Basic Hermeneutics

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Let's take out your handouts that I gave you.
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The title of tonight's lesson is Getting the Most Out of Your Bible Reading in 2015.
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We have been given a Bible reading plan.
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Of course, there are several different Bible reading plans, but the one that I gave you, I like because it breaks each day up.
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You read the epistles one day, you read the law another day, you read from the history books one day, the poetry books another day, the prophetic books, and the Gospels.
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And so you get this, sort of get an opportunity.
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And I've enjoyed it.
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I started last week, and I've just enjoyed being able to sort of invest a different day in a different type of study.
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And it's been a very enjoyable study for me so far.
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But my goal tonight, since we're seeking to encourage people to read through the Bible, is to give you tools to help you study and read with more confidence that you understand what it is that you're reading.
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Let me read the introduction tonight.
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It says, As we look forward to a new year of study, many of us are planning to read through the whole Bible together.
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Others may not plan to read through the whole Bible, but instead are planning to focus more intently on certain portions, like the New Testament or the books of Moses.
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Whatever your personal plan, reading Scripture is one of the most valuable things you can do to grow in your faith.
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As we are reading Scripture, we are also interpreting its meaning.
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To help you get the most out of your reading, we're going to go over the basics of biblical interpretation.
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As John MacArthur says, the meaning of Scripture is the Scripture.
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As we read the Scripture, our goal is to understand the meaning of what we read.
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So, with that in mind, tonight we're going to look at three things.
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We're going to look at an introduction to Bible interpretation.
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We're going to look at the principles of interpretation.
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And then we're going to look at improper methods of interpretation.
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And, beloved, there are many of those.
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So, let's begin with an introduction to interpretation.
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The science of biblical interpretation is called hermeneutics.
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We're going to get to that word, yes.
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But the science of biblical interpretation is called hermeneutics.
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Hermeneutics is derived from the Greek word hermeneuo, which is translated to interpret.
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It is sometimes connected with the mythical Hermes, who was the messenger of the gods.
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So, that's likely one of the places that it came from as far as the root of the word.
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It is summarized for us in 2 Timothy 2.15.
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And this is going to be sort of our text for the evening that's going to lead us to our focus.
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So, I encourage you to open your Bibles to 2 Timothy 2.15.
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When I was in seminary, this particular verse was engraved on a brass plaque, and it was over the door of the seminary from the inside, so that every time you left the seminary, you read this engraved statement.
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In 2 Timothy 2.15, I'm sorry, let me turn.
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I'm in 1 Timothy, that's not the right verse.
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2 Timothy 2.15 tells us, Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
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In the King James Version, it says, Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
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I just remember it that way because that's the way it was engraved on the plaque at school.
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And we always, because the word study is found in the King James.
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Study to show thyself approved.
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And of course, the more modern vernacular is do your best.
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Do everything you can to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that need not be ashamed.
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And how do you do that? By rightly dividing or rightly handling the word of God.
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This book is not just a textbook.
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This book is not just a history book or a book of stories or poetry.
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This book is the word of God.
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And when we take to the reading of it, it's something that we need to place above other activities of life.
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We need to focus and be intentional in how we handle this book.
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Understanding what it is.
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Now, the science of biblical interpretation.
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This is your next blank.
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The science of biblical interpretation involves the establishment and recognition of principles which govern the practice of exegesis.
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Exegesis.
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This is the study of the text of Scripture in order to bring out the meaning that is there.
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This is the, in opposition to eisegesis, sometimes called eisegesis depending on how you pronounce it.
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But the opposite of exegesis is eisegesis, which means to read into something.
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The prefix ex- means to come out.
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When you look at the sign on the wall, it says exit.
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That means that's the going out.
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So when you exegete, you're taking out of the text what's there.
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Eisegesis means into.
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So it means that you're reading something into the text that is not there.
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So our goal is to take out of the text what is there, not to put into the text something that is not there.
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Everybody understand? People do this a lot.
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People read their own traditions into the text.
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They read their own desires into a text.
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They read their own personal sensibilities or wants and wishes into the text.
