Tag Archives: hermeneutics

P.T. Forsyth, Three Ways of Reading the Bible

23 Wednesday Sep 2020

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The man who is exploiting God for the purposes of his own soul or for the race, has in the long run a different religion from the man who is putting his own soul and race absolutely at the disposal of the will of God in Jesus Christ.

P.T. Forsyth in his book, The Work of Christ, has this interesting discussion on reading the Bible.

Supposing, then, we return to the Bible. Supposing that the Church did–as I think it must do if it is not going to collapse; certainly the Free Churches must– supposing we return to the Bible, there are three ways of reading the Bible. The first way asks, What did the Bible say? The second way asks, What can I make the Bible say? The third way asks, What does God say in the Bible?


As to the first question, Forsyth defines this in terms of what we expect from a commentary or a seminary lecture: “The first way is, with the aid of these magnificent scholars, to discover the true historic sense of the Bible.” What the Bible says is a matter of grammatical and historical analysis.
But such information is purely information. Discerning what the text “means” could be interesting in the sense of deciphering an ancient Hittite text; it could be useful for some purpose, such as understanding. But knowing the “meaning” cannot be the end of Bible reading.

Forsyth is interesting in the way which the text has an affect beyond the bare conveyance of information. When he asks “What can I make the Bible say?” he is not attacking the objective meaning of words. Rather, he is concerned with the subjective effect of the words.
To rephrase the question, he is concerned more with “What can I make the Bible do to me?” Or perhaps what does the Bible say to me.
This takes a bit of thinking. One could argue that the words themselves have no definite meaning, as does Humpty Dumpty in Alice Through the Looking Glass:

‘And only one for birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!’
‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory,”’ Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”’
‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument,”’ Alice objected.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master—that’s all.’


That often does happen in Bible reading; far more often than we may imagine. When we come to a work like “grace” or “love” it is very common to pour our expectations and meanings into these concepts make the words mean whatever we want the words to mean. The Bible deals with such tendencies by providing a number of contexts in which the word is used so that we come to understand what the word means. God’s “love” plainly does not mean that God protects us from all trials. The word “faith” or “belief” (which is the same word in Greek) is used in a number of contexts through the Gospel of John so we begin to understand the precise nuance of the word in John’s Gospel.


So, making the text mean something “against its will” is not all that uncommon, even among those who would never think doing such a thing. Rather, it is an easier fault to commit than imagine.


Forsyth’s concern is with the subjective application of text: what does this objective text have to do with me? Let’s take a non-biblical example Someone says, “Shut the door.” Is that a command for me to shut that particular door? Is it the punchline of a joke and I’m supposed to laugh? The words are clear, but what the word does to me depend upon subjective elements within me.


Forsyth cautions against any sort of reading which reduces the objectivity of the text:


Now the grand value of the Bible is just the other thing–its objectivity. The first thing is not how I feel, but it is, How does God feel, and what has God said or done for my soul? When we get to real close quarters with that our feeling and response will look after itself. Do not tell people how they ought to feel towards Christ. That is useless. It is just what they ought that they cannot do. Preach a Christ that will make them feel as they ought. That is objective preaching. The tendency and fashion of the present moment is all in the direction of subjectivity.


That objective text then has a subjective effect:
We allow the Spirit of God to suggest to us whatever lessons or ideas He thinks fit out of the words that are under our eyes. We read the Bible not for correct or historic knowledge, but for religious and spiritual purposes, for our own private and personal needs. That is, of course, a perfectly legitimate thing– indeed, it is quite necessary.

He cautions that there are dangers here: we must not unhinge the objective text and the subjective effect. The text is a real objective fact; but that objective fact has an actual affect upon the reader.
One has the experience of only understanding certain Psalms until one has experienced that trial, that suffering, that ache, or slander. The words did not change in their objective meaning, but since I have changed, the words have changed.

And finally Forsyth says we should concern ourselves what God is up to in the text:
The third way of reading the Bible is reading it to discover the purpose and thought of God, whether it immediately edify us or whether it do not. If we did actually become aware of the will and thought of God it would edify us as nothing else could.


He then makes this brilliant observation:
I read a fine sentence the other day which puts in a condensed form what I have often preached about as the symptom of the present age: “Instead of placing themselves at the service of God most people want a God who is at their service.” These two tendencies represent in the end two different religions. The man who is exploiting God for the purposes of his own soul or for the race, has in the long run a different religion from the man who is putting his own soul and race absolutely at the disposal of the will of God in Jesus Christ.

William Blake, To Tirzah

31 Friday Jul 2020

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This poem is a good example of how difficult it can be know what the poet intends, particularly when the poet is as deliberately ironic as William Blake. 

