Errors To Avoid In Hermeneutics (2)

     As promised, here are three errors to avoid in biblical interpretation.

     1) Do NOT make a point at the price of proper interpretation.

     This can be difficult if you're like me, and will go to great lengths to win an argument. The tricky part is understanding and remembering that this is God's word with which we are dealing! Mess with it and you mess with HIM. Something of which I have personally needed to repent is when I continue to use a particular interpretation that is widely accepted -- even when I know it is FALSE. God is powerful enough all by Himself; He doesn't need any "extra help" that we have to offer by resorting to petty or manipulative means in order to get His (or more likely OUR) point across.

     2) Avoid Superficial Study.

     Bible study is hard work -- it cannot be done flippantly. We are aliens reading an alien text; EVERYTHING about the Bible is foreign to us -- therein lies the work. It takes time and effort to be able to understand the Bible AS IT WAS INTENDED. One cannot expect to open the Bible to any random page and understand what it says without proper study.

     However! Do not be dismayed. The perspicuity of scripture stands true! The Bible is NOT so alien that is cannot be understood. It is hard work to get the the meaning, but it can be done if proper time and effort are put in to understanding the Word of God.
     With this in mind, it is arrogance to believe that one has the ability to perfectly interpret scripture WITHOUT the education and wisdom of two thousand years of Biblical scholarship. Those who say, "I understand the Bible perfectly. I read it myself and I don't need anyone else to explain it to be. I can do it all on my own," those are the ones who most likely fools. To believe that one can understand the depth of a text written over two thousand years ago, in another language, in another part of the world is foolhardy, arrogant and dangerous.

     3) Do NOT spiritualize or allegorize the text.

     This would be classified as using the scripture to make up a story in order to make it mean whatever you want it to mean, OR to mystify the scripture into being inapplicable (call it, glossing over the "hard" parts). This is dangerously close to Deuteronomy 4:2,

"You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you."

and Revelation 22:19,

"and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book."

     Does this mean we must interpret every single verse of the Bible completely literally? No, but keep in mind, we are aliens reading an alien text. Just as we have idioms and metaphors in English, the Bible has the idioms and metaphors of its time. The great danger of spiritualizing and allegorizing the Bible is to take away the real meaning being communicated through the Bible. God put those words there for a reason, and He wants to be understood.

"It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter." (Proverbs 25:2)

"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you." (Matthew 7:7)