Hermeneutics Part Five

Today we consider the final major principle in interpreting the Bible.
Scripture must be interpreted according to the genre in which it is written: Poetry should not be interpreted as prose, nor should prophecy be interpreted as prose. Each style of literary genre is to be interpreted differently, not all as the same thing. This hampers the so-called literal interpretation of Scripture. Scripture is full of allusions, allegorical remarks, metaphors and other literary devices. Many students of the Bible claim to interpret the Scriptures literally, but they cannot do this consistently. For instance, John 15:1 portrays Christ as a vine, yet few (if any) interpreters would say that Jesus meant this literally. Is the difference in the text, does Jesus clue us into the metaphor in any way. Not really. He just says "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser." Throughout the Old Testament we see God portrayed in a variety of metaphors. None of these are to be taken literally with respect to God, for God is spirit and cannot be understood as anything literal or physical. He even warned against this in the Decalogue. Anthropomorphism is a frequent literary device among ancient writings and is never meant to be taken literally. Scripture may have a divine origin, but its writers were men who had to follow the rules of grammar for their social context, just as we do today. Idioms and other literary devices are not uncommon in Scripture, and we must not impose literal constraints on passages that do not have them. How do we tell the difference? We return to the previous point and let Scripture interpret Scripture. In the Olivet discourse Christ references events of catastrophic and cosmic proportions. Today most evangelical Christians understand these events to be future because they have not happened in time. However, this presents the problem of expecting a literal fulfillment of prophecy, which cannot be justified. In the book of Isaiah, the prophet records that in God's judgment on Babylon "the stars of heaven will not give their light and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be darkened in its going forth and the moon will not cause its light to shine" (Isaiah 13:10). This passage must be understood to have been fulfilled because of later revelation in the book of Daniel which references the judgment of Babylon by God through other nations (Daniel 2:36-45). Is this passage to be interpreted literally as one would passages such as Genesis 6 where God destroyed the earth with a flood? Some have suggested that events such as these are literal to God. However, this does not really answer the question. In supposing that scripture was written for contemporary hearers, it must also be supposed that they understood what was being written or said. Otherwise the very nature of Scripture as personal revelation from God is useless. Why would God go about telling us what is real to Him if it is not real to us as well? In short, even if passages such as Isaiah 13:10 are to be taken as literal to God, though not to mankind, they must have some form of reference point to mankind and interpretational value. Therefore, are they to be taken as literal to us? The direct answer is obviously not. The heavens are still around, we can look up and see them. This discussion should inform our understanding of the Olivet Discourse. Is it necessary to restrict Christ's words to literal events which were to occur? Not at all.
If we use these principles of hermeneutics carefully and faithfully, the Scriptures will open up to us with very few problems. We will not understand everything. That is part of the hermeneutical problem. We were not alive when they wrote and have a very different perception of things. The problem of translation is that it does not always catch the idioms and figures of speech that a culture like Israel or Babylon, or even Rome would have known instantly. It is perplexing to us to understand why Christ said that the Pharisees strained out a gnat to swallow a camel, but not impossible to understand it. There are some passages of Scripture that have perplexed scholars for years. The great church father Augustine once wrote concerning the "Man of Sin" in 2 Thessalonians, that he had no idea what Paul was talking about. The best efforts have yet to come to a conclusive answer to the question yet. That does not mean that no answer exists, only that we lack the tools to find it with. All of Scripture is meant to be understood. It may not be for our generation to understand that passage yet. It was not meant for the early church to understand the doctrine of justification, it was meant for those men who suffered for the Protestant Reformation to draw on the Scriptures and the insights of godly men to set down clearly the doctrine of sola fides. This is to say that we should be mindful of our task as exegetes of Scripture. It is there to say something. The depths of Scripture are deep, but they are not inpenetrable. We can exegete a passage to learn what that has to say. We can expound a passage based on our exegesis and learn what the Scriptures have to teach us there. We can systematize the passage with other similar passages to see what God would teach us regarding a similar theme. We can systematize the entire Bible and learn God's will for humanity. But we can do none of these things exhaustively, or without the aid of the Spirit. He is the primary agent in the understanding of Scripture. It is He who, as the Westminster Confession says, is the "supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we can rest" since it is He who is "speaking in the Scripture" (WCF I.x).