How To Read the Bible - A New Hermeneutic, Part 4

How To Read The Bible - A New Hermeneutic

What Works For Me

When Reading the Bible

by R.E. Slater

August 16, 2020

revised & edited August 24, 2020

The Many Worlds of Hermeneutics

I originally wrote this piece as a single composition as I did not wish to have any of it read alone in its parts as each part is necessary for the other part. However, it is a long piece and so, with reservations, I have divided it up for the convenience of the reader. But for those who wish to read it as a whole I have left the original intact and titled parts 1-6. Thank you. - res

PART 4 - The Difficulties of Leaving Holy Traditions

When faced with a complex subject such as how to read the bible, the principle of Occam's Razor comes to mind.... Occam's Razor states that "the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one." In this case, the bible says God is Love. His Incarnation says God is Love. His life, ministry, crucifixion, death, and resurrection says God is Love. And His promise to save His creation says God is Love. More simply, God Loves all the time.

Why then have our teachings and doctrines of the bible been so off target? We think of God as judge, jury, death, angry, too holy, too separate, too transcendent, too far away, unconcerned, uncaring, disinterested. We watch God's earthly church place itself in all kinds of nationalist or racist political entanglements, vindictiveness, hardened, hateful, disapproving acts and actions (e.g., separating and caging border children, homosexuality, Muslims). But where is the God of Love in all of this? Between you and me, I don't think God was ever a part of this. This is the sin which grips our hearts - which rejects God's love as true truth - so incredible His majesty to comprehend.

If love is not there, neither is God

Let me summarize. God has said in the bible "He Loves us". God has shown His Love to us in multiple ways and on multiple occasions. God has backed up His words of Love by His actions of Love on the Cross for us.

1 - God says He loves creation and God came to show us He loves creation - not only to man but to all creation. Since we typically define creation in terms of ourselves we naturally think we are the exclusive receptors of God's loving intimacy, presence, and work. But even as God has been reconciling mankind to Himself He also has been reconciling creation to Himself.

Because of God's love, I, and others, have been writing of God's amazing LOVE and what this means to us across the bible's many spectrums, permutations, perturbations, and probabilities as we can.

2 - Along the way I have discovered amazing theologies to help me speak more clearly of God's love including the language of science. A language I insist must be used to its fullest - even when it disagrees with the bible. A bible pieced together and collected from many oral traditions which were written down over a series of historical events (from Genesis to the exile) to which the ancient mindset spoke of God as they could through their own thoughts and imaginations.

In this amazing collection we know as the bible, the Spirit of the Lord guided ancient men and women in their revelatory insights of God's revelation, who subsequently passed along God's self revelation through their lives, experiences, minds, languages, and culture. This then gives to the Jew and Christian the credibility to their faith based upon the very ancient testimony of Scripture.

Yet even when science claims creation to have been created without formal design, in random chaos, and without any specific ending but all endings, I choose to keep the cold hard facts of science over what the bible says. Why? Because the language of science is describing God's creation exactly as it is in its structure, makeup, and nature from historical past to historical future.

Science was something the ancients did not know. They described God and His creative works in Genesis and throughout their lives in personal or tribal terms as they understood God to be - through their own language and culture. Their legends spoke of an Adam and an Eve, a sacred Garden, an evil snake, and difficult choices reflecting divinity.

The postmodern Christian will use these same concepts but speak of them differently, using scientific terminology when possible - as I have done through the years - and come out with the same biblical teachings: "God is Love and Loves His creation." The difference is in the story but not the God who declares Himself our Father, Creator, Saviour, Redeemer.

3 - A chronological reading of my progressive wanderings through the epistemic wildernesses lying ahead of me years ago will show my path was never straight. And yet, under the guidance of the Lord, my Father-God gave certain knowledge to my spirit that everything He was doing past, present, or future, was being done by His love which guided me true as my Cornerstone and centering foundation.

4 - Examples of things I have discovered about God's Love along the way?

• Violence in the bible? Nope, not of God. But by the hand of religious men claiming God as one thing Who was never that.

• The killing of women and children, boys and men because God said so? Nope, not true. And when done by man's evil hand than his judgment be upon his own misguided head teaching holy war and not holy love.

• God's judgment upon the kingdoms of this world? Only insofar as He warned wicked men -  religious or not - to love one another and not hate. But by man's own actions judgment comes by unloving words and deeds.

• Is Death or Hell from a Loving God? Death... Yes, it comes to all creation as a natural process. But Hell? From a God of LOVE? Not there. Blame Dante. Blame the early Hellenized Church. Blame fanciful Intertestamental eschatologies and early Gnostic writings. If anything, Hell is found in man's own present where his/her sin judges his/her life choices on this earth now. But Hell after death? No, I refer to a final spiritual death as a singular event, or even a series of death events, as an Annihilation of all existing relationships to creation, others, self, and finally to God. Annihilation is not Hell, nor is it Purgatory. These latter concepts are metaphorical descriptors, or theologoumen, describing our present experiences on earth rather than in death when they are meaningless.

• A theologoumenon is a theological statement or concept that lacks absolute doctrinal authority. It is commonly defined as "a theological assertion or statement not derived from divine revelation," or "a theological statement or concept in the area of individual opinion rather than of authoritative doctrine".

Conclusion

For myself, the former borderlands of my faith are but tomorrow's hinterlands of a yesterday gliding further and further into the rearview mirror of my bible-driving Spirit guide. I've left the wildernesses of unhelpful biblical infallibilities and inerrancies, spoken by misleading doctrines and unquestioning preachers of my faith, to tour the greening countrysides of an open and relational process faith whose very terms are the weighty words I took pains to describe post after post after post. Such terms moved me to rewrite the structures of a postmodern constructivist theology through the Spirit's eyes, and the weightier foundations, of God's love. If God's Love is not there in Christian doctrine then neither is God Himself.

So too with God's Person, Deity, His experience of Creation, His past, present and future, along with all we, His creation, experience in ourselves, with each other, and with God's cosmos. Whoever, or whatever, God is - and He is Many Things - God is above all else, LOVE. All things, all words, all actions of God must be defined exclusively by His Love. It is what God is.

