The Bible was ‘clear’…

Some really interesting historical illustrations from Rachel Held Evans of the pitfalls of a "the Bible clearly says" type of hermeneutic. I don't beleive that these examples should keep us from EVER making final statements about the meaning of scripture, but they do admonish us to be ever more honest and humble in our interpretations. So often that which we think is clear from scripture is really nothing more than our effort to justify our own culture with the words of scripture.





See the blog here: The Bible was ‘clear’…

How to take a stand on difficult issues (part 2)

A couple of weeks ago I began this series of posts about how to take a stand on difficult issues related to scripture and interpretation. You can see my first post here. This is my second guiding principle.

Have I done my exegetical homework?

The belief in the perspicuity of scripture has long been treasured in Protestantism. You could make a case that this doctrine is one of the key convictions that eventually gave birth to the Protestant Reformation. It is the belief in the fundamental clarity of scripture. The Bible is able to be clearly understood by all people (although Luther and especially Calvin would hasten to add that the Holy Spirit must be involved in the process of reading in order to overcome the reader’s sinful nature). The belief in perspicuity moved the locus of authority in interpretation away from sacred tradition and the Church to the individual interpreter. Now Protestants, and especially evangelical Protestants, simply assume that the individual reading scripture on her own is perfectly capable and even expected to understand, meditate upon, and apply that scripture to her life usually within the parameters of a “daily quiet time.”

This isn’t the place to debate the nuances of perspicuity. I accept a certain level of perspicuity as being in line with the original intent of scripture. I believe that scripture is not just for the elites but is for all people in all times and places. However, even champions of the doctrine like Luther clearly believed that not every individual reading of the text was equally correct. There was an essential role for an informed teaching ministry within the community of believers to correct and to train in the proper meaning of scripture.

The reason that I am mentioning this point now is because I have noticed that when it comes to dealing with difficult issues in the text the doctrine of perspicuity is sometimes abused. For instance, take the issue of women’s roles in ministry. This is clearly a difficult issue that the church has been struggling with for years. Exegetically there are a small number of texts in the New Testament that seem to prohibit certain roles for women within the assembly of believers (specifically 1 Cor. 14 and 1 Timothy 2). If we are to ever arrive at a principled position on the role of women in ministry today, these texts have to be studied and “figured out.” There are all sorts of exegetical questions that we have to answer:

1. There are historical-cultural questions to be answered. Was there anything in the specific cultures of ancient Corinth and Ephesus that necessitated Paul’s restrictions on women in those churches? Further, was Paul articulating a general principle to be applied in every one of his churches (and therefore should also be applied in the same way in all of our churches) or was this simply a specific contextualization of a general principle (even the two major texts in question don’t agree on every detail)?
2. There are important contextual questions to be answered. How do these restrictions fit within the context of the letters of 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy? What was going on in these churches that would cause Paul to talk in this way? How do these restrictions fit within the broader context of the New Testament? For instance, what are we to make of Paul “tolerating” the teaching ministry of Priscilla and other prophetesses in Acts? What was Jesus’ own understanding of women disciples? How do these texts relate to the general principle of equality outlined by Paul in Galatians 3?
3. There are important grammatical and semantic questions to be answered. What did Paul mean by “authority” or “head” or even “submissiveness?”
4. There are important questions of application as well. Why apply 1 Cor. 14 literally in all churches today but not 1 Cor. 11 which talks about head covering for women? Why permit women to lead worship through song or prayer if they are “not permitted to speak?” At what point are women allowed to teach in the church? Where did we get the idea that it was ok for them to teach boys until the sixth grade but not after that point (as some churches practice)? Is it ok for women to “teach” but not “preach” (even though the word for “preach” is nowhere used by Paul but “teach” is in 1 Tim. 2)? We have to own up to the fact that our application of these texts is laughably inconsistent.  

I bring up these questions not because I’m arguing for a certain position on the issue. I bring them up to illustrate a point. Difficult issues are difficult for a reason. There are a lot of exegetical knots to untie. But when these difficulties are brought up some will respond with arguments about the perspicuity of scripture. “I don’t need a class on studying the Bible to teach me how to read what scripture has clearly said.” In other words, the perspicuity of scripture means that I don’t really have to study it or listen to the perspective of someone who has been trained in how to properly study it. It’s a pre-critical literalism (which somewhat ironically is tied more to the interpreter’s tradition than his actual reading of the text). “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.” But that doesn’t really settle it. There is something missing in that cliché. It should rightly be “The Bible says it. I understand it. I believe it. That settles it…for now.” You aren’t reading scripture well if you aren’t taking the time to actually struggle with it, study it, and understand it. And you aren’t reading scripture well if, after reading the text once or twice, you assume that you have it mastered well enough that you never have to really study it again. Faithful Bible reading requires diligent study.

