The most recent version of this post is available here.
“Every act of faithful leadership will be met with an equal and opposite act of sabotage.” — Joe Rigney
- Home
- What We’re Doing Here
- F A Q
- Anonymous Asks
- Apocrypha-lypso
- Book Reviews
- The Commentariat Speaks
- DAMWWTIM
- Flyover Country
- How Not to Crash and Burn
- Inbox
- The Language of the Debate
- Letters from the Best Man
- Mining the Minors
- On the Mount
- Quote of the Day
- Recommend-a-blog
- Semi-Random Musings
- That Wacky Old Testament
- Time and Chance
- What Does Your Proof Text Prove?
Showing posts with label Interpretation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Interpretation. Show all posts
Friday, February 12, 2016
Tuesday, February 02, 2016
Vashti as Role Model
I deal with legalese every day.
Our company has lawyers for clients, often dozens at a time. We also have templates that enable us to produce a lot of legal documentation very quickly. Sometimes the language in these templates differs from the instructions provided by our clients.
Our company has lawyers for clients, often dozens at a time. We also have templates that enable us to produce a lot of legal documentation very quickly. Sometimes the language in these templates differs from the instructions provided by our clients.
To deal with these apparent conflicts in authorial intent, the company has established a very basic principle of interpretation, and it is this: when the lawyers contradict the template, the lawyers always win. Why? Because instructions directed specifically to the current situation always trump instructions of a more general nature, which have often been written with other documents, other readers and different legal situations in view.
There is a similar principle at work in the interpretation of scripture.
There is a similar principle at work in the interpretation of scripture.
Labels:
Esther
/
Interpretation
/
Mark Driscoll
/
Vashti
Sunday, January 24, 2016
Always Misunderstood
ViralCraze’s “10 Bible Verses That Are Always Misunderstood” explains the parable of the Good Samaritan ... by
not really explaining it:
“Jesus asked the question, ‘Who is your neighbor?’ The simple answer is the one who
you choose to show mercy to.”
This is the generally accepted response, and
it’s not entirely wrong. Still, a careful reading of the passage shows it is not
quite what the Lord Jesus said.
In fact, the parable is not about
identifying our neighbor at all.
Labels:
Good Samaritan
/
Interpretation
/
Mercy
/
Parables
Saturday, December 26, 2015
Too Clever For Their Own Good
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Dinah
/
Genesis
/
Interpretation
/
Jacob
/
Shechem
Monday, December 14, 2015
You Are Being Manipulated
Mass immigration might
be the single most important political issue being discussed in North America
at the moment.
Perhaps you are among the
small minority of people who have never given much thought to the question of
what sort of people — and how many — ought to be allowed to acquire
citizenship in your home country. If so, this will probably not interest
you much.
But if, like many, you
have very definite answers to those questions in mind, and especially if you
are one of a growing number of Christians with the inclination to publicly
share your thoughts on the issue, I have a gentle suggestion for you:
Stop and think first.
There is a very good chance you are being manipulated.
Labels:
Immigration
/
Interpretation
Saturday, December 05, 2015
Below the Surface
A few thoughts for our
Christian readers that I’ve condensed (and hopefully not distorted too badly) from
R’B’s excellent series on interpreting scripture via the Jewish perspective. The
original posts may be found here, here, here and here.
Orthodox Judaism seeks
to understand the first five books of our Old Testament (for them, the Torah) on four levels. These
principles may also be applied to the rest of the scriptures.
Having read about schools
of thought like Kabbalah, which
originated in Judaism, I feared rabbinical
exegesis might be a bit wacky and mystical. For the most part that does not appear
to be the case.
Labels:
Hebrew
/
Interpretation
/
Judaism
/
Scripture
Sunday, November 29, 2015
Recommend-a-blog (15)
Wikipedia calls him “an important leader in early Christianity”; important, I guess, in the sense that his theology got him denounced by the
church fathers of his day. Often described as a Gnostic, he is said to have
rejected the deity described in the Hebrew scriptures and to have affirmed
instead that the true God was the “Father” referred to by the Lord Jesus.
