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The Goal of Interpretation · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to the Deep Dive brought to you by Reformed Thinking.
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This is where we take the source material you sent us all the
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articles, the notes, the research, and we work through it
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together. The goal is to turn dense
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information into something clear, something you can really
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use. Our mission today is a serious
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one. It's a very extensive look at
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the principles of biblical interpretation, what people in
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the field call hermeneutics. And looking at these sources,
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it's clear they are entirely focused on one thing,
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establishing controls for reading scripture.
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Necessary controls the issue. Underneath it all is authority.
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If the message of the Bible can, you know, change or shift just
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based on the reader's pre-existing ideas, then
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scripture stops being authoritative.
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It's no longer God's inspired communication.
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So we need a system. A system rooted in logic and
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history that makes sure the text stays a dependable guide.
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And that tension is really the heart of what we're looking at
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today. How do we determine the original
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true message of Scripture? How do we do that without
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accidentally dragging our own 21st century cultural baggage
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or, you know, our personal leanings into the text?
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This is a deep dive into the controls that are meant to stop
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interpretation from just collapsing into subjectivity.
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Right. We want to establish a framework
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that makes the biblical text function as a window, a window
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into the world of the original author that allows us to see
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their intention as clearly as possible.
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Because if we fail at that, the text just becomes a mirror.
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A mirror reflecting back the reader's own meanings.
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OK, so to give this a structure, we're going to 1st establish the
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single most important rule. Which is the centrality?
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Of the author's intention. Then look at the technical
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framework, the sources used to to dissect communications known
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as speech act theory. And finally we will unpack the
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specific rigorous criteria that act as our quality control
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system. And this becomes really critical
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when sincere readers read very different conclusions about what
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a text means for them today. So let's start with that non
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negotiable principle, the first rule that governs all sound
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biblical interpretation. The primary goal is to discover
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the author encoded historical meaning of the text.
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We're looking for what the author put there.
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Why do we have to start there? Why is authorial intent so
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crucial? Well, it rests on a very
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specific theological conviction for those working in this
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framework. Scripture is understood as the
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very word of God, but conveyed faithfully through human
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authors. And because of that, the
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message's meaning is fixed. It resides in the communication
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because the author, both the divine author and the human one,
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encoded it there. They used historically specific
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language literary forms. It's grounded in a real time and
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place. So the meaning is treated like a
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historical artifact, something concrete that existed at the
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moment of writing and that immediately defines the
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interpreter's job not as an act of creation, but an act of
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discovery. We're basically detectives of
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ancient communication. That is the correct way to see
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it. The interpreter is auxiliary to
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the original author. Our whole mission is to find the
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message that's already present in the text, to recover what the
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original communicator intended when they wrote it.
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The risk of going off track is greatest when we stop asking
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what did the author mean? And we start asking, well what
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does this text mean to me? When we talk about recovering
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this intended meaning, what are we actually looking for?
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I mean, whether the components of the author's communication.
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It feels like we need a more technical way to break it down
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than just saying purpose. We do.
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We have to aim to understand the text in terms of the original
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author, and that covers 4 elements of their commutative
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act. First, their overall purpose in
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writing the book or the letter. Then the specific content they
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conveyed. Third, the commutative energy
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they use. Were they persuading, warning,
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celebrating, and very critically, their intended
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effect on the original audience? What did they want their
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audience to do or think? OK, so if we're going to really
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nail down what intention means in such an old text, we have to
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look at the specialized tools the sources go in, and that
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starts with something called speech act theory.
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This is where we get the technical mechanics we need to
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formally analyze communication. Yes, speech act theory is really
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helpful because it lets us breakdown any commutative acts,
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spoken or written, into 3 distinct arts, and this helps us
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separate what we can actually verify from what we have to
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infer. O If the text itself is all we
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have left from 2000 years ago, what's the first element we need
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to isolate? That would be the locution.
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Locution describes the mechanical act of writing.
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It's the visible, audible part. It is what is actually written
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or spoken. So it includes the specific
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words they chose, the grammar, the syntax, the sentence
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structure, and the genre of the text.
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It's the raw linguistic material.
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And that has to be the most critical starting point, because
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the locution is all the interpreter has to assess
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objectively. It's our data set.
