March 18, 2024 - #mondaymoment #Bible #hermeneutics
Happy Monday, my friends! This is our third and final week considering hermeneutics. One point we often hear from churches which believe in Biblical inerrancy is that the Bible should not be interpreted; that we should take the Bible at what it says and means. Some of these churches will add an appeal to the “original languages” of the Bible, but will proceed to preach from an English translation. For all the bluster these churches and their preachers place on preaching from the text, they still operate from a hermeneutic and they still engage in interpretation.
Recently, I listened to the teenage son of one of my colleagues preach his first sermon. Like most teens and young adults given their first chance to deliver a speech or sermon, he had a lot he wanted to say. However, it was also clear that one of the pastors had trained him in the congregation’s tradition of interpretation. He lacked his usually confident, excited, and witty demeanor which is obvious even in the very few interactions I’ve had with him. This congregation clearly believed in rooting their preaching in the text of the Bible. So this young man went line-by-line commenting on each verse rather than offering a cohesive narrative. While preaching is never easy even if you have experience, I fail to understand preaching styles that use the text one is preaching on to help people understand and contextualize the very same text.
Every preacher stands in at least one tradition of interpretation. We rely on the sermons we’ve heard, the sermons we’ve read, the study we have done, our own reflections and meditations on the text, and maybe our experiences in relation to the text. No matter one’s conviction about interpretation and hermeneutics, we all interpret the Bible and we all have a hermeneutic informing that interpretation. “Sticking to the words of the text” is at best an illusion and is, at worst, grounds to abandon basic logic. This is where people begin to claim that the Bible in their language—usually English—or in a particular translation—usually the King James Version—is the only right language or version for the Bible to be rendered. The pastor of Revival Baptist Church in Orlando, FL, goes as far as to claim that he can correct problems in the Hebrew and the Greek using the King James Version.
We can approach the Bible in as many ways as we can approach the world. We can root our interpretations in what we consider to be a faithful reading and we can draw on sources far outside of the text. We can read meaning into the Bible and read meaning out of the texts. What we can’t do is try to preach or teach the text without interpreting the text.
How do you interpret the Bible? What would you call your hermeneutic?
Let us pray: God, give us the wisdom to honestly interpret and preach your word. May our words be your words. Amen.
Blessings on your weeks, my friends! Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you.
Faithfully,
Ben
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