November 16, 2009

Luxuriating in the Letter

Category: Hermeneutics :: Permalink

We get at the meaning of baptism not by ignoring the properties of water but by musing on those properties.  Eucharistic theology properly emerges from considering the meaning of meals, of bread and of wine, of broken loaves and full cups.  So, too, we get to the rich and richly varied sensus plenior of the sacramental word not by moving past the letter to a spiritual sense, not by treating the letter as a husk for removal.  We get at the riches of Scripture precisely by luxuriating in the letter, by squeezing everything we can from the text as written — Peter Leithart, Deep Exegesis, p. vii.

Posted by John Barach @ 3:51 pm | Discuss (0)

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