A Word: Crypto-systematics
For at least two reasons, I have decided that it is high time that I actually finish John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus -- the first being that if I am to be well-versed in theology and ethics of the last few decades (even as a lay or non-theologian), then Yoder’s is a seminal work; and the second being that I want to know whether I am truly a Christian pacifist or not.
All of the political and theological implications of that paragraph aside, Yoder coins a humdinger of a word in his very first chapter. Here is the extended context with the word in bold:
By what right does one dare seek to throw a cable across the chasm which usually separates the disciplines of New Testament exegesis and contemporary social ethics? Normally any link between these realms of discourse would have to be extremely long and indirect. First there is an enormous distance between past and present to be covered by way of hermeneutics from exegesis to contemporary theology; then still another long leg must be covered from theology to ethics via secular sociology and Ernst Troeltsch. From the perspective of the historical theologian, normally perched on an island between these two spans and thus an amateur on both banks, I can justify leaping into the problem in such an amateur way on only two grounds. For one thing, it seems that the experts who set out to go the long way around never get there. The Scripture scholars in their hermeneutic meditations develop vast systems of crypto-systematics, and the field of ethics remains as it was; or, if anything happens there, it is usually fed from some other sources. (pp. 13-14)
Yoder’s usage of the word crypto-systematics appears to be pejorative, a critique of the insularity of the field of biblical studies. This observation of pejorative usage appears to be justified by the second half of the sentence, in which Yoder also obliquely criticizes the field of ethics (which “remains as it was” or, at the very best, “is usually fed from some other sources”). The definition of crypto-systematics, then, is the field of biblical studies in its manifestation as a cloistered academic domain that largely fails either to receive from or contribute to other fields. Whether any of that is actually true, whether in general or more specifically in biblical studies of the 1960s and 1970s when Yoder was writing, I have no idea. (But I tend to disregard critiques of academic [over-]specialization.) But the word would be a fun one to work into my lexicon at some point.
All of the political and theological implications of that paragraph aside, Yoder coins a humdinger of a word in his very first chapter. Here is the extended context with the word in bold:
By what right does one dare seek to throw a cable across the chasm which usually separates the disciplines of New Testament exegesis and contemporary social ethics? Normally any link between these realms of discourse would have to be extremely long and indirect. First there is an enormous distance between past and present to be covered by way of hermeneutics from exegesis to contemporary theology; then still another long leg must be covered from theology to ethics via secular sociology and Ernst Troeltsch. From the perspective of the historical theologian, normally perched on an island between these two spans and thus an amateur on both banks, I can justify leaping into the problem in such an amateur way on only two grounds. For one thing, it seems that the experts who set out to go the long way around never get there. The Scripture scholars in their hermeneutic meditations develop vast systems of crypto-systematics, and the field of ethics remains as it was; or, if anything happens there, it is usually fed from some other sources. (pp. 13-14)
Yoder’s usage of the word crypto-systematics appears to be pejorative, a critique of the insularity of the field of biblical studies. This observation of pejorative usage appears to be justified by the second half of the sentence, in which Yoder also obliquely criticizes the field of ethics (which “remains as it was” or, at the very best, “is usually fed from some other sources”). The definition of crypto-systematics, then, is the field of biblical studies in its manifestation as a cloistered academic domain that largely fails either to receive from or contribute to other fields. Whether any of that is actually true, whether in general or more specifically in biblical studies of the 1960s and 1970s when Yoder was writing, I have no idea. (But I tend to disregard critiques of academic [over-]specialization.) But the word would be a fun one to work into my lexicon at some point.
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