If you care about truth and intellectual honesty at all, you must stop saying things like "There are many ways to interpret the Bible."
The statement is unhelpful in a myriad of ways and nonsensical in others. In no way does it ever further any conversation, ever. It kills conversations.
All human communication must be interpreted by the hearer/reader. So to say that SOME human communication must be interpreted is to say something superfluous, thus wasting everyone's time.
But some interpretations are wrong. As an example, take this very post. If Joe were to come along and say, "I interpret Rhology's meaning in this post to be that he thinks bearded Mormons are the best at preparing alfredo sauce", that would be wrong. Of course my post is quote-unquote "open to interpretation"; that's because it is human communication. But to understand what I'm actually saying, you have to read, perform proper exegesis, take the context into account, understand English, etc.
It is dishonest to take this post and represent its meaning to someone else in the way 'Joe' did, because that is clearly not what the post is communicating. Joe got it wrong. Whether he is dishonest or whether is merely mistaken would have to be assessed, but either way, he got it wrong.
To say that he didn't get it wrong, that meaning is whatever the reader/hearer pours into the communication that is heard/read, is to **destroy all human communication entirely**. And nobody actually lives that way. It is self-defeating and therefore absurd. Even those who wish to affirm "meaning is whatever the reader/hearer pours into the communication that is heard/read" think that the hearer/reader ought to read, perform proper exegesis, take the context into account, understand English, etc when seeking to understand the statement "meaning is whatever the reader/hearer pours into the communication that is heard/read". Thus it fails its own test. It is nonsense.
This is what many of you are doing to the Bible. You must stop. You must take the Bible for what God meant it to be.
You see, when you say "There are many ways to interpret the Bible", what many of you mean by that statement is "There are parts of the Bible that I don't understand or don't want to obey, so I'm going to ignore those parts". If that is you, you should repent, because Jesus held the Bible in highest regard, thought it was God speaking (ask if you want references; there are lots). If you care about following Jesus, you should follow Him in all things, like He said you're supposed to.
If you want to obey Jesus, you have to stop saying "There are many ways to interpret the Bible". Jesus would never have said anything like that. He commanded people to believe all of it, to take hold of the parts that are promises and to hold to them by faith, and to obey (again, by faith) the parts that are commands and prohibitions.
Jesus is better than post-modern gibberish and textual deconstruction and semantical word-games. Leave them behind. Take up your cross and follow Him.
5 comments:
For someone railing against bad exegesis, it's pretty ironic that you don't realise that the phrase "there are many ways of interpreting the bible" actually means "there are many VALID ways of interpreting the bible." I'm sure that's what everybody understands by that. But apparently YOU have come up with a new and novel interpretation that it means "the bible must be interpreted". Can you see the irony? Apparently we've got two viable interpretations. Given that protestants can't seem to agree on how to interpret the bible, I would tend to think my interpretation of this expression is more likely.
That is dealt with in the paragraph beginning with "To say that he didn't get it wrong..."
Given that protestants can't seem to agree on how to interpret the bible
Do you mean to say "All who call themselves Protestants"? Well, of course, but many Protestants DO agree with each other about TONS of things.
And plenty of Orthodox and Romanists don't agree with each other about how to interpret the Bible or other churchy documents, so you're in no better shape in that regard.
1. The question is not who is in better shape, the question is whether your criticism of the expression "there are many ways to interpret the bible" is valid.
2. No it isn't dealt with in the "he didn't get it wrong" paragraph. Just because there are many ways to interpret something does NOT imply that there are infinite ways to interpret it, or that every interpretation conceived is a valid one. It just means there are 2 or more. Nor does it imply that every statement in the bible has many interpretations. Only that there are on some issues.
3. Perhaps protestants agree on some things. (Actually, I don't think they do, or barely do) but I can concede it for this argument. Just because you agree on things, doesn't mean there aren't many things which there are many ways to interpret.
4. IF Orthodox disagree on interpreting the bible, that hardly supports your contention, now does it?
5. We're only in the same shape as you if the ultimate theological aim is interpreting the bible. This is the only aim for you that is objectively a standard, not for us.
Alan (or Allan),
I am very convinced of the truth of my own religious faith (as you've probably noticed by now), but, in all honesty (as opposed to dishonesty, as you seem to imply), I cannot agree with you here. For several reasons:
- for starters, there are many verses or passages whose true meaning I cannot discern... NOT in the sense that "I have NO idea what on earth this can possibly means", but in the sense that I can think of at least two or three different ways of looking at it, ALL of which cannot simultaneously be true, although they are ALL equally valid from a logical and contextual perspective.
- though I personally deem many Protestant interpretations illogical, there are also many that are self-coherent and plausible.
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