I was wondering what I ought to write about when I stumbled upon my old unfinished series on The Parameters of Meaning. I think these parameters are quite helpful guides for interpreters, but I clean forgot about them. Well, I’m going to try to put things right! Here’s “Rule 9” with a link to the previous eight: The Parameters of Meaning Rule 8. Parameters of Meaning – Rule 9: If a literal interpretation leads you into wholesale spiritualizing or allegorizing, …
Category: Hermeneutics
Part One 4. The smoke from the pit darkens an already darkened sun. When I say “an already darkened sun” I do so because of Revelation 8:12: Then the fourth angel sounded: And a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them were darkened. A third of the day did not shine, and likewise the night. Here the sun is already greatly affected when the …
There are some Bible passages that pose peculiar challenges to interpreters. These passages confront us with revelations of weirdness. We are faced with accepting and exploring this weird side of Scripture, or else with smoothing it over, perhaps by not actually dealing with it, but instead just pretending it is obscure, and on that basis, moving on. Episodes that qualify to be on the list of weird passages would include Genesis 6:1-4 and Joshua 10:11-14, but many could be added. …
Part Three Speech-Act Theory and Biblical Interpretation On a more positive note overall is the matter of whether language is merely descriptive or whether it can be said to actually do something. This gets us into the subject of language as “speech-acts.” This view has been defined as follows: Speech-act theory is a set of pragmatically based principles that were developed at the edge of philosophy and linguistics. The major assumption is that language is not so much concerned with saying …
Part Two Ricoeur Alongside Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur (d. 2005) stands as the most important philosopher of hermeneutics in the last hundred years. His work is often to be found discussed in evangelical circles today, and for that reason we shall devote a little more space to his work. Ricoeur is concerned with how language is used not with how it is structured.[53] As human existence is communicated through language, the study of the use of language is, therefore, the study …
Part One Footnotes follow on from last time. The Hermeneutical Landscape The philosopher of religion Gregory Clark admits that, “[some] sources regularly describe the variety of hermeneutical approaches practiced today as ‘dizzying’.”[22] In closing his article Clark writes: “Hermeneutics as a discipline is as wild and woolly as it has ever been, and its future shape and even its existence are impossible to predict.”[23] Reading the “movers and shakers” in evangelical hermeneutics today is a little foreboding. It might be …
The Olivet Discourse has been a battleground for interpreters from the various schools of eschatology for aeons. Even futurist premillennial writers offer different opinions on the passage. Nothing is going to be solved for everyone here, but I do want to call attention to the way that Jesus introduces two themes and later comes back to them again. If we allow that the Lord is referring to these themes by recapitulating them in His discourse then we have a helpful …
This is a re-run of an old article. In many respects there is much ground that is mutually shared by evangelical/fundamentalist theology per se. However, consistent hermeneutics is the environment in which dispensationalism thrives. Outside of that environment it fades into nothing. In this little essay[1] I want to examine some of what is happening in the world of philosophical hermeneutics so that we can better understand the influences that are being seen in evangelical textbooks on the subject. Still more, we shall start to understand …
Part Three Block’s Challenge Recently the Old Testament scholar Daniel Block has vigorously challenged the whole Cosmic Temple thesis.[1] Even if his counter-arguments are somewhat provisional[2], and he retains certain questionable positions on some matters (e.g. the presence of a covenant in Eden[3]; violence beyond Eden[4]; Jesus replacing the Jerusalem temple[5]), I think he has banged more than a couple of nails into the coffin. Allow me to set out several of his major criticisms[6]: The depiction of Eden in …
Part Two Objections to the Cosmic Temple Motif in Scripture In Beale’s book The Temple and the Church’s Mission, both the garden of Eden and the Jerusalem temple are types of the Church, which is confusingly called the literal non-physical temple.[1] Beale’s thesis, which is fed by many ingeniously interpreted though vague allusions – mainly reliant upon reinterpreting OT texts by privileged interpretations of the NT – is that the OT stories of Adam, Abraham, and Israel recapitulate the same …