An 11-Day Study On Challenges To Biblical AuthoritySample

WHICH INTERPRETATION OF THE BIBLE IS CORRECT?

MIND THE GAP

In the London underground you will find an unusual sign—Mind the Gap. There is a unique danger that passengers need to be aware of; if the train stops on a curve, then there will be a gap between the platform and the train, and this could be harmful for the passenger if he or she would accidentally fall into it. It was impractical for attendants to warn the passengers each time they boarded the train, so they developed the phrase “Mind the Gap” to put on signs—and now these are everywhere. When approaching the Bible, I think we need to adopt this warning as well because the same danger exists for us as modern readers of an ancient text. If we are not careful, then we can misunderstand what God has intended to say.

Four gaps exist between the biblical text and us:

1. Time—between 2,000 to 3,500 years!

2. Language. English is obviously not the same as Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek.

3. Historical/cultural situation. A twenty-first-century America that exalts the absolute freedom of the individual and has seen the scientific, industrial, and sexual revolutions is a very different cultural situation than the ancient writers encountered.

4. Literary genre. As we have seen in our chapter on alleged contradictions, ancients and moderns don’t utilize the same literary devices and textual assumptions.

It will take effort and careful study to bridge this gap, but it can be done. Before we explore a path for doing this, we need to be clear on the goal of our interpretation.

WHO CONTROLS THE MEANING OF THE TEXT—READER OR AUTHOR?

Over the past century, we have seen a debate raging in academia about where meaning resides—with the author or with the reader? This is where postmodernism—with its suspicion of authority, rejection of absolute reason, and belief that reality is socially and linguistically constructed—comes to bear. It might be tempting to think that such esoteric philosophical conversations don’t affect our everyday lives, but that is clearly not the case. Remember, ideas have consequences for people.

The postmodern turn is not merely seeking how to apply in today’s society, the principle that was originally written and intended in the constitution; it’s that the very principle itself has changed! This is what reader-response criticism gives us—the audience determines the meaning of the text.

Here is an everyday example of the difference between “authorial intent” and “reader response” theories of texts and meanings. If I write a note to my son to “please take out the trash” and leave it on the kitchen table, then I control the meaning. The thoughts in my mind were communicated using English letters on a written page. Therefore, it is incorrect for him to interpret that phrase as “play more video games today.” This is true whether it was written twenty minutes ago, or two hundred years ago.

What does this discussion mean for how we approach the Bible? If God really has spoken, then it is of the utmost importance that we try to discover what he has said because it is his voice that is authoritative and the source of life.

CONTEXT IS KING

God intended for us to understand His Word. One indicator of this is the amount of Scripture we are told to obey or listen to; understanding is a prerequisite for obedience. When it comes to reading the Bible, the reader needs to recognize that without “a context, words become meaningless . . . the most important principle of biblical interpretation is that context determines meaning.” Positively, context is the right neighborhood for us to discover the meaning of the passage. In the end, by “honoring the context of Scripture, we are saying that we would rather hear what God has to say than put words in his mouth.”

You have probably had the experience in a small-group Bible study where someone said, “Here is what this passage means to me.” That’s the wrong statement to start with. Before we can determine what implications a particular text has for our lives, we must first discover what the text means. Again, it is important for our generation to understand that the meaning of a Bible passage is determined by the author (the Holy Spirit through the prophet Jeremiah, for example), not the reader (you or me). As a reader, I no more control the meaning of a passage of Scripture than I control the meaning of my income tax statement delivered by the IRS. (Somehow, I don’t think they would be very sympathetic to my interpretation of my tax statement, which is that they owe me money, rather than vice versa.) Stating this principle of biblical interpretation succinctly, a text cannot mean what it never meant. So how do we discover what it originally meant? We need to investigate the historical and literary context, and this is where the interpretive journey begins.

Note from the Publisher: We hope that you have been edified and encouraged from this 11-day plan by Jonathan Morrow. If you have enjoyed the content and would like to read more just head on over and check out his book "Questioning The Bible". Pick up a copy at moodypublishers.com