WSPK 8: Summary of Hermeneutics

For what it's worth, here are the points I've tried to make these past days, with a couple added on.

In Ken's perfect world:

• The pastor is the local expert on the original meaning of the Bible.
• But the pastor realizes that God uses the Bible far more to transform than to inform.
• The pastor is humble in relation to what the text meant originally, confident in preaching the love of God and neighbor, open to the Spirit's speaking through the word, and a facilitator of the congregation's transformation as it listens for the Spirit through the word.

Original Meaning
1. In terms of the original meaning of the Bible, I would like a pastor to consider,

First, some basic hermeneutics:

• The words of the Bible in themselves, like all words, are susceptible to multiple interpretations.
• Meaning is always understood locally (i.e., in the mind of the interpreter).
• We are always unaware to some extent of how much of "us" is in our reading of the Bible. 
• My default interpretations of the words are not timeless, universal meanings. Rather, my default interpretations of their words are a function of the way words are used in my time and place, and the meanings I see are largely if not entirely a function of my modern worldview.
• There is usually some degree of difference between the default way the words of the Bible strike us and the way they would have struck the original audiences.
• There are meanings the words of the Bible had that do not correspond to any words in English or concepts in our world.

Next, some basic features of context:

• The first meanings of the books of the Bible was a function of the way words were used at the times and places when those books were written, and those meanings were largely if not entirely a function of their ancient worldviews.
• Every single word of the Bible was cultural. That is to say, it took on meaning within the historical-cultural matrix in which it was written, just as every word we say has meaning in our own historical-cultural framework.
• The books of the Bible say they were written to ancient Israelites, Thessalonians, Corinthians, etc. That means their first meanings were meanings that made sense to these ancient people in the way they used words at their times and their places.
• In that sense, to read the Bible literally is pretty much to read it as someone else's mail.
• The Bible was not one book originally. It was dozens of books written over many centuries in at least three different languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek).
• They were originally written to audiences at different times and places. That is to say, the "yous" in the Bible were, in the first place, no one alive today. "YOU shall have no other gods before me" was first spoken to ancient Israelites (Exod. 20:3) who lived over 3000 years ago. 
• For the most part, therefore, each book of the Bible was originally a stand-alone book. For the most part, they were first written to be read separately, not as a collection.

Some conclusions that apply to the "literal" meaning of the biblical texts:

• We should not simply apply biblical instruction in its specifics blindly to today. It is essential that we know why that instruction was given in the first place, which had everything to do with the context in which that instruction was given.
• Doing the specifics of what the biblical authors instructed may not have the same meaning that they had. "Doing what they did isn't always doing what they did," especially if doing it in our context doesn't have the same significance today that it had in their context.
• Since the ideas of the Bible were "incarnated" in the worldview categories of their ancient contexts, they have to be organized from the standpoint of a Christian metanarrative. The Bible provides the content of that metanarrative, the Spirit speaking through the Christians of the centuries have bequeathed us with the organizing principles.
• We need to be somewhat tentative when it comes to the details of the original meaning and focus mostly on the broader themes and trajectories of Scripture.

Extending the Meaning

2. Here are some techniques that the Christians of the centuries have legitimately and illegitimately used over the centuries to extend the literal meaning of the biblical texts:

• Biblical scholarship is essential to an informational approach to the minutia of the original meaning of the Bible, but it is neither essential nor intrinsically capable of reading the Bible as Scripture.
• When we read the Bible as Christian Scripture, we often "extend" the literal meaning so that it speaks to us today.
• We often put individual stories that were self-contained into an overarching metanarrative starting with the pre-existent Trinity and extending beyond the eschaton.
• We often generalize or even univeralize words that originally had a limited scope.
• We often substitute our context for their context. We become the y-o-u. This process sometimes works when it is guided by spiritual common sense but at other times it can result in the idiosyncratic and anachronistic.
• Sometimes we redefine the words in ways that fit with our spiritual common sense.
• Sometimes we knowingly or unknowingly deselect passages that do not fit with our spiritual common sense.

In terms of the sacramental function of the Bible:

• There is an existential difference when we read the Bible as Scripture. I do not read these books as mere artifacts of history. These are my books. These books tell the story of my family. These are not curious stories of other peoples from other places. These are the stories of my people. They are stories that provide a framework for identifying who I am.
• I read these books from a perspective of faith. If I am reading these books as Christian Scripture, then I read them from a Christian faith perspective. In philosophical terms, I place the content of these texts into a Christian "metanarrative." 
• This perspective provides the rules by which the original meaning of these texts can be expanded.
• When I read them as Scripture, I see them as mediating God's authority over me in some way.
• We are open to the Spirit speaking to individuals and communities through the words, but recognize that the community and the Church must test the spirits.
• We are always secure to preach the rule of faith and the law of love. The rule of faith is the consensus of common Christianity. The law of love is submission to God and the love of all.
• We let God change us through the text.

WSPK 7: How shall we then read?

Some of you may feel like I pulled a switch-a-roo on you. Didn't my lead off post in this series start with this:

• The Bible as Scripture is as much transformational as informational.

So why have I spent the last five posts more or less talking about the informational? Two reasons.

1. To prepare the way for a clearer sense of the transformational by deconstructing our confidence in the informational.

Everyone thinks they know what the Bible means. This is a by-product of American democracy. Everyone thinks they're an expert at everything. And with the Bible, everyone thinks they know exactly what God thinks about everything.