So when centering Christian doctrine on a God of Love instead of Reformed doctrine what might this mean in Christian terms? Or, rather than placing the bible in the center of the Christian faith - from which so many inconsistent or contrary things are taught from it - I find it more preferable to place the Author of the bible, Jesus, in the center of our Christian theology. Can you fault me for doing this? I, and others like me, find a greater hope and truer truth in recentering all theology around Jesus, the God of Love, than is found in the opinions and perspectives of other Christian doctrines admitting God's love while centralizing and practicing everything but God's love.

A New Theology Brings With It New Terms and Consequences

So what changes when we do this? A lot. And dramatically. But I don't think for the worse. If anything it may be for the better as it places spiritual responsibility into our hands to speak and do the right thing. We can no longer blame God, the devil, or others for our lack. All accountability comes forthwith into our own lives. How we use our lives and how we treat others.

Nor may we wait upon some prophetic future, such as "Jesus' Coming," when its plain that if we do not act now no future kingdom of God will ever arise as it cannot become without His church becoming. So says Process Theology. Live with it. My response to those who repeatedly say, "Lord Come," has always been the rejoiner, "Lord, Become" referring back to the Exodus phrase where YHWH says, "I AM WHO I AM BECOMING." God becomes with His creation as His creation becomes in Him. Its a both-and relationship. Not one way. But both ways. Its call partnering (sic, some may remember the classical doctrinal teaching of the Divine-Human Cooperative).

Here's a few other non-Reformed (or, non-Calvinistic) examples:

• Is God a God of Justice? Yes, BUT Love came first. God Loves, and because He Loves, justice for others is founded in the hoary foundations of God's Love. Holiness, Righteousness, Justice do not come before God's Self. A Self, Essence, or Divine Ontology defined in terms of Love. These attributes are the result of God being a God of Love. To order God's attributes in some kind of priority over Love would be to miss this important ontological fact of God's Self. The doctrines I left were the doctrines which prioritized holiness and judgment over love (sic, loving justice). It's an important distinction many have missed.

• What can we say about the unknown future? Yes, you heard me right. The future is not determined by God. God is Sovereign but not in the ways Christianity has taught. His divine sovereignty rests in terms of His divine love which guides a freewill creation created with agency in its soul. Divine Love gave to creation its agency. It wasn't decreed by God but transferred from God, or many will say, from God's Image, into creation's very bones.

• What can we say about the Christian expectation of a Divine Eschatology full of wrath and judgment? Is this something we should expect from God? Since a wrathful future is neither generative nor valuative it is not of God. I can no longer teach an eschatology filled with Tribulation, an Armageddon, or a Final End Time where Hell and Death are Thrown Into the Pit of Fire. These unloving futures are NOT of God. These events have been presently - as they had been historically, and will be later humanity's future - repeatable human events insofar as man refuses to love one another. Doctrinally vouchsafed "biblical periods of judgment" are not from God's loving hand but from our own.

• But what about the book of Revelation? Anybody can write a fanciful future, the Apostle John did based upon popular gnostic eschatology. And I'm sure he fully believed it even as late Greek Hellenism would have regarded the future as determined by the gods who operated at the hands of fate and fortune. As a postmodern, Process-based Christian, I cannot consider such ancient language as in anyway helpful when by science, process theology, open and relational theism, God is seen repeatedly as a loving God experiencing the present with us moment by moment. This makes the future unknown, undetermined, and pregnant with future possibilities.

• Teachings of Heaven or Hell? We make them here on this earth. Be mindful then to love one another. And as you try to love with God's love know that God is there to help through hardship, oppression, hatred, even death. The world can be a very wicked place even as it can be a very beautiful place made in God's image. However, nor do I advocate for a universal salvation but a responsible agency taking seriously to live out God's love.

This Isn't Your Father's Christianity Anymore... But It Is His Faith

And so, when I read the bible, of its stories and teachings, I must read of God's love or of the absence of God's love in its pages.

When I read church creeds and doctrines which may express God as an unloving God doing unloving things, I know this is not the God I know, or the bible describes, but a God contrived by the human heart to explain its sinful actions and thoughts about others and the world.

Whether racism, xenophobia, hatred for other religions, or trying to explain Christianized forms of exclusion, these are not from God Himself nor His Word. God loves all men. All races. All genders. All sexes. All religions and cultures. Let us learn to speak to all men, especially the ones different from ourselves, in God's language of love.

This then is how I relearned to read the bible. I threw out all my evangelical and churchly rules and started over in the language of divine love. To that I use all the discoveries found from literary, historical, psychological, sociological, ecological, and scientific sources. They helped me to understand the past, present and future of God's world. I would be foolish not to be conversant in these extra-biblical disciplines while ever mindful of exegeting the bible within its anthropological contexts.

So too in my ever-inquisitive conversations with others in this life. I cannot understand God or His Word if I cannot converse with people. Nor can I speak of God to others without knowing God's people. People come from all kinds of backgrounds, experiences, beliefs, learnings, insights, and personalities. I would be remiss not to study humanity and try to understand its many comportments. Society informs my reading of the bible as do the sciences, the Scriptures, literatures, essays, and journalisms. The people I meet teach me something everyday about life - from the good to the bad. They are all welcomed to walk with me even as I am privileged to walk with them for as long as the relationship might last. In the same way the bible walks and talks with us as we do with the bible. Its a relational thing because God is a relational God

Learn to listen, to love, to forgive, to try again. Peace my brothers and sisters. May God's Love dwell richly in your words, deeds, and spirit, in whom the Lord God has written His Spirit of Life upon your heart.

R.E. Slater

Continue to Part 5

or

Continue to Parts 1-6

How To Read the Bible - A New Hermeneutic, Part 3

How To Read The Bible - A New Hermeneutic

What Works For Me

When Reading the Bible

by R.E. Slater

August 16, 2020

The Many Worlds of Hermeneutics

I originally wrote this piece as a single composition as I did not wish to have any of it read alone in its parts as each part is necessary for the other part. However, it is a long piece and so, with reservations, I have divided it up for the convenience of the reader. But for those who wish to read it as a whole I have left the original intact and titled parts 1-6. Thank you. - res

PART 3 - A New Hermeneutic

You'll forgive me if I place an abrupt stop here in reciting the fundamental and evangelical history of biblical interpretation and how it developed off the rhetoric of the Textus Receptus or, Received Text, of the Scripture. There are too many books on this subject which have addressed this area from every imaginable angle - some of which I have reviewed here at Relevancy22 under the topics found under "evangelicalism". 