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And that is dangerous.
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So our goal in hermeneutics is proper biblical eisegesis, to read and take from the text what is there.
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Yes, sir? Yes, when we talk about eisegesis, turn everybody in your Bible to John 1.18.
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This is a good example.
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When it's speaking of the Father and Christ, it says, no one has ever seen God, the only God who is at the Father's side.
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And sometimes that's translated, I think, as only begotten Son, depending on the translation you're looking at.
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But it's speaking, of course, of Christ.
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It says, no one has seen the Father, essentially, but the Son who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known.
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The phrase there, made Him known, is the Greek where we get the word eisegesis.
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It literally means that Christ explains or exposes or demonstrates, shows who the Father is.
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As Jesus says, if you've seen Me, you've seen the Father.
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You know what God is like if you know what Jesus is like.
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That's one of the things that I think sometimes we forget.
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People say, I wonder what God is like.
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Well, God is like Jesus.
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You know, it's something hard for us to imagine sometimes, but Jesus is God in the flesh.
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He's the second person of the Trinity.
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He is God the Son.
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And so when we want to know what the Father is like, we look at the Son.
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He exegetes the Father to us.
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Okay, so there we see it, and we see it in a biblical passage.
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So that's what we're trying to do.
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When you're reading the Bible, some people say, well, I'm just reading through the Bible.
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Yes, you're just reading through the Bible, but you are always interpreting what you're reading.
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You're always feeding on what you're reading, and you're coming to an understanding of something.
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So the goal is to come to a right understanding.
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The goal is to come to a proper understanding, because it's no good if you're reading something, and you're just kind of going through it just to fill a certain quota.
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That's the one danger in reading through the Bible in a year, is that we simply just read through just to get through.
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But we shouldn't try to do that.
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And that's another reason why I like this particular reading plan, because there's only two days in the week where there's a big bulk of reading.
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Tuesdays and Fridays, you have a big bulk of reading, but the rest of the week, it's really only one or two chapters.
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And you can spend more time investing in one or two chapters than you can in five or six chapters.
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So I like that.
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I like the fact that we only look at two verses of Psalms, or we only look at two verses from the Epistles, because we get to chew and gnaw on that a little longer, and let it mull around in our minds a little bit longer as we deal with our interpretation of the text.
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So let's look at the principles for interpretation.
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We are going to look not at all principles, but at the most important ones.
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The first one, letter A, is the principle of literal interpretation.
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The principle of literal interpretation.
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Now, literal simply means this, that we read the text in accord with its normal and plain meaning.
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This does not mean that we are crass in our literalism.
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For instance, the Bible talks about God undergirding us with His wings, or holding us up on His wings.
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Does that mean God has feathers? I know that sounds ridiculous, but that's crass literalism.
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Someone who says, Jesus says, I am the door.
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Does that mean He has rusty hindus, and that He's put together with nails and wood? No.
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And that's why I say, when we talk about literal, what we mean is that we are seeking to use the rules of grammar in accord with the literary genre that the statement is coming to us.
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We read poetry different than we read didactic literature.
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We read apocalyptic literature different than we read historical literature.
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Narrative is different than didactic.
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And so we have to understand that the Bible comes to us in a plethora of different types of genres of literature.
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When I read the Psalms, I understand that I am reading the Psalms as poetry.
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When I read the book of Genesis, I understand that I'm reading historical narrative.
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When I read certain books of the Bible that are apocalyptic, Isaiah, Jeremiah, these books which are the prophetic books of the Old Testament, they read much different than Romans, which is a didactic theology of the Apostle Paul given to the church at Rome.
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So understanding that literal does not mean crass literalism.
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What it means is that I read it according to the standard common sense understanding of what this text would mean.
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Now, moving on to number two, letter B.
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We've looked at literal interpretation.
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Number two, or letter B, is the principle of contextual interpretation.
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Contextual interpretation.
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No verse should be interpreted in isolation from its context.
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In fact, you've all heard me say this and I'll say it again because it's the truth.
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When you're talking about Bible interpretation, there are three rules.
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Rule number one is context.
