0:02
we'll get started again father we do again thank you for this time that we have together and in your word and learning how to read your word help us to help us to understand how you have
0:13
revealed yourself that we might in reading your word come to know you better by the Holy Spirit and through Jesus Christ in whom the scriptures
0:24
culminate so we pray father that you would clear our minds and help us to concentrate uh but also that the things that we think the things that we say would be guided by your Holy Spirit and therefore
0:36
pleasing in your sight for we ask in Jesus name
0:50
discussion um what we've been talking about or what I've been talking about in terms of how to read the Bible the way God revealed himself in the
1:03
Bible actually reflects a the reality of two extremes that goes back to the 2 Century um and was really solidified in the in the 3D Century the third century
1:15
is a very interesting Century in terms of the Mediterranean world uh the church was growing uh really it was it was growing by leaps and
1:25
bound um episcopacy was being firmly established lished in the church not the Roman papacy not yet um but the the um
1:37
the identification of individuals within not just individual churches but in regions who were recognized as themselves uniquely Bishops uh that
1:49
takes place beginning in the 2 Century but again really solidified in the 3 Century so in the 3 century
2:08
you have a phenomenon of the church growing and uh filling the Mediterranean world so if we look at the
2:20
church things are going very well even in the midst of persecution so there's there is a lot of persecution in the 3D century
2:34
it's toward the end of the 2 Century beginning of the 3D Century that tulan famously says that the the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church um so persecution is actually um helping the
2:45
church to grow um as I mentioned we do have the um
3:04
at this point I think that's right these are a college of Bishops there's no hierarchy among them there's no Pope there's a Roman there's a bishop of the Church of Rome but he's only going to be
3:16
named a pope retrospectively Years Later by the Roman Church um in fact in this third Century probably the premier uh Bishops would have been in Alexandria um
3:28
and in Carthage the cyprian the bishop of car Carthage so um you know so we have this now that that doesn't seem important but it it is because it begins
3:39
to institutionalize Christianity within the Mediterranean World which is going to have more to play in terms of the extremes of
3:49
extremes of hermeneutics that arise during the century um so we have that in the church but in the in the Roman Empire
4:03
we can see the dynamic of of Daniel chapter 2 where the the stone cut without hands would roll into that statue and and then crush it into dust and then that little Stone would grow
4:13
into a mountain that would fill the whole world so you know during the second century the church is is um is is hanging on and the Roman Empire is
4:23
actually growing and it reaches its peak of influence and power probably under Marcus celus uh somewhere around the 80 170s 180s so the mid 2 Century Rome
4:36
seems still very very dominant but then in the third Century there are there are 36
4:51
Emperors between 193 and 305 none of them lasted more than 5 years some of them didn't last 20 days
5:03
so Legions were fighting Legions as their Commander declared for the purple and said I am the new emperor and so there Civil War was rif and basically
5:13
the Roman Empire is falling apart eventually um Diocesan will come up with the forpart you know an Eastern Emperor with his Caesar and then a a western
5:24
Augustus with his Caesar but he's going to move the whole thing to Constantinople or actually Constantine does that so it's like just forget all this mess and Western Europe descends
5:36
into what we know as the Dark Ages which is not a good term but what's happening is there's a displacement going on now in U ad.
