"Originalism" and Biblical Hermeneutics, Part II

Yesterday I wrote some thoughts on the original meaning of the books of the Bible. These included:

• The biblical texts had original meanings.
• Those meanings were a function of what words meant at the time of writing, not a function of how we might use similar words today.
• The first meanings of the Bible were things God was saying to them, in their thought categories (not to us in ours).
• God sometimes inspires additional meanings to biblical texts that were not the meanings they had originally.

In Part II today, I want to expand on the question of application of the Bible in light of the above. And, you guessed it, tomorrow I want to think a little about how we might interpret and apply a document like the United States Constitution in the light of hermeneutics.

1. Once a "text" is uttered, it becomes detached from its author's intent to some degree. This happens when you receive an email. This happens when you read a quote all by itself.

If we share a significant amount of context with the author of the text, there's a fair chance we can come close to understanding what the author was getting at. However, you have no doubt seen enough threads on Facebook to know that even what seem to be the most obvious of comments can be misinterpreted, especially tone. If you've ever preached a sermon, you may know that people often take something quite different from your words than you intended.

Words are polyvalent. Without context or clarification, they can take on multiple possible meanings. I truly believe that the Holy Spirit uses this aspect of the Bible to use it as a living word. The Holy Spirit helps us hear in the words what God wants us to hear, even though these meanings are often not meanings that the original authors would recognize.

This dynamic also applies to groups and communities of Christians, and it especially happened prior to the historical study of the Bible. Let me pick a sensitive topic--women in ministry and leadership. There is a wealth of biblical reasons to support women in such roles. There are the examples of individuals like Deborah, Huldah, Mary Magdalene, Priscilla, Phoebe, Lydia, and so forth. There is the theological framing of Acts 2:17, which anticipates that women will prophesy in the age of the Spirit, something we see in Acts 21:9 and 1 Corinthians 11. Galatians 3:28 also gives a general principle.

But there is one verse that sounds like it is on the opposing side, 1 Timothy 2:12. Some Christians put almost the entire weight of a case against women in ministry on this one verse, ignoring all the other passages and instances. In my opinion, while the weight of Scripture clearly points toward the full empowerment of women for ministry and leadership, these voices in the end put all their eggs in the basket of this one verse.

The verse does sound like it's on the other side of the Wesleyan position, my tradition. I call such verses, "naughty verses," and every tradition has them. Let's face it, the Bible is a collection of dozens of books by many different authors written in three languages to multiple audiences to address multiple situations over the course of a thousand years. Such a library is bound to have material that at least sounds like it conflicts with other material!

So I have heard a number of different explanations in my circles for what 1 Timothy 2:12 really meant. These explanations build on the polyvalence of its words. For example, I believe that it is not addressing women and men in general but wives and husbands, a possibility of the Greek. My point is not to argue over its meaning. My point is that denominations get where they sense the need to go by way of the multiple possible meanings of biblical texts.

2. When we look at the Bible as a canon, as a collection of inspired and authoritative texts, we inevitably look at it in a way that is somewhat loosened from its original meanings. On the one hand, bringing diverse texts together into a canon changes their overall context and thus can push in different directions than their original meanings. 

For example, take the placement of the New Testament after the Old Testament. The Old Testament gives us no reason to think that sacrifices would ever stop. The Old Testament gives us no reason to think that the food laws would not be binding at some point on the people of God. Indeed, the Old Testament itself gives us no reason to think that it would one day become an "Old" testament, not when read in context.

But when the New Testament is placed after the Old Testament, we end up seeing an altered storyline, one in which the Old Testament is building to the New Testament. "The New is in the Old concealed; the Old is in the New revealed." The anticipation of a Davidic king in the Old Testament was always about an earthly king of a small earthly kingdom. In the New Testament, every knee will bow and tongue confess that Jesus is cosmic Lord.

Further, there are collective meanings to the Bible that reflect a kind of consensus Christians reached after several centuries of conversation. It is no coincidence that it was after Christianity became both the favored and then the official religion of the Roman empire that 1) the text and contents of the Bible and 2) the orthodox beliefs of Christendom became a matter of agreement. It was not settled that the current 27 books of the New Testament are the right books until about the time that Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire. 

It was also about that time that the text of the Bible used in worship stabilized. For over the next 1500 years the basic text that made its way into the King James Version was used. 

And the Nicene Creed became the official creed of Christendom in AD381. This creed locked our current understanding of the Trinity into place. The century thereafter would do the same for the dual nature of Christ as both fully human and fully divine. This is now how we read the texts of the New Testament. You might say it is now locked in as their canonical meaning.

When we read a text like Genesis 1:27 today--"Let us make humanity in our image"--it is natural for us to hear the Trinity in those words. Was the author of Genesis thinking that? Not a historical chance. The author of Genesis was more likely thinking of the heavenly hosts that show up at various parts of the Old Testament (cf. Ps. 82). But from a canonical perspective, there's nothing wrong with reading the verse that way--we know more than Moses did about God because we have the benefit of much additional revelation.

3. So the process of canonical collection and consensus formation subtly alters the way a community understands its foundational documents. 

This is an important process because documents otherwise become problematic as contexts change. And contexts always change. The ability of communities to subtly alter their sense of foundational documents in keeping with changes in context allows those documents to remain pertinent.

