The Old Hermeneutic
2006 May 26
“Whoever, then, thinks that he understand the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.” – Augustine, On Christian Doctrine
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Wow.
Dear Brett and Leland,
I think that you both have very deep faith. I hope that you find whatever Peter had when he answered Jesus’ question about leaving with “to whom shall we go?” That is where I end up sometimes anyway, when I really do not understand, which is often. And I do not mean that to be trite. I don’t mean to offer that is an answer, I just pray you end up there, where I think Peter was, maybe without answers, but with hope. We’re all still searching if we are honest, I think.
If we have reached the point where we deny infallability (let alone inerrancy) and accept only the scripture that corresponds to our understanding of reality…is there any authority in the bible?
Or what if “love thy neighbor” is not what I see as corresponding to the best way to live in a modern, scientifically formed world? What if I think natural selection is the way to go? Toss out the sermon on the mount as unimportant?
Faith isn’t supposed to make sense…that’s why it’s called faith. Where are we told to “figure it all out” with our human reasoning?
On that note: If we can use Old Testament examples for why a practice should not be used (Nadab & Abihu’s strange fire), why can’t you use an Old Testament example for why a practice should be used (Psalms – instrumental music).
I think this is Mike’s reason for saying that our hermeneutic is shoddy at best. I tend to agree with him.
J.P.,
It’s scary isn’t it? Once you step outside the ‘safe zone’ of Biblical infallibility things aren’t as cut and dry (and it’s frustrating for me too). But that doesn’t change my conclusion- I can’t start blindly accepting everything as literal truth anymore than you’ll allow yourself to doubt it. As for authority- I’m not sure. Guidance and hope definitely, but I can’t be sure about absolute infallible authority on every single statement.
Are these statements ‘authoritative’?:
“And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”
“The flood continued forty days on the earth….And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered.”
“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the O
“Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us- he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.”
“If you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife….After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife. If you are not pleased with her, let her go wherever she wishes.”
I hope you would agree that these statements don’t carry the same authority as the command to love your neighbor as yourself. In fact, some of them are pretty hard to reconcile with it. We just use our God-given reason to come to different conclusions. Again, I would ask “is there absolutely any type of content in Scripture that would make you wonder if the whole thing is authoritative?” For me, these passages are those sort of things.
I guess I shouldn’t expect most posters on a church of Christ blog to really understand.
Brett,
I can definitely relate. On one hand, there is a general consensus of what we find distatsteful, but I wonder how far the application can be stretched to justify things. For instance, the question of homosexuality. How much easier does that dilemma become if we can say, “Oh, sorry, that doesn’t jive with my understanding of loveing my neighbor, toss it out.” That seems to me as non-critical as blind faith on the other end.
I think also where you are coming from is a position, quite understandable, that has very insightfully seen the need to delineate between inerrancy, infallability, and infallability in regards to matters of salvation.
And…don’t be so quick to assume I don’t allow myself to doubt it. I’m just trying to follow others’ arguments to their natural (I think) conclusions. I have a whole different set of faith related baggage, personally.
Romans 2:13ff: “For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.)”
It sounds like Gentiles can come to an understanding of God through reason.
sounds like proof-texting to me.
Actually, it was just a response to your question: ‘Where are we told to figure it all out with our human reasoning?” Of course, the passage I quoted doesn’t say that, but it does say that it’s possible to know God outside revelation, which is more or less the same point.
Back to what you said: “Faith isn’t supposed to make sense…that’s why it’s called faith.” (Proof-text that please) Do you begin conversations with nonbelievers with “Hey, this won’t make sense, but listen anyway”? If so, I doubt we have enough in common to hold any type of conversation.
I absolutely believe faith IS supposed to make sense. It may not be provable, but it won’t be contrary to the sense that God gave us. The problem with your argument of ‘this doesn’t make sense, but accept it because you have faith’ is that you can use it to support absolutely anything.
