I.	VI.  How to appreciate the large-scale historical purposes of God
 A.	Reckoning with the embeddedness of the Bible in time and history

Issues Related to Authorial Intention

Vern S. Poythress, Nov., 1982

		For the sake of effectively maintaining the authority of the Bible in practice, and making sure that the doctrine of inerrancy has real “bite,” we need a certain minimum of agreement on the location of authoritative meaning.  We need to mark out boundaries, outside of which it is dangerous to wander.  

THIS MINIMUM seems to me to involve the following theses:

A.  Concerning boundaries on the interpreter’s choices.
		Negatively: a text without a historical-grammatical context or without a definite author can sponsor a multiplicity of mutually contradictory interpretations (because it is up to the interpreter to “invent” a context and an author after his own making).
		Positively: relevant, valid interpretations, that is, interpretaþtions which in a proper manner aim at unfolding an authoritative message from God, must be interpretations of a biblical discourse in the light of the human author, his language, and his intended audience.  The inclusion of the audience as well as the author may sometimes be important: Colossians is not the same as Philippians, even if they are written contemporaneously by Paul.

B.  Concerning the author.
		Negatively: it is not enough merely to appeal to the divine author, if that means that one allows the interpreter to import a cabalistic, mystical, or neo-orthodox idea of how the divine author communicates.
		Positively: the human authors were fully involved as persons in writing what they wrote.

C.  Concerning the verbal product.
		Negatively: we must avoid locating the authority of the Bible in the author’s psychological processes of planning and producing a text, or even in the author’s phenomenological mental acts, lest we allow the interpreter to retreat behind the publicly accessible claims of the written word.  (Imagine an interpreter saying, “Yes, ordinarily the word means this, and the context seems to confirm it, but the author really intended the word in a special sense, which my intuition has shown me.”)
		Positively: we must locate the focus of authority and binding claims in what is publicly accessible meaning, for which the audience can rightly be held responsible.  (Of course, if they refuse even to read the document, they are responsible for the attitude and action of refusal.)

D.  The bounds given by (A)-(C) above are a suitable minimum for the maintenance of full biblical authority.
		If we follow these bounds in interpretation, many scriptural texts make clear claims, issue commands, make affirmations, and so on.  The human authors intended (and with them, the divine author) that their claims should be heeded, their affirmations believed, and their commands obeyed.  The maintenance of proper biblical authority requires that we make the responses called for, in the case of each and every biblical text.  (But questions of genre, contextualization, cultural change, and so on have to be dealt with.)

(A)-(C) can be summarized in more than one way.  One good way is this:
what the original intended audience would have been justified in understanding a biblical passage to mean is divinely authoritative.  For the sake of (2) it must then be added that the original audience should take into account what they know of the human author.

THE MAXIMUM:

		Within the boundaries, we ought to allow freedom to move around, in order to take into account complexities in interpretation.  The following areas need careful discussion and reflection.

A.  Concerning technical terms
		What do we mean by key words and phrases like “intention,” “meaning,” “interpretation,” “grammatical-historical,” “single sense,” “significance,” “application,” “implication”?  These words have meaning in ordinary language (but “grammatical-historical” exists perhaps exclusively as a technical term).  But, if we follow the later Wittgenstein, at least in some cases that meaning may be a matter of “family resemblances.”  Resemblance is a matter of degree.  For instance, what is a “cow”?  Things that are clearly “cows” share many, many features.  Some entities resemble our paradigm case of a cow in lesser and lesser degree.  We can imagine freaks, “borderline cases.”  Existing usage and English doesn’t draw a perfectly precise boundary.  If we want to be precise, we may have to draw a boundary at an arbitrary point in a continuum.
		If, then, we attempt to produce technical precise terms with precise boundaries, will the boundaries suppress resemblances that occur across the boundary?
		Is there only one way of doing it?  Are we partly involved in semantic disputes about where to draw boundaries?
		If we are hermeneutical theoreticians, we will be expected to show that we are alert to the problems of clearly communicating to others what we want to say.  This means that we cannot assume exact or precise agreement on technical terms to begin with.  Nor will it be easy for audiences just to “catch on” to our technical terms.  (The new hermeneutic is particularly guilty here.)

