Is your Biblical interpretation valid?

[michel]

All of us see scripture through a distorted perspective. It's like trying on someone else's glasses who have the exact opposite prescription.

You think you have a grip on the situation, but all you really have are the "warm fuzzies". So you increase your determination and have a go at it again: yet your vision worsens as you force the perspective.

The path to revelation and wisdom has at it's core humility, submission and a deep love. No room for warm fuzzies here. It's never easy or pleasant and involves a constant change of your character and core values. There is no rest as you attempt to clear the scales from your eyes and see yourself with a vivid clarity. The picture is never pretty and the changes seem insurmountable.

This path has no end, but it does have quite a number of detours and many of those are dead ends. Once you stop being challenged or changing, you have to find your way back to the path.

very good point.

 

[dawny0826]

The thing is that God can work in our lives when we seek God, and work in our hearts and lives even when we can't understand what the Scripture actually says.

I hear you there. My point in my post was...for ME...when I don't understand Scripture and seek HIM for answers...He's never failed to provide me with the warm and fuzzies.

Interpretation is a science and an art, and it is reserved for those who actually do the work of interpretation.

God speaks to me through his Word...I don't have to be educated in the art or science of interpretation to understand what God is trying to say.

 

[SoyLeche]

Something I learned in my first Probability class:

All models are wrong. Some of them are useful.

The goal then becomes finding a model that is more useful then the next guys.

Everyone needs to realize that their interpretation of the Bible is "wrong". Nobody has it exactly right. So, we do what we can to make what we read useful in our lives.

 

[Scuba Pete]

Sorta what I said Soyleche, but I like your twist on it!

 

[angellous_evangellous]

I hear you there. My point in my post was...for ME...when I don't understand Scripture and seek HIM for answers...He's never failed to provide me with the warm and fuzzies.


God speaks to me through his Word...I don't have to be educated in the art or science of interpretation to understand what God is trying to say.

There is a difference in what the words say and what God is trying to say. One is interpretation of Scripture, which is understanding the written or recorded words. The Scriptures simply are not written in our langauge or for our culture or for our historical time period. If you want to interpret the Bible, you must either be educated in the art/science of interpretation or read several others who have that education to actually interpret the Bible.

The other is a supernatural encounter that no interpreter can measure with any tool. God is wholly and utterly unreachable by any human effort. By God's grace, and God's grace alone is any of us able to receive anything from God on any level. This is not biblical interpretation but an encounter with the divine.

 

[Bangbang]

I use several translations and they all have their pros and cons I find that the King James Bible contains the moist errors but I still use it. My favorite is the New World Translation that the Jehovahs Witnesses use.

 

[Scuba Pete]

The other is a supernatural encounter that no interpreter can measure with any tool. God is wholly and utterly unreachable by any human effort. By God's grace, and God's grace alone is any of us able to receive anything from God on any level. This is not biblical interpretation but an encounter with the divine.

Amen to that! The devine chooses to reveal himself to those who submit to his teaching.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Amen to that! The devine chooses to reveal himself to those who submit to his teaching.

I would add that the Divine reveals "Himself" just as God chooses, with little regard to anything but the divine purpose, if of course we take the Christian Scriptures as a guide. God reveals Himself to the obedient and the disobedient according to his purpose and grace. We can't do anything to earn revelation. It is completely up to God.

 

[sushannah]

Have the Christians cornered the market on Bible interpretation? Others interpret also, are their views not worthy of regard?

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Have the Christians cornered the market on Bible interpretation? Others interpret also, are their views not worthy of regard?

Absolutely not!

Anyone can follow the steps of biblical interpretation in my post # 7.

I know that my own or another person's interpretation of the Bible is incorrect and unreliable if we ignore or skip any of these steps or apply them irresponsibly.

Atheists, homosexuals, agnostics, Muslims, feminists, black theologians (they designate themselves as seperate, not me), post-colonials, socoliologists, anthropologists, and the list goes on and on and on. People of every background and creed are actively participating in biblical interpretation and every voice adds color and meaning and depth to the text.

Hearing from and believing in God requires faith, and that is another matter entirely.

 

[SoyLeche]

Have the Christians cornered the market on Bible interpretation? Others interpret also, are their views not worthy of regard?

I don't know where you got that idea. Of course they are worthy of regard.

 

[Scuba Pete]

I Corinthians 2:6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 However, as it is written:
"No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him"— 10 but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 11 For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. 13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. 14 The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment:
16 "For who has known the mind of the Lord
that he may instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ. NIV

So many miss the importance of the Spirit in Christianity. He is our counselor and our advocate.

 

[sushannah]

I don't know where you got that idea. Of course they are worthy of regard.

Read the first post and others in this thread, its about problems with Christian interpretation of the bible.

 

[Scuba Pete]

Your point is that Christians shouldn't have this issue? Who else concerns themselves with understanding the Bible?

 

[sushannah]

Your point is that Christians shouldn't have this issue? Who else concerns themselves with understanding the Bible?

I am Jewish, I concern myself with Bible interpretation.

 

[Scuba Pete]

Hmnnnn... do you concern yourself with the New Testament as well as the Old Testament? Perhaps I erroneously believed thay y'all had other terms for the OT and that the term "Bible" was used by Christians to denote both the Old and the New.

 

[sushannah]

Hmnnnn... do you concern yourself with the New Testament as well as the Old Testament? Perhaps I erroneously believed thay y'all had other terms for the OT and that the term "Bible" was used by Christians to denote both the Old and the New.

Jewish people do not call their scriptures the OT as Christians do. they call it the tanakh. I have also read the NT and have considered it, wouldn't this be viewed as Bible interpretation?

 

[Scuba Pete]

I guess that it's my belief that you can't understand the NT untill you try to live it, but your mileage may vary. Many Jews have dismissed the NT outright and study it only as an intellectual exercise, and not for spiritual enlightenment. This is definitely not true of all Jews.

 

[jewscout]

I believe that the Torah is a divinely recieved document and, in my mind, it must exist on an infinite number of levels. Therefore i can not, by default, brush aside an interpretation without giving it the due time and study to see where or how the interpreter got that gleening.

 

[sushannah]

I guess that it's my belief that you can't understand the NT untill you try to live it, but your mileage may vary. Many Jews have dismissed the NT outright and study it only as an intellectual exercise, and not for spiritual enlightenment. This is definitely not true of all Jews.

Bible interpretation and spiritual enlightenment are two seperate issues, but personally I would never disregard something without reading it first and considering it. Bible interpretation is an intellectual exercise