what prompts this thread is the following exchange from: http://www.christianforums.com/showthread.php?p=30845662#post30845662
Originally Posted by rmwilliamsll
it is the same distinction as the decretive and preceptive wills of God.
Originally Posted by pastorkevin73 View Post
That is still not showing it scripturally. Give some scripture references.
proof texting not only doesn't do any good, nor does it persuade anyone but most importantly it doesn't take Scripture at it's proper value as the shaper of thought, not as evidential. Anyone who is interested in the ideas can google decretive and preceptive wills of God.
I've never seen a decent hermeneutical discussion here, things just fall apart too quickly, the diversity is too great to sustain a useful or long term discussion, apparently.
First try to understand that thinking is not a "flat" operation with everything on one level. Take reading the Bible as an example:
we have a hierarchy of thinking. from the lower level of the text, what does this word mean. To the next level of sentence, what does this sentence mean. The next higher is what does this unit of thought talk about, what is the main idea of the paragraph. The higher levels would be book and then the whole text. This essentially is the problem of exegesis, how to get meaning out of a text, any text, the Bible is read and we "extract" meaning out of it. It is the meaning that appears to be what we primarily "store" in our brains (although i am not real confident of this). Application is taking meaning and applying it to our lives.
As a matter of course, disciplines evolve to address the particular issues of each level, so we have:
lower criticism or textual criticism,
hermeneutics,
Biblical theology,
historical theology,
and systematic theology.
The problem with proof texting is that we really are talking at the level of systematic theology, we are discussing the big meanings of the whole revelation of God (which includes: the Bible, the Creation, history, and for each of us-our lives) and "extracting" meaning from the whole ball of wax. This is the level that the decretive and preceptive wills of God exist at.
Now when i proof text, i yank a verse out of it's context and pretend that the authority of the lower level (Scripture is authoritative on all matters of faith and practice) and try to push the very words into the level of systematic theology. The problem is that everyone that reads this verse, reads it according to his/her own systematic theology, and when it is yanked out of context all that is left is that level to supply the verse with immediate context.
for example:
God so loved the world.
i am as a reformed Christian will never see, hear, read, or speak that phrase in the same way as an arminian. period. Our context for the word-world is extremely different and when the verse is yanked out of it's immediate textual context all we have is for each of us to "surround" it with our own theology.
So when i quote: "God so loved the world" i am really saying something like "God so loved the elect" but when this arminian hears: "God so loved the world" he hears: "God loves everyone". So there is more than a failure to communicate, there is this successful communication, only it is nothing like what i actually said, nor what the other person heard.
so the issue is that i will never (i hope) try to argue with proof texts, it doesn't do justice to Scripture, nor does it really communicate, nor is it really the level that i am trying to address.
what proof texting does when communicated between people who share a substantial amount of their fundamental systematica theology is to remind them of a chain of thinking, from the verse to the highest level principles. It essentially is a stimulate to turn on this long chain of reasoning. But with people of unlike theologies all it does is turn on very different chains.
That is why proof texting in something like the Westminster confession of Faith works, not because it overcomes these problems above, but because since the readers share an entire systematic theology, each verse sets into motion all the complex reasonings that lead to the high level presentation that is being proof texted. Therefore it seems perfectly reasonable and persuasive to everyone reading it.
However if you sit an arminian and i down, the proof texts do nothing like the same things in our minds, nor does he find that the proof texts actually prove or convince him of the reformed doctrines. this is the problem with arguing with proof texts. it looks like it persuades but it really doesn't if the people have different systematic theologies in their heads.
anyhow, i thought i'd start this thread to see if this is an interesting idea to anyone here. i really wish it were impossible to quote a single verse from the Bible, i wish God forced us to stop and read the whole chapter it is from, first, and then let us quote no less than the whole idea.
notes:
proof texting is first cousin to the whole issue of quote mining. for the same set of reasons. yanking out of context. the author had one set of principles in mind, the quote miner is inserting his words in a context where their do not belong and tries to use the authority of the quote to prove something that was the opposite of the original author's intention, which you only will realize if you have the original context intact to review.
Originally Posted by rmwilliamsll
it is the same distinction as the decretive and preceptive wills of God.