This poem also raises the issue of what it means to read something “in context.” Shakespeare and the Bible are famously misused by people who take a particular line wildly out of context. There is a television commercial which advertises a luxury automobile and plays a song which – in its original context — attacks pretension and put-on with material goods. But by using only a portion of the song lyric, the song meant to attack pretension is used to sell pretension.

This short poem is standing by itself one context. In that context, this poem seems to convey a sort of Gnostic Jesus, the body is bad, the soul is good, the hope of life is to be released from the body. “Tirazh” is used as a name for the Northern Kingdom of Israel, following the division of the kingdom into two after the death of Solomon. It is contrast to “Jerusalem,” which would be the heavenly and best.

Tirazh is called a mother of our earthly body which reproduces by means of sexual union, which traps us into a world of sense. The goal of this life is to be finally freed from the body – which the poet claims has been made possible by the “death of Jesus”.

But the poem was a late addition to a collection of poems known as Songs of Experience, which is paired with another collection known as Songs of Innocence. The poems also exist in a larger corpus of poems which develop Blakes philosophy, such as The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

To this difficulty of context, we must remember that Blake is often deliberately ironic. We can never take anything he says at “face value.”

While not at all exhaustive, the following simply raises some questions as to how to interpret this poem when it is put into the context of Blake’s remaining (and largely earlier) work and Blake’s ironic posture as a poet.

To Tirzah

Whate’er is born of moral birth

Must be consuméd with the earth

To rise from generation free, 

Then what have I do to with thee?

Whatever is born will die and return to the earth. The last line is an ironic reworking of Jesus’ words recorded in John 2:4, where Mary tells Jesus that the wedding has run out of wine and Jesus responds, “Woman, what have I to do with thee? My hour is not yet come.” So the poet, seeking to be freed from the enslaving earth says, “What have I to do with thee?”

It also seems to state the poet’s aspiration, to be freed from generation, to be freed from this mother.

He then turns to the manner in which life is continued in this world:

The sexes sprung from shame & pride

Blow’d [blossomed] in the morn: in evening died;

But mercy changed death into sleep;

The sexes rose to work & weep.

This poem was added in the latter versions of his poems, Songs of Experience, and seems to have been written around 1805. But the collection also contains poems such as The Garden of Love (1794) which contend that shame and sexual repression are the result of the “Chapel” whose doors were shut and the words “Thou shalt not” were written over the door. 

Here the shame seems to be something inherent in the fact of mortality and the body.  Is Blake now arguing that sexual shame is not the result of societal norms and oppressive morality, but rather something inherent in birth and death of the body? Was it shame and pride which gave rise to this problem prior to the body?

Thou, Mother of my Mortal part,

With cruelty didst mould my heart

And with false self-deceiving tears

Didst bind my nostrils, eyes & ears.

This stanza echoes the poem The Tyger, also from the same collection and also from 1794. The poet meditates upon the dangerous tiger, who is quite dangerous (“the fearful symmetry”). 

This dangerous beast is blamed upon God

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the lamb make thee? 

[The lamb is addressed in a poem from Songs of Innocence.]

In that poem, Blake asks

And what shoulder & what art

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

In Tirzah, Blake blames the heart upon the earth – the physical part. Is God from Tyger the equivalent of mother in Tirzah? Is his heart cruel like the tigers, or is it merely the product of another’s cruelty? Does his heart give rise to the outrages elsewhere discussed in Songs of Experience?

This discussion of the senses in Tirzah also sits uneasily with Blake’s longer work, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

In that poem, Blake praises physical desire as “energy” and writes such “Proverbs of Hell” as 

The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.

This mortal body of energy is now the moulder of cruelty and death. Does he celebrate the energy of the body, or does he see it as destructive?

And finally

[Thou mother]

Didst close my tongue in useless clay

And me to mortal life betray

The death of Jesus set me free

Then what have I to do with thee?

Jesus, in a Gnostic vein, is used as a trope to argue for an utter freedom from the “useless clay” of the body. How exactly Jesus’ death performs this feat is not clearly stated.

The question then becomes, does this poem reflect a change in Blake’s thinking (it would not be accurate to say that his earlier position was purely a sex-drugs-rock-n-roll ethos, but it was certainly not conventional middle class anachronistically called Victorian piety)? Blake constantly writes with great irony. His poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell seeks a new negotiation of the body and soul along his idiosyncratic lines. 

But in this poem, one could read it as a movement beyond his earlier position (which was written during the early days of the French Revolution) to more escapist, Gnostic vision — complete with the common aspect of Gnostic asceticism due to its distrust of the body.

