Interpretation

The Heart of Hermeneutics – Part 4

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A Relational Responsive Heart Check

The process of Bible study must begin “back then.”  We need to look carefully at the text to see what was actually written.  And we need to learn diligently what the author intended to communicate.  Then we need to appreciate the intended impact of the text “for today.”  That means a careful consideration of the love response that the text should stir in us, as well as the appropriate transformation in how we live our lives.

 

After studying a passage and seeking to interpret it as well as possible, consider the following facets of a relational responsive heart check:

1. God himself.  Since every biblical text is ultimately a revelation of a personal God, ask yourself what this text has revealed about God?  Is it revealing his nature, his character, his heart, his values?  Is it revealing his Son in some way that you can ponder?  The answer is yes.  Every biblical text is a revelation of a personal God, so there will always be value in considering what that revelation should stir in your heart as you read it.

2. The Biblical characters. The Bible is much more incarnated theological truth than it is written code.  That is to say, there are real people on the page.  Theological teaching is usually wrapped up in real people, living in real situations.  There is more narrative than any other type of text, which means lots of characters living out their response to God’s word.  But every text has a narrative nature to it.  Poetry offers a glimpse into a narratival setting, even if you don’t know the details.  Direct communication like speeches and letters were not written in a vacuum.  There was a situation and we are given the glimpse offered by an epistle penned purposefully for the recipients at one moment in their story.  The Bible is ultimately a revelation of God.  And that revelation is wrapped up in the people on the page.  Be mentored by them.  Learn from them.  Allow your heart to engage with them as you watch how they responded to God.

3. The original recipients.  The original author of each book wrote with relational intent.  He wanted to do more than just transfer information.  Each book was written to stir the hearts of the original recipients.  Why not consider them?  What did Moses want Israel to feel as they read his great foundational collection?  What did Paul want to stir in the believers in Galatia, or in his representative Timothy serving in Ephesus?  The text is ultimately about God, it presents itself with characters on the page, and it was written to real people in real situations.  Ponder the intended impact on their hearts as you consider the impact on yours

4. Me.  The original author of each book could not have known about me, but the divine Author has preserved the Scriptures, superintended the collection of the Scriptures, sovereignly overseen the translation of the Scriptures, and graciously provided the opportunity for me to own the Scriptures.  He has given me if I am his child, a new heart that relishes the goodness of God in Christ.  And so, I should look at the Scriptures to see my God, as well as be mentored by the people on the page, considering the impact for the original recipients, and overtly considering how the text should stir my heart as I read it.

5. Others.  As I study the biblical text and consider how it should be stirring my heart, the result will not just be a Godward response.  Yes, there should be wonder, awe, worship, praise, gratitude, devotion, and so on.  But also, a God-stirred heart will be a heart that reflects God’s other-centred heart.  How can what I am seeing in the text, which is stirring my heart in response to God’s revelation, be carried to others evangelistically or pastorally?  At this stage, there might well be a stirring of prayer for others, even if the action of sharing remains in the future from the time I am studying the text.  A truly relational response to the Bible will not just be Godward, but it will also spill over to others because we are relational beings.

Perhaps this five-point checklist can be helpful as we seek to more overtly recognize the role of the heart in the Bible study process.  Look, learn, love, live.

The Heart of Hermeneutics – Part 1

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Something is Missing in our Hermeneutics

Something is missing.  Too much training in Bible handling is missing something critical.  Either we get the technical interpretation elements well: such as recognizing the distance between the world of the text and the world of the contemporary reader, and seeing the gaps that need to be crossed (linguistic, cultural, geographical, religious, etc.).  Or, we dump the technical process and lose both textual accuracy and authority as we treat the Bible like an ancient source of contemporary devotional material.

To put that another way, while some are stronger on the “back then” nature of the text, others are too quick to rush to a “for today” impact.  Good Bible handling requires both a “back then” and a “for today” mindset.

We Must Cross the Divide

The traditional inductive approach to the biblical text requires that we cross the divide.  We begin with Look!  This is the observation stage of seeing what is actually in the text.  What was written?  What does the text say?  Then we progress to Learn!  This is the interpretation stage of making sense of the author’s intended meaning.  What did the text mean?  To look at the text and learn what it means requires that we cross a big gap and go “back then” in our minds.

But then we must also cross that divide to “today” and progress to Live!  This is the application stage of seeing the life impact of the text.  What difference does the text make to my life today?

So, we go back then to ask what does the text say?  And also, what did the text mean?  Then, having understood the meaning of the text, we then need to return to today and seek a biblically appropriate answer to what difference should it make? 

Look — Learn — Live

Each stage is critically important. 

We Tend to Favour One Part of the Process

Some so enjoy the academic pursuit that they dwell in the learn stage and seldom let the text change their lives.  Others are so applicational in their approach that they seldom find out what a text really means before they start landing it in daily life.  (Perhaps fewer get stuck in the observation stage.  It seems like people are drawn to interpretation or application.) However, even when people are well equipped to progress through each stage with a well-grounded “back then” followed by an appropriate and diligent “for today” progression, it still seems like something is missing in our hermeneutics.

Bible Study Mistakes

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I have recently posted a series of videos on common Bible study mistakes. We have probably all made some, or all, of these mistakes. Please take a look and see if these are helpful to you, or to anyone else you know.