For example, there are laws in the Old Testament that Christians have almost forgotten were there. "You will not put on a garment made of two different materials" (Lev. 19:19). It's not entirely clear what the purpose of this verse was in ancient Israel. Christians would generally consider it today to be part of the "ceremonial law" that is no longer binding today.

Scripture itself--most significantly Jesus himself--has given us the key. The whole of the Law, Jesus said, can be summed up in "love God, love neighbor" (e.g., Matt. 22:34-40). We can hold up this principle to the whole of Scripture as a key to discern how specific instruction plays out in our contexts. This is of course a fearsome task we must do together. Some will try to use hermeneutics as an excuse to get out of God's will. But there is no way around it. We have to do it.

Matthew 5 gives us some case studies. Jesus holds up the love principle to several Old Testament laws and shows us how that principle helps us appropriate the Law. In some cases, it intensifies an Old Testament law. We not only must not murder or commit adultery. Love indicates we must not hate or lust.

However, in other cases the Old Testament Law, appropriate for its context, is redirected. Divorce was freely allowed in ancient Israel. But the love principle severely limits it in the New Testament. "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" is abandoned altogether on an individual level. Any tension between biblical texts is given its tie-breaker. The key principles take precedence over any individual passages that are in tension with them.

4. Even with the key principles, we are not so much interested in the specifics of what was in each author's head as with the general principles that made it into the canon. For example, if Paul had had a son--given the culture of his day--he might very well have beat him in a way we would consider abusive today. If so, Paul would not have seen such punishment unloving. In fact, when Proverbs 23:13 talks about beating a son with a rod, it likely pictures something that would get you arrested today.

The principle Christians would apply today in keeping with the love command is to discipline your children in the sense of training them. The form that such training takes will not likely look the same as such training in biblical days. That is completely appropriate. Doing exactly what they did is not actually doing what they did if it means something different in our context.

We thus look to the "why" of Scripture more than the "what." Must we "greet the brothers with a holy kiss" (1 Thess. 5:26)? A holy handshake accomplishes much the same purpose. And in the time of COVID, an elbow bump works too.

If we do not realize that revelation is always incarnated into the worldviews and paradigms of its original recipients, we will inevitably make God look stupid or become oppressive. John says every eye will see Jesus coming in the clouds in Revelation 1:7. We do not usually realize that we have subtly reinterpreted this verse from how John himself pictured it. He thought the earth was flat, so no doubt pictured everyone on a flat earth being able to look up and see Jesus.

5. God does not want us to apply Scripture in an "originalist" way. God wants us to work together under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to re-contextualize its teaching into our paradigms and our worldviews. We typically do it without realizing it. We discipline our children, but we do not beat them with rods. We do not stone a rebellious son to death or put those who practice homosexuality to death (Deut. 21:18-21; Leviticus 20:13). 

This is the problem with Christian fundamentalism. It neither knows how to read the Bible fully in context and in its partial reading mistakes ancient context for the incarnated revelation. It thus mistakenly tries to make our world into the ancient Near East or ancient Mediterranean world, generally missing the essential task of contextualization. It thus makes God look stupid (by mistaking ancient worldviews for God's perspective) and then ends up trying to enforce the wrong points (aspects of the text that relate specifically to that time). 

Indeed, it can end up using the Bible to serve the Devil's purposes rather than God's! This is what happened to many Pharisees, whose "high view" of Scripture became a tool of oppression. This is what happened to those who strongly argued from the Bible in favor of slavery in the early 1800s. It is happening right now in terms of those who would prevent women from obeying the Holy Spirit into ministry. 

When Paul says that the head of the wife is the husband (1 Cor. 11:3), he was saying exactly what Aristotle said in his Politics. There was nothing uniquely Christian about that statement at all. Saying that a wife should submit herself to her husband (e.g., Col. 3:18) was something you might find in the writing of any ancient moralist.

So what is uniquely Christian are those points where Paul elevates the worth and value of the wife. When Paul says, "Nor is the man independent of the woman" (1 Cor. 11:11) or "The husband does not have authority over his body but the wife" (1 Cor. 7:4), those are points to take notice because they are counter-cultural. 

If 1 Peter 3:1 uses wifely submission as a tool of witness in that world and context, it would have exactly the opposite impact in our world today. It would drive people away from the gospel and indeed give free reign to bad behavior on the part of husbands. We have to discern the original point, not always apply the original specifics.

6. I end today's post with an illustration from modern Jewish practice. You cannot have a pepperoni pizza in Old City Jerusalem. Why? Because you must not "boil the kid in its mother's milk" (Deut. 14:21). It is not exactly clear what this command was about originally. We can guess. My guess is that it was addressing some Canaanite religious practice.

But it is certain it had nothing to do with having cheese with meat. Jewish tradition has tried to carry this practice forward but its original sense is pretty much lost. Modern practice is neither originalist nor meaningful, except as a tradition. This is the problem that time and change of context inevitably create. Failure to come to grip with such change only results in strangeness at best, oppression and evil at worse.

Tomorrow we finish this series by looking at how these hermeneutical principles relate to the interpretation and appropriation of a historical document like the US Constitution.