Reading John 9

I'm preparing to preach on John 9 on Sunday evening. To be honest, I'm rather behind! If I had more time, I'd be wanting to look at Peter J. Leithart's Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture (Baylor Univ Press, Waco, 2009). As I understand it, he applies the approaches he talks about to John 9 as a kind of test case and example. According to the Scripture index, John 9 gets quite a bit of treatment: pages 60-64, 72-3, 100-102, 105-7, 117-8, 124-32, 136, 141-2, 161-71, 176-80, 184, 185-88, 192-95, 197-204, 206.

Ooo ooo!

Deep Exegesis by Rev'd Dr Peter Leithart ain't out yet (due middle of Sept.) but it looks very exciting.

Here's the blurb from Amazon:

Seeking to train readers to hear all that is being said within a written text, Peter Leithart advocates a hermeneutics of the letter that is not rigidly literalist and looks to learn to readnot just the Bible, but everything--from Jesus and Paul. Thus Deep Exegesis explores the nature of reading itselftaking clues from Jesus and Paul on the meaning of meaning, the functions of language, and proper modes of interpretation. By looking (and listening) closely, and by including passages from the Bible and other literary sources, Leithart aims to do for the text what Jesus did for the blind man in John 9: to make new by opening eyes. The book is a powerful invitation to enter the depths of a text.

Calvin & Leithart on 'Visible Words'

Peter Leithart has (rightly in my view) criticised the Calvinistic tag of the sacraments as “visible words”. He suggests that taken on its own it can imply (a) that the sacraments are intended primarily like words to communicate information to us and (b) that the sacraments are principally to be looked at.

I guess Leithart would agree that Calvin’s writings properly understood answer these criticisms. Calvin repeatedly and strongly attacks the Roman Catholics who stupidly gaze at the elements without understanding. And he also attacks the holding up and carrying around of the elements. They are not to be looked at but to be taken and eaten by all believers, he stresses.

Having said all that, I think Leithart is right that some tag such as “edible words” or “tangible words” might be better in this respect.

It is also worth saying that both words and sacraments do far more than communicate information or state propositions. Again, I think this is something that Leithart and Calvin could agree on, but perhaps a shift of emphasis from Calvin is helpful. Calvin is very big on knowledge and so on, though admittedly a relational emotion engaging personal sort of knowledge, not just an intellectual abstraction of info. Again Calvin’s anti-medieval-Roman Catholicism helps to account for the stress on doctrine since the RC church had gone so wrong in its doctrine of the Supper and said that understanding it and preaching the Word were comparatively unimportant. Calvin is centre-staging the neglected.