And of course you might easily respond, "Scholars don't agree on a whole lot of things," and you'd be right. Those who are supposed to know the most about the original meaning disagree all the time. So even the best scholars should be a whole lot more tentative about what they think Bible originally meant than they usually are. [1]

But here's an important point on this topic:

• Biblical scholarship is essential to an informational approach to the minutia of the original meaning of the Bible, but it is neither essential nor intrinsically capable of reading the Bible as Scripture.

Once we have at least distanced the original meaning of the Bible from the meaning and significance of Scripture for us today, a whole different discussion ensues. Obviously there must be other guiding factors at work (other than the historical meaning) behind not only the transformational experience of Scripture but even its "informational" aspects as it relates to us today.

What are these factors? All the legitimate factors ultimately relate in some way to the Holy Spirit.

a. First, there are "words from the Lord" to individuals and smaller communities of faith. It is understandable that many Christians and Christian traditions have shied away from spiritual interpretations, "pneumatic" words from the Lord. No doubt if we were to examine all the "revelations" people have claimed to receive over time, most of them are probably nothing but hokum, individuals both good and bad, self-deceived, playing a subconscious game to make themselves feel more important than they are.

Yet the original meaning of the New Testament includes indications that there are prophets among us who hear words from the Lord, including words that are mediated through a prophet's reading of Scripture. We must "test the spirits to see whether they are from God" (1 John 4:1). Those who say the Spirit does not inspire new or extended meanings on the basis of the words of the Bible have their head in the sand when it comes to the way the New Testament authors interpreted the Old Testament.

Communities of faith can also, apparently, have "localized" convictions about how to live out the Bible. The Brethren foot wash. The Wesleyans don't drink. Neither are required positions on the basis of the original meaning of the Bible, but they are the convictions of these groups. They don't mean that these groups are more spiritual than the others. They just have community convictions that they believe are from the Lord.

b. Much more importantly, a preacher can also be confident in the commonly agreed truths of Christianity--the rule of faith and the law of love. These are the truths and ethics that the Church of the centuries has taken from Scripture. Here is actually the most important place for a preacher of the word to camp. We know the biggest ethical principles of all--love God and love neighbor. We can preach any text of Scripture through the eyes of the love of neighbor and we will be able to preach with authority! We can speak with the authority of God to any situation today that clearly plays out our submission to God and our love of others!

c. Beyond this, let me suggest that we are most in danger of going bizarre when we are looking at the details of the biblical texts. It is in the big principles, the trajectory of Scripture, the common sense that the Spirit has built up in the Church over centuries, that we are most certain. It is in the details that we are most likely to make ourselves look stupid informationally--whether we are a scholar, preacher, or lay person--with regard both to what the text meant originally and in how to apply it.

We are safe to apply any passage of Scripture through the lens of God's love for humanity and our obligation to love each other. We are safe to apply any passage with the theme of complete submission to God and the submission of our will to him in a way that does not harm others and correctly recognizes his character as love. We are not safe to apply every passage directly to today without considering the whole counsel of God in Scripture.

The bottom line is that everyone--scholar, preacher, lay person--needs to be a lot more humble when it comes to our handling of the Bible and our confidence that we are speaking for God when it comes to interpretation. "I wonder if the Lord is telling us today..." should be our mode of operation when it comes to the Bible.

Now if you are confident that you are hearing the Holy Spirit, go for it. "The Spirit is telling me today that we need to enter a building program like Nehemiah undertook so long ago." That's fine. Just don't use the Bible as an excuse. "The Bible says..." is often you say--that is the conclusion of these last five posts. You may be right because of the Spirit, even if you're wrong about what the text actually meant.

Just don't play the game so many preachers don't even know they're playing, giving their ideas and trying to give them the authority of Scripture.

2. So one purpose of the last five posts was to move us away from the informational use of Scripture toward a transformational one. What is a transformational use of Scripture?

It is one that listens. It is one that waits. It reads the text and meditates on its words. Bathed in the light of God's love and our total submission to him, we wait for the Holy Spirit to speak to us, to change us. We hide the key passages of Scripture in our hearts (the ones that relate to the spiritual common sense the Spirit has developed in the Church) and we read the others in their light. This will make us bristle at some stories. It will help us rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.

But God sets the agenda for the transformational experience of Scripture. We ponder. Preaching for transformation is reflective. What is God saying to us, to you this morning? Where does God want to take us today as we read these words? Who is you in this story? Who should you be?

The informational approach to Scripture has as its intrinsic goal the mastery of its content. The transformational approach has as its goal the Spirit's mastery of us.

[1] It might be helpful to clarify what an original meaning Bible scholar is. An original meaning Bible scholar of a particular part of the Bible 1) knows the appropriate original languages, 2) knows the historical and cultural context of that part, 3) knows the key history of discussion about the interpretation of that part, and 4) can competently practice contextual interpretation.

Having a PhD does not in itself say how far along one is in the journey toward this vast array of knowledge. Many individuals with PhD in hand are still a little shaky on the languages, have a hit and miss knowledge of the historical background information and may only know the history of the discussion for a small part of the text. Still more significant, the current climate has moved away from contextual interpretation to where many of those with PhDs in the last fifteen years may simply be, more or less, very sophisticated pre-modern interpreters.