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That's it, and we studied the locution to understand the
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second component, elocution. Elocution refers to the
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commutative intent or the energy or the force the author uses
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through those specific words. It answers the question, what
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was the author doing by writing these words?
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Were they giving a command, making a promise, offering a
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lament, or just informing? That sounds like the hardest
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part to verify across history. How do we make sure we've
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correctly figured out the elocutionary force when we can't
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interview the author? That is the essential challenge,
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isn't it? It's why these sources are so
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rigorous about method. We have to infer the elocution
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from a locution using context clues.
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So, for example, if we read a text that's structured like a
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historical narrative, the elocutionary force is probably
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to inform. If the words are structured as
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an appeal, with lots of imperative verbs addressing a
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known problem, then the forces to persuade or to command.
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Without those contextual controls, we risk imposing the
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wrong force. You know, reading a little love
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letter like it's a legal contract.
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And if there's a third component perlocution.
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Perlocution is the author's desired or intended response
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from the readers. It's the outcome, the result
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that the author envisioned for the audience.
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This is the goal oriented part of it.
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So, if the author's illocutionary purpose, say, to
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warn, is successfully realized, the perlocution describes what
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the author wanted the readers to think or feel or do, like flee
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from danger or repent of a particular sin.
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So if we bring all three of those together, the historical
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meaning we're trying to find is the combination of the author's
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illocution, their purpose or force, and their perlocution,
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their intended effect, and both of those are conveyed through
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the locution, the physical words on the page.
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That synthesis gives us the definition of textual meaning,
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and that meaning is constrained. It's constrained by the
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conviction that biblical authors intended their messages to have
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a single meaning. This single meaning is what
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we're after, not a whole bunch of meanings based on personal or
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cultural preference. But doesn't that demand for a
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single meaning risk making the Bible seem, I don't know,
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inflexible or irrelevant to all the different cultures over
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time? That's a very fair concern, and
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the sources address it by drawing a very sharp line.
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The single meaning has to be sought first through historical,
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grammatical, literary, cultural analysis.
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That fixed historical meaning must play the controlling role
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in all the interpretation that comes after.
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If we lose sight of that single illusion, we lose the
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authoritative nature of the text.
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But the text is still relevant because it's single meaning is
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capable of diverse application. Which brings us to our next
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critical point. This is maybe the single most
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important distinction for clarity, the difference between
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textual meaning and significance.
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Or you could call it application.
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Confusing these two is where nearly all interpretive problems
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start. OK, let's define them with
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absolute clarity, starting with a fixed element.
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Textual meaning is fixed. It's single and it's constant.
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It is historical. It is what the author encoded
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using that specific locution to convey their illocutionary force
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and to get to their perlocutionary intention.
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It's stable across time. And significance or application.
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That's the variable elements. Significance is diverse.
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It's contextual, it's multiple. It refers to the varied ways
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that the fixed meaning can be applied and can impact different
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readers across time and place. A text single meaning can have a
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variety of valid applications. So if I'm tracking this, the
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fixed meaning is the author's direct message to their original
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audience. The significance is how I apply
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that same message to my life today.
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That's close, but let's be a little more precise.
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Using our terms from speech act theory, the perlocution is the
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author's intended effect. For example, Paul wanted the
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Corinthians to unify. That was his goal for them.
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The significance or application is the reader's contextual
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response to that fixed meaning today.
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So a modern church might apply that call for unity by, say,
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stopping their quarrels over music styles.
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The original meaning is fixed. The resulting significance is
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varied. That's a very helpful
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distinction. Let's try to expand that
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original recipe analogy you mentioned to clarify where
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errors can happen. Good idea.
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Let's go back to an ancient recipe, maybe for unleavened
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bread, intended for a Passover celebration.
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The ingredients, the measurements, the specific
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preparation technique. That is the fixed meaning
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intended by the author or the chef.
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If you change that recipe by adding yeast or substituting the
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flour, you have changed the meaning.
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That is a hermeneutical error. You're not making unleavened
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bread anymore. The significance then, is how
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that bread gets used across time.
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Right. The bread is prepared for a
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Passover celebration. That's the original
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significance. Later, maybe a community
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prepares that same bread for a small somber memorial service, a
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totally new application. The purpose, the emotional
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impact, the practical use, the significance, it all changes
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based on the context of the consumer.
