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February 8, 2012 By Fr. Spencer

PLUNDERING THE EGYPTIANS

As an aside we will “plunder the Egyptians,” or in this case the Greeks, a bit and learn something from the Procrustean bed of Greek mythology that may help us respect the Bible and the teaching of the Church. Most heresies form in systems that tend to twist Scripture and prune the liturgy to fit their scheme of things. In Greek Mythology there was a man named Procrustes, an innkeeper who had a bed in his home in which his guests slept. Now the problem was that most of the time the guests were either too tall or too short to fit the bed comfortably. But Procrustes had an easy solution to the problem. If the guest was too long he simply chopped off his legs till he fit. If he was too short he would stretch him out till he fit. That is what some people do to the Scriptures. If it doesn’t fit into a systematic Procrustean bed, one just chops it off or stretches it out and makes it fit. We ought not to pick and choose the Scriptures we like and disregard the rest, nor should we ignore the classical liturgies of the Church, East and West, that provide an interpretive grid for understanding the Scriptures. We have to deal with the Bible attentively, openly, intelligently, reasonably, responsibly and lovingly. We have to approach our reading and study of Scriptures such that we are open to being changed by the Word of God. But remember that the meaning of Scripture is not a matter of private opinion, of the consensus of a Bible study group, nor is it a matter of what the latest academic fad in “biblical studies” happens to be. One of the great values of the Rites and Liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer is that they are hermeneutical grids, interpretations of the Scriptures, based on the collective wisdom of the Holy Catholic Church.

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GIVE sentence for me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people; / O deliver me from the deceitful and wicked man. + The Psalm used for Introit […]

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