Rightly Dividing

Though we don’t give it its due, objectively speaking it is a rather dramatic moment. First, of course, there is the broader drama, a recreation of the temptation in the Garden of Eden, but this time taking place in a savage wilderness. Jesus, without food for forty days, is facing temptation from the devil. Immediately prior Jesus had received baptism from John, and God spoke from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with You I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22). The devil, just as he did in Eden begins by questioning the faithful Word of God, asking, “If you are the Son of God command the stone to become bread.” Jesus answers the assault with the Word of God- “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone.” Satan then ups the ante, tempting not just with bread, but with all the kingdoms of the world, if only Jesus would worship him. Jesus again speaks God’s words- “You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve.”

Then the devil, who is more crafty than any of the beasts of the field, surprises us. He begins his final assault with a shocking weapon. He encourages Jesus to throw Himself off the temple’s pinnacle, using God’s own words- He will command His angels concerning you, to guard you- and On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” Dirty pool. But then Dirty Pool may just be the devil’s middle name.

Jesus triumphs. But we are left shaken. If the devil can use even God’s Word against us, what hope do we have? Not much, unless we understand how important it is to understand God’s Word, unless we learn to rightly divide. In both the Garden and in the wilderness the devil did what He always does- he undermines what God has said. His assaults on the Word, however, can come from any number of directions. The direct assault has its diabolical benefits. When we come to the Bible believing it to merely be a politically motivated account of the convictions of a primitive people, we show ourselves to already be on his side. When we take a baby step to the right and affirm that the Bible contains God’s Words, mixed in, under and around the words of men, we are still on the wrong side of the battle.

Are we safe, though, if we not only attest to our conviction that the Bible is God’s inerrant and infallible Word, true in everything it teaches, but having thus affirmed actually avail ourselves of the Bible? Not yet, not by any stretch of the imagination. After all, the Pharisees believed this. Worse still, their father, the devil believes this as well. If we would rightly wield the sword of the Lord we have to not only read the Word, believe the Word, but we must also love the Word and study the Word. We must, in short, love the Word of God will all our hearts, minds, souls and strengths. It’s only bibliolatry if we separate what no man can tear asunder, God’s being and His truth. If we wish to be changed, washed by His Word, then we must study it well.

Rome rightly understands that we are not yet out of the wilderness when we simply affirm that the Bible is true and trustworthy. Her solution, however, simply makes things worse. Because men can and do interpret the Bible wrongly, Rome reasons, God gave us the church which has the ability to give us the authoritative and perfectly accurate interpretation. There are two problems here. First, God nowhere made any such promise. If men are imperfect, and His Word is perfect, then men must submit to His Word, rather than the Word submitting to men. Second is the problem of infinite regress. If we cannot know God’s perfect Word unless we have an inerrant interpretation, then do we not need an inerrant interpretation of the interpretation? Assuming we could find such a thing, would it too not need an inerrant interpretation? Once we embrace the notion that we must have a perfect interpretation to understand something, we will forever be chasing the perfect interpretation of the perfect interpretation of the perfect interpretation, ad nauseum.

Protestants agree that we must interpret the Bible properly. One key difference, however, is how we understand what it means to interpret. In the hands of Rome, or in the hands of those given to postmodern gobbledy-gook, “to interpret” something is to finish it. That is, both Rome and liberalism look at the Bible as an unfinished book, and hermeneutics is the science of finishing the job. The Bible is like a monolith of granite. We come to it and through the science of interpretation chip away and polish and chisel until the full and final message is revealed. By no means.

Hermeneutics, or more commonly the science of interpretation, isn’t about turning a slab into the Pieta. It is instead learning to see the Pieta for what it is. We, when we interpret well, are being shaped and formed by God’s Word that is already finished and complete. The science of hermeneutics is never finishing the message, but hearing it. It is allowing the text to speak. It isn’t contributing our two cents, but getting out of the way. Our calling is to listen, and to say “Amen.”

We are, however, Pelagians at heart. Even as we want to contribute something to our salvation, so we want to contribute something to our interpretation. The Bible then is sliced and diced, molded and shaped, twisted and distorted. Consider, for a moment, the medieval scholastics. Here the goal was open and unashamed- we must learn to synthesize the Bible with Aristotle. If we can take the wisdom of the one and meld it together with the wisdom of the other, these folks seemed to think, we’ll have even more wisdom. One wonders how there could not have been even one desert prophet there to expose the nakedness of this hermeneutical emperor. Well, I suppose God did send one eventually, Martin Luther. For one could make a strong argument that Rome’s departure from the faith began here.

We who are Protestant, however can have our own versions of impositions on the text. There is a brand of hyper-covenantalism out there that forgets that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, that, like lawyers gone wild, can’t bear to see a relationship that is just a relationship, that comes to us without a suzerain/vassal form from the Ancient Near East. And, of course, the covenant must appear to us in a chiastic structure. We are lawyers with biblical poetry and poets with biblical law, all while looking down our noses at the other guys’ mistakes.

Then there is that system that is the anti-system. Here we are so committed to coming to the text with no preconceived notions that we don’t allow even the Bible to give us any preconceived notions. That is, lest we be tagged with “system” we have this text telling us this and that text telling us the opposite. We treat the Word of God not as a coherent whole, but as a huge mass of isolated bits of data. We forget the first rule of sound hermeneutics- that Scripture interprets Scripture. Jesus understood this quite well which is precisely how He was able to combat the Serpent’s use of Scripture against Him.

Hermeneutics then isn’t so much a set of rules and regulations that will make it possible for the Bible to speak. It is instead a set of principles to help us not drown out the Bible as it speaks. Remembering that Scripture interprets Scripture, we move on to the most simple rule of all, though it has a rather complicated name. We let Scripture speak when we remember how language works, that nouns are nouns, verbs are verbs, and forms are forms. That is we interpret well when we stick with the grammatico-historical method. This is a “literalist” approach not in the sense that it denies the use of metaphor, simile and sundry other poetic forms, but in that it allows each of these forms to operate as they ought. To suggest that when Jesus says “I am the door” that we ought to expect to find on His person hinges and a door-knob isn’t to be faithful and literal, but to once again impose from without rather than to listen from within.

To be simple in hearing God speak then is to not complicate things by bringing our own baggage to the table. We affirm that we are joining a conversation that began without us and that will continue after us. We submit to it, rather than asking it to submit to us. We, in seeking to practice faithful hermeneutics, do not come with our systems, but submit to its systems. We see poetry as poetry, proverbs as proverbs, and history as history. We listen to hear God speak.

The God who speaks to us in His Word is the God who is about the business of making known the glory of His reign over all things, including us. Just as the kingdom does not exist for us, but we for the kingdom, so the Word does not exist for us, but we for the Word. For if we would learn but one thing from His Word it is this- in the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word and the Son are one. May we give honor to both by submitting to both. May we see Him in the Word, as we see the Word in Him. Glory and kingdom, Word and Word.