Hermeneutics pt. III – Application

Welcome to the third and final installation in this series in the series on hermeneutics. Over the past two posts, we’ve looked at the process of exegesis — in other words, exploring a Biblical passage to draw out its true meaning. This is foundational to the historical-grammatical method of hermeneutics, the system of Biblical interpretation regarding the Bible to be the real, accurate, inspired Word of God.

Just catching up with us now? You can find part 1 here and part 2 here.

 

Hermeneutics Pt. II – Interpretation

Last week, we looked at the first step in good hermeneutics, observation. Observation is very simply just taking one’s time to see what the passage in question actually says. We have to resist the tendency to begin assigning meaning to things yet, but simply write down what we actually see in the Scripture.

Our example passage was Genesis 2:18-22. We ended up with a simple bullet list like this:

• God said it was not good that man should be alone.
• God said He would make the man a helper comparable to him.
• God brought the animals to Adam to see what he would call them.
• Adam named every living creature.
• There was no helper comparable to Adam found among the animals.
• God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep.
• God took a rib from Adam’s side and closed up the wound.
• God took the rib He had taken, and made it into a woman.
• God brought the woman to the man.

Ideally, this first step of observation should include a lot more of the biblical context, but for the sake of space on this blog, we’re taking on just a few verses at a time.

Now it’s time to start asking the question, what does this mean?

 

Hermeneutics pt. I – Observation

As I mentioned at the end of last post, I want to explain why I went to the lengthy detail I did regarding Genesis 1-3. It seems like a lot of work, especially considering that I (purposefully) didn’t say anything that the Bible doesn’t already say. But that’s actually the point. It’s the necessary starting ground for good hermeneutics.

Simply defined, a hermeneutic is the system that governs how one interprets and understands the Bible. Everyone who reads the Bible — serious scholar or no — operates under some kind of hermeneutic.

 

1 Corinthians 14 – “Let Your Women Keep Silent”

Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says.

This is one of the passages that is used as a deal-clincher in the debate about women in ministry. As we see, Paul clearly is saying that women should not be the speakers in church.

Or at least, that’s what he is “clearly saying” if we only read one verse and stop.

 

Daniel 3 – God is Able to Deliver

I love this chapter. You’ll probably hear me say that a lot in reference to the book of Daniel, but I can’t help it. This is a great book. Daniel 3 is one of those stories that we need to reclaim from our mental flannel-graphs and take seriously again. This is amazing.

To begin with, I have to notice the irony of this setup. In chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar has a dream about a gigantic statue with a head of gold that gets ground into powder by a supernatural boulder. The dream terrifies him so badly that he can’t sleep. So what’s his response? “Hmm, I think I’ll go build a gigantic gold statue.” Nebuchadnezzar was a brilliant man, but this is definitely one of the stupider moves of his political career.

 

Word of Life Meeting 9

This meeting has seriously become a high point of my week. I love this group and I love this topic!

Today we talked about chapter 5 of Word of Life, “The Manner of God’s Coming.” It is an entire chapter dedicated to the virgin birth of Christ.  I have to admit, when I saw the topic of this chapter, I thought to myself, “But we already spent four or five weeks talking about the Incarnation — shouldn’t this be covered already?

Not quite. There are many layers of significance in the fact that Jesus chose to be born in such a unique way.

 

Daniel 2(b) – God, the Revealer of Secrets

Our Word of Life study got bumped back another week, so in the meantime, I thought I’d put in another post on Daniel. We looked a little bit last time at the circumstances and setup of the dream, and in the rest of the chapter, we find out more about the dream itself.

 

Daniel 2(a) – God Raises Up and Removes Kings

I’ve not been as regularly blogging as I would like lately… and it’s almost a guarantee that over the next four days of the onething conference, I’m not apt to do much writing then. It seems like a good time to chip in another chapter of Daniel before things get crazy. 🙂

 

Daniel 1 – Purposefully Undefiled

Ahhh. The joys of “as-I-feel-like-it” writing. It’s only a few days since I let you all know this was coming, and I’m already kicking in part one. What can I say? Daniel is too good to let it sit on the shelf for too long.

The first six chapters of Daniel are not just random “day in the life of Daniel” quips to fill space before you get to the visions. These chapters serve a number of very key purposes:

 

A Long Overdue Post on a Really Cool Book

So I was just talking with someone on the onething forums about the book of Daniel, when I realized that I have not written a single blog post about this amazing book. Those of you who know me will recognize how remarkable that is. I am a bit of a Daniel junkie. I love reading the book, even though I’ve studied it through several times. I jump at the chance to talk about it and I always walk away hyper from discussions about it. I want to be like Daniel when I grow up. If there was a book of Daniel fan club, I’d sign up for it. Maybe I should start one.

Anyway, all that to say it’s high time the book of Daniel made its debut on this blog.