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Rule number two is context.
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And rule number three, big surprise, is context.
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It's context, context, context.
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So when we talk about the principle of contextual interpretation, we're talking about the immediate context and the larger context which have to be examined.
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We're looking at the setting of the verse, the surrounding verses and their subject matter, the historical or social setting in which the event happened, and how the words were used at that particular time.
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All of those things are involved in the context.
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Do we understand that the Apostle Paul lived in a different context than did David? That his context was much different.
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He lived post-crossed.
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That's the first thing.
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He lived after Christ.
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So that means that when we interpret Paul, we're interpreting Paul after the cross.
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We're also interpreting Paul in the time of the establishment of the new covenant church versus David who lived under the old covenant law of Moses.
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And when we interpret Abraham, we're interpreting someone who lived prior to the old covenant law of Moses.
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He lived prior to the giving of the Mosaic law.
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I remember years ago I had a guy ask me, and I don't say that this man was a dumb person.
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He was not a dumb person.
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But he said, you know, did Moses and Jesus ever meet? And all that meant was he didn't understand the historical timeline of the Bible.
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There are centuries that separate those two individuals and thus they live in different contextual situations and he didn't know that.
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And like I said, I don't disparage him.
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He just wasn't a Bible student.
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I don't even think he was a Christian.
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But the reality is that's one of the things that we need to understand as we're reading is that each book has its own context and each passage has a context within the book.
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Okay? Number, letter C.
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I keep saying number.
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I don't number these.
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I letter them.
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Letter C is the principle of clarity.
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Clarity.
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This one is very important.
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Difficult and apparently ambiguous verses should always be understood in the light of the verses that are perfectly clear.
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Let me say it again.
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The verses that are difficult to understand should always be interpreted in light of the passages which are not difficult to understand.
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We call this the analogy of Scripture.
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Latin is, I think, Analogium Scriptorum or something to that effect.
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It's the analogy of Scripture.
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Compare the Bible with the Bible.
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The best interpreter of Scripture is itself.
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So, if I come to a passage which is difficult to understand and it's talking about a subject and so I say, this is a difficult thing to understand and yet there's another Bible passage that is very clear on this subject I go to the clear passage first and I say, well, this is no doubt what this is saying so I interpret the difficult in light of the easy.
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For instance, last Sunday I preached on the verse, Acts 2, 38 Repent and be baptized, every one of you, for the forgiveness of sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
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And I said the controversial section of that is the word for because the word for can mean in order to it can also mean because of so if you go back and read it Repent and be baptized in order to the forgiveness of sins which is how a person would read it if they were trying to argue that baptism causes the forgiveness of sins but now go back and read it the other way Repent and be baptized because of the forgiveness of sins Now you say, well, which one is right? Well, if a person argues that baptism is in order to the forgiveness of sins or causes the forgiveness of sins then they have created a work which causes the forgiveness of sins So what do I do? I go to Ephesians chapter 2 I look at Ephesians 2, 8 and it says, for by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourself it is the gift of God not of works lest anyone should boast So I have a passage which is very clear it says that salvation is not of works and thus I can go back to Acts 2, 38 and