B.  Concerning the verbal text
 1.	Where do we stop drawing implications from the text?
		How far do we reckon such implications as part of legitimate interpretation?  Is there any natural boundary, a sharp transition point, between what is and is not included within the allusive suggestions of a text?
		A “single sense,” I suppose, can include within itself a considerable complexity.  A metaphor operates by means of a relationship and dynamic interaction between at least two layers or planes of meaning.  Sometimes poetry can include allusions in many directions.  What doesn’t count as a single sense?  What criteria distinguish what is single from what is double or triple?
 2.	How do we talk about biblical quotations of earlier biblical texts, which seem to pick up only an aspect of the meaning of the original, or to transform the original in some way?
 3.	How do we discuss in an illuminating way the character of the “gestalt” properties of a text?
		The interpretation of a text as a whole can properly unfold more than the mechanical sum of what could be unfolded from each sentence of the text separately.  The “excess” or extra depth does not reside in any one part, but in relations of the parts to one another.  Now suppose that one has immersed oneself in a text for a long time.  One may come to perceive this depth or excess as (often) attached to particular pieces of text.  The particular pieces are seen as “meaning” a great deal more than they once did (when they were read in more isolating fashion).  One “sees” depth because one has absorbed onto a subconscious level, or level of one’s entire life, the message of the text as a whole, and one “reads” any particular sentence against the background of this psychic context.  A large amount of that context is read into the text and then read out.  But is it really “read in”?  Isn’t the psychological perception in some sense a valid one, if achieved by means of having thoroughly absorbed the text as a whole?
		Now apply this whole discussion of gestalt to the Bible as a single text with a single divine author (though with many human authors).  Won’t there be an “excess” over the mechanical sum that we could obtain from each human author separately?  And what will happen to our perception of texts written at an earlier point in time (OT) now that we have absorbed the message of later texts?  Can the same observations be extended to include not only the biblical texts, but the events of redemption (above all, the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ)?  These events themselves are freighted with divine meaning.  When we take them together with OT prophecies, as a single gestalt, won’t it result in “excess” over a mechanical sum?

C.  Concerning authors
		Do we include some “unconscious intention” within authorial intention (cf. E. D. Hirsch)?  How deep does the unconscious go?  If we don’t include any unconscious elements, then what we are left with is (or can be) rather thin.  How do we talk about the additional thickness or richness of communicative content?
		How do we know how much a prophet consciously knew about the future by virtue of divine inspiration?
		How do we deal with the variety in relationships between the divine and human authors?  In Revelation 2-3, the relation approaches that of dictation.  In Pauline epistles, it is the other extreme.  Can we formulate a uniform principle that equates divine and human meaning, or separates them, in the face of this diversity?
		Is it sometimes (or always?) the “intention” of the human author to present his discourse as more than his own product, and hence as something that he himself does not want to be interpreted solely in the light of what his intended audience knows about him?  (For instance, does Luke give people parables of Jesus with the intention that they ask what Jesus meant, even though Luke himself may not have fully plumbed this meaning?  Does a prophet describe a vision which he has seen, with the intention that the audience ask what God meant by the vision?)

D.  Concerning readers
 4.	How do we talk about the fact that texts are sometimes not merely repositories of information or propositions, but have a rhetorical organization designed to take the reader from where he now is to a more advanced point?
		They alter his understanding, his knowledge, and his very being, as he is in the process of reading and digesting what he has read.  To put it another way: how do we relate the “meaning” of the word of God, in the narrow sense of content expressible in propositions, to its power?  In power, God’s word spiritually changes readers.  Or again: how do we relate narrowly propositional meaning to the personal presence of God, who meets us in speaking to us?  Aren’t there nuances here, in the full process of impartation of God’s word to us, that are difficult to capture in head-on, brute-strength approaches to analysis of meaning-content?  What sort of categories do we employ in order to talk directly about the power and presence of God in the word, rather than leaving this as an indirect, background assumption?  The discussion of “meaning” in a narrow sense can easily leave this wholly in the background.  Ought we to avoid simply dichotomizing meaning and power here?  If so, how?
 5.	How do we talk about the phenomenon of the “second reading”?  The second time through you may pick up things that are invisible the first time.
		How do we deal with the possibility that in some cases an author may intend that the same discourse would have two effects on two different parts of the audience (as would follow from one interpretation of Mark 4:11-12)?  This possibility should be compared with the possibility opened up in the “second reading,” where the two audiences are in effect the same person with access to different horizons.
 6.	Are we sure that we know human nature deeply?
		Is humanity completely uniform, or are there created (not to mention sinful) variations in the way in which interpretation takes place from one person to another?
		Almost every actual interpretation is a partial interpretation, in that it doesn’t capture all the nuances of the text in question.  How do we methodologically deal with a plurality of interpretations which may be able to be combined in an enriching fashion?
 7.	Hearing and overhearing
		If modern readers are only “overhearers” of an ancient text, a text not addressed to them, the text can have authority over them only indirectly, by virtue of values which they bring to the text (e.g., a reader may value philosophical truth, insight about human nature, information about the past, etc.; see the discussion in Poythress, “Ground Rules of New Testament Interpretation,” Westminster Theological Journal 41 (1978-79) 195; E. D. Hirsch, Aims of Interpretation).  How do we properly articulate the “direct” nature of the divine claims of biblical texts?
		If God intends that the message of the Bible be applied in each of our lives, isn’t every (legitimate) application part of his “intention,” and so included in a definition of meaning in terms of intention?

