Quotes About Exegesis

In Book 4 of On Christian Doctrine Augustine restates broad Ciceronian principles and transposes them into homiletical theory. He addresses standard considerations of audience, diction, rhythm, and style, but subjects them all to the authority of the Bible, which, in Augustine's treatment, is not only a source of doctrine but also a handbook of style. Thus the preacher not only exegetes the text but also uses it as a stylistic model for his sermon.

That academic work had a static dimension to it, like we were studying from a distance, analyzing and scrutinizing, making distinctions about distinctions. In that world I got points for precision, for my ability to parse and exegete and summarize. I was rewarded for how well I could pin the butterfly.

when the exhaustive exegesis of God's Word doesn't create people transformed into the image of Jesus, we have missed the forest for the trees.

when the exhaustive exegesis of God's Word doesn't create people transformed into the image of Jesus, we have missed the forest for the trees. Or perhaps Jesus explained it better: "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life" (John 5:39–40).

No verse of Scripture yields its meaning to lazy people.

Thus Judaism is based upon a minimum of revelation and a maximum of interpretation, upon the will of God and upon the understanding of Israel.

There has always been a hermeneutic problem in Christianity because Christianity proceeds from a proclamation.

Or again, exegesis of The Waste Land often reads remarkably like the psychoanalytic interpretation of a dream, yet we know that Eliot's methods were prepared for him not by Freud but by other poets.

The text of the Bible means what God inspired it to mean, not "what it means to

One problem with the work of the New Critics was that their close readings, no matter how brilliant, could not deliver all they seemed to promise.

While we need to look deeply into the Scriptures Jesus knew, we needn't look beyond them for things that aren't there.

So long as the New Testament served to decipher the Old, it was taken as an absolute norm.

Para los puritanos, el sermón no solo gira en torno a la Escritura, sino que literalmente existe dentro de la Palabra de Dios; el texto no está en el sermón, sino que el sermón está en el texto… En pocas palabras, escuchar un sermón es estar en la Biblia»

So much of religion is exegesis. I would rather follow in the footprints of Christ than all of the dogma.

If it is true that there is always more than one way of construing a text, it is not true that all interpretations are equal.

The well-known theologian Augustine adopted the point of view that Scripture, with the exception of prophecy, should be interpreted naturally and literally.

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.

Scripture exists; human beings interpret it.

I would argue that no approach to a text is without method—even what you would call literalism and what I call "vacuous literalism." (In

Spiritual exegesis is not an unrestrained flight of the imagination. Rather, it is a sacred science that proceeds according to certain principles and stands accountable to sacred tradition, the Magisterium, and the wider community of biblical interpreters (both living and deceased).

The New Testament takes no demonstrable position on homosexuality. To suggest that Paul's references to excesses of sexual indulgence involving homosexual behavior are indicative of a general position in opposition to same-sex eroticism is as unfounded as arguing that his condemnation of drunkenness implies opposition to the drinking of wine.

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 greatest proof that the Bible is inspired is that it has withstood so much bad preaching!

Protestant commentaries, I discovered, were also particularly interesting because Protestants have spent more time on Scripture than most of us.