Originally Posted by pastorkevin73 View Post
That is still not showing it scripturally. Give some scripture references.
proof texting not only doesn't do any good, nor does it persuade anyone but most importantly it doesn't take Scripture at it's proper value as the shaper of thought, not as evidential. Anyone who is interested in the ideas can google decretive and preceptive wills of God.
I've never seen a decent hermeneutical discussion here, things just fall apart too quickly, the diversity is too great to sustain a useful or long term discussion, apparently.
The fundamental problem with proof texting (take a single or at most a few verses as evidence and/or proof of your contention) is that it substitutes contexts. Essentially what you do is yank Scripture out of it's textual and historical context and substitute what looks like your own systematic theological context. It is a confusion of levels in the discussion issue.
First try to understand that thinking is not a "flat" operation with everything on one level. Take reading the Bible as an example:
we have a hierarchy of thinking. from the lower level of the text, what does this word mean. To the next level of sentence, what does this sentence mean. The next higher is what does this unit of thought talk about, what is the main idea of the paragraph. The higher levels would be book and then the whole text. This essentially is the problem of exegesis, how to get meaning out of a text, any text, the Bible is read and we "extract" meaning out of it. It is the meaning that appears to be what we primarily "store" in our brains (although i am not real confident of this). Application is taking meaning and applying it to our lives.
As a matter of course, disciplines evolve to address the particular issues of each level, so we have:
lower criticism or textual criticism,
hermeneutics,
Biblical theology,
historical theology,
and systematic theology.
The problem with proof texting is that we really are talking at the level of systematic theology, we are discussing the big meanings of the whole revelation of God (which includes: the Bible, the Creation, history, and for each of us-our lives) and "extracting" meaning from the whole ball of wax. This is the level that the decretive and preceptive wills of God exist at.
Now when i proof text, i yank a verse out of it's context and pretend that the authority of the lower level (Scripture is authoritative on all matters of faith and practice) and try to push the very words into the level of systematic theology. The problem is that everyone that reads this verse, reads it according to his/her own systematic theology, and when it is yanked out of context all that is left is that level to supply the verse with immediate context.
for example:
God so loved the world.
i am as a reformed Christian will never see, hear, read, or speak that phrase in the same way as an arminian. period. Our context for the word-world is extremely different and when the verse is yanked out of it's immediate textual context all we have is for each of us to "surround" it with our own theology.
So when i quote: "God so loved the world" i am really saying something like "God so loved the elect" but when this arminian hears: "God so loved the world" he hears: "God loves everyone". So there is more than a failure to communicate, there is this successful communication, only it is nothing like what i actually said, nor what the other person heard.
so the issue is that i will never (i hope) try to argue with proof texts, it doesn't do justice to Scripture, nor does it really communicate, nor is it really the level that i am trying to address.
what proof texting does when communicated between people who share a substantial amount of their fundamental systematica theology is to remind them of a chain of thinking, from the verse to the highest level principles. It essentially is a stimulate to turn on this long chain of reasoning. But with people of unlike theologies all it does is turn on very different chains.
That is why proof texting in something like the Westminster confession of Faith works, not because it overcomes these problems above, but because since the readers share an entire systematic theology, each verse sets into motion all the complex reasonings that lead to the high level presentation that is being proof texted. Therefore it seems perfectly reasonable and persuasive to everyone reading it.
However if you sit an arminian and i down, the proof texts do nothing like the same things in our minds, nor does he find that the proof texts actually prove or convince him of the reformed doctrines. this is the problem with arguing with proof texts. it looks like it persuades but it really doesn't if the people have different systematic theologies in their heads.
anyhow, i thought i'd start this thread to see if this is an interesting idea to anyone here. i really wish it were impossible to quote a single verse from the Bible, i wish God forced us to stop and read the whole chapter it is from, first, and then let us quote no less than the whole idea.
notes:
proof texting is first cousin to the whole issue of quote mining. for the same set of reasons. yanking out of context. the author had one set of principles in mind, the quote miner is inserting his words in a context where their do not belong and tries to use the authority of the quote to prove something that was the opposite of the original author's intention, which you only will realize if you have the original context intact to review.