My point is, when I was Spirit-led away from the lands of evangelicalism, from the lands of literal thinking and apologising of my Christian faith, I felt an unbounded freedom to explore and approach God and the bible in ways which gave wings to my Christian faith. I no longer needed the worlds of apology. I hungered for the worlds beyond... forbidden to be explored. Along the way I developed a new language and new theologies. All this can be found in the chronologies of my historical journey through Relevancy22.

My language has wandered in-and-out from old to new paradigms as I digested and learned new ways of thinking about God and the bible. Along the way I am learning how to connect the dots and interweave its many pages-and-ideas back inwards-and-through one another. Only recently this past week have I felt I completed this first, primary, task of preliminary studies. And only this present week do I feel I have permission to repeat my journey using the new words and ideas I have learned over so many long years of studying. In many ways, August 2020, has become my watershed moment. Its grand of the Lord to allow me to complete this arduous trek but more daunting now than ever to speak-and-say this new Christian faith rightly to the generations coming forward.

The Jesus Hermeneutic of Love

What I do wish to say is that the most helpful way I am learning to re-read the bible in its depths is the very one I wish to think and talk about of my God, Lord and Saviour. These methods, or overlays to the bible, are not attributable to any one type of bible interpretation or form of hermeneutic. No, on these subjects I have found there are many ways to read and interpret the bible beyond the literal, historic, grammatical, and contextual interpretations I have grown under.

The most helpful overlay which God by His Spirit has been building into the foundations of my heart, head, and voice, is of God's wondrous love. What?? God's Love?? Yes, soooo simple. This "revelation" became my "waking moment" in spirit-renewal and revitalization. By simply substituting God's Love as the central component in my faith and epistemology of knowing I could remove the incipient biblicism (bible idolatry) which had crept in under previous faith cultures.

When I read the bible, I read it through God's love, and not through what I think the bible is saying to me under some interpretive scheme or doctrine. God's love is my primary theme. It is my primary doctrine. It is my principle hermeneutic. I think of God and His Word through the knowledge that God is always, and ever will be, a God of love.

In the center of my Christian faith is no longer the bible but a God of Love. When the bible tells of God saying to His people Israel to go to war and kill their neighbors I now know these "heavenly" commandments did not come from God but from the interpretive reasoning in the skulls of Israel's priestly teachers and appointed kings.

Let us assume then that God's people - those well-meaning Christians embracing the Trumphian age of the Church (or anti-church, as I and other Christians are tending to think of today's conservative evangelicalism) - are hearing God in the way they had been taught to think and reason in accordance with conservative doctrines centering the bible on sin and judgment. How then is white Christian nationalism any different now than early religious nationalism then?

The ancient Israelites claimed they were believers and followers of God yet violence is found throughout their narratives and legends. So too the conservative evangelical churches of today. And yet, one thinks Christians of this sort are but hearing God as they were wont to hear God. Because of this church history is filled with the church killing believers and unbelievers; excluding themselves from society; insulating themselves from the sinful world; and, acting exactly as the world with the same secularity they declare themselves impervious too.

There is then no difference between the Christian faith of the new testament from the Jewish faith of the old testament. The sacrificial blood of Jesus teaching love of neighbor and shunning of legalistic religion is absent today's church. The real church of God loves, binds up wounds, works towards societal policies and politics of goodwill and well being. It shuns false teachers, it ceases to listen to slanderers perpetuating evil as good, and stops societal injustice by measuring wisdom over partisanship.

Jesus as Ethic, Message, and Center of the Christian Faith

When God said to love one another and not kill God meant it. To show this God showed how seriously He takes Love as a guiding principle in living life. God, who could be no other than He really is - as the God of Love - showed us how to read and understand Himself when He came to this earth as Jesus showing us that He is a God who Loves.

Now you might say this is too simple. How can the Love of God cannot be the center of the Christian faith and doctrines? But yet it is. And this is the task we must clothe ourselves of as we speak of the bible and its ancient words to others, including God's wayward church. That the center of our Gospel of Jesus is the Love of God.

When reading the bible we must learn to read it through God's Love. The bible itself is no longer the center of our private or churchly interpretations but God Himself is the center to all thoughts and testimonies. Jesus said "I AM the Word of Life." So let it be. The Word of God has come before us. We have beheld His light and it is the Light of the Life and Love of God" (paraphrased). God, the author of the bible, is our new center to any and all future interpretations of the bible. It couldn't be any more simple.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

John 8:12 (ESV) - Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

John 14.6 (NASB) - Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

John 1:4 - In Him was life, and that life was the light of men.

John 1:14 - The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John 1:17 - For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

John 10:9 - I am the gate. If anyone enters through Me, he will be saved. He will come in and go out and find pasture.

John 11:25 - Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me will live, even though he dies.

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

1 Corinthians 13:13 - And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

1 John 3:1 - See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

1 John 4:7 - Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

1 John 4:8 - Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

1 John 4:16 - And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

1 John 4:18 - There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

1 John 4:19 - We love because he first loved us.

Galatians 2:20 - I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Jeremiah 29:11 - For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Jeremiah 31:3 - The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.

John 3:16 - For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

John 15:13 - Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

Psalm 86:15 - But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.

Psalm 136:26 - Give thanks to the God of heaven. His love endures forever.

Romans 5:8 - But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Deuteronomy 7:9 - Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments.

Zephaniah 3:17 - The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”

Ephesians 2:4-5 - But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.

