Sunday, October 18, 2020

"Originalism" and Biblical Hermeneutics, Part I

 1. Believe it or not, there is a subject I have spent more time pondering in my time as a New Testament scholar than the book of Hebrews. In fact, I suspect it is the one topic I have thought more about than any other. Hermeneutics.

Hermeneutics is the philosophy of interpretation. What is also interesting is that, while I hope I know a number of things about Hebrews, I am actually quite confident about a number of features of hermeneutics. Don't tell the Hebrews guild, but I privately waiver on a number of interpretations of Hebrews for which I might be known. But I have few if any second guesses of my positions on hermeneutics.

2. For example, the biblical texts had original meanings, and those meanings were a function of what words meant at the time of writing. Words do not have meaning apart from contexts. Without human minds interpreting them, they are collections of squigglies. A smoke signal is just puffs of smoke without a human mind interpreting it. A set of flashes from an aircraft carrier is just a series of light pulses without human minds interpreting it.

And both the people generating those signals, those signs, and the people interpreting them do so as a function of potential meanings within their cultures, subcultures, and situations.

3. What of God, you say? Didn't God write Scripture so that the original meanings are God-meanings and not author-meanings? Aren't those meanings for all time and thus for us?

Here I would say there are two-possibilities, both of which I believe are true. First, the first meaning of the Bible in almost if not every instance, was God saying something to them. It would be rather narcissistic to say differently, wouldn't it? "It may say it's to the Corinthians but God was really writing to me." Or, "Revelation wasn't understood until John Darby decoded it in the 1800s so that Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye could finally tell us its real meaning." But surely the seven churches of Asia, to whom it was actually written, thought they knew a little something about what it meant?

"Ken, you're not getting it. It was written to all people in all places--to them and us." No, I get it. That's just not how language works on a specific level. Cultures change. Points of reference change. We share some things in common with other humans because, as humans, we know about eating and drinking and death. There can be similarities either on a broad or narrow level that make it possible for us to get the general picture.

But the specifics of the Bible's first meaning--assuming it means what it says when it says it's written to ancient Israelites, Romans, and others--was first and foremost a meaning that actualized the potential of the range of meanings words had in their time, not ours. We define our words too as an actualization of the potential meanings of words in our times as a function of our cultures, subcultures, and situations. So the person who says, "It was written for all time," is actually saying, "No one could really understand this text to its fullest extent until I came along."

Let me punctuate this point with the following thought. There will almost always be overlap between what the words meant in that context and what it might mean out of the blue to me. An English translation of course is going to pick English words that maximize that potential overlap. But this is a matter of overlap of their meanings and our meanings, varying degrees of overlap. It is not a matter of "It means the same thing for all time." 

To the extent that there are points where the original meaning just doesn't really exist in my world, the hermeneutical point is made. It meant what it meant as a function of their context. It does not mean the same thing for all time. If my off-the-cuff understanding overlaps, it overlaps because my world shares something in common with their world.

4. Another possibility is that God "impregnated" more than one meaning into biblical texts so that it had a first meaning for them but other potential meanings for other people throughout history. Certainly God knew all the countless ways that people would read the Bible, including people not even born yet (if the Lord tarries). I suppose we could have a theological debate about whether God put those potentialities there intentionally or whether God simply dances with us within our own understanding. Maybe for God these two options are the same.

No matter. God does sanction different interpretations of the same words even within Scripture. In its original context, Isaiah 7:14 was a promise to King Ahaz that a virgin would conceive her very first time having sex and that before the child was old enough to tell the difference between right and wrong, the two kings troubling him from the north would be demolished by the king of Babylon. This happened.

Then the Holy Spirit made these same words jump out at Matthew in relation to the virgin birth in Matthew 1:23 in relation to Jesus. Isaiah would have had no idea. That's just not at all likely part of the "original" meaning of Isaiah 7:14. It is a "fuller sense," a "spiritual meaning," a "theological interpretation." God sometimes inspires additional meanings to biblical texts that were not the meanings they had originally. God does this numerous times within Scripture itself, and I believe God does it today when we are reading the Bible.

Let me use the contemporary practice of lectio divina as an example. Lectio divina is the practice of meditating on a passage of Scripture. You read it and then pause to listen to God. It is very much in my mind like the devotional reading that so many of us grew up with. You do morning devotions, think about the Scripture, then pray. The difference is that lectio divina is more methodical, more repetitive, and probably allots more time to listening.

But here let me make a claim. Lectio divina is not about God revealing the original meaning of Scripture to you. Lectio divina is about hearing God speak to you through Scripture today. If you don't know what words could mean at the time a text was written, you're not at all likely to come up with those meanings through lectio divina. Lectio divina is about hearing God speak to you now through the words. It is about a spiritual meaning God might give you for your life today.

5. Let me conclude this first post with a syllogism:

  • Every word (or nearly every word) of the Bible was addressed to people who lived 2000-3000 years ago.
  • They understood the meanings of the words in terms of what words meant in their historical, cultural, and situational contexts.
  • Those historical, cultural, and situational contexts were not only different from ours but, in many cases, dramatically different from ours.
  • Therefore, the Bible was not originally written in terms of my historical, cultural, and situational contexts.
  • Therefore, if I am not aware of this difference, if I don't know points at which the differences are significant, I will likely misinterpret the Bible in terms of what it actually meant. I will likely "misinterpret" it--in terms of its original meaning--often without even knowing it. 
But this is not to lose hope. The Spirit meets us where we are in our reading of Scripture. The Spirit can give new but slightly different (sometimes dramatically different) senses of the words for us, meanings that we need for our contexts and situations. The Spirit gets us where we need to go.

Also very significant, we should read the Bible in communities of faith, where the collective wisdom of the Church and a collective sense of the Spirit can help us. Sometimes our "not original" readings of Scripture aren't the Holy Spirit but that breakfast burrito we had. Reading the Bible together helps us discern what is the Spirit and what is not.

Part II tomorrow.

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