And one final question, should the context of Blake’s personal life be used to answer the question of what Blake means by this poem?

Some Notes What a Narrative “Means” (with Help From Euripides)

15 Saturday Feb 2020

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Hecuba and Polyxena by Merry-Joseph Blondell

We can understand what a work of nonfiction “means”: the words in the text refer to some objective (typically) event in the physical world. A book on President Grant refers back to the life of President Grant.

When it comes to non-fiction, the question of “meaning” because more difficult: A play or poem or story does not express “meaning” in the same manner. Sometimes the “meaning” of a text is merely the entertainment the text provides.

Another type of “meaning” comes from a text which seeks to bring the reader to a new understanding of the world. There are always exceptions, but typically “bad” writing tells the reader plainly what to think. Most writers who attempt this work may try to “show and not tell” the reader what to think will handle it poorly.

But when a towering master performs this work it is a thing of beauty.  The effectiveness of the meaning comes from its ability to speak and persuade. Here is an example of brilliance in Euripides’ play Hecuba.

It would be easy to get lost in the names, so I’ll do my best to be clear.

The first thing you must know, is that the original audience for Euripides play were Greeks. The play itself concern the exploits of the great heroes and the great war of Greek of imagination: In the dim past the Greeks came to war against City of Troy as revenge for taking Helen from a Greek king. (How and why this took place is another story.)

You need to know that this story would be the equivalent of the Revolution and the Civil War and the World Wars all rolled into one. The men in this story are more than just George Washington or Abraham Lincoln; they are heroes, mythic figures, nearly divine.

The story Hecuba begins after the Greeks have sacked Troy. The king of Troy had sent his son to another kingdom with a treasure to keep him safe should Troy fall. Yet when the king of Thrace heard that Troy fell, he murdered his friend’s son to take the gold and treasure. The play beings with the ghost of the son telling what had happened to him, washed up on the shore, unburied (a horror to the Greeks).

Hecuba was the queen of Troy, now reduced to slavery is the moral and emotional center of the story. The audience hears from her what it is to be reduced and enslaved and in fear for her family. The natural sympathy of the story is thus skillfully built-up throw the eyes of the enemy in the greatest war in Greek history.

The tension increases when the ghost of Achilles appears above his tomb and demands the sacrifice of Hebuca’s daughter, the princess of Troy, Polyxena. It would be hard to overstate the greatness of Achilles in Greek imagination: Alexandra the Great thought himself in some way the second Achilles.

Thus, their greatest hero demanded the murder of an enslaved princess.

The message that Polyxena would be killed was brought to Hecuba by Odysseus. Again the space for Odysseus is difficult to explain. He is the hero of the second-half of the Greek “Bible” (if you will), the Odyssey. He is an arch-type of all Western Culture.

The tension is raised here, because Hecuba had spared Odysseus’s life during the time of the war. He is depicted as a groveling, dishonest, manipulative man who said anything just to stay alive. As he puts it, “Word-words full many I  found to escape death.”

It is this groveling, ungrateful wretch who is the hero of the Greeks seeking the murder of a young woman to appease the ghost of an even greater hero.

As we hear this scene, it comes to us through the perspective of Hecuba: the woman who home has been destroyed by an invading army, who family has been destroyed now sees a liar come to drag her daughter off to murder.

At this point, Euripides has made the enemies of Greek imagination sympathetic, and the heroes of Greek thought wretched and vicious.

The punch-line of this scene comes when Odysseus calls Hecuba a “Barbarian” (the height of Greek insults), because she is unwilling to pay homage to the dead.

Upon this insult, the Chorus, who are the moral conscience of the play respond, “Woe What a curse is thralldom’s nature.” Hecuba and Polyxena are “enduring wrong” and are “overborne” by the “strong constraint” of their captors.

Euripides didn’t say in blunt terms, destroying kingdoms, stealing women and sacrificing captives to barbaric.

Rather, by giving voice to the pain and fear of the “enemy” and showing the callous barbarism of the “heroes” he more effectively overturns a cheap chauvinism in his audience.

The “meaning” of the text is not some bare proposition (killing other human beings is generally bad).  Rather, the meaning is reversal of expectation the shock of heroes failing, the sorrow for the enemy. The meaning of the story is the transformation of perspective. 

One could repeat a proposition and even understand it’s cognitive content without being transformed. But cry for the enemy and feel shock for the hero is different than the bare proposition.  One can know and not be changed; but that would not be the “meaning” of this play. The meaning is the movement of the human heart.