Terrysj, I hope you are still following the comments on this thread, I’m a little late in reading it. I wanted to respond to your question about instrumental music. I grew up in non-instrumental Churches of Christ and have worshiped in them most of my life. As a Bible Major and Greek minor in college I began “searching the scriptures to see what was said was true” anew with the new tools I was learning. I found on this subject “our” biblical arguments simply did not hold water. The greek word for to sing in it’s most literal sense is “by or with the playing of strings” (Theological Dictionalry of the New Testament VIII, p499). Though the word certainly progressed to include singing alone I believe a solid argument cannot be made that such alone is being commanded in Eph. 5:19. “To pluck” is simply too inherent in the words. For most of the 1st century christians their Old Testament was a greek version called the Septuagent. And psallo and it’s varients are used for playing an instrument many a time there. After coming to this realization. I prayed that God would forgive me for condemning others who worship with instruments. I also made a more indepth study of scriptural reasons for withdrawing or withholding fellowship. This was thirty plus years ago.
For the last two years I have worshiped in an Army chapel with instruments and have played the guitar with one of the worship teams for the past year. Lest you think instruments are always a distraction to worship I might tell you of a comment I recieved yesterday. The brother said “the worship really touched me today. It was a sermon in song that said it all.” Sometimes I am so aware of God inhabiting His praises when I am singing and playing alone and I am so connected to Him that I am brought to tears. I still sometimes yearn for a little a capella and sing that way though.
I hope you will think about this.
I’ve been challenged by this conversation. Can’t say I’ve enjoyed all of it, but it has been good for me, none-the-less.
I’d like to respond to Leland’s question about Jericho and the connection to love thy neighbor.
Perhaps that isn’t the question to ask. (Perhaps Augustine wasn’t inspired in saying everything has to fit into the two-fold love of God and neighbor.) The greatest command is to love the Lord your God. And I do think there is a connection here.
If your assumption is that God can’t judge or that God can’t punish disobedience, I don’t know what to tell you. But if you believe there will be a day of judgment, there will be a heaven and hell, then why can’t God bring judgment on Jericho. (Aren’t the Minor Prophets continually warning against the Day of the Lord coming on different nations, including Israel?)
Thus it wasn’t a matter of Israel loving its neighbor as much as them being God’s instrument to bring judgment. (Interesting to note that just because one nation is used to bring God’s judgment on another doesn’t necessarily mean it is the more righteous nation. He tells Habakkuk, “You’re not going to believe what I’m going to do… I’m going to use Babylon, an evil nation, as my tool of judgment”. Habakkuk 1:5-12 … is it okay to use the quote marks since it is very loosely translated?)
[Cathy, if you haven’t read this book in awhile, do so. I think you’ll love it. Habakkuk keeps saying, “I don’t understand, but I’ll wait and I’ll watch.” It reminds me of your posts.]
I don’t want to take away from loving our neighbor, but can we consider that God is also a judge who does in fact judge?
One more note and I’ll bow out. Leland, I want to encourage you not to assume this hasn’t been thought out or that I’m simply spewing rhetoric. If you judge it too quickly as a knee-jerk reaction, it will be too easy to judge me instead of what I’m saying.
God bless you guys. Peace
Proof texting is not a good thing, BTW…therefore prooftexting my last comment would make no sense either. Proof texting is taking a passage out of context to prove your point. I don’t believe Romans 2 was written to show us that we can understand God through reason…that sounds very humanistic and takes away God’s authority.
now… Hebrews 11:1 says, “What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see.” (New Living Translation)
“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (New International Version)
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (King James Version)
Faith is not knowing something. Faith is inherently based on what I cannot see.
Which still doesn’t mean faith will be contrary to human common sense.
“I don’t believe Romans 2 was written to show us that we can understand God through reason…that sounds very humanistic and takes away God’s authority.”
I believe the whole passage is talking about how those who don’t have the Law may actually still be following God in their own ways. It’s a scary passage for those who believe you can only arrive at knowing God through divine revelation, but it seems that that’s what it teaches. It doesn’t minimize God’s authority at all- rather it shows that God’s authority is inherent in how the world works, and man can to some extent come to know God by examining the world with his thought. Just because something sounds ‘humanistic’ doesn’t make it sound wrong. Maybe there’s some truth in humanism, to the extent that it gives back to man some of what Biblical literalism takes away when it tells him ‘despite being made in God’s image, you are incapable of coming to know God on your own, you must trust in the revelation he gave to others.’
If there were no basis in reason at all, how would you decide to have faith in Jesus instead of faith in the Bob, or Buddha, or any Hindu deity? I think you would agree that you use your human reason to help shape your faith as well.