I can interpret it repent and be baptized because of the forgiveness of sins being confident that that's what it means because I've compared it to a much clearer and less ambiguous passage of scripture and I've allowed scripture to interpret itself Make sense? That's what we mean when we say the principle of clarity You could put beside that You could put the analogy of scripture because that's what we're talking about the analogy of scripture comparing scripture with itself The next one is the principle of the grammatical historical method the grammatical historical method Now, let's just very quickly we know what these mean What's grammar? Grammar is understanding how words work together and how they function together syntax, definition, language things like that lexical understanding of words and what is historical? meaning the historical way in which certain words were used We talked about this in earlier class I teach the young people earlier on Wednesday we were finishing up our Greek course and we talked about words that we use in Old English that we no longer use anymore like the word ye That was an Old English way of saying you or you all or if you're from the South y'all you know So, we don't use that word anymore to express the plural you you is now plural and singular So, when we go back into the study of the New Testament or the Old Testament we want to see the grammar that's being used and how was that grammar used in accordance with the historical setting I hear people say all the time they'll read anachronistically into a word they'll say well this word is x and x means this and I'll say but wait that's not what it meant to them that word means that to us for instance I'm gonna the Greek word dunamis means power well the gospel is the power of God and the salvation for all who believe to the Jew first and also to the Greek right Romans chapter 1 the word dunamis would later be used for dynamite okay that's where the term dynamite comes from the Greek word dunamis so you'll hear some pastors who will say Paul was saying that the gospel is the dynamite well no that's anachronism there was no such thing as dynamite in the first century is it powerful? yes can the gospel be like dynamite? yes but to say that that's the meaning Paul had in mind is not correct because that's anachronism that's reading something back into it that Paul would not have any idea about so we have to be careful is it powerful? yes am I saying that they're 100% wrong? no I'm saying that that's that's an exaggeration of the use of language yes dynamite comes from dunamis but that's not how we ought to understand the language because we're reading something back into it that is a later construction make sense? so when we talk about the grammatical historical method what we're saying is that we need to understand a historical statement in accordance with its grammar and history the common here's something I wrote I want to mention this the common sense for the author may not be the common sense for us because we don't live in 1st century Palestine we don't live in 5th century BC Israel you know we don't live in these places or these times so a lot of times people say well that's the common sense meaning for you it may be but that doesn't mean it's the common sense meaning for Paul and that's always the goal it's not what does it mean to me it's what did it mean to Paul what did it mean to his hearers because that's how you come to a right understanding ok the next one is the principle of the singularity of meaning singularity of meaning every verse in the Bible only has one meaning now it could have 5,000 applications but it only has one meaning and that's an important thing that people mess up because they try to apply all these other meanings to the text like for instance Jesus went up to Jerusalem well what that means is that Jerusalem is a representation of heaven and we're all supposed to be following Jesus up to Jerusalem because heaven is up and up is good and so we make this big to do about the fact that Jesus was going up to Jerusalem now I will say this biblically speaking Jerusalem is always considered up and anywhere you go from there is always considered down because Jerusalem was considered a high point and a high place and it was a it was spiritually a high place so it's not incorrect to say that every time you see them going to Jerusalem they're always going up but the point is they make a meaning out of something that's unintended and it's dangerous to do that especially with these guys how many of you have seen you're watching TV late at night and you see the guys with the Bible code and now they're trying to sell you the Bible code book and how they'll tell you everything has these secondary meanings and these tertiary meanings and you just need to buy our book and you'll learn all about what the Bible really has to say because there's these meanings that underlie the real the meaning that you think you know but you don't really know because there's a deeper meaning you see the one correct interpretation is always the one that mirrors the intent of the author and he had a singular intent in writing the author being the Holy Spirit and the human author being the writer himself singularity of meaning letter F the principle of accommodation the principle of accommodation what do I mean by that? well the Bible is to be interpreted always in view of the fact that it is an accommodation of divine truths to human minds God the infinite is communicating with man who is finite and the truths of God make contact with the human mind at a common point the Bible to make God knowable we must be careful then not to push accommodating language about God and His nature to literal extremes God does not have feathers and wings we've already addressed that one that one's silly nor does He have arms or hands in the sense that we do and you say well nobody believes that well the Mormons do the Mormons believe that God is a man and that He lived on another planet He was born