Yeah, they could certainly be lumped. “Imaging God” and “Trintarian Metaphor” could go together too, and so on. But I think the higher level of resolution is helpful at this stage of the game. As we get a little further in, we’re going to need to boil it down to a few ‘big box’ talking points. I like “Respect the Author” for one of them — that’s good stuff.

And for the splitters: After reading Wolterstorff’s Divine Discourse, I might rephrase principle # 3 as “Double Agency Discourse”: God—if he is anything—is a speaking God by nature, which means he is a relational God by nature—not surprising, if we also accept “Trinitarian metaphor.” And since human imaging of God should reflect His nature, it is entirely like such a God in His relationship with humanity to “image” Himself in speaking through human discourse by inspiration of the third Person of that Trinity. This includes both recorded Scripture and prophetic speech throughout human history. And that gets us to mentoring, discipleship, counseling, and other variants of “OJT” prophetic speech—all of them ultimately spiritual formation, “for we speak wisdom among the mature” (1 Cor 2:6).

It is an alien hermeneutic; it’s not a slight amendment to the existing system we were taught. The system we were taught — the good parts, anyhow — fits inside this one, not the other way round. The critique of the system we were taught is analogous to C. S. Lewis’ critique of materialism in “Is Theology Poetry?” — it collapses under its own weight. If you take the text seriously, the text itself drives you into a different hermeneutic.
And we need a better designator than “the system we were taught.” “Traditional” doesn’t work, because it’s not in the slightest. “Old” is too complimentary, and untrue anyhow. It’s based in modernist epistemology, with a willful blindness to the consequences. “Old Dallas hermeneutics” is accurate as far as it goes, but too restrictive — it wasn’t limited to the DTS tradition; the DTS tradition was just representative of a larger trend. “Fundamentalist hermeneutics” maybe? What do you think?

There is systematizing, of a sort, but it works typologically rather than topically. Ecclesiology starts with Adam being an inadequate image of the Triune God, and therefore augmented and glorified with a Helper. An Adam needs an Eve. The Seed line keeps terminating in a woman unable for one reason or another to conceive (Sarai because of age, Rebekah because of barrenness, Tamar because she’s denied a husband, Mary because she’s a virgin, etc.). Then comes a Promised Son, an Adam, who needs to find his Eve: Isaac, Jacob, Perez, etc. Eventually you come to Jesus, the Last Adam, who is the Seed, but dies without taking a wife. But He rises and ascends to the right hand of the Father, and it is still not good for Man to be alone. He is preparing His Bride even now…. So what should the church be? Perfected Eve, the Proverbs 31 woman, etc., and there’s a wealth of wisdom embodied by real women in the Story to teach us.

Regarding the senses, that’s a fair question. I’m finding that living the answer isn’t hard to get to for me, other than just having the courage to embrace things that are “off the map” for my community. It’s not as if Christianity is short on ideas for embodied spiritual disciplines. But finding a way to express embodied, passionate engagement with God’s World in a blog post is tougher for me, at least at this point. I’m not sure I’ve got an answer that will fit into print. Not to say that it can’t be talked about, but…you don’t learn to fear the Lord by *reading* Deut. 14:23 in the way that you do by *doing* it (or something analogous). Conveying the latter in print is a challenge for me.

There seems to be much less systematizing, and more dancing around the story of the text. I think some very good practices could develop from such an approach.

One question though…in an earlier post, you mentioned using all five senses. Where and how does that fit in to the principles above?