Re: Allegory; Radical Interpretation; Principle of Charity

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (a reader) writes:

> I don't know enough about Gerald Bruns's work to really comment on
> this with much confidence. But, I'm familiar with Zorn's lemma from
> set theory courses, and your application of it seems sound. I've
> also read some stuff by Willard Quine and Donald Davidson, so I'm
> somewhat familiar with their notions of "radical translation" and
> "radical interpretation", respectively. I think I have maybe three
> or four books by Quine, and one essay collection by Davidson (and
> I've read parts of all of these).

I've never read anything by any of these philosophers.  Nor by Philo
of Alexandria, for that matter.  (I've been meaning to read his
"Against Flaccus" -- current events, not theology -- but I haven't
gotten around to it.)

[...]

> But if you start to think about it more broadly, then the answer
> seems fairly obvious. Matthew Henry is operating within the whole
> Christian moral tradition, and his method is to look for an
> allegorical reading of a Biblical passage that supports that
> tradition.  Context is everything, and truth conditions explain
> nothing.  Then what is the point of Gerald Bruns's application of
> the principle of charity to allegorical readings? I don't know. It
> seems useless to me.

One of Bruns's intentions in that passage, if not his main intent,
seems to have been to "justify" ancient allegory and midrash to us
modern folks, by showing that they're not really as bizarre as they at
first seem -- that they're similar to the type of understanding we do
all the time, and which we're compelled to do if we want to understand
a radically different message.  That intent is clearer if you read the
whole essay.  I agree that Bruns failed in that attempt.