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But the fixed recipe, the meaning has to remain constant.
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That has to control the process. And the major benefit of keeping
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this distinction so rigorous is what you might call theological
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flexibility. By sticking to the fixed
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meaning, we maintain the text authority, but we also keep the
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ability to apply that truth to very different modern contexts.
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That is the goal. We avoid imposing modern
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meanings onto the ancient text because that would violate the
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author's intent. But we can still extract life
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giving significance for today. The texts authority rests on its
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singularity of meaning. Its relevance rests on its
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multiplicity of application. Let's use the specific example
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from the sources. The parable The workers in the
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vineyard Matthew 20 workers get hired at different times of the
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day, but they all receive the same day's wage, and this leads
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to resentment from the ones who started first.
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The historical context there suggests a single fixed meaning
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intended by Jesus, which Matthew then preserved for his readers.
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And that meaning is God operates by sovereign generosity, and
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rewards are given at his discretion, not based on human
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ideas of merit. That message, that truth about
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God's economy, is the fixed meaning.
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But that single meaning led to different applications or
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significances, even within the early Church context.
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Oh yes, for the disciples themselves, the significance
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might have been a warning. A warning to check their own
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personal motives when they were serving Christ.
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I mean, it comes right after Peter asked what do we get for
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following you? But for Matthew's later
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community, the significance probably had to do with the
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inclusion of Gentiles, those latecomers being granted the
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same full inheritance as the long laboring Jewish believers.
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So the meaning is fixed, God is generous, but the implications,
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the practical significances, are multiple.
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Assess your motives. Be gracious toward new members.
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Reject ethnic pride. This model allows the fixed
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truth to govern varied contextual responses.
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So if author encoded single meaning is the rule, we have to
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justify it by looking at the alternatives that the source
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materials dismiss. The sources present five options
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for a meaning might reside in the text.
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And we vigorously uphold option 1A.
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Text has only one meaning, the one intended by the author.
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When we look at the other options, we see why this
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constraint is so crucial for maintaining the authority of
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Scripture. Let's look at the most dangerous
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alternative, the one the sources firmly reject.
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That's Model 3, the reader response view.
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This view argues that meaning isn't fixed in the text, but is
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created by readers imposing their own subjective
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understanding and their own cultural frameworks onto it.
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And this approach is rejected because, in the view of our
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sources, it is homoneutically disastrous.
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It's a catastrophe. It completely ignores the
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historical setting, the authorial elocution.
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It leads directly to interpretive anarchy.
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If the reader creates the meaning, the text stops having
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any external authority. The sources warned that the
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Bible under this model becomes a wax nose that can be twisted
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this way or that to suit the reader's whim.
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That's a pretty serious condemnation.
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It is the text gets reduced to a psychological tool or a cultural
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mirror. The moment you reject the
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authority of the author's single fixed elocution, you remove all
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authoritative controls and the text can no longer make demands
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on the reader. For those who believed in the
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divine inspiration of Scripture, meaning cannot be indeterminate.
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It has to be fixed and traceable to the act of communication
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itself. Moving from that kind of
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outright subjectivity to a much more subtle challenge, we have
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to address Model 4, the census planar debate.
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This is the concept of a fuller sense, right?
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Census planar refers to a possible deeper, secondary, or
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hidden meaning, a meaning encoded by the Holy Spirit that
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exists alongside the literal sense but was entirely unknown
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to the human author. The idea is that the Holy
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Spirit, the divine author, was thinking bigger than the human
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scribe realized. This sounds theological, but it
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creates a huge methodological problem for modern
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interpretation. It really does, because
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traditional historical and grammatical methods of exegesis,
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they're designed to recover the human authors conscious intent.
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They simply cannot detect or verify this alleged secret
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embedded sense in a way that's repeatable or testable.
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If interpretation requires controls and verification, and
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since it's planar, can't be verified by our established
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methods, how can we legitimately claim it has authority over the
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text? So how should a modern
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interpreter handle this concept if they want to stay
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methodologically responsible? The sources give 2 paths.
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The first one, the most methodologically rigorous path,
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is to simply reject its practical existence.
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For modern interpreters, we just confine exegesis strictly to
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what can be defensively studied, the human author's intended
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meaning. If we can't verify how a meaning
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is found, we don't have a reliable tool.
