Whether we like it or not and whether we realize it or not, we are the children of the philosophers who have gone before us. Our thinking is never done in a vacuum, but if you believe otherwise, read on. For Bacon, standing at the dawn of the scientific revolution, the main enemy had been Aristotelian philosophy. Thus he taught that science must start by clearing the decks - by liberating the mind from all metaphysical speculation, all received notions of truth, all the accumulated superstition of the ages... Applied to biblical interpretation, the Baconian method stipulated that the first step is to free our minds from all historical theological formulations (Calvinist, Lutheran, Anglican or whatever). With minds washed clean from merely human speculations, we confront the biblical text as a collection of facts that speak for themselves - and then compile individual verses inductively into a theological system... Perhaps most serious, however, was the Baconian hostility to h...