1 Peter 5:6-7 - Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

Romans 8:37-39 - No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Continue to Part 4

or

Continue to Parts 1-6

How To Read the Bible - A New Hermeneutic, Part 2

How To Read The Bible - A New Hermeneutic

What Works For Me

When Reading the Bible

by R.E. Slater

August 16, 2020

The Many Worlds of Hermeneutics

I originally wrote this piece as a single composition as I did not wish to have any of it read alone in its parts as each part is necessary for the other part. However, it is a long piece and so, with reservations, I have divided it up for the convenience of the reader. But for those who wish to read it as a whole I have left the original intact and titled parts 1-6. Thank you. - res

PART 2 - Another Side to Bible Interpretation

Inerrancy - What Is It?

Another systematic word created much more recently in history is the word inerrancy. It came about in the 1980s at a bible convention of evangelicals (1982) wishing to defend their creedal faith and the epistemology behind their beliefs. In this setting the bible is described as being without error or fault in its original manuscripts. That every word is Spirit written by the finger of God and without error. Yet another quagmire if their ever was one:

Wikipedia - "Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy" - Inerrancy statement:

The Inerrancy Statement elaborates on various details in articles formed as couplets of "We affirm..." and "We deny...".

• Under the statement, inerrancy applies only to the original manuscripts which no longer exist, but which, its adherents claim, "can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy" (Article 10).

• In the statement, inerrancy does not refer to a blind literal interpretation, and that "history must be treated as history, poetry as poetry, hyperbole and metaphor as hyperbole and metaphor, generalization and approximation as what they are, and so forth."

• It also makes clear that the signers deny "that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science. [sic, if the bible says it, it is true and trustworthy, regardless of contra-negating external sources or evidences. - res].

• We further deny that scientific hypotheses about earth history may properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood." [sic, evolution is wrong, wrong, wrong. - res]

• Signatories to the statement came from a variety of evangelical Christian denominations, and included Robert Preus, James Montgomery Boice, Kenneth Kantzer, J. I. Packer, Francis Schaeffer, R. C. Sproul and John F. MacArthur.

As a good evangelical you would say the bible is true truth and the usage of any outside sources may be used to help the bible reader to better understand the bible EXCEPT if those external sources contradict the bible. Consequently, both ancient scholarship, and more recent fundamental and evangelical scholarship of the last 200-300 years, learned to build hermeneutical borderlands around the bible.

To help, self-proclaimed inerrant apologists circle around the bible to keep its true truths from being watered down, removed, or denied. Through preaching and teaching "official versions" of fundamentalism or evangelicalism, apologists attest to the veracity and certitude of the bible's teachings (according to their version of it). Competing for shelf space in bible book stores one will find apologetic works of every kind. From reference volumes, to commentaries, to sermons, to daily devotionals. Each giving a defense for the kind of Christian faith which is wanted and deemed correct.

Jude 1.3 (NASB) - "Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints." (see other cross references here)

Christian Apologetics - The Industry of Defending a Closed System

Giving an apology for one's Christian Faith is an esoteric way of saying one wishes to defend the bible in its theology of God and God's commands. Which is all well and good but it certainly doesn't mean that one is apologetically renouncing one's faith. It means just the opposite... that one is standing-up! for one's faith in high conviction!

However, the manner of apologetic delivery in witness to the Christian faith might be encouraged to always be spoken respectfully and lovingly - though this seldom has been my experience. I do remember a visiting evangelist who admirably lived up to this manner of public speaking and personal compassion. Usually, most apologists aver God and the bible in strong terms of rhetoric and oratory. The good ones are stirring to listen to. They are well spoke and they know what they're doing. They come with ecclesiastical heat and convicting witness tied to their doctrinal deportments of choice.

As such, the ways of defending one's Christian faith may be described as giving an "Apology of the Scriptures and of the Christian Faith." Here is one of many lists of writers/speakers/evangelists/etc who are known as "Defenders of the Faith" and quite admired by today's 2020 contemporary Christian communities:

List of Popular Evangelical Apologists

1. Norm Geisler: normangeisler.net.
2. William Lane Craig: Reasonable Faith.org
3. Ravi Zacharias: RZIM.org
4. John Lennox: John Lennox.org
5. Greg Koukl: STR.org
6. J. Warner Wallace: ColdCaseChristianity.com
7. Paul Copan: PaulCopan.com
8. Ed Feser: http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/
9. Lee Strobel: Lee Strobel.com
10. Josh McDowell: Josh.org
11. Discovery Institute (Dembski, Meyer, Richards, Luskin, Wells): www.Discovery.org
12. C.S. Lewis: CSLewis.org
13. Gary Habermas: GaryHabermas.com
14. Timothy McGrew: http://historicalapologetics.org/
15. Dr. Michael Brown: AskDrBRown.org
16. Richard Howe: Richardghowe.com
17. Tim Keller: TimothyKeller.com
18. J. Budziszewski: Undergroundthomist.org
19. Hank Hanegraaff: Equip.org
20. Hugh Ross: Reasons.org

The problem of Literalism and Closed Arguments

But this entire industry of Apology is unfortunate in the sense of closing down legitimate questions one should be asking of God and the Bible. It also has given rise to the idea of literally reading the bible word-for-word. Reading the bible literally means if the concept is in the bible then its a true truth. All other concepts are false. It is a very wooden, black-and-white way of reading a collection of ancient documents we call the bible in the worse possible way.

Examples abound: "An eye for an eye." Or, Christianity's "Just War" theologies vs. "Living in peace and love with one's neighbor." Another, "Obeying God's Ten Commandments" coupled with the ills of religious Legalism, Hedonism, Materialism, Secularism, and any other 'ism you might think of. Or finally, what to do with Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount" which seems to replace God's Ten Commandments? Reading the bible literally can, and does, present challenges to the Christian faith.

For many exegetes, the word literal is an unfortunate word to be using when interpreting Scripture. But so too is the word symbolical. Those who haven't been taught to read the bible literally have been raised in alternative Reformed traditions of reading Scripture symbolically, metaphorically, or allegorically.

Yes, I believe I said it right. The Reformed tradition is so old and so large as to allow in its early days allegorical interpretation as well as later literal interpretation which arose out of it when Gutenberg's Printing Press (see here and here) began to get the bible's pages out of the monk's hands and into the hands of the commoner.

In Germany, around 1440, goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, which started the Printing Revolution. Modelled on the design of existing screw presses, a single Renaissance printing press could produce up to 3,600 pages per workday, compared to forty by hand-printing and a few by hand-copying.