Despite the fact that both subjectivity and the limitations of our evidence make positive interpretations eternally tentative even for original meaning experts, such scholars should, however, be able to eliminate rather quickly anachronistic interpretations, interpretations that would not have made any sense in the ancient world. Since the essence of premodern interpretation is anachronism, this negative function remains a key area of insight for the biblical scholar today.

WSPK 6: "I know the thoughts I have toward you" (Jer. 29:11)

I have been talking some basic hermeneutics that I hope would be at least a little familiar to a pastor. They have to do with realizing the nature of the real meaning the biblical texts had as well as some sense of how that meaning legitimately is expanded when we read it as Christian Scripture.

Today I want to do a case study on Jeremiah 29:11: "For I indeed know the thoughts that I myself am thinking about you, says YHWH, thoughts of peace and not for evil, to give to you an afterwards and a hope."

1. This is a memory verse of promise for many Christians. I'm sure different Christians take it differently. Some probably take it as a promise that God will get them out of some specific problem situation they are in. Of course God emphatically does not promise to get us out of every thorny situation. Sometimes God lets us suffer, even die. But it is certainly possible that the Spirit would make this verse come alive to a specific individual as a special word to them in a specific situation.

Probably most of us take it as a general statement of God's love and positive attitude toward us. God is not out to catch us out. He's not out to try to make us mess up (Jas. 1:13). He's not some trigger happy sadist hoping to have an excuse to shoot us. His thoughts toward us are one to help us and bring us through.

We also might read this verse within the framework of the Christian metanarrative I mentioned yesterday. As such we might read this verse not as a promise to us as individuals but as an expression of the fact that, at the end of history, God will set the world right and his people will be vindicated.

In my opinion, all these interpretations are legitimate extensions of the text of Jeremiah.

2. So what did this text mean originally?

First, let's go for the obvious. The Y-O-U of this text was obviously those Israelites exiled in Babylon around 590BC. See Jeremiah 29:4: "This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon." These words were not originally addressed to anyone alive today but to people who lived 2400 years ago.

The kingdom of Judah and the city of Jerusalem had been sieged by the Babylonians and many of its people had been taken back to Babylon as slaves. In less than ten years, Babylon would completely destroy Jerusalem and its temple, but it had not quite happened yet.

Jeremiah writes a letter to the exiles. "Build houses and settle down," he tells them (Jer. 29:5). God's will is to submit to Babylon, not to listen to those prophets saying to resist it. Then, in seventy years, God will allow his people to return (29:10).

So in context, here is what the verse was originally saying: "You exiles in Babylon, do not think that I have forgotten you. You are not going to be stuck in Babylon for ever. I have plans for the future restoration of Israel. I have thoughts of peace for your future, a hope. You will come back in seventy years."

3. Now you can see the questions we could ask about the conventional interpretation of Jeremiah 29:11. What makes any of us think that we can apply it to ourselves? It wasn't written to me or about me. God doesn't say anything about anyone but the exiles in Babylon. It didn't apply to Hitler when he invaded Poland. It didn't apply to "Christian" empires that eventually fell in the past. It is not a promise to the United States that it will never be destroyed permanently by its enemies.

There is nothing in the text of Jeremiah that suggests it applies to any other time or place, and the NT never quotes it. It is rather a Christian tradition to apply this verse to today and a function of reading the Bible in an extended sense. That doesn't make the application illegitimate. It simply is another indication that we are programmed to read the Bible out of context when we read it as Scripture.

As an aside, the historical context of this letter was prior to the form of Jeremiah we now read. The book of Jeremiah is an edited collection of the individual prophecies and stories about Jeremiah almost certainly compiled by someone else (perhaps Baruch, cf. Jer. 36:4, although note that since the current form of Jeremiah talks about Baruch writing down one prophecy, in context this verse is not talking about all of the current book of Jeremiah). Jeremiah did not sit down one day and write the whole book of Jeremiah and there are actually different versions of Jeremiah among the manuscripts in which the chapters are in significantly different order.

4. You can see what we are doing subconsciously, unthinkingly, but legitimately, when we read Jeremiah 29:11 the way we normally do, in keeping with yesterday's post:

• We re-specifize it. We understand ourselves to be the "you" that that verse addresses. I may reapply it to me as an individual. To do this, most rip the verse from its obvious literary context. (We deselect the obvious context)
• We generalize it. We make it into a general truth of God's attitude toward his people rather than a specific promise at a specific time and place. However, we do not universalize it because we only apply it to God's people, not to the wicked.
• We may meta-narrativize. We may make it into an eschatological promise for the people of God at the end of the story.

When we extend the meaning in ways that fit with right Christian thinking and right Christian action, this out-of-context process is perfectly legitimate, in my opinion. I personally believe that the Spirit regularly speaks to people in this way. The problem is when Christians disagree over their "spiritual" readings. In that case it can be useful to know something about what the real meaning actually was.

WSPK 5: The Bible as "Scripture" extends the literal meaning.

If you've read the four previous posts, you might feel like I was trying to take away your candy. Today I want to start to give some back.

• When we read the Bible as Christian Scripture, we often "extend" the literal meaning so that it speaks to us today.

Most of the time, we do this without even realizing it. It's part of a certain spiritual common sense we've developed in our communities of faith.

