The Original Sense
The Original Sense
Secondly, we must look for the original sense of Scripture. This is the principle of history.
We have seen in earlier chapters that God chose to reveal himself in a precise historical context. Although his self-revelation is addressed to every man of every age and every country, each part of it was addressed in the first instance to a particular people of a particular age in a particular country. Therefore the permanent and universal message of Scripture can be understood only in the light of the circumstances in which it was originally given. It would obviously be very misleading to read back into Scripture the notions of a later age. As Charles Simeon wrote about the ideals of his preaching ministry:
My endeavour is to bring out of Scripture what is there, and not to thrust in what I think might be there. I have a great jealousy on this head; never to speak more or less than I believe the mind of the Spirit, in the passage I am expounding.10
So, as we read the Bible, we need to keep asking ourselves: What did the author intend to convey by this? What is he actually asserting? What will his original hearers have understood him to have meant? This inquiry is commonly known as the “grammaticohistorical” method of interpretation. J. Gresham Machen has described it well:
Scientific historical method in the interpretation of the Bible requires that the biblical writers should be allowed to speak for themselves. A generation or so ago that feature of scientific method was exalted to the dignity of a principle, and was honored by a long name. It was called “grammatico-historical exegesis.” The fundamental notion of it was that the modern student should distinguish sharply between what he would have said or what he would have liked to have the biblical writer say, and what the writer actually did say.11
As we attempt to transport ourselves back into the author’s mind and times, and to listen to his words as if we were among his first readers, we shall need particularly to consider the situation, the style and the language in which he wrote.
First, the situation. The proper function of literary and historical criticism is to reconstruct the mise-en-scène of the biblical book in question. Who wrote it and to whom? Under what circumstances? For what reason? Floods of light are thrown on the text of the Old Testament prophets, for example, if we can fit them into the story of Israel. The same is true of the New Testament epistles and the story of the early church as Luke tells it in the Acts, and especially the missionary journeys of Paul. For example, Paul’s Letter to the Philippians becomes a much more human document if on the one hand we can picture the author under house arrest in Rome (or possibly Ephesus) and on the other Lydia, the jailer and the slave girl (whose conversions are described in Acts 16) as among its first readers.
A careful consideration of the historical background to the letters of Paul and James would have protected Luther from finding them contradictory and from rejecting James’ letter as made of “straw.” It is true that Paul declared a man “justified by faith apart from observing the law” and gave Abraham as an example (Rom. 3:28; 4:1–3), whereas James declared a man “justified by what he does and not by faith alone” and also quoted Abraham as an example (Jas. 2:21–24). But their positions are not mutually irreconcilable. Paul was tilting at legalists who believed in salvation by works, James at religionists who believed in salvation by orthodoxy. Both believed that salvation was by faith and that a saving faith would manifest itself in good works. It was natural in their particular circumstances, however, that Paul should stress the faith which issues in works, and James the works which spring from faith.
Secondly, the style. It is important to take note of the literary genre of each biblical book. Is it prose or poetry, historical narrative or wisdom literature? Is it law, prophecy, psalm or apocalyptic? Is it a drama, or a letter, or that distinctively Christian form called a “Gospel,” a collection of the words and deeds of Jesus which bear witness to him? How we interpret what we read, not least whether we take it literally or figuratively, will depend largely on its form and style.
Thirdly, the language. All human language is a living, changing thing. The meaning of words alters from century to century and culture to culture. We cannot read the word “love” in Scripture and immediately suppose we know what it means. Four different Greek words are used in the New Testament, all translated “love” in English. But each has a distinctive meaning, and only one expresses what Christians mean by love, which is poles apart from the erotica of twentieth-century glossy magazines.
For many centuries scholars were not able to recognize the kind of Greek in which the New Testament was written. It was neither classical Greek nor modern Greek. Some thought it was made up specially for the purpose. They even called it “the language of the Holy Ghost.” But towards the close of the last century, in the dry sands of Egypt, archaeologists began to discover large quantities of ancient papyrus rolls. They were mostly secular and non-literary documents. Many had come from the wastepaper baskets of public record offices, whose contents had been dumped on the local rubbish heap. And their Greek (the koiné or common language of every day) was found to be largely the same as that of the New Testament. So now the meaning of New Testament Greek words has to be sought against a background not only of classical Greek and of Hebrew thought but also of the secular language of the day. I will give one example only.
In his two letters to the Thessalonians Paul several times refers to those he describes as ataktos. In classical Greek the word was commonly used of soldiers who broke rank, of an army in disarray. So the Authorized Version translates the word “disorderly,” and it was assumed that there was an undisciplined group of some kind in the Thessalonian church. But two or three apprenticeship contracts were discovered among the papyri which contain an undertaking that should the boy play truant from work or exceed his annual holiday, the lost time would be made good. And the word for playing truant is ataktos, or rather its cognate verb. So the New International Version renders it not “disorderly” but “idle.” It seems probably that some Thessalonian Christians, believing that the Lord’s return was imminent, were playing truant from work. It is these idle Christians whom Paul commands to mind their own affairs, work with their own hands and earn their own living, adding that if a man will not work, he shall not eat (1 Thess. 4:11; 5:14; 2 Thess. 3:6–12).