 

Book Review: The Inspiration and Interpretation of Scripture: What the Early Church Can Teach Us. Author: Michael Graves

19 Friday Jul 2019

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Graves explains the purpose of the book:

The present book aims to describe what Christians in the first five centuries of the church believed about the inspiration of Scripture. I will do this by identifying various ideas that early Christians considered to be logical implications of biblical inspiration. In other words: What is true of Scripture as a result of its being inspired? What should divine inspiration cause us to expect from Scripture?

The most common text used to understand the doctrine of inspiration of scripture is 2 Timothy 3:16–17 (ESV)

16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

This was also the text used by the early Church to speak of inspiration, but the early interpreters put the accent in a different place than our contemporaries:

It is interesting to note, however, that early Christian interpreters did not invest as much energy as modern Christians have in working out a precise definition of the term “God-breathed” (theopneustos). Rather, for the Church Fathers the most important term in this passage is ōphelimos, which means “profitable” or “useful.”

Using this as an organizing principle, Graves then goes through 20 means by which early Christians read the Scripture in such a way as to be profitable. There are four chapters which lay out the means by which Scripture was read so as to be profitable. The second chapter begins the detailed analysis and speaks of five ways in which the Scripture could be “useful”. For it was useful for “instruction”. Scripture is useful because it provides examples to follow.

The third chapter concert the spiritual and supernatural dimensions of Scripture. This chapter includes four aspects of the supernatural dimension, which includes the famous four-fold meaning or use of Scripture:

John Cassian used Proverbs 22:20 to identify three senses beyond the literal sense, bringing the total number of senses to four: the “literal” sense (history — things past and visible), “tropology” (moral explanation), “allegory” (prefiguring another mystery), and “anagogy” (pointing to heavenly realities). Cassian’s system was passed on to the Middle Ages and ultimately became the well-known medieval “four senses of Scripture,” which are summarized nicely in the following epigram quoted by Nicholas de Lyra (d. 1349): “The letter teaches events, allegory what you should believe, morality teaches what you should do, anagogy what mark you should be aiming for.” The Church Fathers’ belief that Scripture has more than one sense converged with numerous other beliefs that they held, such as that Scripture is useful for instruction, and that all Scripture teaches a unified message. The concept of a higher sense provided some helpful theological tools for the early church but also generated problems.

The fourth chapter concerns “modes of expression” in the Scripture; the fifth, historicity and facility of scripture; and the sixth, agreement with the truth.

Each of the 20 topics discussed begins with a clear statement of the principle. Graves then puts the interpretative principle in the context of both the Greco-Roman and Jewish history of interpretation. Having clearly stated the principle and putting it into historical context, Graves then gives multiple examples of the use of the principle by Christian interpreters, often putting the interpreters into tension with other writers (and sometimes showing development by an individual Christian interpreter).

He then ends each section with a his evaluation of the usefulness of this interpretative principle for the contemporary church. These sections are irenic, humble and quite useful.

The book does precisely what it claims to do. It provides numerous primary source references (which makes it possible to “check his work”). The writing is clear. Even though he is dealing with a technical subject (how to read a text), he never devolves into needless jargon. You don’t need a seminary education to follow his argument; however, the work is not frivolous or breezy.

All in all I found the work very useful and would recommend it to anyone wishing to learn more on this subject. For what he aims to do, I could not image that one could better execute the project.

Some Advice on Reading the Bible from John Newton

05 Friday Apr 2019

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In Letter IX in the collection entitled “Forty-One Letters”, John Newton answers the question from a young man concerning the doctrines of grace. What is most interesting in the letter is not Newton’s explication of the doctrines of grace per se, but rather his instruction on how to read the Bible.

First, Newton explains that we do not really understand anything if we can merely recite a creed or have a notional understanding of some theological propositions. For instance, I may know about the nature of the worship of a god by ancient Israelites, but I don’t really understand what those Israelites thought and felt in their worship — I can understand the outside, but I can’t feel and see what they felt and saw.

This truth is even more so when it comes to the knowledge of the true God. There is a level of apprehension which goes beyond mere emotional experience. As Newton writes:

We may become wise in notions, and so far masters of a system, or scheme of doctrine, as to be able to argue, object, and fight, in favour of our own hypothesis, by dint of application, and natural abilities; but we rightly understand what we say, and whereof we affirm, no farther than we have a spiritual perception of it wrought in our hearts by the power of the Holy Ghost. It is not, therefore, by noisy disputation, but by humble waiting upon God in prayer, and a careful perusal of his holy word, that we are to expect a satisfactory, experimental, and efficacious knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus. I

John Newton, Richard Cecil, The Works of the John Newton, vol. 1 (London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1824), 188.

He then proceeds to list four guidelines for understanding the Scripture.

