Quotes About Interpretation

History is not the past. It is the stories we tell about the past. How we tell these stories - triumphantly or self-critically, metaphysically or dialectally - has a lot to do with whether we cut short or advance our evolution as human beings.

Despite no education, Mrs. Finn always is more in charge of word meanings than I am. She is especially in charge of Good and Bad. My language limitations here are real. My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life. If I really knew this language, there would surely be in my head, as there is in Webster's or the Dictionary of American Slang, that unreducible verb designed to tell a person like me what to do next.

To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night.

Los libros pertenecen a la vez a varios campos. La literatura, en sí misma, pertenece al orden del arte en general que, por supuesto, es muy complejo, y, yendo hacia lo más sencillo, al orden primario del juego, como el trapo que se vuelve muñeca, como el palo de escoba que hace de caballo.

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.

A singer for me is more like someone who is standing alone with a microphone like Scott Walker, rather than someone who is bashing a plank and is spitting all over a microphone.

For the state, theology is too important to be left to the theologians.

I know what you are thinking about', said Tweedledum: 'but it isn't so, nohow.' 'Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be: but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.

When anything goes digital, let alone something as immaterial as a book, there is a tendency to see it as just in the air to be taken, and to lose the sense that somebody once made it.

He slipped the gold fob-watch out of his waistcoat, flicked open the cover and stared at the dial. The Cat had replaced the conventional numbers with a series of symbols, which stood for 'food', 'sex', 'snooze', 'light snooze', 'heavy snooze', 'major sleep', 'self-adoration hour', 'preening' and 'bathtime'. Right now, it was twenty past sex, or, to put it another way, quarter to food.

Our task is to decipher the meaning of the historical-theological text in biblical narrative, not to reconstruct the original event.

The right hand in Scripture symbolizes power and authority

The deep meaning of any text is a buried treasure; all the riches are waiting under the surface. If we learned there was gold deep under our backyard, nothing would stop us from getting the tools we needed to dig it out. Similarly, in serious Bible study all the treasures and riches of God are waiting to be dug up for our benefit.

This means that when we study the Bible, we should not be satisfied with a cursory reading in which we insert our own meanings into the text. Instead, we must always ask what God intended to say in every passage. But Bible study should not be a tedious duty we have to perform. It is a sacred privilege and a joy.

Often when she thought she was reading his body

I don't believe their minds were so different from ours that we're in danger of wildly misinterpreting anything that looks like a simple message. So far, the worst mistake we could have made would have been to give up too soon on trying to interpret the isotopes.

Don't underestimate the need to appeal to people's imaginations. Maybe you can see all the consequences of your work, already. Other people might need to have them spelled out explicitly." Maria

God either rules as sovereign in interpretation over *all* areas of life or none.

Since the fall of man was ethical in character (not metaphysical) the unregenerate and regenerate share the facts of the world and the rules of thought, but their interpretation and use of them are far from neutral.

There are no facts or uses of reason which are available outside of the interpretive system. The argument must pit the unbeliever's system of thought as a unit against the believer's system of thought as a unit. Their overall perspectives will have to contend with each other.

Christ is our great High Priest who sacrifices Himself to discharge the curse of law (Gal. 3:13; Heb. 2:17-3:1; 4:14-5:10). He functions as a prophet of the law, properly interpreting it and freeing it from the overlaid traditions of men (e.g., Matt. 15:1-20). And because the Son of God has heeded the law and hated all lawlessness, God has exalted Him as the Anointed King (Heb. 1:8 f.). The three-fold office of Christ is unified around the permanent expression of God's will, His holy law.

Guess what? Your god is you. You just made him up. Your god is fake, because you can't edit out the parts of the Bible you don't like. If you treat the Word of God like a buffet line and say, "I will take this aspect of God, but I don't like that one," then you will end up with a god of your own making. It won't be the God of the Bible. And that god of yours won't be able to save you in the final day, because it isn't real.

Punctuation is meant only to clarify. And fruit off with the little smiley faces.

Torture numbers and they will confess to anything