Parameters of Meaning – Part 9 Parameters of Meaning – Rule 10: Never interpret the Bible via assumptions based on extra-biblical data (e.g. “science”, philosophy, history). These can help but they should never preempt Scripture. This “parameter” is of course just a reiteration of the principle of the Sufficiency of Scripture, although the emphasis is upon the whole of Scripture’s content, not just that pertaining to the doctrines of our salvation. The Bible is made up of all kinds of …
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I was wondering what I ought to write about when I stumbled upon my old unfinished series on The Parameters of Meaning. I think these parameters are quite helpful guides for interpreters, but I clean forgot about them. Well, I’m going to try to put things right! Here’s “Rule 9” with a link to the previous eight: The Parameters of Meaning Rule 8. Parameters of Meaning – Rule 9: If a literal interpretation leads you into wholesale spiritualizing or allegorizing, …
Review of An Introduction to John Owen: A Christian Vision for Every Stage of Life by Crawford Gribben, Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020, 190 pages, pbk. Crawford Gribben is a professor at Queen’s University in Belfast and is well known as a scholar of Puritanism, specializing on eschatology. He has written a previous book on John Owen which has garnered him much praise. This work represents a modest exploration of the life and thought of the Puritan giant John Owen, and …
Part Three I’ve said quite a lot about already about the angel of the bottomless pit, but I’ve not finished. I believe certain passages of Scripture act as hermeneutical touchstones. Decisions about what direction to take can be either determinative of where the exposition is going to go, or they highlight the assumptions brought to the text. One thinks of the Olive Tree metaphor in Romans 11, or the exhortation given to Ezekiel in Ezekiel 43. The first eleven verses …
Part Two The Angel and the Beast We are now in a position to look at the angel of the bottomless pit. Here is the principal (some say only) verse referring to him: And they had as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but in Greek he has the name Apollyon. – Rev. 9:11 The first thing to notice is that in contrast to the fairly detailed descriptions of the demonic locusts in verses …
A Review of Three Views on Israel and the Church: Perspectives on Romans 9-11, Jared Compton & Andrew David Naselli, Editors, Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2018, 266 pages, pbk. It might be thought that a debate book on just three chapters in one of Paul’s epistles would only be of interest to a marginal group of specialists. However, the chapters in question are central to the vital theological and hermeneutical issue of the relationship between the nation of Israel and the …
Part One 4. The smoke from the pit darkens an already darkened sun. When I say “an already darkened sun” I do so because of Revelation 8:12: Then the fourth angel sounded: And a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them were darkened. A third of the day did not shine, and likewise the night. Here the sun is already greatly affected when the …
There are some Bible passages that pose peculiar challenges to interpreters. These passages confront us with revelations of weirdness. We are faced with accepting and exploring this weird side of Scripture, or else with smoothing it over, perhaps by not actually dealing with it, but instead just pretending it is obscure, and on that basis, moving on. Episodes that qualify to be on the list of weird passages would include Genesis 6:1-4 and Joshua 10:11-14, but many could be added. …
Are there any among the idols of the nations that can cause rain? Or can the heavens give showers? Are You not He, O LORD our God? Therefore we will wait for You, Since You have made all these. – Jeremiah 14:22 We’ve all heard versions of the prayer that goes, “Lord, help me to be patient, and please hurry up about it.” In my life the lesson on being patient has been probably the hardest one to learn. In fact, I must confess that …
Part Three Speech-Act Theory and Biblical Interpretation On a more positive note overall is the matter of whether language is merely descriptive or whether it can be said to actually do something. This gets us into the subject of language as “speech-acts.” This view has been defined as follows: Speech-act theory is a set of pragmatically based principles that were developed at the edge of philosophy and linguistics. The major assumption is that language is not so much concerned with saying …