First, in handling difficult text or seeming obscure passages, rely upon the “analogy of faith”:

 there is a certain comprehensive view of scriptural truth, which opens hard places, solves objections, and happily reconciles, illustrates, and harmonizes many texts, which to those who have not this master-key, frequently styled the analogy of faith, appear little less than contradictory to each other. When you obtain this key, you will be sure that you have the right sense.

Here is a brief note on the analogy of faith:

Analogia fidei is a concept that has many advocates but few who carefully define it. Henri Blocher has carefully marked out four distinct meanings for the concept of the analogy of faith: 1) the traditional one as set forth by Georg Sohnius (c. 1585):3 “the apostle prescribes that interpretation be analogous to faith (Rom 12:6), that is, that it should agree with the first axioms or principles, so to speak, of faith, as well as with the whole body of heavenly doctrine”; 2) the “perspicuity” of Scripture definition, as championed by Martin Luther, in which the sense of the text is to be drawn from the clear verses in the Bible and thus issue in the topically selective type of analogia fidei; 3) the thematically selective understanding of the analogy of faith, as defended by John Calvin: “When Saint Paul decided that all prophecy should conform to the analogy and similitude of faith (Rom 12:6), he set a most certain rule to test every interpretation of Scripture”;4 and 4) the view held by the majority of Protestants, which may be described as a more formal definition, the analogia totius Scripturae. In this view all relevant Scriptures on any topic are brought to bear in order to establish a position that coheres with the whole of the Bible. The analogy of faith on this view is the harmony of all biblical statements where the text is expounded by a comparison of similar texts with dissimilar ones.

Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Hermeneutics And The Theological Task Trinity Journal 12, no. 1 (1991): 2-4

Second, Newton cautions that one’s reading must be understood in light of real life “consult with experience.” Here is an example of how Newton applied this principle in his writing to the young man in this letter:

But we are assured that the broad road, which is thronged with the greatest multitudes, leads to destruction. Were not you and I in this road? Were we better than those who continue in it still? What has made us differ from our former selves? Grace. What has made us differ from those who are now as we once were? Grace. Then this grace, by the very terms, must be differencing, or distinguishing grace; that is, in other words, electing grace

Third, do not be prejudiced against the truth on the ground that it does not align with your current theological position. I recall R. C. Sproul saying that if John MacArthur were convinced of some truth from Scripture, and if that truth contradicted a position MacArthur held, that MacArthur would instantly change his mind. We need to be willing to allow the truth overrule our position.  Although offered in a very different context and for a different purpose, Emerson’s famous line has some applicability here, “A foolish consistent is the hobgoblin of little minds”.  We should never be stubborn against the truth.

Finally, Newton explains that we should favor those readings which make much of God and God’s glory:

This is an excellent rule, if we can fairly apply it. Whatever is from God, has a sure tendency to ascribe glory to him, to exclude boasting from the creature, to promote the love and practice of holiness, and increase our dependence upon his grace and faithfulness. The Calvinists have no reason to be afraid of resting the merits of their cause upon this issue; notwithstanding the unjust misrepresentations which have been often made of their principles, and the ungenerous treatment of those who would charge the miscarriages of a few individuals, as the necessary consequence of embracing those principles.

John Newton, Richard Cecil, The Works of the John Newton, vol. 1 (London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1824), 189–190.

 

What must you know of the author?

18 Friday May 2018

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There is a debate within literature study as to whether one must know about the author or not in order to make sense of the text. Here in the first essay in the Spectator, Addison places the question a bit differently: rather than speaking of “meaning” he writes of “pleasure”:

I have observed, that a Reader seldom peruses a Book with Pleasure ’till he knows whether the Writer of it be a black or a fair Man, of a mild or cholerick Disposition, Married or a Batchelor, with other Particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right Understanding of an Author. To gratify this Curiosity, which is so natural to a Reader, I design this Paper, and my next, as Prefatory Discourses to my following Writings, and shall give some Account in them of the several persons that are engaged in this Work. As the chief trouble of Compiling, Digesting, and Correcting will fall to my Share, I must do myself the Justice to open the Work with my own History.

That places the question of reading on a very different foundation: is this something in which you can take pleasure?

Reading Scriptural Narrative

24 Saturday Jun 2017

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I am working through Biblical Doctrine by MacArthur and Mayhue. I am going to have a criticism of a single sentence, so I should put this into context. The work over all is quite good. The greatest strength of the work lies with the marshaling of biblical evidence.  When it sets forth a doctrine, it typically sets forth the universe of Scriptural support. For example, on page 340, they list 27 instances of how the Holy Spirits ministers to the people of God (He adopts, baptizes, bears witness, call to ministry, convicts, empowers, et cetera). The book is filled with such lists and charts. On this particular point, it is exceptionally good.