5:49
312 very important official document um by the emperor Constantine and his co-emperor
6:03
linius who because I can't remember his name indicates how important he was um he was only co-emperor as long as Constantine wanted him to be and then he wasn't anymore the Edict of Milan ended persecution of Christianity made
6:14
Christianity illegal religion um it's somewhat of a misnomer or a misunderstanding people say that Constantine made Christianity the religion of the Empire he did not that was done later in the 4th Century what
6:26
he did do was he banned the persecution of Christians um thereby legalizing it as a religion within the Empire now that that changed the whole picture now these Bishops of the church are becoming
6:39
officials of the state and so there's a displacement going on the church is slowly displacing the Roman Empire uh and that's going to be manifest in in
6:49
the um in the Middle Ages very powerfully why this matters uh to what we're talking about is that
7:10
important there were a number of um doctrinal debates within the church even during the 2 and third Century but this is leading up to ad. 325 and the Council of NAA the first ecumenical council of
7:20
the church called by the emperor but his goal was to unify the Empire by unifying Christian doctrine one of the key points of course was the
7:31
Divinity of Jesus Christ which would lead to the doctrine of the Trinity um so this is all moving toward it didn't just happen all of a sudden when when uh
7:42
Christianity is all finally legal hey let's have a council these were decades and even a couple centuries of doctrinal debate and by this time the the
8:15
Cities these two extremes have remained ever since which is which is why I'm mentioning this somewhat as an introduction that what we're talking about in terms of the different ways that people have interpreted the Bible
8:26
um there there really two extreme points view that it seems like different branches of the church grad gr uh what's the word gravitate thank you to one or
8:39
the other of the extremes and what I'm trying to teach is a middle a middle way it not necessarily down the middle and not always it sometimes it's closer
8:50
to the one than the other but those two extremes are represented by the cities of Alexandria and of Antioch now Antioch now this is also very typical of History
9:04
Alexandria is The Cutting Edge Progressive City and we can say what the alexandrian Bishops believed in terms of interpreting scripture what we can say
9:17
about Antioch is they're the reactionary View and they don't really have a position except anything that is not the alexandrian one so that is also very
9:28
typical of the Church throughout history in terms of how do we read and interpret our Bible is there's there's often a very radical allegorical Cutting Edge
9:39
culturally relevant you know that type you know whatever you call it whatever the age calls it there's always that view and then there's the other view that says I don't know but not that okay
9:51
so I really can't tell I mean there is something that the antio school did hold fast to we'll talk about that in a moment but weren't really very good at
10:01
developing it like the alexandrians were in terms of their method do you
10:18
know the same time was there no I I have no idea um the the only region that far east that I know anything of is capid doia which is a little west of Armenia
10:29
in basically Turkey um and there there were a number of of of very in the in the fourth Century that's right fourth Century for the capid doans right um no
10:40
at this point we're really dealing still with the Mediterranean world and even Rome's not a player yet that's going to come later um not not too far in the distance but our our main uh
10:54
doctrinal places are Alexandria and Antioch and they're going and you know I've talked about scholasticism before U these are really kind of the the first
11:05
two schools in Christian dactic history the school of Alexandria or the alexandrian school and the antio school um and I said that it's the alexandrian
11:27
had something to say about what the Bible is and how we ought to this is really not I I call it hermeneutics but it really starts with how we read the Bible and what the meaning of what we
11:38
read really is and the alexandrian school then is associated with the hermeneutical method of allegory now I bring that up now because
11:50
we ended last week talking about the symbolic world of the scriptures and understanding the typology of scripture well there is a a historical
12:02
reality that symbolic interpretation often leads to allegory okay and and that's something that I need to address and kind of try
12:13
to explain how this is not going to go there but I also want to explain first why we don't want it to go there okay because generally
12:24
because generally allegory has been one of those positions that the majority of the church says I don't know but not that okay just not that that's that's too weird um and
12:36
so was I going to write on the board um anyhow the um so the alexandrian school was was was very much famous for its allegorical interpretation it really
12:47
