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What Does the Bible Mean for Us? Hermeneutical Questions in the Epistles

We come now to what we referred to previously as hermeneutical questions. What do these texts mean to us? This is the crux of everything, and compared with this task, exegesis is relatively easy. At least in exegesis, even if there are disagreements at particular points, most people agree as to the parameters of meaning; there are limitations of possibilities set by the historical and literary contexts. Paul, for example, cannot have meant something that he and his readers had never heard of. His meaning at least has to have been a first-century possibility.

However, no such consensus of parameters seems to exist for hermeneutics (learning to hear the meaning in the contexts of our own day). All people “do” hermeneutics, even if they know nothing about exegesis and don’t have a clue as to the meaning of these two words! It is no wonder that there are so many differences among Christians; what might be a cause for wonder is that there are not far more differences than actually exist. The reason for this is that there is, in fact, a common ground of hermeneutics among us, even if we have not always spelled it out.

You are in fact involved in hermeneutics all the time. What is it that all of us do as we read an epistle such as 1 Corinthians? Very simply, we bring our own form of common sense to the text and apply what we can to our own situation. What does not seem to apply is simply left in the first century.

Our problems — and differences — are generated by those moments where some of us think we should obey exactly what is stated and others of us are not so sure.

We'll dig deeper into hermeneutics next time.