Quotes About Hermeneutics

The interpretation of a specific passage must not contradict the total teaching of Scripture on a point. Individual verses do not exist as isolated fragments, but as parts of a whole. To interpret them properly, we must understand their relationship to the whole and to each other. Scripture interprets Scripture.

When Calvin protested against allegorizing, he was protesting not against finding a spiritual meaning in a passage, but against finding one that was not there. The

The text has disappeared under the interpretation.

The Bible must retain its autonomy and speak for itself. But that is also true when we hold traditional interpretations up to the Bible. The biblical text must retain its autonomy from tradition. We must always be willing to return to the text and consider it with fresh eyes.

the Old Testament must always be read in light of the New. I never read such Old Testament texts without immediately asking, "Does the New Testament shed additional light on how I am to understand the nature of such promises and their recipients?

Reading and understanding the Bible involves lots and lots of interpretation. Not just in light of the world and culture around us, but in reference to other parts of the Bible.

Some people read the Bible as if its passages were Rorschach inkblots. They see what is in their head. In more sophisticated language, they project onto the Bible what they want to see.

It is a fact that many statements about what the Bible says are derived from contextless exegeses of a former generation

we should not need a magic wand or a decoder ring to interpret Scripture),

Lay people learn hermeneutics from their pastors' preaching. Whether we like it or not, they learn how to interpret Scripture from how we handle Scripture in the pulpit. So what do we teach listeners about hermeneutics when Jesus makes a surprise appearance in a sermon from Proverbs?

Neoplatonists also believed that the vast variety of human thought, if traced back to the One Source—what Leonardo da Vinci called the Prime Mover—would lead to spiritual enlightenment and ultimately to God. This and the mystical texts that Ficino was translating led him to attempt a fusion of all mystical beliefs, from Greek gnosticism to Egyptian hermeneutics to Christian cosmology—and to Jewish Kabbalah.

this is not reading the Bible as a book. It is using the Bible as a kind of Christian Ouija board.

Si algo tenían en común los pensadores ilustrados era su insistencia en que apliquemos enérgicamente el estándar de la razón a la comprensión de nuestro mundo y no recurramos a generadores de engaño como la fe, el dogma, la revelación, la autoridad, el carisma, el misticismo, la adivinación, las visiones, las corazonadas o el análisis hermenéutico de los textos sagrados.

eisegetical;

We read the whole Bible, cover to cover, over and over again... It wasn't that we read selective parts of the Bible. It was that we interpreted it in this very selective way.

Scripture is not inerrant; believers are called to interpret biblical texts in light of tradition and reason.

One of the most important principles of handling the Word properly and studying the Bible inductively is to interpret Scripture in the light of its context. Why? Because context always rules in interpretation.

Misunderstanding literary form can result in misunderstanding Scripture.

no theory of hermeneutic legitimation can be indeed legitimate if not by the process of hermeneutic reading… At the origin of the hermeneutic practice, there is a circle; it does not matter how holy or how vicious.

The concern of the scholar is primarily with what the text meant; the concern of the layperson is usually with what it means. The believing scholar insists that we must have both. Reading the Bible with an eye only to its meaning for us can lead to a great deal of nonsense as well as to every imaginable kind of error—because it lacks controls. Fortunately, most believers are blessed with at least a measure of that most important of all hermeneutical skills—common sense.

sólo existen dos modos de tratar la Biblia: o se la toma al pie de la letra, o se la toma en serio.

Biblical exegesis without controls is apt to run away into total subjectivity.

The Gospel presents us with the righteousness of Jesus Christ, who, in his earthly life, perfectly interpreted the word of his Father. In so doing he justified the fallible attempts of his people to interpret the word. The justification of our hermeneutics by the perfect hermeneutics of Christ is the motivation for us to strive for hermeneutical sanctification.

The main thing that prevents us from understanding the Bible aright is not a lack of hermeneutical skills but our sin.