In this he
foreshadowed many today who have difficulty reconciling the God of the Old
Testament with the God of the New.
Labels:
Interpretation
/
Marcion
/
Midrash
/
Recommend-a-blog
Saturday, October 31, 2015
Cage Match: Zechariah 14 vs Matthew Henry
Matthew Henry’s commentary on the Bible has
gained a reputation as the “best and most widely used work of its kind”. I have its three bulky volumes on my own bookshelf and have found it surprisingly
useful at times given its age and the limited number of translations and study
tools available when it was written in the early decades of the 18th century. Philip
Doddridge said, “Henry is, perhaps, the only commentator … that deserves
to be entirely and attentively read through”. Evangelist George Whitfield is
said to have read Henry’s commentary daily with his devotions.
So this is not me having another “Rachel
Held Evans” moment. Critiquing the opinions of a social justice wannabe looking
to amp up pageviews, book sales and personal appearance invitations is not
in the same league as tackling a respected and serious writer whose work has
been influential for almost three centuries.
That said, there here is no better way to
highlight the absurdities inherent in some methods of interpretation — even
well accepted and venerable methods — than to simply lay a commentary
side-by-side with the word of God.
Labels:
Interpretation
/
Literalism
/
Matthew Henry
/
Prophecy
/
Zechariah
Thursday, September 24, 2015
Inbox: Things That Don’t Hold Together
My previous post addressed
a question raised by Immanuel Can about the use of the term “bride” in
scripture as a metaphor for the Church. Examining the subject raised a
number of issues best explained in this Infogalactic blurb:
“The Bride of Christ or bride, the Lamb’s wife is a term
used in reference to a group of related verses in the Bible — in the
Gospels, Revelation, the Epistles and related verses in the Old Testament.
Sometimes the Bride is implied through calling Jesus a Bridegroom. For
over fifteen hundred years the Church was identified as the bride
betrothed to Christ. However, there are instances where the interpretation of
the usage of bride varies from Church to Church. The majority believe it always
refers to the Church.”
Another thing we call “groups of related
verses” is systematic theology.
Labels:
Bride of the Lamb
/
Inbox
/
Interpretation
/
Supersessionism
Saturday, August 08, 2015
When the Holy Spirit is Silent
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Acts
/
Barnabas
/
Interpretation
/
John Mark
/
Paul
Saturday, July 25, 2015
Crazy Uncle
Normally, I’d leave
something like this alone. It is, after all, the Huffington
Post, and anything they have to say on the subject of Christianity is almost
guaranteed to be dismissive, frivolous and poorly informed.
But hey, it provides a
useful lead-in to something I’ve been thinking about for a while.
In an article entitled “3 Reasons Why
Apostle Paul Is the Crazy Uncle No One Wants to Talk About”, Pete Enns argues that “Paul’s handling of his Bible makes him look like the crazy uncle
you make excuses for or avoid entirely”.
Labels:
Apostle Paul
/
Inspiration
/
Interpretation
/
Scripture
Sunday, July 19, 2015
Failure to Choose is a Choice Too
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Interpretation
/
Luke
/
Scripture
Sunday, April 19, 2015
The “Cultural” Argument
What do we mean when we say a particular passage of
scripture is “culturally limited”?
It’s a pretty common argument these days, used to dismiss
everything from apostolic teaching about the respective roles of men and women
at home and in church to New Testament instructions about sexual purity.
The assertion at its core is that any particular command,
principle or example being debated was intended only to address a particular
local situation for a limited period of time, not as a directive for the church
throughout its history.
But the cultural argument is a powder keg. We need to be careful
how we handle it.
Labels:
Culture
/
Interpretation
/
Scripture
Wednesday, April 08, 2015
It’s Not a Bug …
How many times have you made an ironic remark that sailed
right over someone’s head, said something sarcastic that much to your surprise
was taken literally, or made a joke that went over like a lead balloon?
You said one thing. A different interpretation was taken.
In the course of looking into the history of universalist
thought, I came across this statement on one of the relevant Wikipedia pages: “The Bible itself has a variety of verses that appear to be
contradictory if not given additional reader interpretation.”
