gaining expertise in those languages is by being taught what words in contexts mean by the exact same people whose biases and social locations led them to come up with sexist and gender-exclusive translations in the first place. These guys think they are such independent thinkers, but it’s all self-referential. You get a patriarchy-infused interpretation because we use patriarchy-infused translations produced by patriarchy-infused scholarship supported by patriarchy-infused learning resources. It’s patriarchy all the way down, and the only way you attempt to see the bias is by applying some version of critical theory and doing the d-word.
Hi Christy! It feels like ages. You of course are correct and sometimes I feel as if too much of Christian education is indoctrination into the Dunning-Kruger effect. Just giving men JUST enough education to repeat the same lines and feel that they are "educated".
I just learned this week that this is where Christian Twitter emigrated! And I’ve just been chilling on Threads learning about people’s bad dates and watching cat videos all this time. Now that I’ve thoroughly detoxed, I can’t say I missed the SBC theobro drama one bit, but it is the water cooler talk of the week I guess. And to your point, I will refrain from launching into a bitter tirade about who gets book deals and paid gigs to be the experts teaching other people in the Ev-Industrial Complex. Not the people who actually put effort into learning stuff.
The first thing that came to mind was the piece written by Augustine to his son, titled, “The Teacher”. Augustine talks about words and the symbols that represent them. I have always been fascinated by that article and how things are represented. It also reminds me of the “aha” moment between Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller.
I hope that interpreters of Scripture learn how if/then arguments function and the weakness of using them.
Should the definition of the "if" be challenged, the "then" is also challenged. I once took a group of younger folks to a presentation about Creation. The presenter claimed that if his view (if) of creation is not accurate then we cannot know that Jesus is Saviour.
If/then is often used in these gotcha moves. The disputer thinks they have built a solid case. Actually the point is overthrown when, as you do, the "if" is shown to be incorrect. "Then" the.conclusion is voided.
I agree with your overall point, but I do think he meant what he said about ‘head’ being hierarchical. I immediately took it as referring to Christ as the head of man (1 Cor 11:3), or of the church (Eph 5:23). It appears that he believes that undermining the authority of husbands over wives in these passages undermines Christ’s authority over men/the church. Now, why he is so invested in authority and hierarchy rather than unity and service, well, I think preservation of one’s own power over women and other ‘lessers’ seems to fit the bill.
I recently had an entertainingly stupid exchange with a man here on Substack who would make exactly the sort of claims that you call out in this article...that there was no such thing as "faithful disagreement", that the Bible meant what it said (which was conveniently what he said it meant) and he didn't have to explain himself because "real Christians" would automatically agree. He even has posts in his profile saying that the fact the SBC even debated allowing women pastors shows how "weak", "liberal" and "compromised" they are.
It's refreshing to read an article calling out the fact that language in any form is a conversation.
Hermeneutics is a fascinating inter-disciplinary topic, and probably only one out of a thousand commenters has any kind of rudimentary grasp on the complexities of meaning-making in language applied to translation in light of doctrines of divine inspiration. The vast majority are just saying ignorant stuff. My one question for these guys whose general wrongness about language and translation makes it hard to know where to even start a dialogue is “Who do you think wrote the English lexicons for your “literal” translations, smarty-pants? Oh, was it the same patriarchal boys club that did the translations? Yes, it was!” iIt “literally” means what they think it “literally” means because sexist men told them something was true. Anyone who thinks modern English speakers have access to the original language and context of Scripture because they bought a subscription to Logos or someone showed them how to pull up Bible Hub’s interlinear is deluded. No one can learn Koine Greek or ancient Hebrew from a community of contemporaneaous speakers, the only way you are gaining expertise in those languages is by being taught what words in contexts mean by the exact same people whose biases and social locations led them to come up with sexist and gender-exclusive translations in the first place. These guys think they are such independent thinkers, but it’s all self-referential. You get a patriarchy-infused interpretation because we use patriarchy-infused translations produced by patriarchy-infused scholarship supported by patriarchy-infused learning resources. It’s patriarchy all the way down, and the only way you attempt to see the bias is by applying some version of critical theory and doing the d-word.
Hi Christy! It feels like ages. You of course are correct and sometimes I feel as if too much of Christian education is indoctrination into the Dunning-Kruger effect. Just giving men JUST enough education to repeat the same lines and feel that they are "educated".
I just learned this week that this is where Christian Twitter emigrated! And I’ve just been chilling on Threads learning about people’s bad dates and watching cat videos all this time. Now that I’ve thoroughly detoxed, I can’t say I missed the SBC theobro drama one bit, but it is the water cooler talk of the week I guess. And to your point, I will refrain from launching into a bitter tirade about who gets book deals and paid gigs to be the experts teaching other people in the Ev-Industrial Complex. Not the people who actually put effort into learning stuff.
The first thing that came to mind was the piece written by Augustine to his son, titled, “The Teacher”. Augustine talks about words and the symbols that represent them. I have always been fascinated by that article and how things are represented. It also reminds me of the “aha” moment between Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller.
I hope that interpreters of Scripture learn how if/then arguments function and the weakness of using them.
Should the definition of the "if" be challenged, the "then" is also challenged. I once took a group of younger folks to a presentation about Creation. The presenter claimed that if his view (if) of creation is not accurate then we cannot know that Jesus is Saviour.
If/then is often used in these gotcha moves. The disputer thinks they have built a solid case. Actually the point is overthrown when, as you do, the "if" is shown to be incorrect. "Then" the.conclusion is voided.
Let the text say what it says.