An Exercise in Diachronic Analysis
Introduction

Diachronic analysis involves the comparison of different discourses originating at different periods of time.  One aspect of diachronic analysis is the exploration of more and more remote sources that contributed directly or indirectly to the formation of a single given discourse.  When we do diachronic analysis of material in the Bible, we will be concerned mostly with parallels within the Bible itself.
Often, as in the Book of Revelation, a given discourse may weave together material from many sources in the Old Testament (for instance, look at the cross references for Rev. 21:22-22:5).  But at other times there may be only one main source.  For example, when a New Testament writer quotes the Old Testament, the Old Testament writing that he quotes is his main source.  Even in cases of quotation there may occasionally be more than one source (1 Pet. 2:7-9).  Whatever the case, a thorough diachronic analysis will try to perceive the way in which all of an author’s sources have contributed to what he says.  It will be sensitive to the fact that some sources may make much greater contributions than others.  And it will try to perceive the author’s and the final text’s own originality.  It will be sensitive to what the final text brings out more clearly, more directly, more specifically, or in different combinations than do the text’s sources.

Earlier and later stages.

	The following exercise is meant to introduce you to one phase of diachronic analysis.  It consists of two parts.  In the first part, you uncover progressively more remote sources for a text in question.  In the second part, you ask what additional information each successive additional source contributes to the total picture that can be gained from all of then.

	Part a.  (1) For a given text (say Acts 15:16-17) find (as far as possible) what the author’s sources were.  That is, what discourses already available to the author influenced his writing?  What discourses did he use?

		(2)	From among the author’s sources, try to find whether there was a single principal source.  For Acts 15:16-17, we do not know Luke’s sources.  Since he was not himself present at the council in Jerusalem, he must have obtained information from people who gave him a second-hand account of the council.  We do not know whether he relied on a single source (perhaps an oral account by Paul, Peter, or James himself), or whether he interviewed several people who were involved in the council.  These people would have been his main source for the text in Acts 15:16-17.  But of course the Septuagint would have been a secondary source, if Luke relied on it in reproducing some of the wording of 15:16-17.

		(3)	Now you can use each source found in (1) above as a starting point.  Try to find what its sources are.  These will be second stage sources.  Again, for each of these second stage sources try to find its (third stage) source.  Obviously, if this process continues for long, the number of distant sources multiplies rapidly.  Hence for the purpose of this exercise, I suggest that you confine yourself to one or at most two main sources at each stage.  Take Acts 15:16-17 as an example.  The first stage sources of Acts 15:16-17 are the interviews that Luke had with others, probably with direct participants in the council.  For all these, there is only one main second stage source, namely James’ speech at the council.  James’ main source (third-stage) was the text of the Septuagint or some Hebrew or Aramaic text of Amos 9:11-12.  These texts had as sources earlier copies, and eventually we get back to the autograph of Amos 9:11-12.  Suppose that Amos preached the message of Amos 9:11-12 orally before it was written down.  Then his oral preaching would be the source.  But perhaps he wrote 9:11-12 without ever preaching it orally.  Whatever may be the case here, behind what Amos says there stands, probably as his primary source, the promise made to David in 2 Sam. 7:7-16 guaranteeing the continuation of David’s house (and hence the restoration of that house when it has fallen).

