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Re: Criteria
"Filel" asks that textual decisions be made according to historical
and scientific criteria and not from theology. I have wrestled
with this kind of aspiration, for I am at a loss to know what kind
of methodology exists which is free from philosophical, epistomo-
logical and cultural presuppositions which are, as I understand
things, expressions of fundamental beliefs about the nature of
things. I have lived where seers, reading the intestines of slain
animals, make astonishing predictions, find lost possessions, fore-
tell the arrival of foreign travels, expose the secrets and dreams
of strangers. Experience, not western linear categorizations,
tells me that there is a spirit world; although I have no clue to
whether it is in the material, one with the material or merely
passing through. (I cite the extreme to make a point.) Perhaps
all I want to say is that a purely reationalistic methodology may
be neither possible nor completely adequate.
Dr. GALEN CURRAH currah@iclnet93.iclnet.org
Western Seminary Division of Intercultural Studies
5511 S.E. Hawthorne, Portland OR 97215 USA Tel. 503-233-8561
Fax 503-234-1639 or 503-239-4216 Amateur radio N7SBB