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And the second option is a bit more cautious.
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It allows for the concept, but severely restricts its use.
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That option is to admit its existence provisionally,
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acknowledge the possibility of a divine hidden sense, but, and
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this is the key, to insist that only inspired New Testament
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writers could have found and disclosed it.
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And this effectively removes it from the toolbox of the modern
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exegete. It reserves that capacity for
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the apostles and prophets who established the New Covenant
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understanding. This second option helps Bridges
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to Model 5, which the sources present as the most suitable
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explanation for how New Testament authors seem to go
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beyond the Old Testament writers conscious intent.
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And that is the allowance that a later inspired biblical author
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may disclose additional significance or perlocutions,
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often using techniques like typology.
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Yes, the New Testament writers respected the fixed meaning of
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the Old Testament, Hosea in Israel, for example, but they
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recognize that under the Spirit's guidance and from a
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post resurrection perspective, that text had a profound
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additional significance for the life and work of Christ.
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They didn't invent a new meaning, but they did reveal A
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richer climactic fulfillment of an existing redemptive pattern.
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So typology. It's often described as the lens
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through which early Christians viewed the Old Testament.
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What exactly is the working definition of typology that
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keeps it constrained and authoritative?
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Typology is the recognition of a correspondence between New and
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Old Testament events, persons, or institutions, and this
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correspondence is based on a conviction of the unchanging
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character of the principles of God's working in salvation
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history. It's not about accidental
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similarities. It's about deliberate recurring
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patterns that got himself established.
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So it's not about finding secret messages, which would push us
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back toward allegorical interpretation.
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It's about finding consistent divine action.
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What's the crucial difference between sound typology and
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arbitrary allegory? That is a necessary guardrail to
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put up. Allegory treats the literal text
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as a shell that's just concealing some unrelated
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abstract spiritual truth. The literal historical meaning
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gets discarded in favor of a deeper, hidden, often moralizing
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meaning. Typology, on the other hand,
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presupposes and honors the literal historical meaning of
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the Old Testament event. It argues that God's actions in
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the past, the type, intentionally correspond to the
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fuller action in Christ, the fulfillment.
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The pattern itself is divinely ordained, but the original
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historical event keeps its full single meaning.
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In typology, the Old Testament action is the type, the
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precursor, and what God accomplishes later in Christ is
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the fulfillment or anti type. That's it.
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The New Testament writers, informed by the resurrection,
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saw these patterns of God's redemptive history reflected in
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the Old Testament, and they saw that they found their
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culmination in Christ and the Church.
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The mechanism is a recognition of patterns like redemption
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through a representative figure or salvation through judgement.
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So typology is primarily a technique of the later writer,
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the New Testament author, who had the Full disclosure of
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Christ's work to mine prior Scripture for similarities to
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explain God's present activities.
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A classic example is Peter's reference to Noah.
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Peter says the water that saved Noah and his family is a type of
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baptism that now saves Christians.
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Noah's salvation through water was the historical meaning for
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the Genesis author. But Peter, the later inspired
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author, sees a divine pattern of salvation being achieved through
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judgement and water, and he applies that pattern to the new
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ritual of baptism. Which means Peter was not
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arguing that the author of Genesis intended to prophecy
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baptism. He saw a consistent, verifiable
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divine pattern in God's saving work.
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Correct. The human author's intention
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remains respected, but the later inspired authors were granted
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the insight to see the larger narrative framework, and they
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then use that to disclose additional significance or
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perlocutions to their readers. Let's focus on that challenging
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example, Matthew's use of Hosea 11.1 out of Egypt.
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I called my son. Hosea originally wrote this
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referring to God rescuing Israel from Pharaoh, but Matthew quotes
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this in relation to Jesus's family returning from Egypt
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after Herod's death. The single, fixed historical
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meaning that Hosea intended was to remind Israel of God's
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faithfulness in the Exodus. Matthew is not claiming Hosea
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had a conscious, human, prophetic intention to speak of
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the Messiah. He's not.
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Instead, Matthew sees a pattern where God rescues and protects
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his chosen Son. Just as God called Israel the
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corporate son out of Egypt, God likewise called Jesus the
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perfect son out of Egypt. So Matthew is finding a valid
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perlocution or an additional significance in the text, a
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divine pattern of God's redemptive activity that finds
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its ultimate, most significant expression in Christ.
