Quotes about Hermeneutics

a literal reading of Genesis is not the firmly settled default position of true faith to which one can "hold firm" or from which one "strays." Literalism is a hermeneutical decision (often implicit) stemming from the belief that God's Word requires a literal reading.

Reading the Bible responsibly and respectfully today means learning what it meant for ancient Israelites to talk about God the way they did, and not pushing alien expectations onto texts written long ago and far away.

Thus, we need the Bible as the guide to enable us to transform and purify our hermeneutical principles. The circle from the Bible to systematic theology to hermeneutics to the Bible is not a vicious circle, but a spiral of growth and progress, guided by the work of the Holy Spirit in illumination.

You see then, that Diatribe truly possesses a free choice in her handling of Scriptures, so that words of one and the same type are for her obliged to prove endeavor in one place and freedom in another, exactly as she pleases.

In what sense is the Bible authoritative in the first place? How can the Bible be appropriately understood and interpreted? How can its authority, assuming such appropriate interpretation, be brought to bear on the church itself, let alone on the world?

The greatest rule in doing biblical exegesis is that the immediate context of a passage is crucial in determining the meaning of that passage.

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.

Literalism is a hermeneutical decision (often implicit) stemming from the belief that God's Word requires a literal reading.

My third note is that when we therefore use scripture in little bits, cut off from their proper context and made to dance to our tunes instead, all sorts of doubts can creep in, like weeds among the wheat.

Biblical exegesis without controls is apt to run away into total subjectivity.

a hermeneutics of suspicion is radically reductionistic. It simply abandons the question of truth, reducing it to questions of power and desire.

the Old Testament must always be read in light of the New. I never read such Old Testament texts without immediately asking, "Does the New Testament shed additional light on how I am to understand the nature of such promises and their recipients?