My German/English seminary professor, Dr. Carl Hoch, would list out 40 different ways the word literal was not literal and misleading to interpreting Scripture. God help me but I wish I could remember that list. Dear Carl was quite humorous to listen to when he got all worked up in his litany of word-tyrannies. When he did, you dropped your pen and stopped any note taking, sat back, and listened with a smile on your face as he rambled on-and-on with no foreseable off-ramp ahead. Lord, how I miss my friend and mentor! (refer to the tongue-in-cheek essay on the word "literally" placed at bottom of this post by Boston.com/Staff)

And so, like the word literal, these allegorical interpretive ways of reading the bible may misdirect, or not allow further considerations of an idea within a textual passage. Both approaches cloud the reading of Scripture and its apprehension. How so? Basically our language and contemporary cultural gets in the way of understanding ancient ways of speaking and communicating with one another back when the passages were composed over their long periods of oral collection.

Playing Fast-and-Loose with the Word Inerrancy

Yet the Chicago Statement of Inerrancy was signed by many prominent evangelicals of the time (as an aside, I believe one of my favs, Dr. Clark Pinnock, made his decision to not sign the statement and began his positive drift away from such hard-headed Christian epistemology).

If you read the Chicago statement carefully (the part which I underlined above in bullet point two), you'll find an evangelical get-out-of-jail-free allowance for not reading the bible literally. How? Should a bible passage or a book be of a certain qualifying literary type such as poetry, a metaphor, a trope, or some other descriptor, a literalist may be forgiven for having questions, doubts, or uncertainty towards those passages.

In one sense then, Relevancy22 is an apology against the literal apologising, or reading of the bible, in a non-exegetical (literal) way. "Literally (pun intended), I love biblical theology... but am not in love with systematic theology." That is to say, if I'm going to systematized the bible at all I would prefer to do it along the lines of an Open and Relational Process Theology rather than the older systematic categories based upon Reformed Theology's Calvinism which teaches ad nauseum God as austere, wrathful, judgmental, and avenging. Or use a "Constructivist Postmodern" approach to the bible. Or a Post-Capitalistic Cosmoecological approach. Even a Continental or Radical Theological approach if I must (which I have done so in past articles and found very helpful to an understanding of God and the bible).

But I approach with skepticism any use of Reformed Systematic forms of interpretive theological systems for what they are. They are closed arguments bound in a closed system forbidding any other interpretive systematics away from its church-approved Christian nomenclatures, traditional Christian creeds, doctrines, folklores and religious borderlands.

The Politics and Polemics of Inerrancy

As a progressive Christian having left conservative evangelicalism I, and many others, have been banned from our former fellowships. We speak a different language and see the world in a different way than the more popular teachings of our former grace fellowships which have embraced a form of Trumpian Christianity as a byproduct of their austere theologies. Like many other Christians, I am glad that I have left these types of conservative fellowships and have taken pains to explain how the Christian faith might grow beyond its nationalised Christianity aligned with Empire and its excluding Ethics.

However, though I do not feel the need to defend God or His Word to the world as an itinerant apologist, I do feel the immense burden to re-teach who God is and isn't to the church at large. I suppose this then makes me God's apologist to His people (or that remnant of His people who are able to listen). Those Christian faithful who are seeking new ways to express their ancient faith in a more contemporary and ethically relevant way in the 21st Century. A faith which might avoid the conflicted worlds of Empire ethics, power, racism, nationalism, and any other horrid policies of exclusionisim. Policies moving rapidly towards the dismantling of an open democracy in favor of an authoritarian form of capitalism. A form which denies open, poly-pural ecological democracies.

Open democracies are based upon multi-representational advocates. In America's case it has been its two-party system which now seem archaic in America's complex poly-plural society. Thus my advocacy for a system holding 4-8 parties which might better represent America's many different peoples each seeing a different part of the nation requiring a voice.

Open democracies are built of many things and as a Christian some of things I wish to advocate for as a Christian is for social justice (in previous eras social justice was known as Christian humanism), Black Lives Matter, Black and Feminist Liberation Theologies, the LGBTQ community, and environmental justice in all its forms. Understanding that each-and-all of these passions lead to ecological civilizations of equality rather than industrialized societies of inequality which we are presently living under which is based upon the several capitalistic forms of State, Financial, and Corporate Capitalism which enslave all (cf. The Contours of a Post-Capitalistic, Whiteheadian-based, Cosmopolitic Ecological Civilization and Society).

The Theologies of Inerrancy

Inerrant-believing Christianity includes all Christian pronouncements advocating for an errorless bible. Who selective enforce the kind of epistemological freedom one should embrace. Whose self-serving defenders help keep the church bounded and bordered from worldly ideas. Whose fellowships act as insular communities to the world around them. At the last, all this activity and ideology but promotes a self-serving land if ever there was one.

A land filled with barbed fortresses instead of open communities. A land of exclusion and judgment willing only to receive those who agree with them and be assimilated into them. A land which ostracizes those who doubt or ask too many questions. Which deems the faithless, the Nones and Dones, the wayward, as the more worldly for their thoughts and actions as compared with the self-righteous religious teachings of the conservative Christian church. This is the downside to dogmatic certitude.

These are the lands the Lord has kept myself, and others, away from. I had good teachers. Good mentors. Good disciplers. They allowed me to think in my own way about God, Scriptures, doctrine, and church history. And "Yes, I passed all their tests, exams, orals, and theses. I am intimately acquainted with my past church history."

And yet. curiously, it was from within conservative evangelicalism Progressive Christianity has raised its voice. Having chosen the theological path of progressiveness in its openness to external voices such as science and whatnot. In so doing it has freed itself from those chaining bonds which kept a "politick" face on all the old forms of Christianity. Progressive Christians are now free to determine a newer, healthier form of hermeneutical expression of God and the bible than the one they had grown up within.

You might consider Progressive Christian voices the "Martin Luther's of their day" banging their new Christian convictions upon the bastioned doors of magazines like Christianity Today, or organizations like James Dobson's Focus on the Family and Family Talk Radio; or Franklin Graham's political organizations (excepting Samaritan's Purse which is a worthy global ministry); or the doors of Jerry Falwell Jr.'s Liberty University; or any other Christian universities or churches speaking evangelical conservatism's excluding voice of God and ministry.

