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Friday, September 15, 2017

Biblical Interpretation

I've been thinking about the different ways people interpret Scripture. No, I'm not going to give you a course in hermeneutics. I'm just going to outline the various approaches.

There is the basic approach. "The Bible says X and means X." This is a simple and mostly effective approach. It works most of the time. It makes good sense. If Jesus said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God," (John 3:3), it seems like a pretty sure bet that one who is not born again cannot see the kingdom of God.

Similar to the basic approach but a little more nuanced, you might find "The Bible says X and means X'." These two approaches are not mutually exclusive. This second one simply takes into account other factors -- content, context, original language, other Scripture elsewhere, that sort of thing. So, yes, the text means what it says, but in a fuller, more encompassing sense. For instance, Paul wrote, "Abstain from all appearance of evil." (1 Thess 5:22) Now if you think about that, it is practically impossible. That is, just about everything appears to someone as "evil". The Pharisees thought the disciples were doing "evil" by spreading the Gospel. It "appeared evil" to them. So there must be some nuance here. And there is. The original language doesn't intend "appearance" but "form", and newer translations write it as, "Abstain from every form of evil." Okay, so what was in question here was what exactly "X" was in the text, and now that we're clearer on the actual word used, we're clearer on the interpretation -- X'.

There is the woodenly literal approach. "The Bible says X and means two diagonal crossed lines." This idea sometimes works, but often misses the point. Sure, Jesus said, "I am the door" (John 10:9), but if you limit that to "He has a doorknob and hinges because He said 'I am the door' and I take my Bible literally", I think you're missing what Jesus was attempting to say. This view fails to take into account figures of speech, modes of communication and the like.

There is the left-leaning approach. "The Bible says X and means Y." "Yes, sure, the Bible says, 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth', but, look, everyone knows that this just isn't so. Evolution created the heavens and the earth. Chance and the Big Bang created the heavens and the earth. No, no, it says that 'God created the heavens and the earth', but that's just an allegory, a legend, a myth." They will tell us that the whole story comes from ancient Mesopotamian mythology and is as real as the "world on the back of the turtle" kind of claims of other religions. This is just a stylized account of God (in general) figuratively bringing order out of chaos ... you know ... by means of natural Evolution. Now, try as you might, claim what you want, this is clearly a case of "The Bible says that God created the heavens and the earth, but He did not." That is "X" and "Y", where X does not equal Y in any real sense.

Just before His arrest and execution, Jesus promised His disciples that He would send the Holy Spirit who would "guide you into all truth." (John 16:13) In the very next chapter, just before heading to the Garden, He prayed for His disciples.
Sanctify them in the truth; Your Word is truth. (John 17:17)
If God's Word is truth, then it is important. If the Holy Spirit will lead God's people into all truth, then it is understandable. So Paul told Timothy, "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth." (2 Tim 2:15) We have the same commission. God's Word is truth. We need to rightly handle it with the confidence that the Spirit has been and will continue to guide His people into the truth. Some approaches to biblical interpretation, then, are valid and helpful. Some are not. And claiming that "God's Word says X so it means X" (or even "X'") does not constitute a "hunch"1, a mere opinion, a "speaking for God." It is simply taking God at His Word. We should not be ashamed of doing just that. Martin Luther said, "Let the man who would hear God speak, read holy Scripture." I agree.
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1 There is a serious misunderstanding about "hunches", about opinion on biblical interpretation. While it is true that lots of people can have their own ideas on this stuff, whether you call it a "hunch" or an opinion or even an educated guess, it is not true that all of these are valid. Using the Genesis 1 example, one person says, "It means what it says" and another says, "It's myth, a reflection of a completely different reality." Both are interpretations; both are opinions. This is true. But both are not true. They cannot both be true. While it is possible for lots of people to have lots of opinions about what the Bible means, this does not mean that all of them are true. The Bible is not a book that bends to the will of the post-modern thinking that says that truth is whatever we think it is and words mean whatever we want them to. The question, then, is not "Is that your hunch?", but "Is that true?"

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