A second aspect of the work which I appreciate is that it does not require a great deal of technical background: the text avoids theological terms and prefers to explain the doctrine and use relative simple English terms. This makes the book useful for those coming to theology for the first time as a discipline.

In short, the book is a very good introductory systematic theology.

Now to pick on a sentence. This sentence scraps a particular concern of mine: the common place lack of training in literature and language for Bible teachers and theologians. The Bible is primarily a book of stories and poems. However, most Western contemporary theological training tries to reduce the entire Scripture to a mass of bare propositions akin to blueprints or a shopping list. This is wrong for a million reasons — but that is another topic.

Anyway, here is my concern:

On page 356, a rule of interpretation is stated as follows:

Use teaching (didactic) sections of Scripture, not historical (narrative) portions to determine what is prescriptive rather than what is merely descriptive —what is exceptional compared to what should be considered normative.

First, the bare fact of something having had happened tells us very little beyond that it had happened. We need to ask other questions to make sense of the bare fact: we need context to understand a historical event. They should have written something like, “there are different hermeneutical principles for deriving application from narrative than for didactic passages.”

Our life comes to us as narrative: we see the events in our life as coming from some context and going in a particular direction. Therefore, anyone who merely points at some bare fact and then draws a “random” conclusion proves little more than there are an infinite number of lines which can be drawn through any point.

For example, George Washington was president of the United States. Therefore, I conclude that am the president — or anyone named George can be can be president — or only persons named George can be president, et cetera. Or only persons who were friends with people who knew George Washington — or whatever crazy rule. The proper context is the legal context of the United States Constitution which creates the basis for one becoming president.

I read the United States went to war with England in 1812, therefore, I conclude that England is the enemy of America. I prove that point by pointing to the Revolutionary War. Then someone points to World War I & II.

This sort of naive reading of narrative is seen by members of the Watchtower Society who will not have birthday parties, because Herod — a bad man — had a birthday party. Therefore, birthday parties are bad. Herod also ate, drank, slept, married.

The question being considered on page 356 is whether all believers must speak with tongues to be saved. Some will argue that because there were instances of tongue speaking recorded in Acts, that such is proof that all believers must speak in tongues. That sort of poor reading does not mean the narrative is ambiguous, faulty or otherwise deficient. It merely means that one has to read a narrative in the manner proper for reading narratives.

The trouble with “we all must speak in tongues” is not that one has used narrative to determine a doctrine. Rather, the trouble is that one has read the narrative poorly. The proper context for the narrative is all of Acts — and all of the New Testament, and all of the Scripture. Part of the narrative context are the epistles.

Moreover, the epistles must be understood by referring back to the narrative portions of Scripture: each of the texts helps make sense of the other texts.

Second, the rule as stated makes a point about reading narrative: it distinguishes between exception and normative: That is something gleaned from reading the narrative. Herod celebrating his birthday does not mean that a two year should not eat cake on his birthday. That would be an example of very poor reading.

Third, the authors contradict this rule repeatedly in this very book because they use narrative to prove up doctrine.

For example, on page 366, they consider the question of the Holy Spirit’s work in the Old Testament. After a review of the narrative they write:

The major characteristics of indwelling in the Old Testament can be summarize as follows:
Infrequent
Involving selected leaders in Israel only
Temporary
An empowerment for service

Page 367. They read the narrative and deduced a doctrinal point. This is an appropriate reading of narrative.

Or, on page 384, they are considering the question of whether miracles are normative and continuing. On previous pages, they cited to historical precedent and church historians. Looking to the Bible they write

There is no single, explicitly clear biblical statement that specifies whether miracles through men and temporary gifts ceased with the apostles or continued, but if one consults the whole counsel of God, one will find the answer.

They then engage in a reading of the explicit and implicit narrative of the New Testament.

What they really mean to say is that one must read the Scripture with some care. For example, when reading narrative, one cannot simply conclude that because a good man has done X that all men must do X to be good (how many men will offer their son as a sacrifice, ascend Mt. Sinai or bury a linen belt?).No can one conclude that because God did X for a good man in the past means that God will do so of all good men in the future (how many men have been fed by ravens?). Such readings demonstrate foolishness: the fault lies in the reader not in the text.

We can only assume that such people do not go about the world concluding that because a police man has a light bar and gun that they should do the same thing.

One’s reading of the narratives must be consistent with all of the Bible. Plucking an isolated text and drawing a conclusion is foolish and lazy.

There is no counsel to be compared

22 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by in Biblical Counseling

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The worst is the not the loss of any outward thing.