as a man that He grew up as a man that He became a God through His fidelity to Mormon teachings and that He lives on a planet which encircles a star named Kolob and that from His elevation to Godhood He gave birth to all these spirit children and then He came to earth physically impregnated the Virgin Mary so that she would have Jesus who was His spirit son this is what they believe so when you say nobody believes God has arms and hands well yeah they do yes they do there are people who do believe that through the scripture God accommodates our humanness by explaining Himself in ways that we can understand because there is not a way for us to understand the infinite because we are finite and I'll use that as an explanation do you realize that the only way that we can describe infinity is by using finite as the explanation we say what is infinity? not finite that's all we can do we can't really explain what it is we just know what it's not and when we start talking about God there are certain things about God that are difficult for us to understand and so God condescends and He uses the language of accommodation He uses the language of anthropomorphism anthropomorphism is simply to use the anthropos for man to use man-like qualities to describe God His hands, His eyes, His feet His hinder parts as He said to Moses I will pass by and you'll see my hinder parts but the idea is there is this accommodating language so that we can have some idea of this God of whom we are speaking because we are finite we are creatures He is the creator we are finite He is infinite all of these things are difficult for us so God condescends to us He talks about God repenting we know God is the God of the universe who does not change His mind and He says He never changes His mind the scripture tells us but yet the Bible does talk about times wherein God repents how do we analogize those two passages when we understand that this is God from our perspective He was going to do one thing and then He did another and from our perspective it's like He changed but from the mind of the finite God He's never changed at all because He knew from the moment of creation what He was going to do and so we have to understand that this is an accommodating type of language make sense? can I move on? yes that's what I was talking about where He said He repented of having made man or that He regretted or even the newer versions which I don't agree say He was sorry that yes we have to understand that and again we look at the text and we compare that which is difficult to understand with that with what is not difficult to understand and we see the very clear passage in scripture that says God is not like a man who changes His mind nor is He the son of man that He would change His mind so we see God from our perspective doing one thing and then doing another and we say oh it's like He made a change and there's language that seems to indicate a change but we know that ultimately when we understand God and His perfection that God doesn't and cannot change and here's the quick analogy that I like to give people that helps make this very simple is God a perfect being? does scripture describe God as perfect? I'm asking you can answer yes if God is perfect and He is described to us in scripture as being perfect if He were to change for the better that means He wasn't perfect to begin with if He would change for the worse that means He ceases to be perfect and if He were to make a linear change neither for the good or for the bad it would still indicate a need for a change and would indicate that He wasn't perfect so when we say God is perfect we are also saying God is immutable immutability means He does not actually change from our perspective there are things that seem like changes and even descriptions of Himself as if He changes but from the perspective of God there is no change and that's sort of the where we talk about accommodating language we can't understand a being that never changes we can't understand that so God describes Himself in such a way that we can better relate to Him does it sadden Him that we sin? yes does it grieve the Spirit of God that we sin? the Bible says so but He knew we were going to and it is a part of His plan in bringing about His redemption He has a plan of redemption that He began from the beginning began from the beginning that's kind of redundant He has a plan of redemption that He started and He is seeing through all the way to the end this is why He can talk about the cross as a past tense event that took place before the foundation of the world He says that Christ is crucified from the foundation of the world well no, Christ was crucified 2,000 years ago there were 5,000 years of history before Christ how can we say Christ is crucified from the foundation of the world because in the mind of God the infinite mind of God these things are past tense He talks about us in Ephesians 2 being seated in heavenly places with Christ but we're not we're here but in God's perspective it's done the deal is over He doesn't He's not bound by time and for Him this is why when you start dealing with predestination you start getting into the mind of God you start getting into the mind of Him who is not bound by past, present, and future God is not bound by time at all and that's something that we cannot really wrap our minds around that's where I would say that all of those things fall into the category of accommodation of language Alright Letter G The Principle of Divine Illumination The Principle of Divine Illumination You might want to write beside it John 14, 26 Jesus tells us that He will be taken away and when He goes He will send us another Comforter and what does the text say? It says the Comforter will teach you all things ultimately any believer who has the Holy Spirit within him or her need to call on the Holy Spirit when studying Scripture to give the Divine Illumination and here's the way I've experienced it in my own life you'll read a text you won't understand it you'll