		(4)	To simplify the analysis of sources, eliminate or ignore the intermediate stages of transmission by scribal copying and oral tradition.  Leave only the stages that the Bible itself alludes to.  When we do this with Acts 15:16-17, we obtain the following simplified sequence of sources:

Acts 15:16-17 ® James at the council ® Amos 9:11-12 ® 2 Sam. 7:7-16 ® Nathan’s oral speech to David ® the Lord’s oral speech to Nathan ® Deut. 17:14-20 ® Gen. 17:6, 12:3.

The Lord’s oral speech to Nathan also builds on texts on the tabernacle.

(The sources of the Lord’s speech to Nathan are many.  Insofar as it talks about kingship, it finds roots in Deut. 17:14-20.  Insofar as it talks about house-building, it has roots in the passages about the tabernacle and about God selecting a place where he will put his name.)

	Part b. In this part, you ask what additional information each successive additional source contributes to the total picture.  For this purpose, you should travel in the reverse direction, from the earlier texts to the later ones.

		(1)	Start with one of the earliest source texts.  Examine it in the light of its original literary and historical context.  Note what it teaches to its original hearers, particularly what it teaches with respect to what they may expect in the future.  Try to express this teaching in one or two sentences.  Thus for the text Gen. 17:6 we might summarize, “Some of Abraham’s descendents will be kings as part of the blessing of God on then.”

		(2)	Now examine another text for which the first text of b(1) above is a source.  That is, take material one less stage remote in time.  Repeat the procedure of b(1), but this time ask whether your given text adds anything significant to what would already be known from the first text.  Does it add a detail, add a different contextual coloring, or clarify some point?

For example, look at Deut 17:14-20.  It adds to Gen 17:6 the hope that there will be Israelite kings over the land of Canaan, devoted to God’s law.

		(3) Repeat the procedure (2) successively until you arrive at the text with which you started in Part a (e.g., Acts 15:16-17).  Taking Acts 15:16-17 as our example again, we may collapse together the Lord’s speech to Nathan and Nathan’s speech to David.  2 Sam 7:7-16 adds only a little by putting this speech into the whole context of David’s subsequent life.

		We may summarize the additions at the various stages thus:

Gen 17:6		Some of Abraham’s descendants will be kings as part of the blessing of God on them.

Deut 17:14-20	They will be kings over Canaan, devoted to God’s law.

Nathan’s speech	David will be head of an everlasting dynasty to protect Israel.  Chastening of iniquity will be involved.

2 Sam 7:7-16	Adds little.  In the context of 2 Samuel and Kings, it is seen that David and his merely human descendants will have their failures.

Amos 9:11-12	David’s house will be rescued from ruin and finally and gloriously established over all nations.  (Messianic)
	
James		The days of fulfillment of Amos 9 are inaugurated with the conversion of the Gentiles taking place in the days after Pentecost.
Acts 15:16-17	Adds little to James.  In the course of time the decision of the council based on Amos encourages the aids the spread of the gospel among the Gentiles (e.g., 15:30-33; 16:4; 21:25).

		Your assignment is to do parts a and b for the text Matt 11:10 or with some portion of the text that you have chosen for you biblical-theological paper.  Imitate what has been done above for Acts 15:16-17.  Your completed paper should contain (a) a sequence of more and more remote sources; (b) some note as to what each source adds (if anything) to the sources that came before it.  You need not write out all the spade work that you do in order to get these conclusions.

		For an early OT text, the above procedure should be turned upside down.  Rather than tracing the sources of the text, ask how it influences, explicitly or implicitly, later canonical writings.  Follow these out as far as possible in chronological sequence.
		For an text in the middle of the OT period, use the procedure both forwards and backwards; that is, ask both about sources and later uses.
		If you elect not to use Matt 11:10, and you do not turn up more than a few stages of sources and transmissions, use other associations (C below) to include a larger list of related passages.

Other associations

		Finally, the method of looking for sources may be combined with the method of looking for subsequent influences (transmissions).  For every source, look for its subsequent influences.  For every subsequent influence, look at its sources.  When you use both of these procedures together, you are on your way to understanding just how much different parts of the Bible are interconnected.
 B.	The historical-critical method
Optional Reading:	Marshall, New Testament Interpretation 11-18 (questions raised in modern exegesis)

