Results 1 - 2 of 2
|
|
|||||
Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | "That's just your interpretation."(?) | 2 Tim 2:15 | kalos | 117012 | ||
"What does this text say to us, anyway?" - - - - - - - - - - - - - "Avoid adlibbing in Bible interpretation. Avoid free wheeling in Bible interpretation." - - - - - - - - - - - - - 'Avoid superficial interpretation...avoid superficial interpretation. One of the common problems in interpreting the Bible is this little phrase, "This verse means to me...." so forth and so forth and so forth. Let me tell you something. It doesn't matter what it means to you, the question is what would it mean if you didn't live? What would it mean if you didn't exist? What does it mean period is the issue, not what does it mean to you. 'Sometimes you'll hear people get together and supposedly have a Bible study which is little more than a pooling of ignorance. People say, "Well, I look at this verse and I feel this verse is saying..." It doesn't matter what you feel. That has nothing to do with it. It's not a matter of how you feel about the verse, it's not a matter of what you think it means to you. Avoid adlibbing in Bible interpretation. Avoid free wheeling in Bible interpretation. Haphazard handling of God's Word. 'We all want to acknowledge the priesthood of the believer...yes, we all want to acknowledge that we have anointing from God, the Spirit of God who dwells within us and the Spirit of God who dwells within us is the teacher who teaches us. We all want to acknowledge that. But that is not justification for flippancy dealing with Scripture. That's why in 1 Timothy 5:17 it says, "The elders who work hard in the Scripture are worthy of double honor." It is hard work. 'Avoid superficial interpretation. Avoid "this means to me." That is not a statement that should preface any interpretation of Scripture. The question is, what does it mean if you don't exist? What did it mean before you were born? And what will mean it after you're dead? What does it mean to people who will never meet you? What does it mean period, is the issue' (www.gty.org). |
||||||
2 | "That's just your interpretation."(?) | 2 Tim 2:15 | Hank | 117024 | ||
kalos, thanks for the fine service to the Forum you provide through your informative and thought-inducing (we hope!) posts. I like particularly the phrase, "This verse means to me...." It's a handy phrase to keep in mind -- and avoid using! If someone came up to me and read a passage of Scripture aloud to me in Japanese (let's say it was John 3:16) and afterward asked me, "What does this verse mean to you?" I would respond, assuming I did not know beforehand that it was John 3:16 in Japanese, "It means absolutely nothing to me." I would be right, of course, in saying it means nothing to me, since I don't know the Japanese language. But that is not the same as saying, "It means nothing" because it does in fact mean a great deal to anyone who understands the language. In other words, my failure to understand does not nullify the intrinsic meaning of the passage. The passage has meaning whether I understand all of it, part of it, or none of it. ....... When someone on this Forum steps up to argue a point of doctrine, he may state to another user that "this passage doesn't mean this but it does mean that," and when he makes such a statement, I have to ask myself what he is really saying? Is he saying he doesn't agree with what the doctrine or the passage intrinsically means, or is he saying that, to him, it doesn't seem to be the right meaning? And if this be so, then I have to ask myself whether the user understands all of the doctrine or the passage, or only part of it, or nothing at all about it. Is he saying that the passage means so and so TO HIM because, in a sense, it falls on ears as deaf as mine would be were I hearing the passage read to me in Japanese? How much of his agreement or disagreement is objectively based on his true understanding of the intrinsic and contextual meanings of the passage and how much on subjective "what it means to me" nonsense? --Hank | ||||||