1 John 3:16


"By this we perceive the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren."

Wednesday 11 August 2010

Devotional/Scholarly

Shallow devotional studies can present a problem, but in recent times people have shied away from scholarly studies because many in the scholastic field were liberal scholars who did not believe in miracles and did not believe that the scripture is the word of God. Liberal scholarship is wrong.

But scholarly studies are required to interpret the scripture. Scholarly studies are studies that reveal and open up the context of scripture. Such studies include literary (grammatical) studies, Hebrew or Greek cultural studies, historical background, Hebrew or Greek language studies and theological studies, which all focus on unearthing the original meaning of the text. This is valuable study if we want to know the Bible.

“Devotional studies” tend to take a short cut form and interpret scripture subjectively. The excuse is that it is the Holy Spirit who reveals the truth. The Holy Spirit reveals the truth through the Biblical context, not apart from the biblical context. Scripture interprets itself by its context. This is what exegesis means.

Exegesis comes from the Greek word meaning “out of”. We see exit signs in buildings, which show the way out of the building. Exit comes from the same Greek word. In interpretation this means that we seek to bring the meaning out of the text itself, by considering all aspects of the text’s own context. This means that we derive the meaning from the text, rather than import our own preconceived meaning into the text.

Some may preach by taking their inspiration (meaning) from psychology, culture or from motivational or business principles and then import these ideas into various passages of the Bible, reinterpreting those passages. This process always misinterprets the Bible, but some people may not realise it so long as the Bible is at least used to speak from. A great deal of preaching is like this.

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