read a text four or five times and not understand it you will pray and God will illuminate your mind to a text may not happen that day may not happen that year but there will come a time when God opens up your eyes and the scales will fall off and you'll understand better than you did before and most of us who have done Bible study for a long period of time have experienced this multiple times where the Holy Spirit will bring illumination now there needs to be a caveat made illumination is not revelation we talk about revelation we're talking about God speaking directly to an individual through the process of Divine Revelation and that's what we believe God did with the Prophets it's what we believe God did with the Apostles it's how we believe we got the Scripture we call the Scripture Revelation God's we talk about the Book of Revelation but the whole Bible is the Revelation of God but we would argue and contest that God no longer is giving Revelation that the Revelation concluded at the end of the Apostolic Age with the last Apostle who was John and that now we receive illumination or the Spirit's guidance in understanding what He has revealed rather than revealing more things He is illuminating us or lightening us to what He has already given for instance you'll hear people say well God told me and they'll address it as if they're a Prophet this happens every year about this time somebody will come out a Pastor or a Prophet or a Prophetess or Apostle or Apostles if there are such a thing they'll come out and they'll say well God told me that there was one that was on this last past week I saw somebody on Facebook said God had given them the Word for 2015 the Word was expanse last year's Word was intense or something and the Word before that every year God gives this person they come out on their little stage and they say the Word this year is blah you know what the Word is never? it's never repent it's never you're a sinner it's always expanse intense awesome I'm going to talk about this Sunday about how we've we've gotten away from the ordinary means of grace and everything now has to be so out of sight everything has to be so crazy and extreme we can't just have the Word and the sacraments and the prayers anymore and the fellowship of the saints it has to be a show it has to be Grinchmas and we're having a stage lighting effect with dancers and stage managers you've got to have all this stuff because the Word and sacrament and prayers are not enough not anymore see that's where we've come but the reality is getting back to the lesson the principle of divine illumination is simply this that when we go to the Scripture we need to pray before going in pray when coming out and pray while we're studying this is God speaking to us through His Word and if you want to know what the author intended ask the author himself simple enough you go there now that does not and we're going to get to this in a minute with improper methods that doesn't give us the right to twist the Scripture because there are some people who say well God told me that John 1 1 doesn't mean Jesus was divine well no he didn't because that's what the text says there are rules of grammar and all that other stuff that also apply and you're twisting it when you say God told me again that's the whole revelation versus illumination problem alright let's move on to the improper methods and I don't have a clock what time is it? okay got a few minutes let's look at the improper methods of interpretation number one allegorical interpretation allegorical let me I'll write them over here allegorical interpretation the allegorical school teaches that beneath each verse of Scripture beneath the obvious meaning is the real quote unquote meaning of the passage this is believing that the hidden message in the sentence or statement is the symbolic spiritual message and we just have to find out what the allegory is the best one I've ever huh? yeah you gotta get it it's the Bible code well the best allegorical interpretation I ever heard best worst best of the worst I don't wanna say it's best as if it's good the best of the worst was by a man a man by the name of John Dominic Crossan John Dominic Crossan is one of the leaders in the Jesus Seminar that is a group of liberal scholars who have come together and have totally tore the Bible to shreds he's very influential in the in the liberal protestant churches he actually teaches in the Disciples of Christ Church I got a magazine from the Disciples of Christ when we were still when the church was going through transition we still had those ties and I remember turning the book over to the back and it said have John Dominic Crossan come to your church and I was like no but here's one of the things he said he said everything about Jesus' life on well he didn't say everything he said most everything we know about Jesus is a parable so Jesus didn't really feed the 5,000 what Jesus did was he convinced the ones who had food to share it with the ones who didn't have food and so what we see is not a miracle of Christ taking five loaves and two fish and making more what we see is the miracle of socialism is that if those who have will take care of those who have not then the world will be a better place and if it goes through the hands of the disciples that's the biggest blessing because that's how the transfer came it came from those who had through the hands of the disciples into the hands of those who didn't and that's what the church needs to be about it needs to be about taking from those who are wealthy and giving to those who are poor and you can see how somebody who is not wanting to believe in the miraculous hears that and they go yay yippee that's a great way to interpret it because I don't have to interpret it as a miracle I can interpret it simply as an allegory yes oh absolutely he has he really well I don't know him and John shall be small or close so I sometimes confuse the two so I don't want to make this certain but one of them would even argue