But when we get into disagreements, it is helpful to open up the hermeneutical hood of the car to see how the meaning actually breaks down. And surely a pastor should at least have some sense of what is under the hood, even if most of the time he or she just drives the car.

1. Here is an important hermeneutical point:

• There is a difference between reading the books of the Bible as historical documents and reading them as Christian Scripture.

What are the differences?

• Perhaps most importantly, there is an existential difference. I do not read these books as mere artifacts of history. These are my books. These books tell the story of my family. These are not curious stories of other peoples from other places. These are the stories of my people. They are stories that provide a framework for identifying who I am.
• I read these books from a perspective of faith. If I am reading these books as Christian Scripture, then I read them from a Christian faith perspective. In philosophical terms, I place the content of these texts into a Christian "metanarrative." 
• This perspective provides the rules by which the original meaning of these texts can be expanded.
• When I read them as Scripture, I see them as mediating God's authority over me in some way.

A metanarrative is an overarching framework, like a map, that we use to interpret something. For example, who told us that Hebrews gives us the final answer about animal sacrifices? Would it not be possible, say if we were a non-Christian Jew, to read these texts with the author of Hebrews as a deviant and Leviticus as the right answer for all time as to animal sacrifices? How do we know that Hebrews gives a more complete answer on the topic than Leviticus?

Our Christian point of view does. As Christians, our "metanarrative" sees Christ as the "goal of the law" (Rom. 10:4). We know, not because of the texts themselves, which could be integrated in more than one way. We believe, because of the Christian glasses we wear, that Hebrews gives a more complete answer than Leviticus.

From a historical perspective, Leviticus did not give any hint that the animal sacrifices would ever end. The text of Leviticus itself knows nothing of the sort. It is when we read Leviticus from a Christian perspective that we see the Levitical system as temporary, a foreshadowing of the death of Christ.

There is a theorem in mathematics called Gödel's incompleteness theorem. To put it in layman's terms, the theorem basically says that a closed system of ideas cannot show itself to be entirely coherent without the introduction of some framework from outside the closed system. To apply this to the biblical situation, the books of the Bible themselves cannot establish their own coherency without the use of a metanarrative that comes alongside them and organizes their content from the outside.

The difference between the historical meaning of the biblical texts and reading the Bible as Christian Scripture is the introduction of the Christian metanarrative. Without this metanarrative, the coherency of the Bible falls apart. Without it, the result is predictable--the atomization of the texts. This is what happened in Protestant Liberalism. This was the death of biblical theology. Theological interpretation has tried to recover it, but to the extent that it pretends to be based on the text alone, it is simply an exercise in self-deception.

The metanarrative is supplied by Christian tradition, and the most important metanarrative is that which derives from common Christianity, that is, Christian orthodoxy.

2. So what are the concrete mechanisms by which the biblical meaning is expanded? Here are some examples:

a. Meta-narrativizing
In its literary context, the story of Adam and Eve explains why men have to work hard on the land, why women have painful childbirth and are subject to their husbands, and why humans and snakes do not get along. The rest of the OT knows nothing of this story. We have no evidence to say whether David or Isaiah or Samuel even knew it. It plays no obvious role at all in the thinking of the rest of the OT, which never mentions it again.

Yet when we read the Bible as Christian Scripture, the Adam/Eve story provides the problem for which Christ is the solution. This is the "metanarrativizing" of this short story. It extends the scope and significance of the story from two local chapters to make them one of the key texts in all of Scripture. This is an extension of this passage's original meaning that happens when we read it as Christian Scripture.

b. Generalizing/Universalizing
Read on its own terms, the Sabbath command is about not working on Saturday (It can also refer to other rest days on Israel's calendar). It is a day of rest but also a day that signifies Israel's association with Yahweh, for there are capital consequences for those who work on this day. There is little association in the OT between the Sabbath and worship, although Ezekiel 46:3-4 is a very rare exception. It refers, however, to the obligation to make a Sabbath sacrifice in the sanctuary on Saturdays.

In the NT, Paul's writings explicitly tell Gentile believers that they are not obligated to keep the Jewish Sabbath (Col. 2:16; Rom. 14:5). When Christians today interpret the Sabbath law as taking any day for rest or when they transfer the idea to worshiping God on Sunday, they are changing the connotations of the original command by generalizing it. A specific command about a specific day becomes a general principle of rest and worship. This is not what the command originally said but is a generalized version of it.

c. Re-specification
Sometimes, the specifics of the original context are subtly replaced with our own. So whenever the Bible says "you" and it was referring to an ancient audience and we take ourselves as the "you," we have subtly replaced our specifics for the original ones. We make sense of the words of the Bible against our context instead of the original one.

So when we use the Bible to come up with "biblical principles" on how to manage your money or how to relate as husbands and wives, we are usually projecting the dynamics of a modern economy or a modern family onto the text. Originally, of course, any instruction on money in the Bible came from an agricultural world and a highly patriarchal system.

d. Archaization
A subset of the respecification above is when we end up introducing ancient elements as normative for our contemporary behavior. The result is usually bizarre or even oppressive. So we start to treat women according to ancient norms or we start to dress with some veil substitute. Perhaps we try to make an ancient picture of the world fit with modern science or psychology.

e. Redefinition
Sometimes we make sense of a biblical passage by redefining the words. There is the old sermon from the King James of Isaiah 35:8 about how you can be stupid and still live a godly life--even fools will not err therein. Where "fools" were originally the ungodly, they are redefined as the stupid. Where "err" in this context meant to wander onto a path accidentally, it is redefined to mean "go astray" or "go wrong."

