Bible interpretation (hermeneutics) are central to the ideological war in the church and world today.
Ever since modern Infidelity reared its head from the bottomless pit in the late 18th century, there has been an information war on the Bible.
Some King James Bible only people seem to be fighting a battle about text, about what words are being deleted from the Scripture. However, the issue of translation is far more sinister. Changing words is a bigger problem than the evil of deleting them.
The greatest evil we see manifest all the time however is the ideological war, and that has to do with the program of language itself, that is, what language conveys in meaning and feeling.
Now, you can take a number of Christians and ask them to interpret the Scripture, and they seem to come up with different interpretations, because there are a number of presuppositions, frameworks and methods of interpretation (hermeneutics).
The reality of the presuppositions are around the reality or deniability of God’s presence, which is to say, either faith or doubt. Thus, many Christians are more like Deists than Present-Divine-Interventionists. The former being tipped toward doubt, the latter toward belief.
Likewise frameworks are like cosmological models, such as Dispensationalism. Starting with a model, people can try to make everything fit that model. This frankly is the problem of human systems of reasoning.
As Jesus said, “Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition.” (Matthew 15:6b). And the extraction from Isaiah 29:13, “But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” (Matthew 13:9).
These issues also have do with willingness of heart and readiness to obey the Scripture and treat it as truth.
And so we come to the issue of hermeneutics. Hermeneutics are the basic method or fundamental elements of how Scripture is to be interpreted.
There are two sides within evangelical (“born again”) Christianity in this battle.
One side is that which is influenced by modern Infidelity, the other side is that which is resisting that. Generally speaking, fundamentalists and Pentecostals have been on this spectrum towards to believing end, while Calvinists of various stripes particularly have been towards the modern Infidelity side. It is ironic, by the way, that these same people might be the champions of young earth creationism!
This leads us to identify the schools of interpretation, specifically, the one called the “grammatical-critical-historical school” and the adjacent “grammatical-historical school”.
It is important here that we are not talking about the mere “critical” schools of Higher Criticism, Literary and Form Criticism and the full plunge into multiple Isaiahs, late prophet authorship, YEDP, M-source document, liberal theology, Modernism, etc. All of this of course is rank unbelief and directly the voice of the spirit of antichrist as promoted by the Enlightenment philosophies which are part of modern Infidelity.
Rather, we are talking here about actual Christians, who believe in the inspiration of Scripture, who nevertheless have been influenced by the same underlying error.
Before addressing the manifestation of error in the “grammatical-historical” categories, we need to establish the truth.
Our common foundation is the inspiration of Scripture. That Scripture came from God and was perfect when first written is not here questioned by the sincere Christians on both sides of this struggle.
There is certainly, however, a division over whether the truth of Scripture can be communicated through time. One position holds that the true words have been preserved/recovered. We would put this under the heading of the Textus Receptus position. Another position goes further and says that a perfect translation is available, which is the King James Bible only position.
There is, however, a further step in communication, which is that perfect interpretation and doctrine is attainable. This is something that needs to be investigated and judged.
In looking at a believing set of hermeneutical basics and related isagogics, which is to say, to look at each book of the Bible and the Scripture as a whole, how it came to be and its purpose, we see two distinct elements: the divine author and the human author.
The problem that arises with modern Infidelity is the absolute war on the divine author, which is why they will emphasise the human author, and even with that, cast doubt on even their reliability.
The right approach is to see God as the divine author of Scripture (i.e. inspiration, infallibility, inerrancy, etc.) and to not segregate the human author from the divine.
Fundamentally in communication, people speak of the “sender”, the “medium” and the “receiver” who then “decodes” (interprets) what is being communicated. The analogy of a World War 2 agent sending messages from occupied France back to headquarters is well known.
We don’t reduce the Bible to just a natural book, as if Paul was just writing his thoughts and sending the letter off to a church in some city, and likewise, people just copied copies over the centuries, until we happen to be able to “peak in” on what Paul wrote then today.
Way too many believers are almost thinking of the Scripture in these low terms. We must truly see that God was speaking via Paul to those churches he wrote to. Now, believers will say that they believe in Paul’s words really being God’s words, and they will go some way in accepting God’s words having something to say to today. But so many have it in theory rather than practice.
You see, the most important fact is that God was speaking to the original audience as well as today. This is the biggest key in this discussion.
“For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.” (Romans 15:4).
The whole “grammatical-historical” hermeneutics go wrong because they are a way that allows so many interferences onto God speaking to us today.
The first way they let interference come in is by looking at the written document in a natural way, in regards to modern textual criticism, fallibility in translation and constraints of the genre of writing itself and being bogged down by original language grammar, syntax and vocabulary.
This means that they might have reason to doubt the words, doubt the meaning, constrain the meaning and be uncertain of the linguistic construction.
The basic assumption is not that the Holy Ghost is giving the reader or hearer today the true meaning, but rather, that we must apply our minds to try to scrape together as best we can an understanding. Worse is that they are letting the doctrines of modern version ontology (some words don’t belong to the Bible) and modern translation alteration of concepts interfere heavily.
The teaching of the Scripture is so clear about being able to know and have God’s words, that is to say, in application to knowing what is the written Scripture.
“19 That thy trust may be in the LORD, I have made known to thee this day, even to thee.
20 Have not I written to thee excellent things in counsels and knowledge,
21 That I might make thee know the certainty of the words of truth; that thou mightest answer the words of truth to them that send unto thee?” (Proverbs 22:19-21).
Having the words is the first step, but being able to interpret them is the other.
And that’s where the “Grammatical-Historical method” goes even further awry. They try to interpret the Bible in its so-called historical context, which is to say, that people today impose their opinion of the past, including a constructed scheme of what they call “ancient near eastern culture”. This construction of course exists in the present, in the minds of modern professors and teachers, and may well bear little resemblance to the past.
But more importantly, nowhere are we instructed by Scripture, nor is it even a sure method of interpreting, to caste ourselves across some fictional gulf of cultural difference to another era in history in order to “really” understand the Bible.
While it is obviously true that the Jews were living in an agricultural culture without electricity, we are not dealing with things so different to ourselves. Above all this is the intention of God, in making the Scripture, to communicate specifically to us, and to all mankind!
“But now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith:” (Romans 16:26).
The Bible has been more designed for the last generations of mankind prior to the translation of the saints (the rapture) than to any other time in history. The Bible’s acceptance across the Earth is for our day, and therefore we should not be looking at the Bible as though it was merely written in the past to past people. No, it is written by God to us and to a glorious future of Church Restitution.
“Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you.” (Proverbs 1:23).
“For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” (Hab. 2:14).
Putting things in the way of being able to know and understand Scripture is really doubt, it is allowing the influence of the enemy in interpreting Scripture.
People can talk about “literal” and “context” all they like, but without belief and without the connection to the Holy Ghost, it’s going to be human striving to get some glimmer of a truth rather than confidently receiving from God the clarity of the truth.
Many born again Christians are in fact in bondage in this area. They may recognise some christological truths in the Old Testament or recognise types and symbolism in the New Testament, but are held back in recognising the “sensus plenior” especially in regard to double and multiple fulfilments of Bible prophecy.
In their zeal for the literal, they have lost the old aspects of seeing the allegorical, moral and anagogical.
If we are to enter into the full counsel of God, then we cannot continue in a paradigm which came from the unbelievers of the 18th and 19th centuries, which came via Milton S. Terry and 20th century evangelicals. Rather, we must turn to a believing approach, which is not to endorse personal, crazy charismatic or hyper-spiro views either.