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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
Definition.—I define Epistemological Primitivism as the view that a given text exists in a state of nature or a condition of primordial meaning. It is the literary equivalent to the version of empiricism which stresses the passivity of the mind and the purity of the data in the knowing process. The impossibility of holding consistently to epistemological primitivism is seen when (1) the interpreter recognises that a text gains cognitive meaning only if it is interwoven with other texts and (2) the interpreter actively brings to the text a selective factor by designating which texts will interlace more predominantly and directly with one another.
Example.—The famous or infamous passage of Romans 9.11–24 serves as a vivid example of a network of interwoven texts whose overall impact forces the conclusion that Paul is advancing a doctrine of strict predestination. In this passage, each verse seems to prepare the way for the following verse in elaborating the theme of predestination of human choice itself. In his book The Debate About the Bible evangelical Christian Stephen Davis, recognizing the force of the Romans 9 passage, writes, ‘I do not claim to know how to reconcile Paul's teachings on election with the Bible's apparent commitment to the notion that people are free and morally responsible agents.’ Davis' point is that within the Bible are texts other than Romans 9 which seem to force the conclusion that some human choices are neither caused by God nor predestined.
page 501 note 1 Davis, Stephen T., The Debate About the Bible: Inerrancy Versus Infallibility (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977), pp. 15, 116.Google Scholar
page 502 note 1 See Howard, V. E., Foreordination and Predestination (West Monroe, LA: Central Printers and Publishers, 1970), pp. 6–14.Google Scholar
page 504 note 1 Ramm, Bernard, Special Revelation and the Word of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1961), pp. 17, 102f, 166.Google Scholar
page 504 note 2 See Popper, Karl, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (New York: Harper Torchbook, Harper and Row, 1965).Google Scholar
page 504 note 3 See Ernest, ‘Concepts and Society’, in Wilson, Bryan (ed.), Rationality: Key Concepts in the Social Sciences (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), pp. 27–33.Google Scholar
page 512 note 1 In ‘Grace and Recompense: Reflections on a Pauline Paradox’, Russell Pregeant, tracing out ‘the logic of grace’ and ‘the logic of recompense’, speaks of ‘Paul's own struggle toward conceptual unity’. He thinks that ‘we must recognize a drive toward the resolution of the tension in a coherent conceptuality’. Moving beyond the inerrancy paradigm, Pregeant believes that the Whiteheadian perspective provides a fruitful and creative context for interpreting the rich diversity of themes within the Pauline letters (Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 47: 1 [March 1979], 73–96Google Scholar).