Individuals regularly find meanings that make sense within their overarching Christian theological and ethical framework by finding a potential meaning in the words that fits. This eliminates any distance between the text and the themselves, often by redefining the meaning of the words. So the food laws may have had everything to do with an ancient priestly way of understanding the world, but we make sense of them by making it have to do with dietary hygiene.

f. Metaphor
We can extend the original meaning of the text by applying it somewhat metaphorically. Paul does this in 1 Corinthians 9:9-10 when he takes instruction about not muzzling an ox when it is treading grain and applies it to ministers of the gospel--they should be supported materially for the work they do.

We sometimes reinterpret elements of ancient worldview metaphorically. Whereas Paul may have literally believed in three layers of sky (2 Cor. 12:1), we take it figuratively. When I read imprecatory psalms as a young person, I took my enemies in terms of my temptations and my challenges, the things that would lead me to sin. Of course originally they were quite tangible people.

g. Deselection
There are any number of OT texts that we, without thinking about it, ignore. These are the texts that just don't fit our metanarrative. Who spends much time lingering over Psalm 137:9 or Nahum? They are "naughty verses" that don't fit our Christian metanarrative as easily. Specific Christian traditions also tend to have some passages they pay a lot of attention to and others that they may not even notice are there.

3. These are all strategies to extend the literal and original meanings of the Bible to make them speak directly to us today. We are often not even aware that we are extending the meanings, these dynamics are so much a part of our inherited way of reading biblical texts. They are subconscious. We do not even know we are doing it.

The result is that we read Scripture unlike we would read any other book. We would never pull a single sentence out of a letter we found on the street and apply it to ourselves, substituting ourselves for the "you." The default way of reading Scripture is an out of context one, one that is programmed to bracket context and apply the words directly to ourselves.

This is not bad, except when it becomes harmful or oppressive or hinders the gospel because it gets plain weird. We also get into situations where, because neither of us is reading the words for what they really meant, we have no basis to arbitrate between competing interpretations.

4. Finally, modernist evangelical hermeneutics derived a more scientific method of fusing the horizons between "that time" and "our time." You identify the "why" behind the original instruction or the "principle" inherent in the original meaning of the text. Then you reapply that principle to our contemporary context.

This is a valid method but it is one that the average person is not trained to do. You might also argue that the method is often practiced with some elements of a premodern perspective retained in the sense that original meaning interpretations sometimes stop short of a penetrating cultural analysis and there are sometimes artificial boundaries both to the limits of what the original meaning can be and the way in which it must be applied.

WSPK 4: Biblical commands were contextual too.

I decided there were at least two more posts I want to do on hermeneutics in this series on "What a pastor should know about the Bible."

The last post talked about how "all meaning is local." The key points from that post were:

• There are meanings the words of the Bible had that do not correspond to any words in English or concepts in our world.
• The first meanings of the books of the Bible was a function of the way words were used at the times and places when those books were written, and those meanings were largely if not entirely a function of their ancient worldviews.
• My default interpretations of their words are not some timeless, universal meaning. Rather, my default interpretations of their words are also a function of the way words are used in my time and place, and the meanings I see are largely if not entirely a function of my modern worldview.
• Meaning is always understood locally.

1. This dynamic also applies to actions.

• The meaning of actions is also understood locally. 

There are actions that have a very similar meaning regardless of time and place. This is because all those local contexts share features in common. For example, the murder of an innocent person no doubt involves very similar dynamics around the world. (although we might be surprised to find differences even on this score).

However, there are many instances where the meaning of an action has everything to do with a cultural context. This is one benefit of spending some time immersed in a foreign culture--so you can see aspects of your own culture that do not apply in other places.

Rude gestures are a great example of how actions and events find their meaning in a particular context. When my son was very young, someone in an elementary school class told him that he couldn't lift his middle finger up. Proudly, my son showed him that he could, leading to uproarious laughter by several students.

The meaning of that action is not inherent in the universe. We learn it as we live in this culture. I could give the equivalent English gesture, and most Americans would think I was giving a peace sign. The meanings of those actions are not universal. They are culturally-defined.

2. So it is that the Bible was not written so blandly and generally that all its instruction is as broad as "Love your neighbor." (Again, even what it means concretely to love someone else can vary widely from culture to culture) When God spoke to the audiences of the Bible through human writers, he spoke in a way that was timely and relevant to them.

The implication of this fact, however, is that some of the biblical instruction is not as directly relevant to every time and place and some of the specific instruction does not apply directly at all. In many cases, our traditions of interpretation have reinterpreted the sense of the biblical words to make them continue to be relevant, even though their original meaning is not.

A good example of this dynamic is the instruction in Deuteronomy 14:21: "Do not cook a young goat in its mother's milk." We do not know enough of the historical context to know for sure what the reasoning behind this instruction is. Probably the best guess is that it has something to do with Canaanite religion.

What is certain is that it had nothing to do with the way this verse is applied in orthodox Judaism today...

