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David Hemlock

Truth is the revelation of the incarnate Christ, the Holy Spirit, experience of God-bearing/illuminated saints rather than methodological application of scientific hermeneutic methodologies whether ancient or modern. Even within Orthodoxy, with scripture and Tradition at our disposal, truth is living, not methodological, not restricted to any horizontal dimension, and only properly received by a repentant sinner (“open our eyes, Lord, that we might see glorious things from thy Law”). This is *not* to say that the methodological study of historical criticism, hermeneutics, exegesis, etc. are rendered irrelevant; tacitly or explicitly truth of which the Church is a pillar and ground may run congruent with some authoritative method like rabbinical midrash, historical criticism, etc., but never in the sense of truth being reducible to some horizontal reality. Christ is the foundation; Christ is the truth; the Church is the pillar and ground and witness/martyr. Even if a book, an appointed authority, or some presumably infallible method could “speak” infallibly it cannot be heard except by the ears of a repentant sinner, hence the locus of truth is not the “authority” (more of a Latin Catholic/Protestant/contemporary academic preoccupation, I think); Christ Himself is the truth, and the Church as a whole is His body. Apologies for being so lengthy, but the sum of it is that I think of authenticity criteria of any kind, Wright’s included, in the same manner as the ancient Greek tragedies regarded their heroes greatest strength as often paradoxically displaying not only a fatal weakness, but a fatal weakness with potential to actually undo the hero at the end of the day.’
-David Hemlock
http://theologiansinc.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/history-theology-and-methodology/
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