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."

Tuesday 10 August 2010

Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics is the science of interpretation. The word is derived from the name of the Greek god Hermes, who in mythology interpreted the message of the gods to the people. Today the word is related to the correct interpretation of scripture.

Everybody interprets, whether we realise it or not. The question is, are we interpreting correctly? If it is settled that God is truth and the scriptures are His word, then the only remaining matter is how we interpret the scriptures. We do not want a dynamic equivalent, meaning an understanding of scripture that just sounds right. God said that we should work, to find out if it is right.

A common practice is to interpret scripture “devotionally” or “privately”. By “devotional interpretation” we mean reading the scripture assuming what it means to us personally, without taking the trouble to see if that is the intended meaning of the passage. Devotional study is a positive practice, but the casual use of it is what we are referring to here. Devotion to God must be based on what God actually says.

The Holy Spirit speaks to us from scripture. He reveals the original intended meaning of scripture, as we come to understand its historical and literary (grammatical) context. When scripture was first written, God gave a message to those it was written to, intending that it be understood the same way by generations that would follow. The purpose of study is to read the Bible in its original meaning.

We may give random meanings to the Bible when preaching. We study to help us avoid doing this. The first step in applying the scripture is to understand what it meant to the generation when it was written. Scripture does not mean what we think it means, because we feel that God has spoken to us from it in a particular way. The scripture means what it meant to the generation it was addressed to.

Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spoke, as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. (2 Pet 1:20-21).

“Private interpretation” means we interpret the Bible personally, without first finding out what it means contextually (in its own context). The meaning of prophetic scripture is not arbitrary, according to our view, but it is according to what the Holy Sprit originally said.

An example of this may be taken from Hebrews 12. The Hebrew believers were told to “lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily besets them...”. We might read that text today and apply it to a hobby which we feel that we should lay aside. While that may be beneficial, it is not the message of the text.

Hebrews was written to exhort believers not to go back to the Law of Moses, but to go on in Christ. The law was the weight; and disobedience to the New Covenant (unbelief) was the sin that beset them. Hebrews 12 is telling us not to go back to the law, or back to ritual. A “devotional” interpretation may apply a text in a way not intended, while a contextual study looks for the original exhortation.

This is our duty, or God was not serious when He said study to rightly divide the word of truth. A devotional assumption may give us a meaning opposite to the scripture, in the case of Hebrews 12, a legalistic view of a hobby, when the passage was exhorting against legalism. An innocent mistake is fine, but when these assumptions build over time they cause us real problems without us realising it.

When we study contextually we ask questions like: “Who was this passage written to? What was the purpose of the letter? How does this passage fit into the message of the whole letter? How would the people at that time have understood this then?”. We need to slow down and have a careful look before we think we know what the passage means, even if we have already read it many times before.

The first question is not what does the passage mean now, but what did the passage mean then?

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