Contemporary Christianity is in a turmoil. It is both burning up the gospel it has lived and preached for ages yet at the same time resurrecting from its own decimated ashes to preach the Jesus gospel of freedom and release unbounded from nationalism, racism, xenophobia, and such like. It is a time of revival for the true church to come away again back to the bible and to the God who loves and provides atoning redemption to those who seek.

So then, what is this new hermeneutic which is so freeing? So disturbing? So upsetting to the church? Let's go to the next section to discuss the nub of this article's central message...

* * * * * * * * * *

Literally the most misused word

https://www.boston.com/culture/lifestyle/2011/07/19/literally-the-most-misused-word

by Boston.com Staff

July 19, 2011

The adverb clutters our speech to the point where

it is in danger of losing its literal meaning.

When “Parks and Recreation’’ co-creator Michael Schur began crafting Rob Lowe’s character for his NBC sitcom, he wanted him to be a man of extremes.

“It was referenced in an episode last year (2010) that he does 10,000 push-ups a day,’’ Schur says of the character Chris Traeger. “He lives every moment of his life to the fullest, so overusing the word ‘literally’ seemed like a good character fit. He’s the kind of guy who is always claiming that something was literally the greatest thing he’s ever seen or something is literally the most fun you could ever have. In real life, it’s something that drives me crazy, because [the word's] so often misused.’’

Schur isn’t the only one peeved by “literally’’ gaining popularity as both a throwaway intensifier and a replacement for “figuratively.’’ It’s a word that has been misused by everyone from fashion stylist Rachel Zoe to President Obama, and linguists predict that it will continue to be led astray from its meaning. There is a good chance the incorrect use of the word eventually will eclipse its original definition.

What the word means is “in a literal or strict sense.’’ Such as: “The novel was translated literally from the Russian.’’

“It should not be used as a synonym for actually or really,’’ writes Paul Brians in “Common Errors in English Usage.’’ “Don’t say of someone that he ‘literally blew up’ unless he swallows a stick of dynamite.’’

“My kids do this all the time,’’ writer and former Time magazine editor James Geary explained in the British newspaper the Guardian last month. “There were ‘literally’ a million people there, or I ‘literally’ died I was so scared. When people use literally in this way, they mean it metaphorically, of course. It’s a worn-out word, though, because it prevents people from thinking up a fresh metaphor for whatever it is they want to describe.’’

Schur is able to capture some of this misuse in the ridiculousness of Lowe’s “Parks and Recreation’’ character (you can watch all of his “literally’’ moments strung together on the Internet). But while Schur can make light of “literally’’ through a sitcom, linguists and academics believe the word will soon join others that are so misused as to be past restoring.

“My impression is that many people don’t have any idea of what ‘literally’ means – or used to mean,’’ says Jean Berko Gleason, a psycholinguist at Boston University. “So they say things like ‘He was literally insane with jealousy.’ If in response, you asked them if this person had been institutionalized, they’d look at you as if you were the crazy one. The new ‘literally’ is being used interchangeably with words such as ‘quite,’ ‘rather,’ and ‘actually.’ ’’

The debate over the misuse of the word can be traced to the 18th or 19th century (depending on whom you ask), and the abuse began gathering legitimacy by 1839, when Charles Dickens wrote in “Nicholas Nickleby’’ that a character “had literally feasted his eyes in silence on his culprit.’’

By 1909, Webster’s New International Dictionary noted the misuse according to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. True scorn for the misuse of “literally’’ began to simmer by the 1920s, when lexicographer H.W. Fowler scolded that it was something “we ought to take great pains to repudiate; such false coin makes honest traffic in words impossible.’’

Nothing has done much to discourage incorrect usage of the word. Watch any talk show or listen to any conversation and “literally’’ will pop up as often as “like’’ or “um.’’

In the 1990s, “Mad TV’’ featured a recurring sketch of a pretentious pair who regularly employed “literally.’’ That was followed by a blog that tracked the misuse of the word, and Worcester resident Tyler Hougaboom’s Facebook page condemning it.

MADtv - Literally

All this has sent word nerds into a snit:

“It does at times render the speaker ridiculous,’’ says Martha Brockenbrough, author of “Things That Make Us [Sic].’’ “Indiscriminate use of literally as an intensifier also diminishes the originality of the speaker.’’

The growth of “literally’’ also corresponds to our culture’s increasing desire for drama. Just count the number of times you hear “literally’’ on any reality show (Hello, Rachel Zoe).

“It’s no longer enough to say that ‘I was upset.’ You have to say, ‘My head was literally ready to explode,’ because it’s more dramatic,’’ says Paul Yeager, author of “Literally, the Best Language Book Ever.’’

If misuse of “literally’’ continues at the current rate, its true meaning could meet the fate of words such as “nonplussed’’ (meaning surprised and confused, but often misused as a synonym for disconcerted), or “bemuse’’ (to bewilder or puzzle, but often misused as a synonym for amuse). These are words that have been misused for so long that their original definitions have been completely distorted.

Bryan Garner, author of “Garner’s Modern American Usage,’’ has developed a scale for the five stages of misuse. Stage one is when usage mistakes crop up, but are widely rejected. By the time a word reaches the dreaded stage five, Garner writes that the incorrect definition is “truly universal, and the only people who reject it are eccentrics.’’

Garner now puts “literally’’ at stage three [in the year 2011] which is defined as “being used by a majority of the language community.’’ However, Ben Zimmer, executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com, believes “literally’’ has already slipped dangerously close to stage four, which means that it has become ubiquitous and only a few diehards reject the new meaning.

“I go on a lot of talk shows, and people complain about the usual suspects,’’ Zimmer says. “It’s ‘literally’ and ‘hopefully’ that people complain about. But there are many other words that are commonly used: ‘truly,’ ‘positively,’ ‘absolutely.’ But those words don’t stick in people’s craw the way that ‘literally’ does.

Zimmer has a simple solution: Rephrase your sentence.

