Proclaimer Blog
Frameworks and the text
I am greatly enjoying reading through Progressive Covenantalism (ed. Wellum & Parker) at the moment. It’s a thoughtful, careful collection of esays steering a course away from some of the madness associated with New Covenant Theology towards a more academically rigorous framework. A review will be forthcoming! But one paragraph caught my eye. We’ve long said at PT that one of the key things that a preacher has to do is to make sure that his framework does not affect his interpretation of the text.
Some have interpreted this to mean that we don’t like any framework. That’s patent nonsense. Everyone has framework (even “not having a framework”!). Rather, we are keen to say that the text must be in the driving seat. In his contribution to the book, Jason Meyer makes this point with slightly more finesse:
“In Greek mythology Procrusteus was the son of Poseidon. He had an iron bed that he offered to weary travellers. He used hospitality as a torture trap. If travellers were too short for the bed, he would stretch out their bodies to fit the bed. If they were too tall for the bed, he would cut off the excess length of their legs.
“Theological systems can become a Procrustean bed. If the text does not want satisfy our system, we can stretch the text to say what we want. If the text says more than what comfortably fits our system, we can cut off what we wish it would not say.
“I am not denigrating theological systems. On the contrary, theological systems can sharpen our understanding of the whole counsel of God but only if they do not first determine our understanding of God’s word. Therefore, theological systems should always be paired with theological self-awareness. We must be up front with our theological commitments, taking them to Scripture. The Bible does not belong on the bed. The Bible is the bed. The Bible alone has the authority to serve as the Procrustean bed for all our thinking. If we love the Bible more than our theological systems, we will be eager to measure our systems with our theological thinking.”