Love God, neighbor and enemy.
    Treat others the way you want to be treated.
People matter.  Stuff doesn't.        - Jesus

Resurrection   Anglican Church

SUNDAY SERVICE 10 AM. Join us!  (Announcements for Sunday service? Here.)

LATEST NEWS about Resurrection and Anglican Communion.  What is Anglicanism? by Abp Henry Luke Orombi.
Donate to Resurrection here.

Humor - Theo, but not necessarily Logical

HOW WOULD THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND DEAL WITH THE PHRASE "THE CAT SAT ON THE MAT" IF IT APPEARED IN THE BIBLE?

The liberal theologians would point out that such a passage did not of course mean that the cat literally sat on the mat. Also, 'cat' and 'mat' had different meanings in those days from today, and anyway, the text should be interpreted according to the customs and practices of the period.

This would lead to an immediate backlash from the Evangelicals. They would make it an essential condition of faith that a real, physical, living cat, being a domestic cat of the felix domesticus speciese, and having a whiskered head and furry body, four legs and a tail, did physically place its whole body on a floor covering, designed for that purpose, and which is on the floor but not of the floor. The expression "on the floor but not of the floor" would be explained in a leaflet.

Meanwhile, the Catholics would have developed the Feast of the Sedentation of the Blessed Cat. This would teach that the cat was white and majestically reclined on a mat of gold thread before its assumption to the Great Cat basket of Heaven. This is commemorated by the singing of the Magnificent Cat, lighting three candles, and ringing a bell five times.

This would cause a schism with the Orthodox Church which believes that tradition requires Holy Cats Day (as it is colloquially known) to be marked by the lighting of six candles and ringing the bell four times. This would partly be resolved by the Cuckoo Land Declaration recognizing the validity of each.

Eventually the Anglican House of Bishops would issue a statement on the Doctrine of Feline Sedentation. It would explain that, traditionally, the text describes a domestic feline quadruped superadjacent to an unattached covering of a fundamental surface. For determining salvific and eschatalogical (escatalogical?) significations, they follow the heuristic analytical principles adopted in dealing with the Canine Fenestration Question ("How much is that doggie in the window?") and the Affirmative Musaceous Paradox ("Yes, we have no bananas") And so on, for another 210 pages.

The General Synod of the Church of England would then commend this report, without officially endorsing it, as a helpful resource material for clergy as they explain to the man in the pew the difficult doctrine of the cat sitting on a mat.

-Author unknown

HERMENEUTICS IN EVERYDAY LIFE

herme'neutics. [f. hermeneutic a.: see -ics. Also in form hermeneutic. Cf. Gr. �qlgmetsij– (sc. sŒvmg), L. hermeŽneutica, F. l’herméneutique.] The art or science of interpretation, esp. of Scripture. Commonly distinguished from exegesis or practical exposition.  - Oxford English Dictionary

Suppose you're traveling to work and you see a stop sign. What do you do? That depends on how you hermeneutically understand the stop sign.

1. A postmodernist deconstructs the sign (knocks it over with his car), ending forever the tyranny of the north-south traffic over the east-west traffic.

2. Similarly, a Marxist refuses to stop because he sees the stop sign as an instrument of class conflict. He concludes that the bourgeois use the north-south road and obstruct the progress of the workers in the east-west road.

3. A serious and educated Catholic rolls through the intersection because he believes he cannot understand the stop sign apart from its interpretive community and tradition. Observing that the interpretive community doesn't take it too seriously, he doesn't feel obligated to take it too seriously either.

4. An average Catholic (or Orthodox or Coptic or Anglican or Methodist or Presbyterian or whatever) doesn't bother to read the sign but he'll stop if the car in front of him does.

5. A fundamentalist, taking the text very literally, stops at the stop sign and waits for it to tell him to go.

6. A seminary-educated evangelical preacher might look up "STOP" in his lexicons of English and discover that it can mean: 1) something which prevents motion, such as a plug for a drain, or a block of wood that prevents a door from closing; 2) a location where a train or bus lets off passengers. The main point of his sermon the following Sunday on this text is: when you see a stop sign, it is a place where traffic is naturally clogged, so it is a good place to let off passengers from your car.

7. An orthodox Jew does one of two things: a) Take another route to work that doesn't have a stop sign so that he doesn't run the risk of disobeying the Law; b) Stop at the sign, say "Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, king of the universe, who hast given us thy commandment to stop," wait 3 seconds according to his watch, and then proceed. Incidently, the Talmud has the following comments on this passage: R[abbi] Meir says: He who does not stop shall not live long. R. Hillel says: Cursed is he who does not count to three before proceeding. R. Simon ben Yudah says: Why three? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, gave us the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. R. ben Issac says: Because of the three patriarchs. R. Yehuda says: Why bless the Lord at a stop sign? Because it says, "Be still and know that I am God"....

8. A scholar from the Jesus Seminar concludes that the passage "STOP" undoubtably was never uttered by Jesus himself because being the progressive Jew that He was, He would never have wanted to stifle peoples' progress. Therefore, STOP must be a textual insertion belonging entirely to stage III of the gospel tradition, when the church was first confronted by traffic in its parking lot.

9. A NT scholar notices that there is no stop sign on Mark street but there is one on Matthew and Luke streets, and concludes that the ones on Luke and Matthew streets are both copied from a sign on a street no one has ever seen called "Q" Street. There is an excellent 300 page doctoral dissertation on the origin of these stop signs and the differences between stop signs on Matthew and Luke street in the scholar's commentary on the passage. There is an unfortunate omission in the dissertation, however; it doesn't explain the meaning of the text!

10. An OT scholar points out that there are a number of stylistic differences between the first and second half of the passage "STOP." For example, "ST" contains no enclosed areas and 5 line endings, whereas "OP" contains two enclosed areas and only one line termination. He concludes that the author for the second part is different from the author of the first part and probably lived hundreds of years later. Later scholars determine that the second half is itself actually written by two separate authors beause of similar stylistic differences between the "O" and the "P".

11. Another prominent OT scholar notes in his commentary that the stop sign would fit better into the context three streets back. (Unfortunately, he neglected to explain why in his commentary.) Clearly it was moved to its present location by a later redactor. He thus exegetes the intersection as though the sign were not there.

12. Because of the difficulties in interpretation, another OT scholar amends the text, changing the "T" to "H". "SHOP" is much easier to understand in context than "STOP" because of the multiplicity of stores in the area. The textual corruption probably occurred because "SHOP" is so similar to "STOP" on the sign several streets back, that it is a natural mistake for a scribe to make. Thus the sign should be interpreted to announce the existence of a shopping area. If this is true, it could indicate that both meanings are valid, thus making the thrust of the message "STOP (AND) SHOP."

Always Accessible

This Web site is (and always has been) owned, paid for and operated as a courtesy to the people of Resurrection, by the webmaster, and may be withdrawn or redirected at any time at his sole discretion.