[By the way, being Jewish does not intrinsically give a person any greater insight into the historical context of the Old Testament. At most, one may be more aware of literature and traditions than the average person. But the same historical data that are available to Jews today are available to anyone else. In some cases, acquaintance with the Mishnah and Talmud can actually hinder an open-minded listening to the biblical texts, which predate these rabbinic sources by hundreds of years. Judaism before AD70 was much more diverse than later rabbinic Judaism.

[The bottom line is that while we celebrate the Old Testament people of God today and especially Messianic Jews, their Jewishness does not make them any greater experts on the meaning of the Bible--or give them any greater knowledge of the historical context of the Ancient Near East--than any other scholar. Such an interpreter especially needs to guard against anachronism--reading rabbinic and modern practices anachronistically into the Second Temple Period.]

... In Judaism today, you do not eat meat and milk in the same meal. The meat represents the young goat and the milk obviously relates to the mother's milk. But this tradition has nothing to do with the original meaning of this verse. There was a reason for the verse, one that had everything to do with the context in which the instruction arose.

In the same way, we naturally do our best to make sense of these words within our view of the world. So, metaphorically, is it not cruel to cook a child in the milk of its mother? Does this not point to a gross violation of the nurturing of motherhood? Is this not a horrendous evil?

Those are all truths we can take from the instruction. The point is that it is not at all clear that those were the original truths. They are rather truths that we see in the text as we read it with Christian values.

3  There is a bottom line here:

• Doing the specifics of what the biblical authors instructed may not have the same meaning that they had. "Doing what they did isn't always doing what they did," especially if doing it in our context doesn't have the same significance today that it had in their context.

Indeed, it could be that "doing what they did" actually has the opposite meaning for us that it had for them. Instruction that actually freed women up for them may have the effect of constricting them today.

Take the question of drinking. None of the biblical texts completely prohibit drinking. They urge moderation, but only Nazirites did not drink at all. Jesus almost certainly drank fermented wine.

But, and here is the crucial point--this fact does not end discussion on whether Christians should drink today in every context. Doing what they did--drinking moderately--may not mean the same thing in every context today. Drinking at all in my own religious context had such a seriously bad significance at one point that I can't imagine that any loving person would have done it, even if it did not bother their own conscience.

Once again the fundamental truth comes home. The words of the Bible were not written originally to us today. No mature reading of Scripture will be unaware of this fact.

• We should not simply apply biblical instruction in its specifics blindly to today. It is essential that we know why that instruction was given in the first place, which had everything to do with the context in which that instruction was given.

Since the pre-modern interpreter assumes that all the instruction of the Bible was written to them, this crucial dynamic is missed. We might end up dressing like we think biblical people dressed. We might end up doing things that are actually contrary to the point of the original instruction. The result is a kind of hermeneutical Amishness.

This is not, strictly, a matter of determining what in the Bible is cultural and what isn't.

• Every single word of the Bible was cultural. That is to say, it took on meaning within the historical-cultural matrix in which it was written, just as every word we say has meaning in our own historical-cultural framework.

The question is what also applies directly to our culture, what indirectly can apply to our culture, what needs to be applied differently to our culture, and what should not be applied at all to our culture.

This is not relativism. This is finding the real points of continuity rather than blindly misapplying many things in ignorance. I can show the same spirit as Paul had when he greeted other men with a kiss (e.g., 1 Thess. 5:26)... without kissing them today. A holy handshake will do.

Much of the time, we process these issues subconsciously, using spiritual common sense. Often the Christian traditions we are in have processed them for us, drawing on the God-given wisdom of our communities of faith. Most of the time, we don't even realize this processing is happening.

But when we hit the borderline issues, when we can't agree on the common sense, the principle that the words and instructions of Scripture took their first sense from the contexts in which they were written gives us a fixed point (I would argue that the other important fixed point is the consensus of orthodoxy). It allows us to strip the layers of paint on paint that have accrued over the years, to see our own subjectivity more clearly, so that we can work out our salvation with fear and trembling from a standpoint of better contextual understanding.

WSPK 3: Meaning is understood locally.

I have started a series, "What should a pastor know about the Bible?" In the first two posts, I have suggested the following hermeneutical points for starters:

• The words of the Bible in themselves are susceptible to multiple interpretations.
• The Bible as Scripture is as much transformational as informational.
• We are always unaware to some extent of how much of "us" is in our reading of the Bible. Our default is to assume it means as it appears to us, not how it actually was originally.
• The books of the Bible say they were written to people who have been dead a long time. To read the Bible literally is pretty much to read it as someone else's mail.
• These books were first written to address many different times and places over many centuries in three different languages. The "y-o-u-s" of the Bible were not originally anyone alive today.
• The Bible is more like a library of books than a single book. It was not one book originally.
• For the most part, each book of the Bible was first written to stand alone, not to be read as part of a bigger book.

With this post, I want to end these preliminary observations of hermeneutics. Their implications will resound in profound ways in everything that follows. But I am almost ready to dive into the details.

1. The word "pre-modern" is not entirely helpful. For one thing, it sounds like a put-down. For another, as I define the word, we are all inevitably "pre-modern" and can never not be to some extent. I use it in reference to the fact that we all impose meaning on the world on the basis of our pre-understandings without knowing it. We are all "unreflective knowers" to some degree or another.

The term is often used to speak of a transition that took place in the 1600s in philosophy to what is then called "modernism." But not only has this supposed transition been heavily critiqued, but obviously not everyone in the 1600s suddenly changed hats to become modernists. Nevertheless, the basic concept, as I use it, refers to the fact that we tend to see meaning "in" things when in fact we are the ones projecting meaning onto them.