What is the most pernicious and destructive evil which a man is in danger of? Not the loss of any outward good things whatsoever, for they are all in their nature perishable; we enjoy them on the very condition of parting with them again; no wisdom can keep them: “Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats; but God shall destroy both it and them,” 1 Cor. 6:13. Not the suffering of any outward troubles, which the best of men have suffered and triumphed over.

The greatest danger is the loss of the soul.

But the greatest loss is the loss of a precious soul, which is more worth than all the world, Matt. 16:26; and the greatest suffering is the wrath of God on the conscience, Psal. 90:11; Isa. 33:14; Heb. 10:31; Matt. 10:28. Therefore, to avoid this danger, and to snatch this “darling from the paw of the lion,” is of all other the greatest wisdom. It is wisdom to deliver a “city,” Eccl. 9:15; much more to deliver “souls,” Prov. 11:30. Angelical, seraphical knowledge, without this, is all worth “nothing,” 1 Cor. 13:1, 2.

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Shepherds Conference 2015, Albert Mohler: Inerrancy & Hermeneutic

06 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by in Albert Mohler, Apologetics, Bibliology

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Shepherds Conference 2015
Thursday 8 p.m.
Albert Mohler

We do feel the weight of history on this; we do feel that we will look back and say “I was there.”
“I was there when Mark Dever read Psalm 119”.

We are here because we are invited to be here. My position here tonight is one every preacher would envy, to preach about inerrancy and hermeneutics.

Imagine how many people out in the world would think we are insane to gather at this hour of a Thursday night to speak about it. This summit will encourage all the right people and irritate all the right people. It isn’t over and we aren’t giving up without an argument. And the Lord we are confident will defend his Word.

We would interrupt anything to defend the inerrancy of Scripture. It matters more than most people think, more than most people who sit in your churches now understand.

In about a month the Supreme Court will hear argument on the issue of same sex marriage. The line of precedent runs back to Griswold and he invented the “right to privacy”. Douglas found it in the penumbra & emmanations of the constitution. But my concern is not the Court, it is what you do in the pulpit.

It comes out in two different legal theories. First are strict constructionism. These are people who believe words are words and reveal intention. Second there is critical legal studies. There is a living constitution from which we find what we need (not to be bound by a 200 year old constitution).

It means everything for preaching: it is either we are bound by the text or not.

“When the Bible speaks God speaks.”

plenary verbal inspiration: total truthfulness

The Bible Without Illusion: The writers of the NT & OT believed the inerrancy of Scripture and that remained through all through the Reformation. It was not challenged until the Enlightenment.

Nothing they confronted in 1978 has gone away (there are merely new things); although some stuff has come back in new clothes.

Go to Schleirmacher (liberalism, higher criticism): he did not believe the Scripture could be inerrant because he did not believe in verbal inspiration. This is not just a great intellectual crisis for elite institutions; it touches every Jr. High School. The very air we believe is deeply subversive of all claims of scriptural inspiration.

There has been a great intellectual embarrassment by many preachers and theologians. Fosdick at the Beecher lectures at Yale: the Bible is a problem.

John Updike: the reverend Clarence Wilmont: he lost his faith because he came to believe that the OT was an ancient set of writings. He traced it back in the historical critical approach to the seminary: “he plunged into the chilly Baltic sea of higher criticism.”

Many “evangelicals” are promoting new approaches that treat the Bible as something other than the Word of God.

Does Inerrancy Imply a Hermeneutic

The most important statement on hermeneutics is in the ICI, then if we believe in plenary verbal inspiration then we are committed to a historical grammatical hermeneutic.

