Recently my church ran a short study on how to interpret the Bible, a three-session series based on the first 9 General Principles of Interpretation from Walter A. Henrichsen's book, A Layman's Guide to Interpreting the Bible. I found these short sessions very helpful, and appreciated how they were so simply and straightforwardly laid out; it didn't make you feel like you were masquerading as a theological student! To be honest, I never gave much thought on how to interpret the Bible, preferring to focus on those more straightforward passages, so yes, it was about time. Since we all don't have the time to read as many books as we'd like to, I thought I'd summarize those 9 principles for your benefit. You're welcome. RULE ONE: Work from the assumption that the Bible is authoritative. Henrichsen identifies 3 forms of authority that every Christian "consciously or unconsciously" relies on: Tradition, Reason, and the Scriptures. According to the Reformed belief, the Scriptures should always come first, based on its authority as the Word of God, though that doesn't exclude the validity of the other two forms of authority. This of course raises the question: how do we know the Bible is inspired by God, is the Word of God? According to Henrichsen, inspiration must follow authority, not the other way around: "Therefore in Bible Study you begin with the issues of authority. It and the question of inspiration which naturally follows are answered when you submit to the Word of God. You may study inspiration as a separate topic, but you only know the Bible to be the inspired Word of God as you place yourself under its authority." Henrichsen uses the example of a passenger about to board a plane bound for Tokyo, even though the captain cannot guarantee a safe journey: "The demand that commitment come before knowledge is not unique to the Christian faith. It is common, everyday experience for all people." RULE TWO: Use the Bible to interpret the Bible; Scripture best explains Scripture. When interpreting the Bible, beware of omission and addition, as the disastrous consequences in the Garden of Eden indicate. Likewise, beware of individual verses taken in isolation, as they can often be used to support both sides of an argument and can't be considered conclusive as such. Heinrichsen gives an example of how either Galatians 5:4 ("You have fallen away from grace") might give the impression--taken in isolation--that it's possible for a Christian to lose their salvation; however, as John 10:27-29 shows, this isn't the case: "My sheep listen to My voice; I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of My hand. My Father, Who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand." And that's why cross-referencing is important. Primary cross-referencing should be based on thought/topic rather than on specific words, which should be secondary cross-referencing. RULE THREE: Saving faith and the Holy Spirit are necessary for us to understand and properly interpret the Scriptures. This was an interesting thought I hadn't considered, which to me underlined the fact that studying the Bible is not like studying any other book. Don't come at it with an attitude of entitlement, expecting the formula of read-understand-benefit that might work with a Tolstoy or a Shakespeare play. When we decide we want to study the Bible it requires a humble attitude, godliness/a clean conscience before God, and prayer for the Holy Spirit's enabling. How much we understand from our study is directly related to our spiritual state.
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"Count your blessings, name them one by one...Count your many blessings, see what God has done." I grew up singing this song and was always slightly skeptical about how simple it made gratitude sound. Even at that age I knew there was a difference between knowing I had many things to be thankful for, and being thankful for them. Talk about counting, I could rattle off a list of blessings I had without necessarily feeling more grateful for them--like saying grace and knowing that though you were grudgingly 'thankful' for food so you didn't have to starve, you weren't thankful for oatmeal all the same. Thanksgiving, however, is something we are commanded to do in the Bible, because God knows it's something we need to do--something we have to be reminded to do, sometimes. It's hard to be thankful when your mind is full of things that need to be done. It's like trying to pray with a to-do list for the day in front of you. I've never seen the correlation between busyness and the challenge of gratefulness before, but looking at it in this way totally makes sense--having actually experienced how hard it is to do devotions with a hundred things on your mind. We always say that we have so many things to be grateful for (and we usually use the word 'blessings' when we say that) but the truth is that we struggle to actually feel this gratitude we talk so loudly about. Of the ten lepers Jesus healed in Luke 17, I find it interesting how they were healed halfway on their way to the high priest. Perhaps it was a test of faith, to see if they were willing to start on the journey even before they had been healed. At any rate, the actual healing happened when they had already left Christ. After the initial rejoicing died down, the nine were all focused on finishing the journey, following the right protocol and getting officially declared cleansed as soon as possible. Get to the temple, find high priest, and a hundred other things they wanted to do and could do now they were clean, was probably buzzing in their minds nonstop. Only one realized that he owed so much to the man they'd left behind, and that they hadn't even thanked Him. And that he might not get the chance again. He stopped. And he turned back. He stopped long enough to realize that though the official cleansing was important, and that his whole life had been given back to him, with all the possibilities and opportunities that meant, it could wait. He stopped to consider the implications, not just the consequences of the miracle which had just happened. Gratitude doesn't come in instant formulas, like noodles or coffee. Contrary to being achievement-oriented--even for the right things, as in this case--thankfulness requires that we stop and reflect. One of the reasons God knows that we need to be commanded to be thankful, reminded to be thankful; all too often we're headlong in our schedule, our goals, our duties and responsibilities, even our emotions. Thankfulness is realizing what we are, and who God is. I was just notified that apparently the link to my other blog (the Discipline of Wonder) under the Browse page of this blog isn't working--due to a small and yes, characteristically blur mistake on my part--so I hurried to fix that! Clearly I wasn't destined to make waves in Silicon Valley. *PS: It has just come to my attention that "blur" is specifically Singlish slang, so for my non-Singaporean readers, here's a definition from none other than Oxford Dictionaries. |
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