Comment on Supreme Court Decision on Church Employment Case by Wesley Kime.
@ken: Kimean hermeneutics?
Long of tooth, I’m such an ancient Adventist I can remember when we did bible study, not hermeneutics. Back in that big evangelistic baptismal tent that I recalled for you from 73 years ago, that you always remind me of, sawdust and all, there was considerable about Daniel 2, nothing whatsoNEVERever about hermeneutics. Nor do I recall the word from the course in upper division Pauline Epistles that I took at, of all places (as I like to say), LSU nee LSC (C for College) from Edward Heppenstall, PhD, the most academically advanced theologian in our then un-inflated tent. He ventured into exegesis but not, at least in public, hermeneutics. And advanced to our seminary. (He did propose, I recall, some new flavors, not new recipes, for our beloved staple, “justification by faith through grace”.)
Of all the Pauline epistles, Romans is one of the most challenging books both to heart and mind ever written, and it wasn’t as though Dr. Heppenstall didn’t play its esotericism for all it is worth. On the first day of every new course, in the first ten minutes, he would grin his electric grin and inform us premedical students that, our SATs notwithstanding, mere materially-oriented premeds could never comprehend it. Only the spiritually ordained could, which, in retrospect, now that I’ve learned the word, would seem to bar the hermeneutically-disoriented. Hermeneutics is many award-winning things but one thing it is not, is spiritual. Rarefied, yes; spiritual, no. Alas for hermeneutically sealed Romans.
Heroic hermeneutics came upon us along with apoacademic eonic evolution. Recent radioactive decay data suggest that hermeneutics crawled out of the swamp along with other fishy karyopoetics when LSC (which I attended) became LSU (of which I’m considered an alumnus, qualifying me for the full dose of promotional newsletters, featuring gecko-fondling biologists). That our re-metamorphosed (horrors! not born-again) transcendentally post-grad hermeneutic Postadventist adventurers find mere bible study, even exegesis, and doctrines accruing therefrom, sorely embarrassing, is embarrassing and disheartening to me. Hermeneutics is one of those buttons on my keyboard that shouldn’t be punched lest all my old bells ring and I light up and go tilt.
It’s not that I am not equipped, despite my pre-medicalness, perhaps because of it, to hermeneutic haranguesmanship, as I once so loved, generating quite a stack of Kimean hermeneutics, but I’ve been disqualified. It’s not that age has mellowed me. Becoming rather spiritually oriented has. Alas for Kimean hermeneutics.
But never you mind all that, my friend. Actually, I have been waiting for a chance to spring-unload on (harangue) hermeneutics, but not in response to any progressive paen to it, of which there have been plenty hereabouts. (Pannings, not paens, and all the puns in the world, are its just deserts.) However unwittingly, totally unwittingly and unexpectedly, you gave me the right cue. Seriously, Ken, it was so sweet of you, what you said. Your heart, and hermeneutics, are in the right places. On you that hermeneutic hat, cocked just so, looks becoming.
Your ahermeneutic friend, W
PS: Meet some day, somewhere, we must, and shall.
Wesley Kime Also Commented
Supreme Court Decision on Church Employment Case
@ken: “…either Son of God or else a madman or something worse.” “Did his ardent followers try to create a divine being out of a remarkable man?” If so, they, we, are madmen, something worse. And if they didn’t, to thus dismiss Him may be madness or something worse. Oh no, not Paschal’s Wager again…
Your believing friend, W
Supreme Court Decision on Church Employment Case
@Ron: Pardon me for being just one of those legalists preoccupied by purity rites, but shouldn’t this clarification of truest agnosticism be over in the “Christian Agnostic” thread?
Supreme Court Decision on Church Employment Case
@Ken: amen
Recent Comments by Wesley Kime
Beyond the Creation Story – Why the Controversy Matters
@Ken: Ken, re. yours of May 31, 15 12:42 pm: … those standing up for FB28 have every right to do so…until they [presumably the FBs, not the communicants, although either could be changed in a twinkling of any eye] are democratically changed.”
FB28? What’s that? You probably know better than I. Genesis 1 I can quote; FB28 I can’t. And won’t bother to check. I couldn’t even tell you where to find those FBs. I read what you say more assiduously than the FBs. (What’s FB? FaceBook?)
In the first place I think you’ve got Adventism wrong, or at least Adventism as I know it. Well, maybe you haven’t, the postmodernist kind anyway. I’m pre-catechistic, ergo prehistoric, alas. I’m that old.
FB28 or whatever it is, if it WERE changed, democratically or otherwise, dramatically or creepingly, by evolution or edict, even if expunged and expurgated in the interest of big-tent accord, which seemed on the verge of happening pre-T. Wilson, and may yet, I wouldn’t even know it until I saw it here. You’d know before I would.
With or without and despite FB28 or whatever, or EduTruth, I’d still honor Genesis 1. I’d honor it, A, by faith, because the Bible, i.e. God, says so. A validated faith validated by B, The evidence, good scientific falsifiable evidence. And C, the consummate cosmic multi-vectored syllogism. Everything fits.
Seriously, though, discussion has to start somewhere and be referenced by something, for convenience if not citizenship. But I’d prefer to start, if granted “every right,” with Genesis 1, at the beginning.
Dr. Ariel Roth’s Creation Lectures for Teachers
@Ken: “something Dr. Kime said struck a very strange chord in me: that a Chair in ID at Harvard would be a quantum leap (forward – my edit) while such a Chair would be a step backward at LSU. I’ m very sorry Wes, but for me to honestly investigate reality, such double standard is not acceptable. …[therefore] I think I’m coming to the end of my Adventist journey.”
I can, of course, dear friend, understand why, and respect that, you would see the two directions of leaping, forward and backward, by Harvard and LSU, as a double standard.
But might it also be seen as simple Einsteinian Relativity? It all depends on from whence you’re starting or observing. Two venues, Harvard vs. LSU, two vectors, not two standards. At any rate, a parting of our ways. The Chair did it. A very unlucky ill-omened Chair, from the start.
Parting — that indeed is sad, especially this parting. I grieve too. In sadness we are agreed. That’s not double speak; only you could I say that to.
For these several years you, and your courteous ways, even your questions, have been most fascinating, even endearing, inspiring to both poetic and, I now regret, rasping response. I’ve so much enjoyed your postings, always looked for them first, and appreciated your uncommon patience and politeness, and our camaraderie in the bomb shelter and on the grandstand. Too bad the Chair, our double bed, didn’t work out.
As benediction, maybe we can all get together again, somewhere. Meanwhile, the Mizpah, which I think I should be the one to deliver, seeing it was, you say, my one-liner that was the last straw, for which I’ll get heck all around, and rightly so: “The Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.” Genesis 31:49.
What the heck, have some popcorn for the road. And don’t forget your cyber plaque. You will be remembered, appreciated, thought about, prayed for. Do come back soon.
Until then, your jousting friend, W
Strumming the Attached Strings
@Phillip Brantley: Excellent! I shall quote you: “learn something from Sean Pitman.” Indeed, indeed — there’s so much to learn from that man.
Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
@Bill Sorensen: “I don’t know if anyone has really been able to follow your thinking…”
A tad, a smidgeon, just slightly overstated maybe? Just a tad, just a smidgeon, at the cost of not a few dislikes? Well, I for one do follow it. And with great admiration. Great.
What does it take to be a true Seventh-day Adventist?
@Ervin Taylor: Out of purely poetic symmetry of rhetoric, Ervin, your trademark whimsical “…I guess someone who rejects…” is asking for — I was waiting for it! — a Pitman’s “I guess someone who accepts…” Lovely diptych, ping and pong.