Mistake 1: Proof-Texting – It is just so convenient to find a line of text that says what we want to say. But the danger is that we will not see the richness of the text as it was intended to be understood. It seems obvious once you say it, but it is good to remember that what God made it say is always better than what we can make it say! Click here for this video.

Mistake 2: Collapsing Correlations – When you are reading and you see something that reminds you of something else . . . perhaps a saying of Jesus, or a different epistle, and then you collapse both passages in together, then you are collapsing your correlations together. Easily done, but what if that other passage doesn’t mean the same thing? Click here for the video.

Mistake 3: Ignoring Background – Sometimes it is just easier to read the passage and ignore whatever background may be relevant to your study. Who has the time to think about distant geography, ancient customs, and foreign politics? Well, if we want to understand the Bible, we need to make sure we don’t ignore the background. Click here for this video.

Mistake 4: Genre Override – Apart from sounding like a cool concept, what is genre override? It is when you take some of the rules of interpreting a genre and let those rules run roughshod over your interpretation of the passage. “Since this passage is apocalyptic literature…” is the start of many misleading sentences! Of course, we need to be sensitive to the genre, but that is always a support to our being sensitive to the passage. Click here to find out more.

Mistake 5: Imposing Meaning – Our goal in Bible study is exegesis, that is, drawing out the meaning of the text as intended by the author. But when we impose meaning, we are doing eisegesis. That is, reading into the text what we want to see there. God’s Word is better than yours, or mine! Click here for more.

Mistake 6: Isolationist Confidence – Bible study is something we may do on our own a lot of the time. But we must be wary of isolationist confidence. When it is just me and the Bible, I can easily become overconfident in my own opinion. I may be on the right track, but very superficial. Or I might be wandering off into new (therefore heretical) theological territory. We need to think about the role of the community in our Bible study! Click here for this video.

Mistake 7: Tone-Deaf Reading – The Bible is not just a data store that we are to mine for theological truths or applicational points. It is interpersonal communication and so we need to make sure we are sensitive to the writer’s tone as we seek to make sense of what is written. Here is the link to this video.

I will probably add a few more, in due course. As ever with these things, if you are able to like, share, comment or subscribe to the YouTube channel, it is all helpful in encouraging the algorithm to share this content. Thanks!

Here is the playlist that contains these videos, plus others that are all related!

Whose Word?

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The Bible is unlike any other book on earth for this reason: it was inspired by God.  Other books may be written by inspiring people or by people inspired by their subject.  But the Bible is “God-breathed” – it comes from God.  God superintended the writing process so that the original authors wrote their thoughts, in their words, in their language, and God made sure that they wrote exactly what he wanted to be written.  That is why we call it God’s Word.  (2Tim.3:16)

So when the prophets wrote their books, they did not dream up their content.  Rather, they were carried along by the Holy Spirit – he was the wind in their sails!  Again, that means that what we have in our Bibles is not just humanly authored but also divinely inspired. (2Peter 1:20-21)

This all means that our goal in reading or studying the Bible is to understand what is there.  What did the Author and the author intend to communicate?  Our job is not to be creative, or fanciful, or original.  We do not get bonus points for making up a meaning nobody has seen before.  No matter how clever you are, what you can make it say is not as good as what God made it say!

Check out the latest video in the Enjoying the Word series:

Weighing Interpretation Options

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Yesterday I made passing reference to the process involved in deciding between options when interpreting some aspect of a passage.  Perhaps you can think of two or three ways to take it, to understand what it means.  Perhaps two commentators differ on the interpretation and offer different sets of evidence for their view.  These kind of decisions face us all the time as we are interpreting the Bible.  So how do we evaluate the accuracy and relative weight of the various evidences used to support possible interpretations of a passage?

I still use an approach I was taught in seminary.  It is not a formula that guarantees results.  It is not something that can be put in a spreadsheet and simply crunch the numbers, but as a guideline it is very helpful.  I will list six categories of evidence.  Evidence that sits in category 1 is generally worth more than evidence in category 3.  On the other hand, multiple evidences in different categories may outweigh single evidence in a “better” category, although not always.  This is a guide, not a hard and fast rule.  Here are the categories from most valuable to least:

1. Syntactical Evidence – support found within the passage’s structure or grammar.  This is the internal contextual support for an understanding of the passage.

2. Contextual Evidence – support found in the context of the passage.  The closer the context, the higher the value (immediate context, section context, book context, same writer context, etc.)

3. Lexical Evidence – support found in specific meaning of words used.  Since meaning of a word is determined by the company it keeps, this category actually overlaps with both syntactical and contextual evidence, but a lexical argument lacking in syntactical or contextual support stands here in third place.

4. Correlational Evidence – support found in more distant biblical support where the same word or concept appears.  A different writer may be using the term in a different way.  (Remember that a distance passage that is directly influencing your passage, such as an Old Testament section that is quoted, is much more significant and may be considered as category 2 evidence.)

5. Theological Evidence – support found in theology, rather than elsewhere in the Bible.  This is like correlation, but with a theological creed or system.

6. Verificational Evidence – support found in “experts” (ie.commentators, etc.)  Simply because a big name agrees is of minimal value.  Much better to integrate their arguments into the five categories above, then using the commentary adds much greater value to your study.

Remember, this is a guideline, but I think it is helpful.  It pushes us to look for understanding within the text itself and within the context.  Many people seem to lean heavily on distant unrelated, but familiar, passages.  They tend to rely on their system of theology and having an expert or two on side in an interpretive decision.  Much better to have the better evidence to support an interpretation too!