If we are to take a stand on a difficult issue like women’s roles in ministry (or dozens of other similar issues), we must commit ourselves to understanding the word by doing the difficult work of exegesis.

Scripture as missional and identity-shaping

The best way to describe Scripture is that it is identity-shaping. The Bible tells us who we are, where we are, and where we are going. In fact, its identity-shaping, Spirit-mentored direction propels its readers into a missional life. Eugene Peterson warns of the danger of making the Bible after our own Trinitarian image: my Holy Wants, Holy Needs, and Holy Feelings. Instead, if we read the Bible aright, we are remade--since the Bible as been sent as a word from God to us--into God's image, the perfect Eikon, Jesus Christ...

...This is what it is meant by Scripture being missional: Scripture is designed by God to work its story into persons of God so that they may become doers of the good.  Scripture is missional because it is designed to create restored Eikons who are in union with God and communion with others for the good of others and the world. Scripture, I somethings have to tell myself, is not designed just to be exegeted and probed and pulled apart until it yields its (gnostic-like) secrets to those who know its languages and its interpretative traditions and who can then divulge their gleanings behind pulpits on Sunday mornings or in monographs and academic journals (very few care to read).  Scripture is missional because it is designed to create missional people who learn from their missional praxis how to see Scripture as amissional text that shapes them so that they can live in the story that the church tells in Scripture.

Scot McKnight, A Community Called Atonement (Nashville: Abingdon, 2007), 146-147.

Foundations Only a Few Can Build

This is a sermon that was preached by Dr. Robert Lowery of Lincoln Christian Seminary in chapel services on Feb. 8, 2001. Dr. Lowery was a passionate communicator and devoted student of God's word - as this sermon so clearly illustrates. Through his many years of service in the seminary, Dr. Lowery positively impacted the lives and the ministries of thousands - including my own. My own teaching ministry owes a huge debt of gratitude to Dr. Lowery's influence and encouragement. After listening again to this sermon yesterday I was reminded all over again of just how much my own thinking on scripture, hermeneutics, and ministry I have happily stolen from Dr. Lowery through the years.


When I first accepted the call to teach at Ozark Christian College, Dr. Lowery shared with me a prayer of his for all of his students - especially those who teach. His prayer was from Psalm 119:99 - "I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes." I laughed when I heard it, and it still sounds outrageous to think about today. But really, shouldn't this be the prayer of every teacher and mentor? That his students may eventually be able to say, "I have gained more insight than my teachers - not because they were unfaithful or ignorant or irrelevant - but because they faithfully pointed me to the timeless truths of God's word. These truths which I have learned to consume and which I have learned to let consume me."

Dr. Lowery died last week after a prolonged battle with cancer. The man who knew more about the book of Revelation than anyone I've ever known, now knows immeasurably more than he ever imagined. Thank you, Dr. Lowery.

Messy Hermeneutics

Interpretation is not an exact science. Understanding--be it of God, works of art, ourselves, or others--is both messier and more provisional than explanations that work with causal laws. Why should this be so? Three reasons: 1) because what we're trying to understand is often singular and unique, 2) because meaning is a matter of seeing the parts in relation to larger wholes of which finite human interpreters have only partial glimpses, and 3) because interpreters often have vested interests for seeing things in one way rather than another and lack the requisite virtues to see things as they really are coram Deo (before God).

Kevin Vanhoozer, Everyday Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), 36

Finishing the sentence began by exegesis with theology...

The church can and must, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, develop words, concepts, discourse of all sorts, out beyond the narrow confines of exegesis. That is what happened with Athanasius, holding out for the nonbliblical term homoousion to express, against Arius, the radically biblical view of the divinity of Jesus Christ. We cannot reduce the task of theology to that of biblical commentary.

N.T. Wright, Justification (Downers Grove: IVP, 2009), 81.

Exegesis is a dust cloth...

But, inconvenient or not, we are stuck with the necessity of exegesis. We have a written word to read and attend to. It is God's word, or so we believe, and we had better get it right. Exegesis is the care we give to getting the words right. Exegesis is foundational to Christian spirituality. Foundations disappear from view as a building is constructed, but if the builders don't build a solid foundation, their building doesn't last long.

