{"id":40113,"date":"2018-04-08T10:03:04","date_gmt":"2018-04-08T14:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=40113"},"modified":"2019-11-04T21:29:07","modified_gmt":"2019-11-05T03:29:07","slug":"losing-patience-with-the-hint-hunters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/losing-patience-with-the-hint-hunters\/","title":{"rendered":"losing patience with the hint-hunters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I’m starting to lose patience with<\/a> our present-day confused and confusing tradition of “high christology” exegesis. I think of it as a new Gnosticism<\/strong> – reading the New Testament gospels as if they were esoteric texts, texts written so that their main or most important meaning is hidden from plain sight, waiting to be uncovered by only the more spiritual, more insightful reader – like you, you beautiful man, you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

To mix metaphors, it’s buried pirate treasure<\/strong>; you must stride past the visible features of the landscape, and follow pre-drawn maps<\/strong> which show you where to plunge your shovel in, and hopefully hit the wooden top of a treasure-chest. Ahoy, Matey! Jesus had<\/em> to mumble and gesture at his being God himself; but this was all a deliberate plan on his part, so as to be more persuasive. How clever!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Granting that Jesus would (if he believed it) have to keep such a claim on the down-low, clearly, there is no reason to think that the gospels’ authors c. 50-95 AD would have also muttered and hinted! If<\/em> they thought the point of it all was that Jesus is God himself, they could have and would have clearly asserted that! But instead, they pound the table to insist that<\/strong> (drum-roll, please): Jesus is God’s Messiah, God’s Christ, God’s anointed one, his special, human agent, the descendant of David who will rule as a king forever, under God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These hint-hunting readers, I think, are not respecting<\/em> the New Testament gospels <\/strong>or their authors. They are using<\/em> those texts, to be sure, but not for the intended purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems to me that the main purpose of any New Testament gospel<\/strong> was this: to be read aloud in Christian home assemblies. They were meant to be heard, understood<\/strong>, and acted on, by all manner of believers, from the educated rich man to the illiterate slave. From the ten-year-old boy to the eighty-seven year old grandma, and everyone in between. They were not meant to be a playground for those proud of their exegetical acumen and their rare “spiritual” insights. These authors do not mutter. They do not encode. They do not sneakily gesture, when it comes to their main message, which is that Jesus really was and is God’s Messiah.<\/strong> To pat that message on the head and stride right past it, rushing towards the hidden gems, the sneaky indications, clever hints, and oblique suggestions that “Jesus is God”… that is a kind of learned ignorance, pointy-headed point-missing<\/strong>. That Jesus is God’s Messiah – this is an astounding, life-changing, mind-boggling, old-order-overturning truth, when you finally understand the implications of it. If you don’t see this as revolutionary… you may have been distracted by other ideas. This is a truth worth dying<\/em> for, and worth living for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some failures of basic reading comprehension are due to ignorance; but such is the human condition that some failures of reading comprehension are do to misguided learning – to theory-devotion. Don’t snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, young exegete!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The way you interpret a gospel is to drive a stake into the ground when you find its thesis statement<\/strong>. Interpret any more difficult passages in the light of this and other clear <\/em>teachings in it. In a non-esoteric book, there is no hidden main meaning. These authors shout their message from the rooftops. Thankfully, even hordes of hint-hunters have not drowned out those shouts!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s your homework. Chose one of the four New Testament gospels. Does it have a thesis statement? If so, what is it?<\/strong> Where<\/em> is it? How do you know that this is the main point?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are you<\/em> listening, Mr. Spiritual Digger? Drop the shovel, and absorb the Good News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The deity of Christ” – the secret message of the gospels?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"default","neve_meta_container":"default","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"off","neve_meta_content_width":70,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"off","neve_meta_disable_footer":"off","neve_meta_disable_title":"off","footnotes":""},"categories":[37,21,6,8,77,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apologetics","category-bible","category-complaints","category-linkage","category-protestant","category-unitarianism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40113"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41934,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40113\/revisions\/41934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}