Tim,
Again, good, thoughtful posts. I too think it’s about time for this to wrap up since we’ve come down to our assumptions that point to the roots of our conflict. I’ve heard the same explanation (relating to judgement and using the Israelites as an instrument) from Bible professors at Harding (Monte Cox specifically), and it does seem well thought out. You say; “If your assumption is that God can’t judge or that God can’t punish disobedience, I don’t know what to tell you. But if you believe there will be a day of judgment, there will be a heaven and hell, then why can’t God bring judgment on Jericho.”
You’re right here- the disagreement is deeper than Jericho. It’s about the nature of God. If you can believe in a God who has revealed his word through the Bible and the Bible only, and will punish those who do not obey (which appears to be the majority of his created humans for most of history) to eternal judgment, then Jericho makes perfect sense. Since we disagree on the nature of God, it would make sense that our conception of which actions make sense for Him would be different.
“I believe the whole passage is talking about how those who don’t have the Law may actually still be following God in their own ways. It’s a scary passage for those who believe you can only arrive at knowing God through divine revelation, but it seems that that’s what it teaches. It doesn’t minimize God’s authority at all- rather it shows that God’s authority is inherent in how the world works, and man can to some extent come to know God by examining the world with his thought. Just because something sounds ‘humanistic’ doesn’t make it sound wrong.”
I agree with you on this…the former post you made sounded different to me.
“If there were no basis in reason at all, how would you decide to have faith in Jesus instead of faith in the Bob, or Buddha, or any Hindu deity? I think you would agree that you use your human reason to help shape your faith as well.”
I didn’t mean to make it sound like there is no brain activity going on when we have faith, but that faith is different than belief or knowledge.
At the same time, I would like to add that I don’t think we were meant to figure out every aspect of every facet of all our lives.
The Jews were given the Law written word for word to address pretty much every situation. The Old Law was taken away with Jesus’ perfect law arrival: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and prophets hang on these.
To try to dictate every worship practice from incomplete information that we’ve tried to deduce what kind of singing we use in a one hour time frame from week to week is moronic to me when there’s not one verse that says anything about doing a specific set of things in that one hour a week.
Especially when we have verses like Romans 12:1 which tells us that we are “…in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.”
I don’t think we will ever figure it all out. But this should not be an excuse to relegate it to mystery.
Hey, fun discussion over on “Inorganic Music”, its been a blast. As someone who truly accepts God’s word as perfect [I do have questions about a couple translations however] I wonder how ol Augustine feels about the “love of God” as quoted by the inspired apostle John in 1 John 5:3. ” For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments: for His commandments are not grievous” kjv, by the way, how do the “new hermeneutic” folks deal with this? Just curious. Tim
Leland, in a rhetorical way (you may answer if you like) I ask, what is so bad about mystery?…
Tim said, “I wonder how ol Augustine feels about the “love of God” as quoted by the inspired apostle John in 1 John 5:3. “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments: for His commandments are not grievous” kjv, by the way, how do the “new hermeneutic” folks deal with this? Just curious. Tim”
I personally would ask, what are God’s commandments that we are supposed to follow? I usually go to what Jesus taught as main authority. I would say that the commandments under Jesus’ new law are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. The second is like it…to love your neighbor as yourself. These words were spoken by Jesus himself when posed the same question.
BML,
There is absolutely nothing wrong with mystery. It is the fuel for discovery.
Great milestones have been reached by putting mystery on the table and examining it closely.
By this method we can assign the label mystery to what really is mystery and not just lack of critical thought.
Exactly.
Just wondering… are the words [recorded by Holy Spirit inspired men] of Christ in the Biblical record of more weight than words written by other men who were also inspired by the Holy Spirit who is God? For instance, Our savior commanded belief and baptism for salvation [Mark 16:15-16], whereas in ACTS 2, Luke recorded Peter expounding that baptism is for remission of sins, along with Pauls experience in Acts 22:16, baptism to wash away his sins. Do those folks embracing the “new” hermeneutic give more weight and emphasis on some inspired scripture than on other inspired scripture?
Just trying to figure out where you folks are coming from……Tim
Me…I weigh Jesus’ words over everyone else’s. I can’t speak for everyone here though and would not try to.
I’ve been away for a bit, so forgive this late reply to a older post.
I think this quote is so applicable to the workings of how we view the Bible. How we understand and perceive things is often relative to our station and point in our lives.
The point about the two fold love of God is powerful. Interpretation can go lots of ways, however, application brings teh reality and experience of God’s holy love to hearts who need Him.