Alan has posted an article on his site that discusses the conservative Chuch of Christ hermenutic. In short, it is called CENi and it stands for Command, Example, and Necessary Inference. Most people agree on obeying direct commands of the Bible, but the other two present some contention. I had a perfect example yesterday, but cannot find the link. So, here is a different paraphrase:
In Matthew 26:26
, we see Jesus breaking the bread for the Passover.
- We are commanded to eat of his body.
- We follow the example in that he reinstituted Passover (which we call communion) for NT Christians.
- By necessary inference, communion most have one loaf of bread that is broken by each participant.
Using this logic, it is therefore a command of God in the Scriptures to perform Communion with only one loaf of bread.
Our hermenutic was quite a bit more pragmatic, mainly because we believed silence in the Bible was inclusive, not exclusive. A working definition I have in mind at this point would be EPSAY:
Example, Pragmatism, Structure, Authority, and Youth.
Using this hermenutic we would take David and Johnathan relationship and make it an example of discipling relationships, make sure that the person in this relationship was in a bible talk with you because you see them most often, confirmed the need for a discipling relationship, demonstrated the authority of the discipler, and much was made of their apparent youth. I knew of several men that pledged this kind of friendship to their discipler every time they switched. (A couple of them even did the grabbing of the other man’s thigh in imitation of Johnathan.)
Before going further, I want to look at our history of understanding the Bible. More in the next article.
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One Response to “Our Hermenutic - Rough Thoughts”
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- toeteaknow: well, since it was a post, the answer I guess is ‘yes’ and not ‘maybe’….. …maybe not? ttk
- pinakidion: what rock said
- Rock: “Is Pinakidion ever going to post again?”
- salguod: Is that an answer to a question that I missed?
- xray342: How’s this for cryptic? $ echo ‘pinakidion’ | md5 16da6556b9ba8a411a6f4251591eae2b
I think one place that “necessary inference” goes awry is when the inference isn’t really necessary. For example, I don’t think the inference about one loaf “necessarily” follows from the instruction to partake of his body. That may make logical sense but it is not the only possible logical conclusion.
In the ICOC there really was not a hermeneutic. Kip did like to say that we speak where the Bible is silent, and are silent where the Bible speaks. But he was not consistent with that. He (we) became adept at choosing the hermeneutic that led to the conclusion we wanted. Sometimes we were patternists. The idea of small groups is at best a pattern, which we tried to bind as mandatory. Weekly communion is nothing but a pattern. Even worshipping every Sunday was a pattern, not an explicit command. Yet, we felt free to implement a hierarchy of authority over the congregations which was contrary to the pattern of scripture. There, we felt it was not necessary to have a biblical pattern to authorize our practice.
It is a dangerous thing to have multiple hermeneutics, choosing between them at will. We become our own authority at that point.
A man with one clock knows what time it is. A man with two is never quite sure.
Alan