they're not even certain that God exists but yet they consider themselves ministers yes and it's so so dangerous now the method of allegorical interpretation was rejected by the reformers Luther called it a scourge Calvin called it satanic those holding to the principles of the reformation generally regard this method of interpretation as undermining the power and impact of the literal word now that is not to say that the reformers rejected all allegories they argued that instead allegorical or symbolic passages are those that come to us in books that lend themselves to that genre of literature there are allegories that are used in scripture there are parables Jesus spoke in many parables I get people mad sometimes when I say I don't think there was a good Samaritan Jesus didn't say there was he told a story of the good Samaritan it doesn't mean that there was a literal guy who did those things it was a story it doesn't come to us in the language of a historical narrative it comes to us in the language of a parable yet I do believe in Luke 16 that Lazarus and the rich man were real people that really did go that the rich man went to hell because Jesus names Lazarus as an individual and that's the only time in any of Jesus' stories that anyone gets a name which makes me think that that's a person that Jesus is talking about not a parable so again how do I make that distinction I have a reason why I'm seeing one as one and one as the other and neither one of them would change how I would understand whether or not I see it as a parable or not such as that of the Good Samaritan because the story of the Good Samaritan and I do this I do a much longer hermeneutics course this is very condensed but in the longer hermeneutics course I teach how to understand the difference between something that would come to us as an allegory versus something that comes to us as a historical narrative but one of the biggest things that we see in historical narrative is you never see in allegories genealogies people argue about Adam and Eve whether or not they were real people there's a genealogy given in Genesis from Adam all the way down the line you don't give a genealogy of a myth or a parable or an allegory so that's one of the ways that we can use to argue at least that the Bible is teaching that these were real people because it gives us a legitimate genealogy Jesus Christ has a legitimate genealogy he has two one in Matthew one in Luke one coming from his father and one coming from his mother we have two genealogies telling Jesus was a person so all that to be said allegorical interpretation can be and is quite dangerous the second one is devotional interpretation devotional interpretation the devotional school emphasizes the edifying aspects of the scriptures and their interpretation with the goal of developing one's own spiritual life this method often advocates the reading of the scriptures as a means of obtaining some type of an emotional and even mystical experience the Bible is said to be useful for devotion and prayer but need not be studied there is an over emphasis on personal application often to the neglect of the standard rules of interpretation here's how it goes what does it mean to you? what does it mean to me? I read the text it doesn't matter what it meant to Paul or what it meant to John or James it matters what it means to me let me tell you something you buy devotional books read through they apply all this stuff to us it wasn't meant to be applied to me at least in the sense that the way they're applying it there's all kinds of passages like that that people make the application to me specifically on a specific thing that did not intend to be applied there's one I don't want to burst anybody's bubble because this is one I better not I have to there's a passage in early Jeremiah where it talks about God choosing him from the womb to do a certain thing now is it true that we're chosen from the womb for salvation? is it true that God knows us from the womb? Psalm 139 tells us specifically but they apply that specific passage to tell people God's appointed you to something and he's got some kind of appointment and they tear it out of the context of Jeremiah and they make personal application without first understanding the immediate application which was the application which was being made to Jeremiah I think that's dangerous and that's what's often done with scripture yes go ahead everybody stops right there for like I mean that's huge everybody I know do you think that's bad? I don't think that's necessarily bad because I think that I would I would prefer to use Psalm 139 because it's more general but I think what happens especially in the in the more health and wealth style there becomes this sort of everything in the text is about me and they don't understand the original intent of Jeremiah's position that God had called him and appointed him as a prophet to the nations and how that passage was if you can first understand the the proper application or proper interpretation then you can make a proper application but they skip over the interpretation go right to application and that's where it becomes dangerous that's why I said that one is kind of difficult because yes we could make an application out to a general application but there are a lot of passages where you can't but they still do they still do and so that's why I said I hesitate to use that one because I can see the merits of it especially in the abortion situation using that one but there are many many others I just don't have any come into mind at the moment that people use devotional interpretation is again there's an over emphasis on personal application without a right understanding of the text all texts ultimately can be applied but they first have to be understood and if you bypass the understanding and go right to application that's a problem and that's what devotions often do devotional interpretation number three liberal interpretation now we've already talked a little bit about Mr.