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And this preserves the original meaning while leveraging the
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forward-looking nature of the total Scripture.
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The Old Testament, taken as a unified whole, is recognized as
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having this forward-looking dimension, the promise
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fulfillment narrative that was always tending toward Christ,
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even if the scope was, you know, partially unknown to the
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original human authors. For the New Testament writers,
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the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus became the
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hermeneutical key that unlocked the full significance of these
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patterns. So if we accept that our goal is
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to recover the author's elocution and perlocution, and
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we accept that we're dealing in approximations, we absolutely
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require a rigorous quality control system.
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And this system has to test both the recovery of the original
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meaning and the derivation of the modern significance.
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Let's start with the criteria. Focus strictly on the text
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itself. These help us verify the
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original fixed meaning. The sources draw heavily on the
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principles of Edie Hirsch Junior.
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Here we have to establish the most probable reading based on
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external evidence. These criteria make sure that
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we're treating the Bible like any other ancient human
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communication. We're seeking the normal and
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clear sense in which humans ordinarily convey messages,
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constrained by the type of literature we're reading.
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OK, Criterion 1. The interpretation must be
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possible according to the norms of the language in which the
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text was written. This is basic.
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We have to be historical linguists.
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You can't just assert that a Greek or Hebrew word meant
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something in the 1st century that it only acquired in the
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15th century. If an interpretation is
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linguistically impossible in the original setting, it fails right
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away. This is how we push back against
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those who try to make a word mean whatever they want it to
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mean. Criterion too.
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It must be able to account for each linguistic component in the
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text. We have to be grammarians, and
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interpretation can't just ignore the prepositional phrases or the
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tense of the verbs or the specific names used just because
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they complicate the meaning you want to get the entire locution.
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Every piece of the puzzle has to be integrated into the final
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proposed elocution. Interpreters often fail here by
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focusing only on key nouns and just discarding the restrictive
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clauses. Criterion 3.
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It must follow the conventions for its type of literature, it's
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genre. This is a massive control
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mechanism. If we interpret a highly
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symbolic apocalyptic vision like Revelation as if it were a
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literal historical report, we have radically misidentified the
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author's intended elocution. And conversely, we can't read
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legal material from Exodus as if it were pure poetry.
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Recognizing genre, narrative, law, wisdom, prophecy,
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Apocalypse tells us the rule book for interpreting the
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locution. Misinterpretation of genre has
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historically led to profound theological error.
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In criterion 4, it must be coherent.
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It has to make sense within the immediate and the larger
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literary context. The interpretation has to work
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not just for the specific verse, but it has to make sense within
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the paragraph, the chapter, the entire book, and the entire
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sweep of Scripture. If your interpretation of one
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passage creates an internal contradiction with the clear
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teaching of the rest of the author's work or the rest of the
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Bible, it's likely incoherent. It has to be rejected.
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The interpretation that satisfies all four of these
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historical and linguistic elements, The one that is the
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most historically defensible, has the greatest authority as
22:07
the single fixed meaning intended by the author.
22:10
Now, once we have locked down that fixed meaning, we have to
22:13
test the derived significance, the creative application or the
22:17
modern perlecution, and this requires criteria focused on the
22:20
Community and on Orthodoxy. OK, criterion one.
22:23
For that it must express or conform to Orthodox Christian
22:26
theology. This subjects the interpretation
22:28
to an external bar, the worldwide Christian community
22:32
throughout history. It has to align with the
22:34
essential doctrines of the faith as they're expressed in the
22:37
historic creeds. A new application can't deny the
22:40
Trinity or the deity of Christ or the nature of sin, even if it
22:44
seems compelling based on one specific text.
22:48
Orthodoxy provides the necessary check on theological novelty.
22:52
Criterion 2. It must correspond to typical
22:55
paradigms of God's truth or activity as clearly revealed in
22:59
historically interpreted sections of the Bible.
23:01
What this means is the significance we derive must
23:04
align with the broad, consistent patterns of God's character
23:06
revealed elsewhere. So if an application suggests
23:09
God is arbitrary or unjust or cruel, even if it's derived from
23:13
a single obscure text, it fails this test.