 1.	On the development of the method, see the section in Berkhof on the history of hermeneutics
 2.	Antisupernaturalist and historicist presuppositions
 a.	The term “historical-critical method” connotes different things to different people.
 (1)	To many in the mainstream of scholarship, it connotes simply exercising scholarly care and technical skill in examining an ancient text.
 (2)	But many do not understand that the framework of a world view deeply influences the way in which they do historical investigation.
The existing tools of scholarship have developed in a nonneutral environment.  They are not the only possible ways of doing things with care.  So we need to sift the assumptions underlying the approaches.
 (3)	At Westminster, the term is used to describe the dominant framework for historical investigation within the mainstream of biblical scholarship, a framework which includes the presuppositions of a world view.
 b.	Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923) at the turn of the century analyzed the fundamental assumptions involved in modern historical investigation.  (See Gesammelte Schriften, 2:729-53.)
 (1)	Criticism.  Only probabilistic judgments occur concerning history (p. 731).
 (2)	Analogy.  The present is the key to the past.  Homogeneity of all historical events must be presupposed (p. 732).
 (3)	Correlation.  (Causality.)  There is a closed continuum of causation connecting earlier and later events (p. 733).
 c.	This approach assumes the nonexistence of the supernatural, the brute-fact character of historical events.  “Historicism” labels the approach based on these assumptions and the additional one that the historian’s goal is to describe with pure objectivity what happened, without interpretation (assumes that historical events constitute brute facts).
 3.	“Critical” tools of the mainstream of biblical scholarship
 a.	Text criticism
What was the original (autographic) text behind the extant mss?  More generally, what was the whole history of transmission from the autograph onwards?
 b.	Source criticism (classically, labeled literary criticism)
What earlier written sources were used in forming the final text?
For the Pentateuch, the four source JEDP is the classic form of it.
 c.	Form criticism
What structural “forms” of discourse were used at prewritten (oral) stages, from what Sitz im Leben (life setting) did each form originate, and what changes did each unit undergo in the course of oral transmission?
For the psalms, individual lament, corporate lament, thanksgiving, hymn, song of Zion/temple.  In the Gospels, miracle story, parable, pronouncement story, legend, wisdom saying.  These supposedly owe their origin to preaching and apologetic situations in the Palestinian or Hellenistic church.
 d.	Redaction criticism
How did the final editor/redactor shape his immediate sources?  In particular, what theological emphases (Tendenz) does the redactor show, and what do we learn about him from the changes that he introduces into his sources?
Matthew and Luke, line-by-line comparison with Mark.  For Mark and John, speculative reconstruction of theological bias on the basis of hypothetical earlier stages.
 4.	Possible value
 a.	Theoretical legitimacy as an attempt to answer human curiosity 
 b.	Problems of speculation, and questionable assumptions about transmission
 c.	Apologetic use
 d.	Reconstruction of OT/NT environment (a contribution to questions of OT/NT introduction)
 5.	The fundamental issue: is the meaning of a text what it says or the history of its origin?

 C.	Modern situationist and subjectivist hermeneutics
 1.	The reaction to rationalism.
 a.	The historical-critical method is the logical outcome of the attempt to be god by obtaining exhaustive, scientific mastery of history and texts.  It claims a false objectivism (non-Christian rationalism).  A supposedly neutral scientific observer can rationally, critically analyze all texts without reference to presuppositions and without reference to loyalty to God.  This approach to interpretation is a hermeneutical form of powerful cultural forces in the West.  Think of the desire for a purely secular science, technology, and political order.  The Beast in Revelation is the apotheosis of human power.
 b.	But false objectivism always provokes in reaction a false subjectivism, that is, a false assertion of freedom for the human subject who rises above all law (non-Christian irrationalism).
 c.	“Scientific” secular rationality reduces human beings to the play of impersonal laws.  There must be more to persons.  Hence the more must be something above all law, purely autonomous.
 d.	Hence in some forms of deconstruction we find the claim that readers create meaning afresh with each reading of the text.  Meaning is not bound to the purposes of the author.
 e.	So-called situation ethics (Joseph Fletcher) refuses to acknowledge any absolute norms, and in doing so makes the human subject in its subjectivized ideas of love into a virtual norm.
 f.	The popularized form of this approach is in psychological relativism and subjectivism.
 (1)	It says of religion in general, “Whatever works for you is OK for you; but don’t bug me.”
 (2)	It says of the Bible in particular, “That is your interpretation.”  That is, everyone has an equal “right” to his interpretation.  Here is a bastardization of the principle of equal judicial rights before the law.
 g.	Here are manifestations of the Prostitute of Revelation, the exaltation of personal pleasure and self-fulfillment as a god.
 2.	Marxism, theology of liberation, and “politically correct” thinking (situationalist hermeneutics)
 a.	Because of the political collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern European Marxist governments, many people think that Marxism is dead.  But variants of Marxism are likely to be with us for some time, through Latin American theology of liberation and through North American “political correctness.”  This latter ideology I will label “correctism.”
 b.	Theology of liberation uses Marxism for its analysis of economic and social problems.  Correctism derives from Marxism the emphasis on thinking people in terms of their membership in economic, social, and cultural classes—“classism.”  Though it does not have exactly the same views as classical Marxism, its approach is structurally homologous at many points.
 c.	In biblical interpretation and other forms of literary interpretation, Marxism advocates a “hermeneutics of suspicion.”  The political and economic motives of authors and interpreters determine meaning.  Hence one must be prepared to resist what they say in their straightforward meaning.

