“There is only one meaning to the text.” If he said it once, he said it a hundred times. It was 1984, and I was taking a class on hermeneutics1 at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. My professor was the renowned theologian, Dr. Walter Kaiser. Professor Kaiser’s mantra for this course was, “there is only one meaning to the text.” He said it at least once every class meeting.
At the time I was pursuing my master’s degree in Church History. Hermeneutics was not required for my course of study, but I wanted to take a course with Dr. Kaiser and I thought that learning to interpret the Bible properly would be helpful no matter what I did in life. Looking back to that class 35 years later, I can say it has probably been the most valuable course I ever took. At the time however, I did not see the full implications of what I was learning. I had no idea why Dr. Kaiser kept repeating this one phrase: “there is only one meaning to the text.”
I realized later that, in the eight years between my undergraduate and graduate studies, a philosophical shift had taken place in the academic world. At Duke, the dominant worldview of the faculty had been what could be called modernism or humanism. In this way of thinking, truth is rational and objective and can be known using scientific principles. The idea that there is a supreme being who supernaturally intervenes in the affairs of human beings was considered irrational and dismissed out of hand. When applying modernism to the study of the Bible 19th Century theologians had developed the concept of “higher criticism.” Priding themselves as rational men who did not believe in the supernatural, these theologians decided that the Bible was a solely man-made document written by many different groups of people each with their own agenda and edited together at a much later date. It was the task of higher criticism to figure out what passages were written by what groups following what was known as the documentary hypothesis.2 I took an Old Testament class at Duke from a professor who believed in the higher critical method. We learned that, for example, the book of Isaiah could not have been written by the Prophet Isaiah. They came to this conclusion because Isaiah lived 700 years before Christ and according to modernist thinking, there is no such thing as predictive prophecy and this book so obviously describes Jesus’ death and resurrection.3 On the exams in this classes, I always explained what we had been taught and then said that I do not agree with these theories since I believe the Bible was the Word of God.
By 1984, however, Postmodernism had become the dominant worldview in academia. In this way of thinking, truth is relative and subjective. What is truth for you is not necessarily truth for me.4 In theology this meant it was no longer so important who wrote the Bible. In postmodernism, the meaning of a text is not what the author had intended but what the reader determined the meaning to be for him or herself. Following a postmodern approach to the scriptures, each passage could have an endless number of meanings depending on the point of view of the reader.
It was this mentality that Dr. Kaiser combatting with his mantra, “there is only one meaning to the text.” As I learned in my hermeneutics class, scripture has only one meaning which is the natural sense intended by the author. John Calvin, in his Preface to the Commentary on Romans, said, “It is the first business of an interpreter to let his author say what he does say, instead of attributing to him what we think he ought to say.”
By now, I imagine that some, probably most, of you are rolling your eyes and saying, really Leecy, who cares? However, I think you would be amazed at how much the postmodern way of thinking as permeated 21st Century American life. The college students who were taught that truth is relative and subjective went on to become teachers and brought these ideas to their high school, middle school and grade school students. So that we now have a whole generation of young people who each think that they are the arbiter of truth. We see this every day. Have you ever had anybody say to you, “that may be true for you, but it’s not true for me?” Have you been in a Bible study, where the leader has asked everyone to share what the passage means to them? If so. you have been confronted by postmodernism.
So why was Dr. Kaiser so concerned about postmodern thinking influencing Christians? He realized if there are multiple meanings to a text, we can never be sure of what God is saying to us in His Word. And I am sure, he was concerned that if we fail to recognize scripture as “the eternal, living word of God.” (1 Peter 1:23c, NLT) we will return to the anarchy of the period of Judges when “all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.” (Judges 17:6b, NLT)
While the meaning of scripture is the same for all of us, the Holy Spirit takes that meaning and applies it to each of our unique situations. Pastor Mel Lawrenz also emphasizes the single meaning for each scripture passage and shows how this works out in our study of God’s word:
Here is an extremely important principle: a particular biblical passage has a singular and specific meaning—that is, it does not have many different meanings. But a particular biblical passage does have multiple valid applications. For example, James 1:19-20 says, “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.” We study this passage to get at the specific and singular meaning. We note that this injunction is similar to Proverbs in the Old Testament (which is true for much of the book of James). It is not directed at one particular group of people (as might be the case in a book like 1 Corinthians or 1 Timothy), but is a principle of healthy living for all believers. We look at key words like “listen” and “angry” and “anger.” We conclude that this passage is a general exhortation to believers that we should listen more and react less. Especially, we should hold in check any knee-jerk reaction of anger. Now we apply the singular meaning of that passage to life. The application goes to many different real-life situations, and validly so.
Learning the Lesson:
Let’s look at one verse where the meaning is pretty straight forward and then see how you can apply it to your individual life.
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10, NASB)
Meaning:
- We are God’s work of art. (The word translated workmanship is the word from which we get our word poem.)
- Those who are in Christ Jesus are designed to do good works.
- God has prepared in advance the good works He wants us to do.
Application questions:
- How can I best express God creative work in my life?
____________________
[1] According to the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary,
hermeneutics is “the study of the methodological principles of interpretation
(as of the Bible)”.
[2] See Focus on the Family, The "JEDP" Theory and Its Implications for Biblical
Credibility. (https://www.focusonthefamily.com/family-q-and-a/faith/the-jedp-theory-and-its-implications-for-biblical-credibility)
[3] I later learned that the whole book of Isaiah had been
found as a part of the Dead Sea Scrolls. See McDowell, J. (1972). Evidence that demands of verdict. Campus
Crusade for Christ, page 61.
[4] This is a very simplistic explanation. For a better overview of this topic see the
notes from University of Idaho Professor
Tom Drake’s course, English 258: Literature of Western Civilization: Modernism vs.
Postmodernism (https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/engl_258/Lecture%20Notes/modernism_vs_postmodernism.htm)
No comments:
Post a Comment