A well known preacher here in Sydney has often been heard to say that evangelicals are not in the business of “interpreting” scripture. I’ve always thought this was an odd thing to say. Surely this is exactly what we are doing when we come to a passage which is hard to understand and which doesn’t present itself with immediate clarity. Surely we are “interpreting” the text when we translate from Greek and Hebrew into English. What is this preacher talking about? Is he advocating an approach where we just respond to an unaided reading of the text, with no recourse to commentaries or other aids when trying to unlock the difficult bits?
It’s helpful to realise that we can mean different things when we talk about “interpretation”. For example, “interpretation” can mean:
1. translation;
2. uncovering the meaning of a particular text when the text is from another culture;
3. attaching meaning to a text from our own context and experience, hence providing an “interpretation”.
I think it’s this last one which the preacher in question is arguing against. It’s worth considering the difference between the last two options given above.
Often those who might oppose our reading of a text will say “That’s just your interpretation!” But as an evangelical, I don’t see myself as providing an “interpretation”. Rather I’m seeking to “read” rather than “interpret”, and this “reading” uses the tools of exegesis and history to uncover the text’s original meaning from its cultural and grammatical context. This assumes that the text has an original purpose and meaning, and that this original purpose and meaning is still worth our attention. I guess in doing this we are seeking an interpretation according to definition 2 above, but I would call this “reading” rather than “interpreting.”
On the other hand, there are some approaches which seek to remove the text from its context, leaving it as an entity in itself. This text then has meaning attached to it from modern contexts. While it’s an appealing idea to see texts “released” so that they can do many weird and wonderful things, I think that too much is lost with this approach. My fear is that we end up ‘bastardising’ the text; we leave it without an origin. And by removing the text from its origin we only enslave it to our own context; we use it to tell our own story. We may as well not play games and just say what we think, avoiding the temptation to marry our opinions to a text which we have “neutralized.” This is especially important if the original context still has very real implications which are imposed upon us. Because the NT texts were born from the context of a resurrected Lord who is still ruling and claiming his rights over us today, then they are texts which cannot be “interpreted” in separation from the ongoing rule of the risen Lord Jesus, and are also texts which still have a claim on us who live under his Lordship.
So what can we say about “interpretation”? It’s true that we must “read” the text and not “interpret” it, if interpretation means reading our own stories and experiences into a passage which has been divorced from its context. But “reading” does not simply mean “reading” like we would read a novel. It means reading with an eye to the ground out of which the text was born, a ground which saw Jesus rise from the dead and establish his ongoing rule, a rule which carries the original meaning of the NT through to our current context.
I hope all that makes some sense. It is 1.59AM after all. I guess I’m trying to tie the ongoing relevance of scripture to the ongoing Lordship of Christ. Perhaps I’ll write some more on this issue one of these days, at a more thought friendly hour.
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3 comments:
interesting post marty - and good to see you back blogging again. i take your point about situating and understanding biblical texts in relation to their origins - thats really important (we could call this an historical hermenutic?).
i wonder, though, if we are kidding ourselves when suggesting we can do this kind of 'reading' in complete independence from our own context and culture. i think its too subjective a process for that - however we might strive for impartiality in our reading.
clearly, i am neither a theoretician of literature and reading, nor an historian of biblical interpreation - but i do know that the historical hermenutic itself has emerged in a particular period of human history (ie it has not always been a dominant method of 'reading' the bible - cf the more allegorical approach of the middle ages). in other words, our ideas about how to read, what constitutes reading etc are historically / geographically / culturally located. this means, i think, that we need to be humble not only about what we think the text means, but about how we come to a conclusion about its meaning - ie our method of reading.
i am not saying all methods of reading are equal, just that we need to recognise that we actually do have a particular interpretive method - and that it is culturally embedded just as our ideas about meaning are.
meredith
Thanks Marty for this interpretation aimed at saving a faithful reading of aforementioned well-known preacher!
Meredith makes a very good point. This mustn't be confused with 'anything goes' relativism (a very small number of serious scholars actually hold anything like the caricature that is often made of similar arguments - ironically, those most concerned about carefully understanding authorial intention are often the ones most guilty of misreading!).
I'd just like to add my $0.02, that reading a novel is no straightforward and interpretation-free event. Most good novels are considerably more complicated to interpret than your average Bible passage. It's just that we usually think more depends on the latter than the former.
Hey Marty, I have nothing important to say, I should be sorting through the junk in my room but instead I'm on my bed making sure its too late to do anything productive.
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