Biblical Hermeneutics: Five Views (Spectrum Multiview Book Series) by Stanley E. Porter & Beth M. Stovell

Author:Stanley E. Porter & Beth M. Stovell [Porter, Stanley E. & Stovell, Beth M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, Biblical Studies, Exegesis & Hermeneutics
ISBN: 9780830839636
Google: oOdCnwEACAAJ
Amazon: 0830839631
Barnesnoble: 0830839631
Publisher: IVP Academic
Published: 2012-04-19T22:00:00+00:00

CONCLUSIONS

The historical-critical/grammatical method seeks the original meaning of biblical authors as they wrote texts to specific audiences. All the other methods envision something else going on as well that takes later writers, texts and/or readers into account! I fully appreciate the potential sterility of biblical analysis that does not ask questions about literary style, speechacts, how one book relates to later ones, the canonical shape of the entire Christian Scriptures, subsequent reader reception and proper application to believers' lives, individually and in community. All of those issues are important. However, none of these questions can be addressed properly unless the foundation of historical-critical/grammatical analysis of each text's constituent elements is laid down first and remains of primary importance. Of course, no one ever comes to the study of Scripture this simply or methodically. Almost everyone has a sense of various wholes before they scrutinize the parts, and few readers come to any part of the Bible without some preformed sense of what the Bible is about that colors their reading of the text. Hence, we need the hermeneutical spiral to continually test our previous understandings against the details of Scripture itself.

Diversity of interpretations is important because all of us are finite and fallen, and we miss things and misconstrue things. Yet reveling in diversity simply for diversity's sake, or using diversity as an occasion to celebrate an interpreter's creativity, is not a Christian virtue. Nevertheless, orthodox interpretations, however faithful they are to apostolic tradition or later creedal formulations, if they do not express what a given text under consideration is actually teaching, must also be rejected. The right doctrine from the wrong texts continues to plague our pulpits around the world every Sunday in far too many places. The historical-critical/grammatical method, when properly used, not to exclude other methods but as the foundation for those other methods, provides many of the necessary checks and balances to keep interpreters from going off track in either of these two directions.

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