Because we speak our language so casually, it is easy to fall into the habit of treating it casually. But language is persistently difficult to understand. We spend our early lives leaning the language, and just when we think we have it mastered our spouse says, "You don't understand a thing I'm saying, do you?" We teach our children to talk, and just about the time we think they might be getting it, they quit talking to us; and when we overhear them talking to their friends, we find we can't understand more than one out of every eight or nine words they say. A close relationship doesn't guarentee understanding. A long affection doesn't guarantee understanding. In fact, the closer we are to another and the more intimate our relations, the more care we must exercise to hear accurately, to understand thoroughly, to answer appropriately.

Which is to say, the more "spiritual" we become, the more care we must give to exegesis. The more mature we become in the Christian faith, the more exegetically rigorous we must become. THis is not a task from which we graduate. These words given to us in our Spiritures are constantly getting overlaid with personal preferences, cultural assumptions, sin distortions, and ignorant guesses and pollute the text. The pollutants are always in the air, gathering dust on our Bibles, corroding our use of the language, especially the language of faith. Exegesis is a dust cloth, a scrub brush, or even a Q-tip for keeping the words clean.

Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book, 53

Authority of Scripture

Once you can make scripture stand on its hind legs and dance a jig, it becomes a tame pet rather than a roaring lion. It is no longer “authoritative” in any strict sense; that is, it may be cited as though in “proof” of some point or other, but it is not leading the way, energizing the church with the fresh breath of God himself. The question must always be asked, whether scripture is being used to serve an existing theology or vice versa.

N.T. Wright, The Last Word (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2005), 70

Preaching and Hermeneutics

An effective expositor is first an effective exegete. Exegesis precedes exposition, just as baking a cake comes before serving it. The exegetical process takes place in the workshop, the warehouse. It is a process in private, a perspiring task in which the Bible student examines the backgrounds, meanings, and forms of words; studies the structure and parts of sentences; seeks to ascertain the original textual reading (textual criticism); etc. But not all those details are shared when he preaches or teaches the Bible. An artist, in the process of creating his work, agonizes over the minutia of his painting, but in the end he wants others to see not the fine details but the whole and how the parts are related.

Roy B. Zuck, Rightly Divided (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1996), 24-25.

Principles of Interpretation

1. A close reading of the text cannot be done without a perspective provided by one’s preunderstanding as identified by a “sociology of knowledge” perspective.
2. I must distinguish presupposition from prejudice.
3. We must seek controls that enable us to work with presuppositions (the positive) rather than to be dominated by prejudices (the negative).
a. We must be open to new possibilities.
b. We must understand the dangers of merely assuming our presuppositions.
c. The interpreter must not only address the text but must allow the text to address him or her (the hermeneutical circle).
d. Polyvalent interpretations per se are unnecessary, but a pluralistic or polyvalent attitude is critical.
4. We must all good hermeneutical principles to shape our exegesis and to control our tendency to read our prejudices into the text.
a. Consider the genre or type of literature and interpret each according to the proper rules of their particular language game.
b. The structural development of the passage provides a control against artificial atomistic exegesis.
c. Semantic research further helps the reader to discover the sense and reference of the passage.
d. A judicious use of background information helps us avoid the opposite error, namely, ignoring the historical aspect in favor of the poetic.
e. The implied author and implied reader in the text provide an indispensable perspective for the intended meaning of a text.
f. The question of verification of competing interpretive possibilities is essential for any system. This is a threefold process: inductively, deductively, sociologically.

Grant Osborne, The Hermeneutical Spiral (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2006), 516-519.

The Role of Experience in Interpretation

What we must never be encouraged to do, although all of us are guilty of it over and over, is to force Scripture to fit our experience. Our experience is too small; it’s like trying to put the ocean into a thimble. What we want is to fit into the world revealed by scripture, to swim in this vast ocean.”

Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 68.

Humility

…exegesis does not mean mastering the text, it means submitting to it as it is given to us. Exegesis doesn’t take charge of the text and impose superior knowledge on it; it enters the world of the text and lets the text “read” us. Exegesis is an act of sustained humility: There is so much about this text that I don’t know, that I will never know. Christians keep returning to it, with all the help we can get from grammarians and archaeologists and historians and theologians, letting ourselves be formed by it.

Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 57

Humility

Exegesis is the discipline of attending to the text and listening to it rightly and well.

Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 50