In addition to situation, style and language there is the vital question of culture. Since God’s revelation was given in a particular historical and geographical situation, this means that it had a particular cultural setting as well. The social customs which form the background of some biblical instruction are entirely foreign to those of our day. Are we then to reject the teaching because it is culturally dated? Or are we to go to the other extreme and try to invest both teaching and setting with the same permanent validity? Neither of these seems to be the right way to escape the dilemma. The third and better way is to accept the biblical instruction itself as permanently binding, but to translate it into contemporary cultural terms. Thus, Jesus commanded his disciples to wash one another’s feet as a mark of the mutual love which humbles itself to serve (John 13:12–17), and the apostles Paul and Peter commanded their readers, when they came together, to greet one another with a holy kiss or a kiss of love (Rom. 16:16; 2 Cor. 13:12; 1 Thess. 5:26; 1 Pet. 5:14). We have no liberty to repudiate these commandments. But nor should we give them a slavishly literal obedience. For nowadays (at least in the West) we do not walk through dusty streets in sandals, and therefore do not need to have our feet washed. Nor is it customary to go round kissing everybody in public. Nevertheless, we can and must obey Christ’s injunction through other outward forms of humble service, and obey the apostles’ command by a “handshake all round,” as J. B. Phillips aptly paraphrases the kiss of peace.
A more difficult example of the tension between the permanently valid and the culturally dated concerns the status, behavior and dress of women. Are we to retain all the detailed biblical requirements, or—in deference to many voices in the “Women’s Lib” movement—jettison the lot? Again there seems to be a wiser middle course. Consider the question of the veiling of women, to which Paul devotes half a chapter in First Corinthians (11). He insists that it is dishonorable, even disgraceful, for a woman to pray or prophesy in public with her head unveiled. He appeals to reason, nature, ecclesiastical custom and his own apostolic authority in support of his teaching. What are we to make of this? Perhaps the commonest and most superficial reaction is to suppose that the apostle’s requirement is met if women wear hats in church. But eastern veils and western hats are entirely different, theologically as well as culturally! One of the crucial statements of Paul’s argument occurs in verse 10 where, in referring to a woman’s duty “to have a veil on her head” (RSV), he actually writes that she ought to wear “authority” (RSV margin and New International Version) on her head. This is the point. In those days the veil a woman wore was a symbol of her husband’s authority over her. Not only does a woman’s hat not have this significance today, but some modern modes appear to symbolize the exact reverse—liberation, not submission. What is permanently valid in Paul’s teaching is the authority of the husband, for he grounds it on unchanging theological truths concerning creation. What is culturally dated is the veil. We must find other social customs which express a woman’s acceptance of the authority which God has given to man.
In addition, we must be very careful how we interpret the husband’s “authority.”The word is by no means a synonym for authoritarianism. Nor can it be taken to express any “superiority” of the male or “inferiority” of the female. For—centuries in advance of his time—Paul emphatically declared that in Christ “there is neither … male nor female” (Gal. 3:28). He also drew a profound analogy between the relationship of husband and wife in marriage and the relationship between the Father and the Son in the Godhead (1 Cor. 11:3). This suggests that the husband’s “headship” over his wife is not incompatible with their equality, any more than is the Father’s “headship” over Christ. Perhaps the husband’s authority should be understood in terms rather of responsibility than of autocracy, the responsibility of a loving care.
It is essential to recognize that the purpose of “cultural transposition” (the practice of transposing the teaching of Scripture from one culture into another) is not to avoid obedience but rather to ensure it, by making it contemporary. If so far I have concentrated on “exegesis,” that is, on how to elucidate the original meaning of each biblical text, it is only because this is an indispensable preliminary to asking the next question: what has the text to say today, in our own generation and culture, or (better) what is God saying to us through it? The great merit of the so-called “new hermeneutic” is that it lays its emphasis here. Mind you, it sometimes goes too far. Its more extreme proponents teach that a text’s only meaning is what it means to me. This is absurd. A text cannot with any possible legitimacy mean to me something substantially different from what it meant to its original author and readers. To claim that it can is to sink into the quicksands of subjectivity. Besides, every flower cut from its roots is bound to wither and die. Nevertheless, there is the opposite danger of scrutinizing a text “over there” as if it had nothing to say to me. This is to lapse into irresponsible objectivity. The third and right way is to combine the historical and the contemporary, and to relate the past to the present. To be concerned only with the ancient text and ignore its modern application is antiquarianism; to search for a living message without first wrestling with the original meaning is existentialism. Meaning and message must be held together. Moreover, in going beyond meaning to message, we must be ready for the text to penetrate our defenses, challenge our assumptions, disturb our complacency and judge our compromises. Otherwise, if we come to Scripture with our mind already made up, all we are likely to hear is the reassuring echoes of our own prejudice.