begins as far as the history goes with a Jew not a Christian Pho of Alexandria or Pho judeus uh famous um second century
13:01
Jewish philosopher who tried to synthesize um Plato and Moses he was a devout Jew um he actually gives us one of the um uh in
13:14
the in the Christian era though again he's not a Christian he's a Jew he gives us one of the first lists of the recognized Canon of the Old Testament um
13:24
actually Pho is earlier than that um pho's contemporary with Paul um so he's fairly early on and he he is devout in his belief that scripture is
13:36
the inspired word of God he's very Orthodox in that perspective but his interpretive method tries to incorporate Greek philosophy into a Biblical
13:48
exegesis and biblical hermeneutic and what he's trying to do is he's trying to synthesize the philosophical teachings of Plato with the biblical teachings of Moses um so that's that's Pho we really
14:01
don't have any connection um Smoking Gun between Pho and the Christians of Alexandria in the 3D Century there's no
14:11
they weren't necessarily reading Pho but it just seems like Alexandria became a school of school of allegory um and so pho's attempt again
14:22
was to synthesize Moses and and Plato 1200 years later Thomas aquinus
14:34
will try to do the same thing with Jesus and Aristotle um but there's a there's a certain characteristic here those are kind of the two peaks in terms of um
14:47
uh of the history of this method but there's a there's a sense in which allegorizing is a way of contemporizing an ancient text so
14:58
there's kind of an under under Ling motive here in terms of the history of allegorizing and what we call it today is making the text culturally
15:09
text culturally relevant but if you've heard any culturally relevant sermons you realize that they have nothing to do with the text okay they don't call them allegory
15:20
anymore because that's a four-letter word okay but you'll call it culturally relevant and everybody's okay with it but I'm just trying to say that you know you can call it something different but it still smells the same and it ain't a
15:30
rose okay um and so or in the Christian then Clement and
15:42
Clement and origin and mostly origin he's the most famous um in terms of allegorizing the Old Testament especially in order and
15:54
and I I have no doubt that origin and Clement were both Believers I again I need to make it clear that just because we may disagree with a particular approach does NE not mean that they're
16:06
heretical that they were holding false Doctrine they just had a uh a form of hermeneutic that um manipulates
16:17
scripture to achieve a predetermined end and that's not what we're about even if we recognize that the
16:27
historical events of the Old Testament of God's work including his creation we recognize that these things were both historical events and Redemptive symbols
16:39
is is everybody okay with that I just don't know the difference between I know seem like the same they seem like the same which is what I'm going to try to do it's going to take a
16:50
little be patient but they and that's why I'm saying what I'm saying because as soon as I say types and you know symbols you think well how do you not go to allegory and that's what I'm going to
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not why not um because allegory in its in its negative form I mean we cannot condemn allegory completely because Paul
17:14
does it in Galatians 4 right and yet what Paul does is not foreign to the texts he texts he uses does that make sense well it's like
17:29
God he set theory exactly but but unfortunately the word allegory has been given a different
17:40
connotation in hermeneutics by men like origin okay um and also I mean Luther was not immune to it so Paul uses the
17:52
word the word in the Greek is the transliterated allegory okay so that's where we get the word so I can't demn plus allegories that are that are upfront okay like um Pilgrims Progress
18:05
that's an allegory um and we know it's an allegory he's he's not trying to make an allegory out of of another text so what what what I'm going to say and this
18:15
is a very general comment and please understand that I'm dealing with allegory in its historical manifestation and making a distinction
18:27
between typological and typological and allegorical primarily because of the antio reaction which is rigid
18:38
literalism okay so just to give you an idea before I talk about it um the extremes here would be
19:08
literalism they Remain the extremes okay so when I use the word allegory in the notes and in in the lectures I'm really refer referring to
19:19
alexandrian allegory which if you've read any of origin or uh the Epistle of Barnabas or I mean allegory was very popular in terms of of an interpretive method
19:33
you you pretty quickly realize that they have left the text behind does that make sense I mean not just the symbolism within the text they're not even in the text they're
19:43
text they're assigning um meaning to the words of the text that have no basis either in the text itself or in the symbolic Arc of of
19:57
that particular that particular symbol like Paul clearly does right I mean Paul assigns a different meaning to Abraham to Sarah to Hagar to Ishmael and
