Quotes about Exegesis

We must train our people that it is not irreverent to see difficulties in the biblical text and to think hard about how they can be resolved.

The student of the word should not make his opinions a center around which truth is to revolve. He should not search for the purpose of finding texts of Scripture that he can construe to prove his theories, for this is wresting the Scriptures to his own destruction.

Reading and understanding the Bible involves lots and lots of interpretation. Not just in light of the world and culture around us, but in reference to other parts of the Bible.

Some people read the Bible as if its passages were Rorschach inkblots. They see what is in their head. In more sophisticated language, they project onto the Bible what they want to see.

It is a fact that many statements about what the Bible says are derived from contextless exegeses of a former generation

Yes, I think that when the Bible refers to a horse or a horseman, that's exactly what it means.

Opponents of this view often point out that it is not rooted in an exegesis of Genesis 1:26—28, the central biblical text that discusses the imago Dei. Indeed, it is frequently argued that the view that the imago Dei refers to the soul is more influenced by Greek philosophy than by Scripture. More specifically, it is argued that the traditional emphasis on reason as one of the hallmarks of the imago Dei is a distinctly Hellenistic, not Hebraic, notion.

No verse of Scripture yields its meaning to lazy people.

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

Jesus was best known as a master of metaphor, a legendary storyteller, and a powerful healer who communicated in signs, images, and gestures. Therefore, to understand Jesus and the Scriptures, we need to train ourselves and others not to exegete more words but to exegete images.

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).

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.