That isn't to say that there may not be factual aspects of the world that play a role in the meaning I ascribe to them. It's just that there is always a whole lot more of me in my interpretations of the world than I realize. This unreflectivity about the meaning I see in the world is what I mean when I speak of a pre-modern interpretation.

So when we unreflectively read the Bible as one book, not a collection of books, that is a pre-modern reading. We are making it one book in our minds when these were actually separate books written over the course of hundreds of years. When you unknowingly assume that Revelation 22:19 is about the whole Bible ("If anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from that person any share in the tree of life and in the Holy City, which are described in this book"), when it was really about the scroll of Revelation itself, that is a pre-modern interpretation.

Now you can knowingly read the texts as one book too, a "post" modern reading. You can knowingly take Revelation 22:19 in relation to the whole Bible. You might call this a return to a "second naivete." What I am calling pre-modern is when you do it without knowing you're doing it.

2. In the end, I am inevitably the one who understands meaning in things. Meaning inevitably takes place in my head, not in yours. The meaning I see in the Bible is inevitably a meaning I see. It cannot be otherwise. You can communicate your interpretation into my head, but once you do so, it is--as it always is--now an interpretation in my head.

I spent two months in Germany in 1995. Let's just say my German wasn't up to speed at that point. There may have been many a brilliant lunch conversation while I was there, but I don't know it. They just weren't able to get into my head. I used to say that my friends knew more about my time in Germany than I did.

In the same way, from a practical standpoint, it doesn't matter how fantastic the truth of the Bible is on its own time. It will never be more brilliant to me than it is assembled in my mind, at least as far as its informational aspect goes. Meaning is inevitably a function of my mind, and all meaning is understood locally.

3. What does this have to do with reading the Bible? Let's apply it to the first meaning of the books of the Bible. Each word of the Bible had a local meaning for them too, for the Israelites, Romans, and Corinthians.

2 Thessalonians 2:4-5 make help us begin to understand what this fact implies: "He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God. Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things?"

Who is the "you" here?  It's no one reading this post. It was presumably some Christians who lived in Thessalonica in the first century. I am not the one to whom Paul was writing. [1] They had information, referential information, that I don't have. Paul was not with me a few months ago.

So what is the temple here? There was one standing in Jerusalem when this text was written. Is that what Paul was referring to? Am I to see this "man of lawlessness" in 2 Thessalonians 2 through the eyes of some Left Behind novel I've read? Or is there information Paul and Thessalonians had in common that I don't know, meanings local to them, to which I am just not privy?

4. This is an easy example. We just lack enough information to know for sure what Paul was fully saying. But here's one place that this whole conversation leads:

• There are meanings the words of the Bible had that do not correspond to any words in English or concepts in our world. 

You just can't translate the books of the Bible straightforwardly into English or any other existing language today (including modern Greek and Hebrew). We just don't have the words. We just don't have the concepts. In ways we cannot even know, the meanings their Greek and Hebrew words had involved elements of their ancient world to which we are not privy and that we are not equipped to understand fully.

Take the idea of sacrifice. We can say, "A sacrifice was killing an animal to propitiate and please the gods." But that doesn't mean we really understand sacrifices. Frankly, the notion of sacrifice was so primal, so deeply ingrained on the subconscious of the ancients, that I'm not sure they even knew how it worked or what it was all about.

There is a "deep structure" to the meaning of sacrifice, requiring a "thick description" of the ancient psyche. I would like to think we can come close to understanding it, but I guarantee you the English word sacrifice doesn't come close. In a world that doesn't offer sacrifices, it's going to take some doing for us to understand sacrifices.

Here is the end of today's post:

• The first meanings of the books of the Bible was a function of the way words were used at the times and places when those books were written, and those meanings were largely if not entirely a function of their ancient worldviews.
• My default interpretations of their words are not some timeless, universal meaning. Rather, my default interpretations of their words are also a function of the way words are used in my time and place, and the meanings I see are largely if not entirely a function of my modern worldview.
• Meaning is always understood locally.

So could not God have inspired them to write universally instead of locally, for all time instead of for their time? This sounds like a pious answer, but it is really asking one of the following questions:

• Couldn't God have inspired the Bible so that it was irrelevant to the people to whom it was first written and only became totally relevant when I came along and understood it from my modern perspective? or
• Couldn't God have inspired the Bible so generally that it fit in all local contexts? In other words, so that it really doesn't give much specific help to any one culture but just gives really general information, the kind that would apply anywhere?

The first meaning would be highly self-centered. The second just isn't what we find in the Bible. It's a lot more helpful that that. When we dive into history, we find that these words made total sense at the specific times and places when they were written.

This turns out just to be a defensive reaction that won't hold up against examination. It is a pre-modern perspective in transition to a contextual one.

[1] I'm ignoring for now debates over whether Paul wrote 2 Thessalonians and, thus also, whether it was actually written to Thessalonica.

WSPK 2: The world in front of the text

I started a series yesterday--What should a pastor know about the Bible? (WSPK) Yesterday I made two key points:

• The words of the Bible in themselves are susceptible to multiple interpretations.
• The Bible as Scripture is as much transformational as informational.