He points to a recent quote by Boston Bruins goalie Tim Thomas, who said, “This is literally a dream come true, just like it is for everyone on this team.’’

“Thomas and his teammates didn’t all ‘literally’ dream about winning the Stanley Cup and then wake up to find themselves acting out their dreams,’’ Zimmer says. “He could have used another intensifier (‘absolutely,’ ‘definitely,’ ‘unquestionably’) to make the same point.’’

Thomas’s teammate Andrew Ference said of the Bruins victory parade, “I can’t wrap my mind around how many people were there. I literally can’t wrap my head around it.’’

Zimmer says, “It’s true, he can’t literally wrap his head around the number of people who went to the parade. And thank goodness – that kind of literal head-wrapping would be very painful indeed. Other intensifiers that could work here include ‘simply,’ ‘honestly,’ and ‘frankly.’ ’’

The ubiquity of the usage does not make it correct.

“Many people still don’t like it,’’ Zimmer says. “Just by rephrasing, you can save yourself a lot of grief.’’

End

Continue to Part 3

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Continue to Parts 1-6

How To Read the Bible - A New Hermeneutic, Part 1

How To Read The Bible - A New Hermeneutic

What Works For Me

When Reading the Bible

by R.E. Slater

August 16, 2020

The Many Worlds of Hermeneutics

I originally wrote this piece as a single composition as I did not wish to have any of it read alone in its parts as each part is necessary for the other part. However, it is a long piece and so, with reservations, I have divided it up for the convenience of the reader. But for those who wish to read it as a whole I have left the original intact and titled parts 1-6. Thank you. - res

PART 1 - Literal, Historical, Grammatical, Contextual Bible Interpretation

Welcome to the World of Bible Study

I set out not too many years ago to find a way to interpret the bible by re-imagining a hermeneutic which might be helpful to readers in understanding God's revelation. Extra-biblical words I grew up  with such as creedal or doctrinal words like the infallibility of Scripture, or the inerrancy of Scripture, told me the bible could NOT be wrong in (i) its theology of God or in (ii) its epistemological apprehension about God.

For many years I explored exegetical words (cf. last Wikipedia article at the bottom of this post re "Biblical Studies") from the biblical text which might help discern how to read Scripture in its textual themes and traditions. And as I did I kept to the reformed tradition of literal, historical, grammatical, and contextual bible interpretation. This would also include keeping to the "internal and external consistency" of the text of the biblical passage. The following links will show just how popular these set of interpretive methods have been through church history: Wikipedia; Britannica; Christian Publishing House; Redmoon Rapture's site; and EndTimes.org.

I realized quite quickly that by using the Reformed system to interpret the bible it would keep me within Protestantism's borderlands of beliefs which did not allow other "external" voices to be considered. It prescribes a "closed" hermeneutical tradition rather than an "open" interpretive system. There were certain voices I could listen to and other voices I could not. Science, for one, was a big, big problem. Its voice seemed to deny so much in the bible I was raised to believe (I'll say more about this later).

And what were the extra-biblical words which kept this closed hermeneutical tradition pointing inward on itself (or which created a "circular" borderland impervious to contradiction)? Yes, you guessed it, the infallibility and inerrancy of the bible.

Together, these systematic doctrinal words described the bible as God's revealed (special) revelation (as opposed to the general revelation of nature and humanity). That the bible (i) tells us of God and (ii) can be trusted in its telling of God. That the bible's words are infallible and inerrant. The bible will not mislead us nor will it deceive us. It may be trusted.

Wikipedia - Systematic theology is a discipline of Christian theology that formulates an orderly, rational, and coherent account of the doctrines of the Christian faith. It addresses issues such as what the Bible teaches about certain topics or what is true about God and his universe. It also builds on biblical disciplines, church history, as well as biblical and historical theology. Systematic theology shares its systematic tasks with other disciplines such as constructive theology, dogmatics, ethics, apologetics, and philosophy of religion.

With a methodological tradition that differs somewhat from biblical theology, systematic theology draws on the core sacred texts of Christianity, while simultaneously investigating the development of Christian doctrine over the course of history, particularly through philosophy, ethics, social sciences, and even natural sciences. Using biblical texts, it attempts to compare and relate all of scripture which led to the creation of a systematized statement on what the whole Bible says about particular issues.

Within Christianity, different traditions (both intellectual and ecclesial) approach systematic theology in different ways impacting a) the method employed to develop the system, b) the understanding of theology's task, c) the doctrines included in the system, and d) the order those doctrines appear. Even with such diversity, it is generally the case that systematic theologies begin with biblical revelation and conclude with eschatology.

Infallibility - What Is It?

Herein lies the problem... (i) "How is the bible infallible," and (ii) "How may it be trusted?" The first area speaks to the kind of theology one is expressing and believes in. The second area speaks to the area of knowledge, assurance, dependability of the Scriptures themselves. Which naturally leads to the question, "Whose theology of God should we be listening to?" And, "Whose epistemic expression of God gives to us the right foundation for credibility?" We might summarize it this way, (i) "How do we know, and (ii) How do we know we know?"

Wikipedia - Infallibility. Refers to the inability to be wrong. The term has significance in both theology and epistemology and its meaning and significance in both fields is the subject of continued debate.

[An important branch in the study of philosophy] is the study of epistemology. It is concerned with the question of what, if anything, humans can know. The answer to the issue of whether or not a human (in Catholic terms), or the bible (in Protestant terms), can be infallible depends on the philosophical school:

• Advocates of philosophical skepticism claim that one cannot know anything with certainty, much less be infallible.

• Infallibilists hold that knowledge requires absolute certainty, in the sense that if one knows that something is true, it is impossible that it could have turned out to be false.

• Advocates of subjectivism claim that there is no objective reality or truth, and therefore anyone can be considered infallible, since whatever is within a person's consciousness is considered the real and the true.

• Advocates of reason and rationality claim that one can gain certainty of knowledge, through a process of extreme refinement measures unlikely to be perfected enough for someone to assurably say "certainty of this knowledge is absolute", yet also assume by chance that one could land on the objective without the knowledge being confidently described as "universally certain", thus as a result, advocates tend to avoid this altogether and instead rely upon Occam's Razor as a suitable means for obtaining knowledge.