20:07
to Isaac right and it's not a meaning that you would get from reading back in Genesis but you can see what happened to Ishmael what happened to Isaac the
20:18
Covenant being renewed with Isaac and then the whole history of the events and you realize that all of this that Paul sees was in there so
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right yes and and and that gets us back I I'll get to you in a moment please don't forget that gets us back to that touchy issue of Jesus on every page okay most of origin's allegories were and same
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with Luther were attempts to find Jesus on every page in every story whereas Jesus permeates there are other aspects of God 's Redemption that
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are in those stories yes of course the the whole story of Abraham's family and Isaac that all culminates in Jesus but that's not what Paul's talking about
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fact he doesn't really even mention Jesus he mentions the church as the new as the true Jerusalem but what the important thing is is two things that we we kind of reiterate as we go along
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number one he never denies the historicity of the event that's always a dead give away now origin didn't either but these days you
21:33
know nobody believes that that stuff ever actually happened so you're starting with a legend and ending with an allegory there's no truth there there's no Solid Ground there okay so
21:44
that's one thing the second thing is an allegory leaves the text behind fairly quickly and ass signs meaning to the words of the text that have no basis
21:55
either in the text or in the arc of development that that story then undergoes as a symbolic part of that symbolic world that then you're okay
22:07
here I can see it now but it's always there an example of allegory not just leaving the text but seemly contradicting text read Jonah I think
22:18
maybe it was a I can't remember but that Jonah fleing to tares is allegorical Jesus
22:29
leaving heaven to come and save us all right let me repeat that um apparently Austin who who was also guilty of allegorizing he was Church Father it may
22:41
have been origin but that in In Jonah Jonah himself fleeing to Tarsus is allegorical for Jesus leaving heaven and coming to coming to Earth no it's not and what are you
22:55
smoking all right he like that's not in the ark of you see what I'm that's a very good example there's so many examples that are that are incredibly ridiculous I have one in the notes um
23:06
and you know maybe it'll cut to the chase if I can find it it's in the Epistle of Barnabas um and yeah I won't look too long because
23:18
it I don't want to waste time but it it's just one of those things that um you realized this is not biblical EX
23:28
Jesus this is not a good hermeneutic this is fanciful imagination um and but we're often um we're we're often kind of bedazzled
23:40
first of all by the imaginative nature of it but also because the the the Christian allegorize will always bring it bring it back to Christ and so how can that be wrong you know I mean it
23:52
doesn't seem like that can be wrong because you know they're bringing it back to Christ but but what they're doing though is they're they're really cheapening God's cheapening God's word and and yeah you always end up back
24:03
with Jesus but the root you got there had no Trail markers and you are very fortunate to get back to you know to Jesus um and and we've maybe it's it's
24:15
more uh I'm more sensitive of it because this is very very popular among charismatics okay I remember we were at some uh I don't know what you call it U
24:25
um I know what I would call it but uh I don't know what they called it but it was a guest speaker oh beware of guest speakers um please you know um but this
24:36
guy was going on about Esau Edam meaning uh red and how uh Jacob was it Jacob that
24:48
grasped Esau's heel okay so the next night of the conference half the people there are wearing red high top sneakers
25:02
I'm like this is really weird I will tell you that even in that time of of young life I did not go out and buy a pair of red high top sneakers that was that was one of the that was kind of the
25:13
beginning of that that um uh what did what did uh denur say in in and Lord of the Rings flee Flee for your lives okay
25:24
it was at that point that we were fleeing we were this is so weird um but you would listen to the sermons like I must not have faith or the spirit or a brain in my head because I have no
25:35
idea where you got that and you you're supposed to think that because when when Paul gives you an allegory you can see it can't you I mean
25:45
Galatians 4 is pure allegory and he's not saying that Abraham never existed and this is all Legend and this was the point of the story no this all happened he said but this is what it means and so
25:57
there that's it that's of the important features that that differentiate symbolic hermeneutic from allegorical okay and and the reason I make the distinction is not because there's
26:08
