Scripture: Understand and Teach

"There are two things on which all interpretation of Scripture depends: the mode of ascertaining the proper meaning, and the mode of making known the meaning when it is ascertained."
          -- Saint Augustine, On Christian Teaching

Puritan Hermeneutics and Exegesis

Excerpt from the conclusion to the second chapter ("Puritan Hermeneutics and Exegesis") in A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life by Joel R. Beeke and Mark Jones.

Thus, their [Puritan authors like John Owen, Thomas Goodwin, John Howe, Stephen Charnock, etc.] covenantal reading of the Bible, whereby history is divided into two basic covenants (i.e., works and grace) meant that they were consciously reading the Scriptures with a Christ-centered lens, which was seen in their use of typology and, at times, allegory. They rejected the many "sense" of Scripture (i.e., the so-called quadriga), but their writings certainly show that they were often keen to press home the "fuller sense" of certain passages, which may have multiple layers of meanings and was a legitimate application of the literal meaning (sensus literalis). Their view that the Scriptures were internally consistent and that most theological truths had to be gathered out of more than one place in the Bible made the basic principles of the analogy of faith and "good and necessary consequence" [WCF. I.] an indispensable part of their hermeneutic. These principles of interpretation are important, but if reason alone tries to make sense of the mystery of the gospel, a Christian will forever run into error and heresy. Only a Spirit-wrought, supernatural faith will allow a Christian to believe that God had a Son as old as Himself! And yet to come to formulate such a truth a host of interpretative techniques were required (40).

Praying and Reading

What to pray while reading Scripture: "Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law" (Psalm 119:18).

Hermeneutical Thoughts

Four important qualities of Hermeneutics (Biblical interpretation).

1) Hermeneutics requires humility -- Biblical interpretation requires humility. God is the one telling the story. Sacred Scripture is God's story-telling of history via a divine-historical text. We don't own the story. It is a gift. This means we should handle the divine-story-text with humility and gratitude.

2) Hermeneutics is quasi-scientific  -- Scripture is not an accident. God decided that men under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit would write down in the format of a divine-historical-text the history which is the "external medium of God's redemptive plan" (William DiPuccio, The Interior Sense of Scripture: The Sacred Hermeneutic of John W. Nevin, p. 91). This included semantics and syntax and grammar and words and people and narratives and historical settings and types and figures: the men inspired by the Holy Spirit that wrote down the divine-historical-text used those things as the raw materials for the divine revelation of Sacred Scripture, and Biblical interpretation aims to understand those raw materials. Understanding is not accidental, it takes effort, skill, and serious study, but that is not all that it takes -- it takes much more. Since interpretation is also an art (see next point), Hermeneutics is quasi-scientific.

3) Hermeneutics is an art -- Scripture was written by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Third Person of the Trinity, the Father and the Son's breath-voice-spirit-singer. Accordingly, Scripture is a "musical" book that is rich in symbols and imagery, rhythm and repetition. Therefore, interpreting the Bible is also an art. Why? Because it isn't enough to know all the words to the song, you also have to know the tune. And Scripture has a tune.

4) Hermeneutics is Spirit-led -- Sacred Scripture is a Spirit-book. Scripture was written by the Holy Spirit. And only those who have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit, those that have been given eyes to see and ears to hear the written God-song of God's divine-story-text know the "tune" of Scripture. (They know the "tune" because they've been regenerated, they have a new Father who teaches them songs of their ancestors -- the "tune" sang by Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc.) The Bride of Christ is the Church: together her members sing the "tune" of Sacred Scripture, which was taught to her by the beautiful Holy Spirit.

Expository Responsibility

"Whether it [the text] is long or short, our responsibility as expositors is to open it up in such a way that it speaks its message clearly, plainly, accurately, relevantly, without addition, subtraction or falsification." Quotation from Stott's Between Two Worlds, as quoted by Sidney Greidanus (The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text: Interpreting and Preaching Biblical Literature, 11).

Pass on Message of the Bible: Preach Biblically

"To preach the word today means, therefore, to pass on to the church here and now the message of the Bible. The call to preach the word is a call to preach biblically" (Sidney Greidanus, The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text: Interpreting and Preaching Biblical Literature, 10).

High View of Preaching

"No less than their biblical counterparts, contemporary preachers are called to be channels of the word of God. The metaphors of herald and ambassador apply as much to them as they did to the apostles. This high view of preaching came to clear expression in the Reformed Second Helvetic Confession of 1566: Praedicatio verbi Dei est verbum Dei (the preaching of the word of God is the word of God)."
...
"This high view of preaching can never be the boast of preachers, of course; it can only underscore their responsibility. For with the prophets we noticed that their authority did not reside, ultimately, in their calling or office but in the words they spoke, whether they were from the Lord. So it is with preachers today: they have a word from the Lord, but only if they speak the Lord's word. The only norm we have for judging whether preachers speak the word of the Lord is the Bible" (Sidney Greidanus, The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text: Interpreting and Preaching Biblical Literature, 8-9).

God's Word - God's Deed

Following the logic of Gerhard von Rad, Sidney Greidanus discusses how the OT Prophets and NT authors understood God's word as being God's deed:

"You have been born anew ... through the living and abiding word of God." If anyone should wonder what the word of God is precisely, Peter explains: "That word is the good news which was preached to you" (1 Pet 1:23, 25). Like the prophets and Paul, Peter is convinced of the power of the preached word. That power is not some magical force in the words themselves but is the power of God whose word it is, for the gospel "is the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith" (Rom 1:16). The New Testament, therefore, views preaching as "God in action." Preaching is not merely a word about God and his redemptive acts but a word of God and as such is itself a redemptive event (The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text: Interpreting and Preaching Biblical Language, 5). 

Reading Scripture

“Christ’s sacrifice and death for sinners, and Christ’s kingdom and future glory, are the light we must bring to bear on any book of Scripture we read” (J. C. Ryle, Holiness, 312).