Quotes About Hermeneutics

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

In this sense, the methodological form that comes into play here is ultimately quite simple: Scripture is interpreted by Scripture. Scripture interprets itself. Attentive listening to Scripture's own internal self-interpretation is very characteristic of Redemptoris Mater.

What we need to do now," he mused, "is make better sci-fi movies so that we can have better contact experiences." That is hermeneutics.

Therefore, "a distinction should always be made between what Scripture reports and includes and what it teaches or intends."[269]

Tertullian argued that the Bible is often difficult to interpret. Obscure passages must be interpreted by those which are plain.

as Childs points out, we first need to hear the "discrete voice" of the OT, we must then go on to read the OT from a post-Christ perspective.

Letting the Bible speak for itself, that is, letting it speak in its own terms, includes letting the Bible speak from within its own worldview rather than merely our own.

The greatest rule in doing biblical exegesis is that the immediate context of a passage is crucial in determining the meaning of that passage.

Sokal gave his piece a suitably portentous title: "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." The text was a farrago of ludicrous claims about the

Does one approach the Scriptures (or any other influential document or collection of documents in the history of world civilization) with a hermeneutics of consent or a hermeneutics of suspicion? Christians have not done well in trying to read literature from other religions empathetically, and atheists and adherents of other world religions today increasingly approach the Bible with preexisting hostility.

Using only nonnarrative portions of the Bible to interpret narrative is not only disrespectful to the narrative portions but also suggests a misguided approach to nonnarrative parts of the Bible.

every church should train its members in theology, hermeneutics, and logic, so that they may better handle the word of truth.

medhermeneutical

The aim of interpretation is not agreement but understanding

Theological Seminary, points out that the sin of Sodom is mentioned several times elsewhere in the Bible, but never in connection with homosexual acts.

Scripture to its literal, grammatical, historical sense.

The book of Revelation is filled with symbols, yet these symbols refer to things that are literal. They have literal referents (see, for example, the explanation that appears in Revelation 1:20).

Method proper to the understanding of dreams: reverie over dreams, hermeneutics reverie. Because it is not something said, but an echo through totality. It is this system of echoes which also constitutes the oneirism of wakefulness.

He admits that "such a method" of somehow thinking together the philosophical foundations and the hermeneutical articulations in terms of the Holocaust is "circular," but, he says, "provided this circle is recognized, and the recognition of it permeates the whole discourse, it merely illustrates . . . that a philosophical writer with a systematic purpose cannot say everything that needs to be said

In what sense is the Bible authoritative in the first place? How can the Bible be appropriately understood and interpreted? How can its authority, assuming such appropriate interpretation, be brought to bear on the church itself, let alone on the world?

My third note is that when we therefore use scripture in little bits, cut off from their proper context and made to dance to our tunes instead, all sorts of doubts can creep in, like weeds among the wheat.

make sure we are doing justice and honour to scripture itself, rather than simply using it within schemes of our own making.

a hermeneutics of suspicion is radically reductionistic. It simply abandons the question of truth, reducing it to questions of power and desire.

Thus, we need the Bible as the guide to enable us to transform and purify our hermeneutical principles. The circle from the Bible to systematic theology to hermeneutics to the Bible is not a vicious circle, but a spiral of growth and progress, guided by the work of the Holy Spirit in illumination.