Guest Post By Gregg Strawbridge
See the longer article here which addresses the details of St. Luke’s Gospel:
http://allsaints-church.com/files/etstearingdownhouse.htm
Should we interpret “literally” – well, yes. But what does this mean? Let me pick on the dispensationalists. “That a single passage has one meaning and one meaning only has been a long-established principle of biblical interpretation. Among evangelicals, recent violations of that principle have multiplied,” writes Robert Thomas. Thomas cites Milton S. Terry’s classic Hermeneutics text, “A fundamental principle in grammatico-historical exposition is that the words and sentences can have but one significance in one and the same connection. The moment we neglect this principle we drift out upon a sea of uncertainty and conjecture.” In defending grammatical-historical hermeneutics, Thomas challenges Clark Pinnock’s “future” meanings, Mikel Neumann’s contextualization, Greg Beale and Grant Osborne on Revelation 11, and Kenneth Gentry’s preterism, and last but not least the whole lot of progressive dispensationalists with their “complementary” hermeneutics. He even calls Daniel Wallace’s Greek book dangerous because Wallace acknowledges that there are “… instances of double entendre, sensus plenior (conservatively defined), puns, and word-plays in the NT.” He sounds the alarm: “A mass evangelical exodus from this time-honored principle of interpreting Scripture is jeopardizing the church’s access to the truths that are taught therein.”
However, literary structure, encoded narratives, and double senses in Luke’s gospel, not to mention the Gospel of John, and indeed most Biblical literature, do not square with this simplistic hermeneutic. I call this way of reading mono-literalisticalism. It assumes the Bible is a term-paper, apart from obvious metaphors like “I am the door.”
The insistence on a monoliteralistical-meaning to Scripture surely does not reflect the NT writers’ use of the OT. Think of Paul’s allegro in Galatians 4:21–5:1 with Sarah and Hagar. Or of the ark and baptism in Peter’s antitupos in 1 Peter 3:21. Or Matthew’s “out of Egypt, I called My Son” (Matt. 2:15, Hos. 11:1). I believe that for interpreters such as Dr. Thomas, the real issue is to protect certain conclusions of the interpretive process, namely, classic dispensationalism’s schemata. The process of interpretation is not made of stainless steel rules, neutral, objective, and unbiased. No interpretive process is a mere straight-jacket of meaning; no interpretation is a mere following a objective, neutral, obvious rules. Hermeneutics is really an exercise in the justification of a point of view. Ok, I sound too deconstructionist here. Not my intention. There is objectivity and the Text is not a wax nose you can bend any way. But the old school dispensationalists really did not produce an objectively demonstrable interpretation out of linear hermeneutics. That’s why they had to reform from within; “progressive dispensationalism.”
Consider St. Luke. One can easily miss the structure of Luke without reading for structure, type, and parallels. But it is clearly no accident that the temple (beginning, middle and final verse) is so prominent. As it turns out, no Biblical writer gives us modern prose which sets out its messages flatly without any dimensionality. From the crafted genealogies to the arrangement of the Psalms, Scripture is robust literature. It is the first literature and the perfect literature. All Scripture has, what I am calling, multi-dimensionality. To some extent that is how all good literature works. Melville’s classic, Moby Dick, is just a story about a big whale. No. It is a rich and wonderful novel because it is more than the story of Ishmael and the hunting of a white whale. It is the story of Ahab “striking through the mask” at God. Such literature includes the robust and subtle development of symbol, type, foreshadowing, and imagery, almost to the point of allegory.
In Luke, Jesus walked to Jerusalem. Who denies Jesus traversed from this GPS coordinate to another GPS coordinate? That is true. But that is hardly the meaning of Luke’s refrain in chapters 9-19. Jesus “steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem” (9:51). Luke clearly has deeper structures of meaning in mind which shaped his gospel. All Scripture abounds in such rich literary structures.
Taking another example, is it scientifically possible for a man to survive inside of “fish” for three days, is it a fish or a whale, fish or mammal? The point of the book of Jonah is not biology. Jonah is a story about a man swallowed up. Jonah has more than one sense. There are literary conventions in Jonah. There are undercurrents like the chiasm in Jonah 1:3 (a structural parallelism). Jonah’s action is a fleeing from the Lord that takes him:
…to Tarshish, away from the face of the Lord
down…
…to Tarshish
down…
…to Tarshish, away from the face of the Lord.
This pattern communicates the rebellious nature of Jonah’s flight in a very vivid sense. It sets up the more subtle point of Jonah’s real repentance when he is spat “up” on the land (Jon. 2:10).
Jonah was swallowed by “a great fish” and he came out alive. This actually happened. Liberalism has long seen these dramatic literary delights, denying the power thereof. Fundamentalists know this is a fact and truth. They will stare down a liberal with the gleam of a thousand Covenanters in their eye (CSL That Hideous Strength). But the Triune God of the Bible is not outdone in creativity. He can do poetry. He can create poetic and artistic reality.
The literary purpose of Jonah has extra-dimensionality and we are told as much by Jesus. He refers to the “sign of Jonah.” “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12:39-40). Jonah is the story of the whole nation (Hos. 6:2). Israel is disobedient and will be cast into the sea of the Gentiles. But she will be saved by the unclean nations somehow (Assyria, Babylon, Persia) and finally delivered back into the Land. This will result in the increasing knowledge of God (in Assyria, Babylon, Persia). Israel will come back to life (in the spread of the knowledge of God). Finally Israel will be embodied in One who will go down, down, down and come up to Life.
An elder (Chris Schlect) once challenged me on this point in an interview for my pastoral charge. What is my view of Westminster Confession 1:9? “The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself: and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly.” I believe my points above reinforce the main point of these wise words: “The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself.” But note the parenthetical remarks: Scripture’s sense “(which is not manifold, but one).” We are to take all of God’s Word as instructive and inductively search out our principles of interpretation from the way Scripture uses Scripture. This will not lead us to impose a “four-decker” allegorical bus (as some medievals saw) on the text. Still, reading the Bible as a xerox of Modernity leads to woeful error. Scripture is ancient literature and we must understand the differences between the way ancients “hear” the Text vs how modern writing and reading works. Moreover, it is God’s writing and we must accept His hermeneutics. In order to do that we must immerse ourselves in the ad fontes of the Word.
The greatest influence on my reading of Scripture has been James B. Jordan. Check out his teachings on interpretation:
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