I didn’t know there was a word for it — hamartology. I never know in greek when to pronounce the h. I’m kind of Eliza Doolittle in that regard, I forget which way the little comma ought point. is “ha-” different from “a”, as a prefix. Could there theoretically be an hatheist, which is different from an atheist? My sketchiness with Biblical language makes for plenty of exegetical errors. But darned fine scholars are pushing exegetical errors (perhaps deceptions) on people. We all gotta keep our bull stool dectectors in tune. Mine tends to light up from language that both mystifies and implies that the speaker knows, but cannot competently communicate (because to the listerners’ shortcomings) beneath the mystery. That’s priest language. But getting over my knee jerk dismissal of a new-agey tone, I sense something in that wisdom/knowledge dichotomy which mirrors my own thinking.

In my own employment of mystifying language, I express the dichotomy as subject/object. The Bible comes to us as subject — as something both mobile, and capable of moving readers. It acts upon us. I’ll be vague as to how, but not priesty, because I’ve not a clue as to how, or how to explain how. I just know it by faith, sense, and praxis. But — people think they are elevating the Bible above man, by calling it “infallable” or words to that effect. But what they are doing is separating the tapestry into threads and the threads into knots, and mistaking the study of knots for the apprehension of the spectacle.

Systematic Theology, as I experienced it from my Calvinist upbringing, is every bit as much “placing God on the dock” (an expression of CS Lewis I believe, suggesting the Judge of men becomes the defendant facing men’s judgment) as smorgasboard “mix and match” fashion-conscious spirituality of the post-modern age. I think that critical methods deplored by “orthodox reformed” tradition are sometimes lost in minutiae, but ultimately seek to listen to the Word with greater clarity and less static — a signal/noise dichotomy. The abstractions of 16th Century Calvinism are reducing the Word to precepts and propositions, to be acted upon by syllogisms and meta-precepts which belong more to that age, than to the Bible itself. At least critical scholarship lets the defendent testify. God on the Calvinist docket is convicted by the forensic specialists. Hair and fiber evidence.

I got lost in a tangent — the title of “ironic elevation” being intended to look at the aspirations of man to build Babel, or to hold standards (knowledge of good and evil) to convict God of theodosic crimes. Did men of the first 1/3 of Genesis aspire to an I/Thou relationship with God, that seems to me possible with the Incarnation. Or did they aspire to rebel/replace/conquer God? One sees ironic elevation in Biblical inerrancy. That doctrine effectively enables men to conquer God, while all the time claiming perfect submission.

A puff away from 3 packs a day