ORLAPUBS P. R245: HOW PRECONCEPTIONS ALTER LITERAL READINGSF BELIEF

HOW PRECONCEPTIONS ALTER
WHAT LITERALISTS READ

© 2002-2003 by Orchid Land Publications

Where we think that something is or what we think that something is prevents us from realizing where or what it really is when we go looking for it. I recently "lost" a medication for my dalamatian. I was sure that I had put it with some other medications, as I had done when I first brought the medicine home. I looked everywhere for several days, when I found that it had been in sight all along. The container was behind my kitchen sink a little behind the drying rack for the dishes . . . but in full view. Today, I happened to be cleaning there and discovered what had been "lost." This shows how strongly our preconceptions determine our perceptions. Preconceptions are even more potent when it comes to what we read.

THE PROBLEM OF PRESUPPOSITIONS

Although Orchid Land Publications is on Orchid Land Drive, mainlanders presuppositions leads them to read (and address materials to) Orchard Lane Dr. The axioms that form our paradigms of religious reality impose interpretations on those who translate or read a given text in the Bible; they of course exclude other interpretations, including those of the energy ontology of speaker of Hellenistic Greek like St. Paul. See R250.

You may wonder why some self-avowed literalists on the Christian left (Evangelical Fundamentalists) read the Bible so differently from the way those who spoke the language that the Bible was written in interpreted it--and how their followers down to the present have consistently done for 2000 years. The difference is due to the rôle played by presuppositional axioms (which together constitute a paradigm) in imposing on the words one reads sense that they can and cannot bear.

--If you are convinced that matter can play no rôle in religion, then sacraments, blessed objects, etc., will have no importance; you will find the literal sense of John 3:5 and 6:53:54 to be something very different from what the words plainly say. And Christ's Incarnation and Resurrection will be incidental to Salvation.

--If you have a static outlook, time and therefore tradition will play no rôle in your religion, and both conversion and Salvation will be instantaneous. Neither can the creation of the cosmos nor Christian belief have grown or developed in any meaningful manner. The 27 energy terms in the New Testament Epistles will not be translated energetically; non-energy translations will prevail. Instead of viewing unity with God's Energies, you will think of unity with G0d's Essence--but since It is imiparticipable by finite creatures, you will have to invent a virtual unity with God--either an intentional (conceptual) unity (the Latins) or a volitional-covenantal unity (the Protestant Reformers).

--If you hold that words are more potent than things, you will hold the Creator of the cosmos to have been a Word, however silly the notion is. You may develop a magical view of words. You will alter Worship directed to God to become an activity in which words are preached to people, turning the word Worship upside-down. This activity will bear no resemblance to what Worship meant to the various religions of the Apostolic Age and during the following one and a half millenniums.

--If you set out from the position that there can be no personal God, all of the evidence for a Creator God that you come across will be interpreted as point in that direction.

--If you exalt will over mind, as the (then termed) "modernist" philosophy that Luther embraced did, you will read various verses very differently from those who think that only a will subject to reason can "intend" anything. Virtual reality will be on the table; with Luther, you will insist that Salvation is virtual (imputed) righteousness.
--If you combine the preceding with an assumption that the parameters of mental or volitional traits and physical traits overlap conceptually, you will be able to read certain passages as speaking of physically inheriting someone else's moral guilt or transferring someone's merits to another--all thinkable when the transfer is by will and is therefore virtual--imputed.

Some premises are so strong that there are literalists who claim that what Jesus turned the water into was grape juice--not wine!

Those who are unaware of the foregoing considerations and observations will always be victims of their preconceptions, locked into their conceptual boxes, close-minded in the most literal way. They will never see the world as it is. Those who have consciously examined various preconceptions about reality, not least their own, will be in a different position to find the truth, should they wish to do so.