23:16
It fails because it contradicts the clear central pattern of
23:19
God's consistent redemptive activity and justice found in
23:21
the rest of Scripture. Criterion 3.
23:24
It must work in the Crucible of Christian experience, That is,
23:27
it has to produce godliness and advance God's Kingdom in
23:30
practice. This is the pragmatic test.
23:32
Does the application of this significance produce virtue,
23:36
love, righteousness, humility in the lives of believers?
23:41
If an interpretation, no matter how clever it is, consistently
23:44
leads to sectarianism or arrogance or immorality, that's
23:48
a sign of the interpretation or its application is flawed.
23:51
Genuine understanding yields faithful living.
23:54
Criterion 4. It must find confirmation along
23:57
the full spectrum of Christians within an Orthodox faith
24:00
community spanning different traditions and demographics.
24:03
We need humility and communal confirmation.
24:05
A truly significant application should resonate with believers
24:08
across cultural and economic lines.
24:11
If a new truth surfaces only in an isolated, narrow sector, it
24:15
should be approached with extreme caution until it can
24:17
prove its validity against the witness of the broader body of
24:20
Christ. This comprehensive system acts
24:22
as the essential quality control first historical and linguistic
24:26
tools lock down the original design.
24:28
Hersh's criteria 2nd. Theological and communal tools.
24:31
Check the adaptation and application of that design.
24:34
The Orthodoxy criteria. But even after applying this
24:36
rigorous quality control system, sincere believers who are
24:40
applying the same exegetical tools, sometimes they arrive at
24:43
differing conclusions specifically about the
24:46
significance or application of a text, and those differences are
24:49
often very complex and systemic. The sources acknowledge this
24:53
tension with two classic examples.
24:55
The first example is the interpretive stalemate over
24:57
baptism. Both immersionists, who practice
25:00
believers only baptism, and paedo Baptists, who practice
25:03
infant baptism both operate under the authority of
25:07
Scripture, Yet they derive fundamentally opposing
25:09
conclusions about the mode and the timing of the right.
25:13
The locution is straightforward. The ritual is clearly commanded.
25:16
The disagreement happens because different traditions prioritize
25:19
different scriptural principles to derive their necessary
25:22
perlocution, their intended effect or practice.
25:25
The immersionists often appeal to the lexical meaning of the
25:28
Greek word baptizo, which means to dip or to immerse, and that
25:33
establishes the mode. They also appeal to the New
25:36
Testament pattern of personal faith, confession coming before
25:38
the right. They'll reference passages like
25:40
Acts 8 where the Ethiopian eunuch has to 1st profess faith.
25:44
Their core perlocution is that baptism is a public symbol of
25:47
individual regeneration. Right.
25:49
And conversely, the paedo Baptist appeal to the
25:52
overarching covenantal scheme of the Bible.
25:55
They argue that baptism is the New Testament equivalent of the
25:58
Old Testament rite of circumcision.
26:00
They'll cite texts like Colossians 2.
26:03
This approach relies on a theological inference analogy,
26:06
not direct command, to establish that children born into the
26:08
community of faith should receive the covenant sign.
26:11
Their perlocution is that baptism is a sign of covenant
26:13
inclusion, regardless of the child's current faith status.
26:16
So neither side is rejecting the fixed meaning of baptism, but
26:20
they're arguing over which set of broader scriptural trajectory
26:23
should govern. The final practice is the new
26:26
covenant and adult only institution based on radical
26:29
discontinuity or is it a continuation of a family based
26:33
covenant? That's it.
26:35
Both claims rely on defensible perlocutions that align with
26:38
their systematic theology and their community commitments.
26:41
And since neither view can be fully excluded on strictly
26:44
grammatical or historical grounds, we have to recognize
26:47
that the single fixed meaning has yielded differing but
26:49
orthodox applications. The second interpretive
26:52
stalemate is the Millennium, specifically the thousand year
26:55
reign mentioned in Revelation 20.
26:57
The core disagreement is whether this reign is a literal future
27:00
event on Earth or a figurative reality in the present age.
27:04
This divergent is primarily rooted in how interpreters apply
27:07
Criterion 3 genre analysis and millennialists, those who
27:11
believe the thousand years are figurative and happening now,
27:14
read Revelation as highly symbolic apocalyptic literature.
