THE DIARY OF A YOUNG MINISTER

THE DIARY OF A YOUNG MINISTER vol 200

SCRIPTURAL INTERPRETATION 1

“There is always the danger of eisegesis, reading into the Bible the ideas which we have received from elsewhere and then receiving them each with the authority with which we have come to surround the book.”

(World Council of Churches Symposium on Biblical Authority for Today, Oxford, 1949)

To avoid any subjective or private interpretation of Scripture, we need the Holy Spirit. Interpretation is essentially the faculty of the Spirit, especially on scriptural matters.

Without the ministry of the Spirit employed in scriptural interpretation the believer is no different from the Pharisees known to set forth a dangerous precedent of approaching Scripture with a theory, with preconceived ideas, with some pet idea: the moment we do so, we shall be tempted to over-emphasize one aspect and under-emphasize another, stretching Scripture to its elastic limit in what the Lord described as the leaven of the Pharisees,a systemic torturing of Scripture in every possible manner to make them say just about anything!

Because we all have our prejudices and misconceptions, it is all too easy to see in Scripture only what we want to see, and to miss the new and edifying revelation of fuller truth which is God’s purpose for us…It is all too easy to read our ideas into Scripture instead of getting out of the Scripture what it teaches, which might quite possibly overthrow our ideas.

In working with the Spirit, we must fully understand that the Spirit-inspired illumination comes to the minds of God’s people—not just to the spiritually elite. There is no guru class in biblical Christianity, no Illuminati, no people through whom all proper interpretation must come. And, so, while the Holy Spirit gives unique gifts of wisdom, knowledge, and spiritual discernment, He does not assign these gifted Christians to be the only authoritative interpreters of His Word. It is up to each of His people to learn, to judge and to discern by reference to the Bible, which stands as the authority over even those to whom God has given special abilities.”

The first prominent ministry of the Spirit in this regard is to help us navigate the rapids of Scripture

1.literarily (i.e. historically),

2.doctrinally,

3.prophetically,

4.philosophically and

5.allegorically.

The Holy Spirit is the only resource that can help to situate the word within the broader concept of the five factors stated above.

For instance, in crafting his epistles to the gentiles, the Spirit enabled Apostle Paul to handle literal old testament scriptures, extract their doctrinal imperatives, analyze them prophetically,present them philosophically and allegorically unzip them. He concluded that God reveals Himself to the chosen people of Israel and that He revealed Himself in no radically different way from the way in which He reveals Himself to the Greek” “to the Jews first and also to the Greek.”

Apostle Paul by the Spirit, converted Hebrew to Greek without losing the Hebrew essence in the conversion process.

The sinfulness of humanity has turned this method (and all methods to some extent) into a means to prove almost anything and then to call it biblical.

For instance, if you live and minister within the context of a 21st century Lagos, how do you interpret 1st Corinthians in the context of Lagos without losing the essence of the book. The book was written originally to believers in the 1st century Corinth with its historical, cultural and philosophical settings not applicable to the Lagos of today. Also, these letters were not originally written in English, mostly in Greek. The person who reads the Bible only in English is at the mercy of the translator(s). Translators have often had to make choices as to what the original Hebrew or Greek intended to say” .so we see there is a gap somewhere there, the only one that can fill in the gap is the Spirit. Looking at it analytically the epistles were not written to us (we are not Corinthians,and even if we are we did not live in the 1st century Corinth), so the epistles are written FOR US, for our learning and for our admonition.

Technically Apostle Paul did not have you in mind when He was writing to the Corinthians, but the Holy Spirit did. Basically, Paul was writing letters to the churches he founded in the first century and never knew that by the 4th century his letters inspired by the Spirit would be added to the canon of Scripture.

The ministry of the Spirit is most needed in this regard in translating Corinth, for instance, to Lagos without losing the Corinthian essence.

It is only the Spirit that can help us answer the question“what did the original author say in the original manuscripts?” We do not have any of the original writings of the biblical authors (autographs). As a matter of fact, we are removed by hundreds of years from those originals (autographs). Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, our oldest Old Testament manuscript was from the ninth century a.d., called the Masoretic Text. The Masoretes were a group of Jewish scholars who placed the vowels (vowel points) into a consonantal, Hebrew text. This project was not completed until the ninth century a.d. The Dead Sea Scrolls allow us to verify this Hebrew text back into the b.c. era. They confirmed the accuracy of our Old Testament based on the MT. This enables scholars to compare Hebrew manuscripts with their Greek translations: the Septuagint, and those of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotian. The point of all this is that there are many differences among all of these copies.

The New Testament is also involved in the same difficulty. We do not have the writings of the Apostles, as a matter of fact, our copies are several hundred years removed from them. The oldest manuscripts available of the Greek New Testament are fragments of individual books written on papyri. These date from the second and third centuries a.d. and none have the complete New Testament. The next oldest group of Greek manuscripts comes from the fourth through sixth centuries. They are written in all capital letters with no punctuation marks or paragraph divisions. After this comes thousands of manuscripts from later centuries, mostly the 12th - 16th (written in small letters). None of these agrees entirely. However, it needs to be strongly emphasized that none of the variants affects major Christian doctrines.

Another critical area where the ministry of the Spirit is needed is the problem of human language. As a prolific author, I understand that the problem of human language is further complicated when put into a written form. So often the inflection of the voice or some bodily gesture helps us understand the subtleties of human communication, but these are not present in a written text. Yet, even with these obvious limits, we are still able, for the most part, to understand each other. Our study of the Bible will be limited by these ambiguities, as well as the additional problem of translating three separate languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek). We will not be able to know for sure the complete meaning of every passage. With the help of the Holy Spirit, we will be able to understand the plain sense of most Scripture. Maybe the ambiguities are there to humble us and cause us to be dependent on God’s mercy.

As we depend on the Holy Spirit to interpret Scripture to us and for us, he begins to give us tools and resources to capture what the original author is saying to us. One way, possibly the best way, to understand a written document is to identify the author’s purpose and the major divisions (i.e., literary units) in his presentation. We write with a purpose and goal in mind. So too, did the biblical authors. Our ability to identify this overarching purpose and its significant divisions will significantly facilitate our understanding of its smaller parts (paragraphs and words). A key to this deductive approach is outlining. Before one tries to interpret a paragraph within a biblical book, he needs to know the purpose of the literary unit of which it is a part in light of the surrounding passages and the structure of the whole book. I understand that this procedure seems overwhelming at first, as far as putting it into practice, but it is crucial as far as interpretation is concerned.

Another key strategy of the Holy Spirit is in teaching us to use commentaries and translations.

The Bible student can overcome gaps and barriers (not knowing originals and having to use translations) by an educated use of the better commentaries. Above all, everyone must be aware of the dangers. The student should compare the translations as he studies the passage, and should take none of them for granted.

Finally, reading Scripture without the ministry of the Spirit is like operating your system in an off-line mode, but with the Spirit, you are online and can get real-time plugins, updates and download.

God gave us His word; He also gave us His Spirit to help us interpret his word. Please engage Him always.

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