Chapter One: A Principlizing Model by Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. (Colman M. Mockler Emeritus Distinguished Professor of OT and Ethics and President Emeritus of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts).
Kaiser advocates applying specifics principles from the ancient text to the contemporary culture. Kaiser provides lists and defines six principles that expose euthanasia as wrong. Kaiser draws principles from different text in his opinion to justify women praying and prophesying. The next issue Kaiser deals with is homosexuality. Kaiser states that no one needs to go beyond the Bible to see that homosexuality is condemned in seven passages. Kaiser believes there are principles in the Bible, such as found in the book of Philemon, that teach slaves should be freed. Kaiser teaches that there are adequate principles against abortion and embryonic stem cell research that no one needs to go beyond the Bible.
Kaiser wrote of three horizons of interpretation. “(1) the culture of the Bible, (2) the culture of the interpreter, and (3) the culture of the receptor.”[1] Our culture cannot be part of the interpretation process.
Kaiser also writes “that the task of interpreting the text was not concluded until the reader or interpreter had carried what the text meant over to the present day and said what it now means.”[2] This is a weakness in Kaiser’s view. The interpretation process ends when the interpreters discovers what the authorial intent of the passage meant to the original audience. Next, is the application of the interpretation to the modern audience. What Kaiser calls “principlizing” is application not interpretation.
The first step is identifying the subject. This is the single meaning for the original audience. This is followed by the second step of expressing the subject in “propositional principles” for the modern audience.[3] Kaiser uses Paul’s example of principlizing of Deut. 25:4 where the owner of an oxen is told to feed the animal that is providing service. Paul applies that principle to churches paying their ministers who serve them God’s Word (1 Cor. 9:9-12 and 1 Tim. 5:18).
Kaiser advocates to go “beyond” Scripture is to violate the Reformer’s sola Scriptura. He adds that contemporary interpreters of the Word of God should be content with moving from the specificity of the biblical text followed by a generalizing principle to apply to different people in different times and places.
Kaiser raises the issue of euthanasia. He notes that the Scripture “does not directly mention or give explicit guidance”[4] but the interpreter does not need to go beyond the Bible because there are principles that do guide. He lists six principles.[5] The next example is women’s role in the church which Kaiser states that from the text in 1 Tim. 2:11-12 “once again, the exegetical principles derived from the text were adequate in and of themselves to cover the modern as well as the ancient situation. Women most certainly were to be taught and thereafter be permitted to pray in public and to prophesy in public, for that is exactly what God had ordered.”[6] He ignores 1 Tim. 3:1 “If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desires a good work.” Kaiser states that the seven passages that condemn homosexuality are clear in their condemnation and there is no need to go beyond Scripture.[7] Kaiser believes the book of Philemon sufficiently shows the Bible’s solution to the issue of pagan slavery and there is no need to go beyond the Bible.[8] Kaiser advocates that the Scripture so sufficiently condemns abortion that there is no need to go beyond the Bible.[9]
Kaiser critiques I. Howard Marshall’s book Beyond the Bible: Moving from Scripture to Theology. What Marshall calls the development of doctrine and moving beyond the Bible, Kaiser believes is the doctrine of progressive revelation. Howard contended that because the early writers of the NT developed the OT, and Jesus expanded and developed the early writings, and Paul developed even more the Gospels. What the writers of Scripture were permitted to do under the supervision of the Holy Spirit with progressive revelation we believers today are not permitted to do.[10] I think 2 Tim 3:16 justifies Kaiser’s view.
A Response To Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. by Daniel M. Doriani (Senior Pastor of Central Presbyterian Church: Adjunct Professor of New Testament at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri). Doriani agrees with Kaiser that “the interpretive contributions of contemporary Christians belong to a different category”[11] from the writers of Scripture who through progressive revelation developed doctrine. Doriani states that “the redemptive-historical theologian also wishes Kaiser made more of the christocentricity of Scripture and the Bible’s character as the narrative of God’s redemptive acts.”[12]
A Response To Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. by Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Blanchard Professor of Theology at Wheaton College and Graduate School, Wheaton, Illinois). Vanhoozer questions Kaiser principlizing of Genesis 2:18 and 1 Corinthians 11:10 and calls it “fancy etymological spadework in Canaanite roots.”[13] “What I am proposing is not principlizing but theodramatizing---a form of typological or figural reading where what gets ‘figured’ or worked out in the present is the old, old, story of what God is doing in Jesus through the Spirit. To theodramatize a text---to go beyond the text theodramatically---is to understand what judgment has been embodied by a biblical author and then to embody that same judgment in a new conceptual or cultural form today.”[14]
A Response To Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. by William J. Webb (Professor on New Testament at Heritage Seminary in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada). Webb disagrees with Kaiser that Philemon teaches the abolition of slavery as explicitly as Kaiser does. But Webb admits “of course, a logical extension of the letter’s redemptive spirit is quite another matter.”[15] Every one of his seven objections to Kaiser’s view can be answered. For example, Webb believes that an abolitionists would not have sent the slave back to his owner. Paul sent Onesimus back because Onesimus had stolen from Philemon and reconciliation needed to be made which was the Christian and biblical thing to do.
In our next post, we will consider Chapter Two: A Redemptive-Historical Model by Daniel M. Doriani.
[1] Ibid., 20.
[2] Ibid., 21.
[3] Ibid., 23.
[4] Ibid., 27.
[5] Ibid., 28-29.
[6] Ibid., 35.
[7] Ibid., 39.
[8] Ibid., 42.
[9] Ibid., 45.
[10] Ibid., 49-50.
[11] Ibid., 53.
[12] Ibid., 56.
[13] Ibid., 59.
[14] Ibid., 62.
[15] Ibid., 65.