That’s worth thinking about for a moment, isn’t it.
Labels:
Interpretation
/
Scripture
Saturday, November 01, 2014
Inbox: The Sin of Sodom
In response to Thursday’s post on homosexuality, a reader
writes:
Q: “Was [Matthew]
Vines referring to Ezek. 16:49 which lists Sodom’s sin as being made up of a
combination of pride, gluttony, indifference and unwillingness to share one’s
bread (inhospitable?) but notably, no mention of aberrant sexual conduct? How
would you answer?”
A: Well, let’s
look at what Ezekiel says, for starters:
“Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.”
Labels:
Ezekiel
/
Genesis
/
Homosexuality
/
Inbox
/
Interpretation
/
Sodom
Thursday, August 07, 2014
Too Hot to Handle: The Christian View of Premarital Sex [Part 2]
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Interpretation
/
Premarital Sex
/
Too Hot to Handle
Wednesday, August 06, 2014
Too Hot to Handle: The Christian View of Premarital Sex [Part 1]
The most current version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Interpretation
/
Premarital Sex
/
Sexuality
/
Too Hot to Handle
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Universalism = InterpretationFail
It is awfully useful to observe how and where people go
wrong in interpreting scripture.
If, say, a Universalist misappropriates a particular text to
serve his cause, you can bet Calvinists, Amillennialists, Prosperity Gospel
folks or whoever will use a similar bag of tricks to get
where they want to go too.
In perusing Universalist websites for a previous post, I
noticed many of them have this is common: they are fond of pointing to the word
“all”, as though its employment in any context decisively proves their point. I
suppose this preoccupation is easily understood, given the nature of their
particular doctrinal aberration.
How can we go about making Scripture say whatever we’d like
it to?
Labels:
Context
/
Interpretation
/
Universalism
Saturday, February 08, 2014
Leave Scripture Out of It
A more current version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Apostle Paul
/
Homosexuality
/
Interpretation
/
Scripture
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Inbox: Marital Breakdown
In response to this post Tertius and Susan T. Foh seem to be in agreement. Susan’s position on Genesis 3:16 was advanced by Ted Hildebrandt in the Westminster Theological Journal. Tertius says:
I’m with Ted’s explanation; at the least there seems to be nothing in the immediate context to forbid it. Secondly, 1 Cor. 14:34-37 reinforce it, as does 1 Tim. 2:12. Thirdly, having spent some 50 or more years marriage counselling I have observed that much marital breakdown occurs when either a man fails to fulfil his role as a protector and provider or a woman competes with his leadership. She may do this by asserting her ‘rights’ or manipulating her husband into doing what she wants.
To which I can only add three more passages in the New Testament that also reinforce this interpretation, which are the subject of this coming Monday’s Bible Study 06.
Labels:
Bible Study
/
Interpretation
/
Men's Role
/
Submission
/
Women's Role
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Bible Study 05 — Comparison [Part 5]
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Bible Study
/
Genesis
/
Interpretation
Monday, January 13, 2014
“A Matter of Interpretation”
The existence of various denominations and sects within
Christianity has led many to conclude that there must be all sorts of different
ways to interpret the Bible. Since most Christian churches say that the Bible
is the Word of God, observers assume that every practice or belief of a
Christian church must be based on a particular interpretation of the Bible. If
another group has a different practice or belief, that must be because they
have a different interpretation. This produces the conviction in people’s minds
that the Bible does not speak clearly, and that one person’s interpretation of
it is just as good as anyone else’s. But is this true?
If everybody was really going to have any number of
different ideas about what the Bible was saying, there would be no point in
writing the Bible at all. The reason authors write books is because they
believe that they can expound their ideas clearly and have other people
understand and perhaps accept those ideas. When people read books, it shows
that they believe they will be able to understand the ideas which the author
wanted to express. We read newspaper stories and magazine articles and books of
philosophy in the belief that the clear communication of ideas is possible. We
may disagree with what we read, but that is not the same as having a “different
interpretation” of what the author was saying.
Labels:
Bible Study
/
Interpretation
Subscribe to:
Posts
(
Atom
)