12 Principles of Hermeneutics for Inerrantists:

1.  When the Bible speaks God speaks. An auracular book (Warfield).Our task is to hear God’s voice; affirming the authorship and authority which comes from God and God alone. We are thus committed to a hermeneutic of submission (as opposed to a hermeneutic of suspicion). A self-attesting revelation. The Bible does not merely contain the Word of God; it is the Word of God.
The biblical text determines the limits of its own interpretation. We take the text as it is given to us. Look to the genre. This means that we can’t be looking for a meaning that is behind or after the text; it is within the text. We approach the text looking for the “plain meaning” of the text. We are not looking for the “Bible code”.
Scripture is to be interpreted by Scripture (the analogy of faith). There is no conflict in the text. Not as some of the emerging church; it can’t be authoritative because it is not coherent. Yet, if there is an apparent conflict the problem is in our reading, not in the text.
2. The Biblical text addresses as words, propositions, sentences. Words are adequate conveyors of truth. That may seem odd, but that is taught. The Lord who has made us in his image is the Lord who has addressed us in words. We live in an age which denies propositions. [Wittengenstein, Surely it’s not a proposition until its understood.] Attacking propositions is of course a self-contradictory proposition. Henry: relationships may not be reducible to propositions, but we cannot speak of the relationship without proposition.
3. We are given a canon of Scripture. We need all of it until Jesus comes. The canon itself also establishes a basic proposition for interpretation: it limits where we may look. [Funny discussion of the Jesus Seminar voting with marbles: but do you preach & teach as if I hold all of the canon as inspired.]
4. The forms of biblical literature are themselves essential to the understanding of the text as God intended. We need the forms to understand what God would have us to know. Is it poetry or parables or history, etc. Jesus affirmed that he spoke in parables for a very specific reason. We are not to teach everything as it is given to us. We are to receive all of it and teach it that way.
5. No external authority can correct the Scripture. We have the text of the OT, but it just wasn’t verified by modern archaeology. Nothing can correct the Bible in any respect. There is no form of human knowledge that can correct the Scripture. We are getting hit from two sides. First, there is the attack on creation: but there are no “assured results of modern science”. The amazing thing is that people think this is new. We must know that there is a direct collision between naturalistic worldview. We are not being asked to re-understanding creation; we are being asked to surrender. The second attack is on sexuality. Paul was doing the best he could in dealing with sexuality; but he didn’t know what we know about sexuality. He was only a First Century man. If the ultimate author of Romans that is a plausible argument. norma normans non normata: the norm of norms that can’t be normed. Luther
8. Scriptural claims about historical claims about the space-time continuum are to be understood as claims within the space-time continuum. We have to affirm “true truth”. Schaefer: there are those who want to speak of history of something that is not really history “it happened”. Some evangelical writers: “history-like”. The Bible doesn’t say “once upon a time”; it says “In the beginning God ….” Our salvation depends upon things that happened in the space time continuum. 1 Cor. 15:
9. Holy Scripture is to read as a Scripture that contains stories; it has a metanarrative. Grammatical historical, redemptive historical, unabashedly Christological.
10. Our confidence in the Bible is unbroken: all that claims it is true; in all that it promises will come to be. It is as true of the future as it is of the past. All truth claims: what it meant is what it means.
11. Our understanding of Scripture is dependent upon the work of the Holy Spirit. He did not merely inspire the text he makes possible our understanding (and assured) and makes possible our proclamation. The Scripture is meant to be heard & obeyed. John Calvin: rightly preaching the Word of God makes possible the Word of God being heard.
12. Our study & our preaching of the Bible is not an end itself. Every word of scripture is profitable. The end of our hermeneutic is the knowledge of the one true and living God and the one whom he has sent. The hermeneutic leads to a homiletic. Philip and the eunuch: how can I understand without a guide.

There are millions of Americans are affected by work of the Court in interpreting the constitution: the ultimate argument is between those who find words which are there and those who say we are bound by words as given.

How much more is at stake when you are your chambers, your study. How much more is at stake when you stand in the pulpit to speak. What you speak is dependent upon your hermeneutic which you bring to your pulpit.
Jeremiah 23:28:

Jeremiah 23:28 (ESV)
28 Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let him who has my word speak my word faithfully.

Tradition in Interpretation

19 Monday May 2014

Posted by in Bible Study, Theology

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Systematic theology flows out of (1) exegetical decisions regarding the theological meaning of individual passages, (2) the collation of the meaning of passages on an issue of biblical theology, and (3) the use of models (good and bad) provided by a study of the history of dogma on the issue. In constructing a theology for today, four components form the “raw materials” – Scripture, tradition (both the creedal traditions of the church as a whole and the individual traditions of the theological systems), experience (personal experience, corporate experience in a local church, and the community of scholars whose works challenge and inspire us), and reason (ways of organizing the data into coherent patters for the current culture). Tradition, experience, and reason together form our preunderstanding, that set of hermeneutical awareness and beliefs that guide us when we study a text and draw theological meaning from it. This compendium of the reader’s strategies must he held consciously, lest they become an a priori that determines the textual meaning rather than a perspective from which we make decisions. Once again, the competing schools of thought are oru friend, for they force use away from presuppositional readings.

There is general agreement that Scripture must provide the basis for all theological formulation. The debate centers upon what part it must play and what place we gtive to church tradition in developing our belief system. The thesis of this essay is that Scripture has absolute primacy, and tradition is supplemental, informing us and providing models for the way Scripture has been utilized through the centuries, but not determining our present system.

Grant Osborne, “Hermeneutics and Theological Interpretations,” in Understanding the Times: New Testament Studies in the 21st, ed. Andreas J. Kostenberger and Robert W. Yarbrough (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010), 83-84.