27:19
They argue that concepts like 1000 years should be interpreted
27:22
non literally, consistent with the rest of the books hyperbolic
27:25
language. They also interpret the phrase
27:27
they came to life and reigned with Christ as a spiritual
27:31
resurrection, the souls of deceased believers reigning with
27:34
Christ in heaven right now. They'll often argue that Satan
27:38
is currently bound in the sense that he can't prevent the spread
27:41
of the Gospel even though he's still active.
27:43
Premillennialists, on the other hand, will read the texts
27:46
chronology more literally where possible, especially that phrase
27:49
came to life. They see it as a literal bodily
27:52
resurrection that happens prior to a literal reign of Christ on
27:55
earth. They argue that to spiritualize
27:57
the entire sequence violates the sense of chronological structure
28:01
that revelation often uses. So the fixed meaning of
28:03
Revelation 20 remains single. It's describing a reign, but the
28:07
resulting conclusions diverge because sincere interpreters
28:10
prioritize different perlocutions. 1 prioritizing a
28:14
spiritual already realized significance and millennialism
28:18
and the other a future earthly significance, premillennialism,
28:23
and each one aligns with a different systematic theological
28:26
trajectory. The problem isn't the text
28:28
elocution, it's the application of the genre controls, and both
28:32
resulting applications are typically seen as being within
28:34
the boundaries of acceptable orthodoxy.
28:36
They don't violate the core creeds of Christianity.
28:39
So, given these situations where sincere believers, after
28:42
applying rigorous analysis, arrive at different conclusions
28:45
about the significance of a text, and those views stay
28:48
within acceptable orthodox boundaries, what's the final
28:51
call for the Church? The call is for humility and for
28:53
grace. Where alternative
28:55
interpretations or the resulting practices, the perlocutions,
28:59
meet the rigorous criteria for validity, meaning they are
29:02
orthodox, they're biblically consistent in broader patterns,
29:05
and they produce genuine godliness.
29:07
We have to accept them. We have to commit to agree to
29:10
disagree in love. And we have to make sure that
29:13
such differences in interpretation, especially on
29:16
matters like the Millennium where the historical data isn't
29:19
overwhelmingly clear, are not used to divide the body of
29:21
Christ. If the textual and historical
29:24
evidence is genuinely insufficient to defend one view
29:27
as more probable than the others, interpreters should
29:30
exercise restraint. Allow for alternate options.
29:33
While we recognize that different interpretive
29:35
communities will produce different perlocutions based on
29:38
their theological systems, we have to exert every effort to
29:41
minimize departures from the historical meanings the author
29:44
originally intended. That single historical meaning
29:47
remains the final control, the final guardrail against error.
29:52
This has been a rigorous deep dive into the controls of
29:55
biblical interpretation. We established that the primary
29:57
goal is discovery, recovering the author's single fixed
30:00
meaning. And we established that the
30:02
single meaning is rigorously defined by combining the
30:05
author's elocution, their intent, and their perlocution,
30:08
their intended effect, all of which has to be extracted from
30:11
the verifiable data of the locution, the text itself.
30:15
And we have to consistently distinguish this fixed meaning
30:17
from the varied valid applications or significance
30:20
that follow. And you now have the necessary
30:23
tools, the Speech Act framework and Hersh's 4 criteria focusing
30:27
on linguistic rigor to measure any proposed interpretation
30:30
against the historical context and the demands of language and
30:34
genre. The resulting challenge for you
30:36
is critical self examination during application.
30:39
When you're reading, always begin by asking what did the
30:42
original author intend for the original reader, constrained by
30:45
the language and history? Only after establishing that
30:48
fixed historical meaning can we responsibly translate that
30:51
single message into diverse life, giving significance for
30:54
today. So let us leave you with this
30:56
provocative thought, building on those validation criteria we
30:59
discussed. Given that the total teaching of
31:01
the Bible provides the ultimate guidelines and restraints, what
31:04
happens to an interpretation, even a highly historically
31:07
defensible one, if it's application consistently causes
31:10
a major deviation from the practice of godliness in the
31:14
lives of believers? The authority of the text
31:16
demands not just accuracy of meaning, but fidelity and
31:19
living.