Well, so far not a lot of comments on the ole perspicuity of Scripture. But it’s been really helpful for me to go through this book again. So I’ll plug away for two more days.
Chapter Four, “Engaging the hermeneutical challenge”, looks, not surprisingly, at several hermeneutical challenges.
1. “The form of Scripture is not a dispensable shell.” Literary form and genre do matter. Letters should be read differently than poem which require a different sort of reading than history or law. (Note: Thompson prefers the word “reading” instead of “interpretation” because it is less overlain with the complexities of theorists. After all, people can read well without studying a theory behind reading.)
2. “The words of Scripture may refer but reference does not exhaust their function.” There is a big debate in literary circles about whether language is performative or declarative. That is, do words refer to things or do words do things? Clearly, the Bible sees itself as doing both. Scripture refers to actual events and truths, but it also comforts, prods, and even brings new life.
3. “Reading takes place in a context (and so does hermeneutical theorizing!).” Yes, we do read texts from a particular location and as a particular people. We are not neutral readers. But we are not incompetent either, and neither is God. Our filters can distort the message of Scripture, but they don’t so of necessity. Spiritual people can understand spiritual truths (1 Cor. 2:13).
4. “Critical methods have brought significant gains but at a cost.” We can all benefit from the advances in biblical scholarship over the past few hundred years, but our benefit will not be a spiritual one if do not take the Scripture on its own terms and listen to it as the authoritative word of God. The problem with critical methodology is that it often brings a whole host of unbelieving assumptions to the text.
5. “The misuse of Scripture in the interests of personal or corporate power is not simply hypothetical.” In other words, we’ve screwed up the Bible before and probably will again.
After accepting these five challenges and learning from them, Thompson protests against the more extreme elements inherent in them. In so doing he make three points.
First, we believe in God. If God is the author of the Scriptures, as Christians believe, then no matter how much we may give up on hearing the text rightly, the Author has not given up on being heard.
Second, the Bible is not just another text. To give but one example, as Christians we believe the Bible is inspired as no other book is and as such affords us the same Spirit to help us understand it.
Third, despite the changes in culture and language from the biblical text to our time, there are two constants that cannot be overlooked: 1) God’s character and purposes are still the same, and 2) the human need for forgiveness and a Savior are still the same. These constants anchor our interpretative vessels amidst the downward pull of the hermeneutical spiral.
Here’s the point:
