Birch on Calvinist Hermeneutics

The suggestion was made to me over at Triablogue that I somehow have to submit my moral intuitions to Scripture, and that the way to really be in submission to biblical authority is to come with no presuppositions whatsoever.

But does anyone really do that? Does anyone come to Scripture without some kind of hermeneutical center? Somehow, there is something terribly wrong with coming to the Bible with an initial set of perspectives as to what we should expect to find in Scripture. I admit that I come to Scripture with a hermeneutical center grounded in the love of God. As such, interpretations that conflict with that hermeneutical center, for me, carry a higher burden of proof than those that don't.

Now, of course, the paradigm can shift. I happen to have trouble imagining making that paradigm shift myself, but what I can imagine and what is possible are two different things.

But do Calvinists have a hermeneutical center? Are they more truly submissive to Scripture? Despite their moralizing about this, I doubt it. And apparently Calvinist Silva, quoted here by Birch, says that sovereignty is the underlying principle behind all Calvinist biblical interpretation.

I wish people who debate theology would study the philosophy of science. I think biblical positivism is as much a pretense in theology as logical positivism was in the philosophy of science.

Scripture doesn't speak to us in a vacuum, nor should it.