As you can see, infallibility is a word Christian's throw around a lot when describing the bible and sharing, or teaching, what it says. When a Christian speaks of their faith in God they would like to be able to claim veracity and certainty of their ancient faith. This faith is founded in the bible. It gives to both Jew and Christian their faith. It is meant to communicate to us who God is and what He is doing.

The Good and Bad of the Word Infallible

Herein lies the nub of the problem. It is here we get into the many kinds of religious beliefs, the plethora of denominational creeds and traditions, the differences between mainline and independent faith statements, pulpiteering dictims, doctrinal dogmas, sects, cults, and 'isms. So I share in my sympathy to the Christian of any age - whether new or old in their faith - in trying to discern how to read the bible and take away from it words of wisdom unto salvation.

Yet I think, perhaps the word infallibility takes us too far in our expectations. It was suppose to be a good, meaty doctrinal term expressing assurance of faith based upon the bible's teachings of God and salvation. But in the negative sense of it's usage, infallibility may lead one into misperception and unhelpfulness about the bible's teachings.

For example, "Are women equal with men or subservient to men?" (sic, equalitarianism or complimentarianism):

Complementarianism and egalitarianism are theological views on the relationship between men and women, especially in marriage and in ministry. Complementarianism stresses that although men and women are equal in personhood, they are created for different roles. Egalitarianism also agrees that men and women are equal in personhood but holds that there are no gender-based limitations on the roles of men and women.

When infallibility is used in this way by the teachings of a church, a church congregation, a denomination, or independent bible association, then such teachings may be spoken as de facto statements from God and the bible: "God's Word says it so I believe it and we teach it!" Yet, in so doing, such teaching may in fact both be wrong - and unhelpfully wrong - in living out God's Word.

As example, by misusing the infallibility the bible many false teachings are taught of God; false attitudes are taught towards the world; and false ideas given of worship and witness. This happens all the time when preachers or churches are considered "infallible" and their teachings are based "infallibly" upon God's "infallible" Word. Such dictums or dogmas do not allow themselves to be questioned when they fully should be questioned and held up to rebuttal.

Epistemology - How Do We Know What We know? And Why Do We Know It?

The word infallibility when used as an epistemological expression of belief states both consciously and unconsciously that the bible is never wrong. And yet it is. The bible is fallible in its narratives though one would like to say it is never wrong in its portrayal of God's salvation in the bible. But literary errors of ignorance or misunderstanding from transcriptionists of the bible shouldn't alarm us but provide a degree of assurance which testifies to the bible's ancient legacies and age.

The fallibility of the bible lies in the insistence that its documentaries and narratives are "infalliably accurate". Which isn't so. Like any ancient collection of oral histories the archaeologist and biblical historian will find errors in its collected manuscripts again-and-again. The kind of errors which later oral tellers of its stories, or later authors who collected its stories, would normally make being unacquainted with the history of the past generations of the ancients. You see this all the time in the reading of ancient Greek legends such as Homer's Illiad or Odysssey.

As a benign example, when the domestication of camels occurred challenges the story of Abraham in Genesis 12.16 as some contend the husbandry of camels occured in the United Monarchy period many centuries later (Camel Domestication History Challenges Biblical Narrative). Details like this occur all the time in the bible though the normal bible reader would not know the difference. Similarly with the later transcriber adding or removing details consciously or unconsciously from the world they knew around them.

So by describing the bible as infallible seems more like an epistemic oxymoron to me when trying to describe how we know what we know as a hard-and-fast rule asserting an authoritarian expression of certainty of the Christian's knowledge and trust over the bible. It in no way reflects upon God in the bible's fallible composition or transmission but does reflect how the process of transmission was very human in its capacity to make mistakes as well as the fallible knowledge of the ancient back then in describing the world around them.

Claiming Certainty Doesn't Make Certain

Epistemology is that branch of philosophy which speaks to absolute knowledge in the classical sense. And if used in the modernist's sense of doubt, one might examine how we might know a thing by analyzing the causes and foundations of our beliefs and misbeliefs.

You can see why I think of infallibility as an epistemic oxymoron. Infallibility claims a surety of knowledge - a knowledge which is era-specific and therefore temporal - where no such certainty of knowledge should be claimed if the Christian faith is to remain healthy. More so, we should always challenge why we know or believe something. The challenge itself proves healthy. As does doubt and uncertainty. God would not expect us to carry on in any other way. Nor would any good parent when teaching their children. Mere word alone oftentimes is never enough. Its part of our freewill agency to test and try the wisdom of our peers.

And so, if Christianity does not continually challenged itself towards apprehending God's Self, and His Revelation to us, faithful Christians will eventually lose themselves to internal religious error. Doubt and uncertainty are healthy exchanges in the spiritual aptitude of our souls....

Wikipedia - Hermeneutics is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. Hermeneutics is more than interpretive principles or methods used when immediate comprehension fails and includes the art of understanding and communication.

Modern hermeneutics includes both verbal and non-verbal communication as well as semiotics, presuppositions, and pre-understandings. Hermeneutics has been broadly applied in the humanities, especially in law, history and theology.

Hermeneutics was initially applied to the interpretation, or exegesis, of scripture, and has been later broadened to questions of general interpretation. The terms hermeneutics and exegesis are sometimes used interchangeably. Hermeneutics is a wider discipline which includes written, verbal, and non-verbal communication. Exegesis focuses primarily upon the word and grammar of texts.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Wikipedia - Exegesis (/ˌɛksɪˈdʒiːsɪs/; from the Greek ἐξήγησις from ἐξηγεῖσθαι, "to lead out") is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text, particularly a religious text. Traditionally the term was used primarily for work with the Bible; however, in modern usage biblical exegesis is used for greater specificity to distinguish it from any other broader critical text explanation.

Exegesis includes a wide range of critical disciplines: textual criticism is the investigation into the history and origins of the text, but exegesis may include the study of the historical and cultural backgrounds of the author, text, and original audience. Other analyses include classification of the type of literary genres presented in the text and analysis of grammatical and syntactical features in the text itself.

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