Hermeneutics
One of the first courses I took when I was in Bible College was Hermeneutics or simply known as how to read and interpret Scripture. I will always remember the ‘cardinal’ rules that my hermeneutics professor cemented into our heads.
When it comes to hermeneutics we have to remember that “a text can never mean what it never meant,” and “a text without a context is merely pretext.” At first I just thought they were catchy phrases that this professor used to help us remember but the older I get, and the more I delve into theology and Scripture, the more true these words have become. Essentially these two pithy statements tell us that Scripture can never mean what it never meant to the original readers, and that we need to read Scripture and specific passages in their historical, cultural and literary contexts in order to properly understand what God is saying through those passages.
In Grasping God’s Word, by Scott Duvall and Daniel Hays, there are some great hermeneutical principles that the authors discuss. These principles are as follows:
Grasping the Text in Their Town
Measuring the Width of the River to Cross
Crossing the Principlizing Bridge
Consult the Biblical Map
Grasping the Text in Our Town
These five principles take us on an interpretive journey. Each step is important to fully understand and apply Scripture to our lives today. For conciseness, I will not go super in-depth in each step, but I will get right to the point to demonstrate why the step is important.
1) Grasping the Text in Their Town
In this first step we ask what the text, or specific part of Scripture we are reading, meant to the original audience. We need to ask ourselves how would the people originally being spoken to understand what was being said. Here, we look at specific words and grammatical structures, and any innuendo’s or idioms that the original audience would have understood. This is also the point where we look at what is going on historically and culturally at the time. How did woman act or what was expected of them? What was their role in society? What kinds of foreign idol worship were the nations around Israel participating in? How was food looked at, and how was it used in cultic worship practices? All of these questions allow us to begin to understand what the author of the text was talking about.
In this step we also take into account the literary genre of the text. Are we reading history or are we reading an Epistle? It is important to take into account the literary genre because we read genres differently. Poems often use metaphors and very dynamic images to get a point across, while letters are often more direct. We would never read history the same way we read a prophecy. Genre is very important to consider in the interpretive process.
2) Measuring the Width of the River to Cross
In the second step, we are looking at the things that are different between our current context and that of the original readers. We need to ask ourselves, “What happens in our society, that is different today than it was then?” An example of this is how women are perceived in society. If one of the original readers came to our current context, they might gawk at the fact that women of status are not wearing a head covering, or how very little our clothing covers us up. Another difference is our geography. When we read Psalm 121 we might have a hard time understanding it when it says, “I look to the hills” if we have always lived on the prairies of western Canada.
There are many differences between the context of the original readers and the context that we find ourselves in today. These differences are important for us to recognize because in them we can begin to recognize our own biases.
3) Cross the Principlizing Bridge
In this step we are looking for the authors intended meaning that transcends time and space between our culture and context and that of the original readers. If we believe that all of Scripture is profitable for teaching, correcting and rebuking (2 Tim 3:16-17), then each and every bit of Scripture has an unchanging piece of truth for our ever changing contexts.
The goal is to dig into the text and find this principle. This is not something that we come with ourselves, but the meaning that God originally intended through the text.
4) Consult the Biblical Map
When we come to a consensus on what we think the meaning of the Biblical text is saying, we need to look at what the rest of Scripture says as well. For example, if we read a portion of Scripture and come to the conclusion that God wants us to exclude, when we turn to the rest of Scripture we know that that conclusion cannot be true. This is because God is constantly welcoming and including those who are on the margins of society. (For more information, read the blogpost “God of the ‘Other’”)
Without the rest of the Bible, we are merely taking verses out of the Biblical story and can interpret them at our leisure. Scripture is rooted in it’s immediate context, the section of Scripture it is a part of (OT, NT, etc.) as well as its wider biblical context. Like my hermeneutics professor stated, “a text without a context is merely pretext.” Scripture must be rooted in its context of the wider biblical narrative.
5) Grasping the Text in Our Town
In this step we are taking the biblical principle and applying it to our unique situations. There would be almost no point of Scripture if we didn’t try and apply it to our lives. Scripture is a living document; one that is meant to be read, absorbed, and lived out.
Without the previous steps in this road map, we would not be able to accurately execute this one. Scripture is the never changing Word of God, but we live in a world that is ever changing. While the text can never mean what it never meant, how we apply that in our lives may look vastly different than how the original audience applied it to theres.
In this step, and throughout all of the steps, it is crucial that we recognize our own biases. While Scripture is our guiding principle as Christians, we all come to the text full of our own biases and ways of seeing life. No one is immune to this. Whether it is some deep-seated belief that we were taught when we were growing up, or something implicit that we believe because of what our environment has taught us, we all have lenses through which we read and interpret Scripture and the world around us.
When we read the Bible it is imperative that we try and discern what our biases are when we come to the text, and try and ask God to remove those biases so that we can hear from Him—the Giver of Scripture.
No matter what your ethnicity, socio-economic status, family background, gender identity, sexual orientation, or profession, we are all constantly looking at the world around us, what we read and watch, and filtering what is right and wrong through those lenses. Some of these lenses need to be adjusted, and some need to be removed. This is true of everyone.
At the end of the day, we need to strive to apply the never changing Word of God, to our ever changing contexts.
Bibliography
Duvall, J. Scott, and J. Daniel Hays. Grasping God's Word: A Hands-On Approach to Reading, Interpreting and Applying the Bible. Zondervan, 2012
The basis of this blog post is taken from Chapter 2. Duvall and Hays’ example and image for the interpretive journey provides an excellent visual for the interpretation of Scripture. Please note that these ideas are not mine, but taken from their work.