When I was in seminary, one of my best friends came up with a brilliant theological \u2026 pick up line:\u00a0<\/span>\u201c<\/i>Hey, baby. What\u2019s your hermeneutic?\u201d<\/span> When I was in seminary, one of my best friends came up with a brilliant theological \u2026 pick up line:\u00a0\u201cHey, baby. What\u2019s your hermeneutic?\u201dDespite the genius of that question, we soon discovered that anytime you start a pick up line with \u201cHey, baby\u201d you\u2019re in some trouble.But it\u2019s such a great question. Think of all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
<\/span>Despite the genius of that question, we soon discovered that anytime you start a pick up line with \u201cHey, baby\u201d you\u2019re in some trouble.<\/span>
But it\u2019s such a great question. Think of all the relationships that would have avoided painful break ups if they just defined the relationship in the beginning by answering the question \u201cWhat\u2019s your hermeneutic? What\u2019s your primary interpretive method for understanding how the world works? What\u2019s your interpretation of God?\u201d<\/span>
<\/span>Since seminary, I\u2019ve learned some important things about hermeneutics from a man named Ren\u00e9 Girard. Girard is an anthropologist who put forth a theory about human nature that has profound implications for how we do theology. Girard\u2019s anthropology is called \u201cthe mimetic theory.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span>Mimetic theory is important to Christianity in the 21st\u00a0<\/sup>century because it helps us understand that violence belongs to humans, not to God. Girard\u2019s point is that from the very beginning of culture, we have had a hermeneutic of sacrificial violence. But Girard helps us see that this hermeneutic is false and that the God revealed through the Judeo-Christian tradition and specifically through Jesus Christ is in the process of transforming our hermeneutic from sacrificial violence to a hermeneutic of nonviolent forgiveness, mercy, and love.<\/span>
<\/span>Mimetic theory has three basic principles:\u00a0<\/span>
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