 d.	Marxism has both rationalist and irrationalist motifs.  It is rationalist in the claim to analyze “scientifically” the nature of human beings (work and economic relations) and the course of history.  Marxism  is irrationalist in its claims concerning the pervasiveness of ideological influences on people’s views.
 e.	In interpretation, irrationalism operates in the dogmatism with which Marxists can reject competing interpretations because the interpreters’ backgrounds are not politically correct.  Rationalism operates in the workings of a method that easily imposes Marxist motifs and conclusions on all literary works.  The Bible can become a Marxist textbook by selectively reading it to justify predetermined ideas about justice.
 f.	But the rationalist and irrationalist poles destroy one another.  If everything is ideologically contaminated, so is Marxism.
 g.	Marxism offers an intoxicating form of moral liberation.  It offers an outlet for the alienation of intellectuals, and relief from the guilt over their privileges in relation to the masses.  The relief comes from self-justification by works, specifically, the work of identifying with the correct political views and working for their triumph.
 h.	Marxism justifies the seizure of political power by the elite and the oppression of all resistors.  Similarly, correctism justifies the seizure of academic power and media power by the elite who correctly identify oppression and correctly avoid oppressive language.
 i.	Marxist “justice” is autonomously “known” before God speaks in his word, and the word is not really allowed to contradict it.  This is pure rebellion.
 j.	Marxism owes its ideological power largely to ability to counterfeit major Christian motifs, such as sin (economic oppression), gospel (Marxist call to the workers), deliverance (communist revolution), consummation (communist utopia at the end of history).
 k.	Correctism has analogous motifs.  Sin is prejudice against classes.  The pseudogospel is the message that salvation will come through acceptance of every class and the transformation of language and literature to manifest this acceptance.  Deliverance is the imposition of politically correct standards about language.
 3.	Feminism
 a.	Feminism is parallel to Marxism, except that the enemy ideology is now male chauvinism, whose influence must be overcome when reading texts.  Feminism is in fact one of the concerns in correctism.  Politically correct thinking includes concerns for race, class, and gender, and feminism is the subdivision concerned with gender.
 b.	Like Marxism, it appeals to the Christian motive of caring for the underdog.
 c.	Like Marxism, it can dogmatically consign opponents to the flames because they have bad motives.
 d.	Like Marxism, feminism misses the value of the calling to be a servant.  Jesus says, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matt 20:26-28).  There is dignity and worth in service to others, whether or not it is recognized or honored by the godless world.  In particular, there is dignity in motherhood.
In this respect, feminism is self-contradictory.  It is a chauvinist ideology.  It looks down on servants and swallows the idea that you are not important unless you have worldly power and get mentioned in history books.  Infected by modern male ideas about what constitutes human worth and justice, and about how to go about achieving them, it is bent on distorting what is distinct about being a man or a woman, and is prepared to oppress men and women to do so.
 e.	Again like Marxism, feminist “justice” is autonomously “known” before God speaks in his word, and the word is not really allowed to contradict it.  This is pure rebellion.
 4.	What can be learned from these?
 a.	Presuppositions
 (1)	Van Til reminds us of the prevasive influence of presuppositions.
 (2)	Sin is radical and the remedy is radical.  Even after we become Christians, our lives are contaminated by impure motives.  Among these are protecting selfish economic interests and protecting our selfish interests in sexuality.  These elements often work at unconscious levels.  If we have power and prestige, we have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.  So we emphasize any biblical texts that appear to reinforce the status quo.
 b.	Often Marxists, politically correct people, and feminists are critical of real sins in the past and present.  Positions of power and prestige do give people ways of oppressing others and then concealing it.  Even Christian religion can be twisted in order to provide support for oppression (as in the supposed justification for the Spanish inquisition and for persecuting the Huguenots).  (But be careful, or the modern ideologies will exploit guilt feelings and desires to do right.)
