III. Connection With the Designed Sense
CONNECTION WITH THE DESIGNED SENSE
Global readings (Part II) show us the important role that culture plays in interpretation. If we want to fully hear someone, we must hear them in their cultural context. Yet God inspired Scripture itself in particular cultural contexts. Modern readers are increasingly alienated from the world of the Bible, in particular the seminomadic pastoral culture of the patriarchs, the poetry of Israel’s prophetic books, and so forth. Today some peoples least equipped to read the Bible in terms of basic reading skills are best equipped to understand it culturally. By contrast, many who are highly literate in reading our own languages are culturally illiterate in understanding many events, customs, and clusters of thought in Scripture.
If we had not guessed otherwise, the incarnation would show us that history and historical particularity matter. It is important for me to address in this book issues of original meaning 1 because some interpreters, in the name of “Pentecostal hermeneutics,” have played down original meaning’s value. Others have simply taken it for granted and emphasized the Spirit’s role in engaging the modern reader with the text (as I have done to some extent earlier in this book), but with the unfortunate consequence that their readers have sometimes assumed that original context is dispensable.
Observing the designed sense, or what we might call the sense projected by the ideal author or at least the ancient cultural sense, is a vital and foundational objective for interpreting Scripture. Analogously, understanding a building’s design, including in the context of contemporary architectural agendas, engineering limitations, local building codes, and other relevant data, can help us reconstruct many relevant interests of the implied architect. 2
Something’s design also is ideally consistent with its planned function, suggesting in turn its greatest spheres of usefulness. A commonly cited example is that of the hammer: one can employ it as a weapon, a doorstop, or a prop, but the specific design of the handle, face, and claws fits its designed function in pounding in and removing nails. The goals for which texts were designed point us toward the uses for which they will usually be most relevant. We cannot infallibly recover an author’s thought processes; we can, however, seek to recognize the “implied author’s” design in the text. 3