2. Today, I want to dive a little deeper into the first one.

• We are always unaware to some extent of how much of "us" is in our reading of the Bible. The less we know about ourselves, the less we are able to read the Bible as something other than a mirror.

This is especially the case if we have grown up hearing certain interpretations and ways of reading the Bible. So I grew up in the Wesleyan-holiness tradition. So grew up with certain definitions of words like "holiness" and "sanctification." I grew up reading Acts 2 a certain way that I inherited.

As it turns out, these interpretations had as much to do with the nineteenth century American holiness movement as they did with what the various biblical authors likely had in mind. Inevitably, we are all wearing glasses that color our reading of the Bible. No one can escape them completely. We can't know when we're not aware of something... because we're not aware of it!

We call this element of reading the Bible, "the world in front of the text." It's me, and all the preconceptions I bring as a reader, sitting in front of the text. I assume the text is as it appears to me. And I don't realize how different it appears to someone else... including those to whom it was first written.

2. So what is the right interpretation of the Bible? That is the ultimate question, isn't it?

Here's at least a place to start:

• The books of the Bible say they were written to ancient Israelites, Thessalonians, Corinthians, etc. That means their first meanings were meanings that made sense to these ancient people in the way they used words at their times and their places. 

It may be difficult at first to appreciate the magnitude of this statement and how far its implications reach. We tend to read the Bible as God speaking to us, not as Paul to the Philippians or even God speaking through Paul to the Philippians. What was the literal meaning of the Bible? It was the meaning that was communicated and understood by those to whom it actually says it was first written.

Our first reaction might be, "It doesn't matter that it was written to them first. God inspired it for all times and all places." Let's hold that thought for now. Perhaps this is true in some sense. My point right now is that we know it was written to them. We have to argue it is for us too because that's not really what the books of the Bible themselves say for the most part.

So let's hold off on the question of the extent to which the Bible might be God's word for all times and all places. Let's start with some absolutely obvious truths about the first meanings of the Bible.

• The Bible was not one book originally. It was dozens of books written over many centuries in at least three different languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek).
• They were originally written to audiences at different times and places. That is to say, the "yous" in the Bible were, in the first place, no one alive today. "YOU shall have no other gods before me" was first spoken to ancient Israelites (Exod. 20:3) who lived over 3000 years ago. 
• For the most part, therefore, each book of the Bible was originally a stand-alone book. For the most part, they were first written to be read separately, not as a collection.

In the first place, we are reading someone else's mail when we read the books of the Bible. Perhaps it is also our mail in some way too. But we should not miss the obvious for that which must be argued. The obvious is that it was their mail first.

What we will find is that to read them for us as well usually requires us to take them in a less than literal way, in an extended sense. Chances are, you know how to read them in an extended sense. The greater blind spot is knowing how to read them for what they literally meant originally, their first meaning in context.

What should a pastor know about the Bible?

I'm thinking about starting a new series. What should a pastor know about the Bible?

I'm not talking about content. I'm assuming a pastor will know the content of the Bible. I'm talking about things contextual and hermeneutical.

What is the Bible?
So I think it is appropriate to make the first post hermeneutical. Hermeneutics, by one definition, is the study of meaning and interpretation. How is it that the Bible comes to have meaning to us?

I imagine a common response to the question, "What is the Bible?" would be, "the inspired word of God." That is the appropriate salute, but what do we mean when we say something of this sort?

• It is, at the very least, a salute to God's authority as mediated in some way through the words of the Bible.
• It usually implies that the Bible gives me the right answers to the questions of life.
• It usually implies that the Bible gives me commands on how to live.

1. However, these responses do not answer the most crucial question of all--how am I to understand the words of the Bible? There is usually an assumption in this answer that the meaning of the Bible is self-evident and obvious, which experience tells us it is not.

• This is the first insight I would like to mention about what a pastor should know about the Bible. The words are susceptible to multiple interpretations. The panoply of differing denominations is not an indicator of our godlessness. It is a direct reflection of the ambiguity of language, especially religious language (we tend to read Scripture differently than we read ordinary communication). It also reflects the pervasive lack of training in how to read the Bible in context, which at least potentially can delimit the polyvalence of the biblical texts.

I don't see how anyone could even begin to argue anything to the contrary and still drive down your average city block in America with its ten different churches.

2. A second point is much more crucial. These responses to the question, "What is the Bible?" tend toward an informational reading of Scripture. But think about it, if the primary function of Scripture is informational--what I should believe and how I should live--then it is not formatted very helpfully. If the primary function of the Bible is informational, then the best thing to do is to break it down into a systematic presentation of what we should believe and how we should live.

If the Bible is only informational, then we should stop worrying about preaching from the biblical texts themselves and should focus on its implicit theology in preaching and teaching. If its purpose is primarily informational, then its actual genres (stories, occasional letters, prophecies to Israel, etc) are distracting. We should boil the content down and extract it for more efficient use.

This leads us to a second realization about Scripture:

• The Bible is as much or more transformational as it is informational. We have a different experience when we read Genesis as a story than when we try to extract its implicit ideas and practices. In that sense, it is not primarily a book of answers or ideas. It is a sacrament of transformation, a divinely appointed place to encounter God.

That's enough for today. Today I suggested that a pastor should have a larger sense of the Bible than it simply being an answer, idea, or worldview book. It is a book more for God to do something to us than a book for us to find out something.

More to come...