 c.	By asking new questions of texts they make us notice new things that we have not noticed before.  (But they are also capable of leading us to notice things in a text that are not really there!)
 5.	What must we avoid?  Avoid sin, in order to read the Bible rightly.
 6.	Marxism, correctism, and feminism are unaware of how sin infects their own work.  They justify and excuse self-righteousness, envy, arrogance, and lust for power, prominence, and riches among their followers and those influenced by them—all on the ground that they are working for “justice” for the oppressed.
 7.	Everyone has guilt about sexuality and money.  And everyone has been oppressed (sinned against).  Feminism and Marxism offer easy, false redemption.  Feminism does so by leveling sexual differences and pretending they do not matter (“mere biology”); or (in another form of feminism) advocating a selfish lawlessness in which everyone does his own thing and labels all rules and customs as oppressive.  Marxism does so by telling you who has the right to economic power and giving self-righteousness to those who side with the oppressed by fighting for its programs.  (Hence, when those programs win, the self-righteous can justify their own versions of opulence.)
Correctism tells you how to talk and think acceptingly about race, gender, and class.  Those who conform to their standards can then be self-righteous.
The opposites of these programs are also false solutions: chauvinism in abolishing the woman (opposite to feminism), raw acquisitiveness in abolishing scruples (opposite to Marxism), and discrimination in devaluing everything not belonging to one’s own cultural group (opposite to correctism).  All these evade and conceal the real problems of the heart, which are much harder to root out.
 8.	Marxism, correctism, and feminism feed on a wide-spread rationalist intoxication with egalitarianism.  And indeed there is a grain of truth here: all people are human beings made in the image of God.  The Bible promotes justice without favoritism and common access to God the Father for all Christians (Eph 2:18).
But in many respects people are strikingly different from one another, in age, personality, sex, wealth, skills, culture, giftedness, and status in authority.  Intellectuals cannot rationally analyze these differences to the very bottom, because they are so many proofs of God’s sovereignty in giving to each person as he wills (1 Cor 12:11).  In particular, authority is not autonomously analyzable.  So modern unbelief rebels against all expressions of authority, whether the authority of the owner of a business or the authority of a husband in his home.
 9.	Temptation of autonomy
Autonomy and abdication of responsibility tempts us on all sides.  No one is free from the influence of the temptations from the surrounding culture.  For example, we can abdicate responsibilities in marriage in several ways.  Strong, dominant men avoid responsibility to discover their wives in their differentness by simply imposing unilaterally their decisions and their view of what it means to love.  Weak men avoid responsibility to discover their wives in their differentness by pretending that marital responsibility can be shared in an interchangeable way and so abdicating leadership.  Strong, dominant women avoid responsibility to submit by pushing their “rights” and their gifts; weak women avoid responsibility to be different by simply conforming to their husband’s expectations.
The rich live in selfish, indulgent luxury and salve their consciences with charitable gifts.  The poor envy the rich and look for quick fixes to poverty, by winning in the lottery or escaping into drugs.
 10.	Eph 5:22-33 destroys feminism and chauvinism.  All of us are tempted to read our own subjective desires into Eph 5:22-33.  But the word of God will burst the sinful bonds that we impose on it.  The words challenge us rather than leave us content with what we are.

 11.	Note in particular that there is much mutuality but also an irreversible headship given to the husband, including responsibility for providing and caring (vv 28-29).  People who try to destroy the irreversibility simply prevent robust application of the love of Christ to marriage, and so perpetuate sin, rebellion, and oppression.
 12.	The church is the family of God (1 Tim 3:15).  By analogy with the ordinary family, the church ought to have male leadership in the form of elders.
 13.	The Holy Spirit, by making us part of one family of God, teaches us to treat one another with Christian love.  Such love takes into account the uniqueness and value of each person, and does not reduce anyone to membership in a race, class, or gender.  On the other hand, love also pays attention to a person in all his aspects, including age, gender, culture, social background, giftedness, etc.  It does not pretend to strike out the richness a person has as part of a larger context of relations.