This is a quote from Vance in another thread.
( http://www.christianforums.com/showthread.php?p=15450135#post15450135)
It is i believe in a nutshell the crucial hermeneutical principles that lead to the division of liberals and conservatives.
my metaphor is a pyramid of interpretation.
image a pyramid, the bottom level are the words of scripture, the text itself.
as you build the pyramid you abstract principles from the text, then collate and unify principles until at the very top you get the big principles of: love God and love your neighbor.
Conservatives typically argue from a lower level than do liberals.Liberals are more interested in derived principles, while conservatives with the text.
For instance,
yom = days for a conservative
yom = ages for a OEC
the OEC is using an abstraction, is deriving a principle from the text and is operating on a level above the conservative, even though both are discussing the same text.
The big question is concerning how do we derive each layer of abstraction, the problem is that at each level auxillary principles which are deductively derived from the top enter into the analysis. The is where the OEC introduces the idea of long ages from Gen 1 to us in order to take modern science into consideration. This is in fact a very high order principle feedback into the process of deriving meaning from the text. It is these controlling principles that allow such divergence in analysis of the Scriptures.
( http://www.christianforums.com/showthread.php?p=15450135#post15450135)
It is i believe in a nutshell the crucial hermeneutical principles that lead to the division of liberals and conservatives.
my metaphor is a pyramid of interpretation.
image a pyramid, the bottom level are the words of scripture, the text itself.
as you build the pyramid you abstract principles from the text, then collate and unify principles until at the very top you get the big principles of: love God and love your neighbor.
Conservatives typically argue from a lower level than do liberals.Liberals are more interested in derived principles, while conservatives with the text.
For instance,
yom = days for a conservative
yom = ages for a OEC
the OEC is using an abstraction, is deriving a principle from the text and is operating on a level above the conservative, even though both are discussing the same text.
The big question is concerning how do we derive each layer of abstraction, the problem is that at each level auxillary principles which are deductively derived from the top enter into the analysis. The is where the OEC introduces the idea of long ages from Gen 1 to us in order to take modern science into consideration. This is in fact a very high order principle feedback into the process of deriving meaning from the text. It is these controlling principles that allow such divergence in analysis of the Scriptures.