anything wrong with the word allegory but because of what has been done under the heading of allegorical interpretation throughout the history of the church okay so we we we want to kind
26:21
of figure out a way not to go there but I'm going to um maintain that the antien
26:34
[Music] school while safer was little better and I believe this is also a
26:45
pattern that we've seen throughout church history in terms of how we read our Bible one branch of the church seems to always be cutting edge and coming up
26:56
with new stuff another in reaction to that seems to be rigid and immovable and so there's there are these
27:06
extremes that everybody seems to gravitate to one or the other and I'm saying that they're both wrong the one that we just talked about
27:16
is wrong because it leaves the scripture completely and comes up with its own imaginative path back to Jesus somehow that's that's not biblical hermeneutics
27:27
it's not biblical theology it's just not right but the other is also wrong because it establishes a hermeneutic that the New Testament writers themselves did not
27:38
use and that should be a major yellow flag at least you know that that we're not in any way reading the
27:48
Bible the way Paul and John and Peter obviously did and so this school became the School of
28:03
literalism by literalism is symbol yes essentially essentially a fear of the symbolic okay and there there obviously there's going to be very few that hold the absolute
28:14
view but there are now uh within dispensationalism you know there are uh those who hold to an absolute rigid textual literalism the word says what it
28:26
means and means what it says says or maybe it's the other way around okay means what it says and says what you've all heard that I'm sure well that's a statement of rigid literalism yes it
28:37
says what it means and it means what it says but then there's a question of the meaning of meaning what does it mean when it was first written it meant one
28:48
thing okay later on it didn't mean something completely different but its meaning is expanded is it not that that's what we're getting at here
28:59
allegory says it meant something completely different and what really gives allegory away is is no two allegorist come up with the same allegory from the same passage that should always be you know another red
29:11
flag is you know origin came up with his allegories and then someone else came up with different ones so there must be something wrong here if if the one holy
29:21
spirit is leading us all to different interpretations of these passages but the opposite view says it's what it what it says and there's no looking any deeper
29:34
and and why is it that the New Testament writers were able to say something about a passage that clearly is not the literal meaning out of Egypt I called my
29:46
son has a literal meaning of The Exodus in Hosea in Hosea 11 but it has a different meaning in Matthew okay it's not a different
29:57
meaning though when you realize that Matthew's reading of it is in hosea's speaking of it it's there because who is
30:08
my son well yes it's Israel but ultimately it is the singular representation or representative Israel the Messiah of Israel okay and so many other passages
30:20
referring to the Messiah will then will then culminate and distill into the identity of Jesus and so it's the typological the symbolic
30:31
expands as the progressive revelation continues but it never leaves the original meaning entirely okay so the
30:42
the rigidity now um what was very important and this still is important but um again rigid
30:53
literalism that's not going to sell books that that's not you know you say okay I'm I'm an advocate of rigid literalism no that that sounds like you're an absolute stick in the mud and
31:05
no one's going to buy your book so we have to call it something different and what we call it is is itself good but it's also somewhat misleading we call it
31:26
grammatical doesn't that sound better sounds f sounds fancier doesn't it might sell a book right yeah better than rigid than rigid literalism yeah uh historical grammatical is is essentially the
31:36
hermeneutic of of reformed exegesis and as such I don't have any I have no basic objection to it I actually have no basic objection to algorism if
31:46
it's defined correctly but historical grammatical is looking at the text as it was written and as it is written meaning
31:58
what is the context historically and what is the syntax of the text now both of those are important okay I'm not I'm not diminishing those but they're often
32:10
also used to avoid any investigation into the symbolic meaning or significance of a
32:21
passage it's right as far as it goes but it's if it's as far as you go with the text it becomes wrong does that make
32:33
sense it allows us perhaps to to understand the actual textual historical grammatical meaning of that so important
32:44
prophecy in prophecy in Isaiah about the Virgin birth in Isaiah 7
33:04
therefore the Lord uh verse 14 therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign Behold a virgin will be with child and bear a son and she will call his name Immanuel and he will eat curds
33:15
and honey at the time that he knows enough to refuse evil and choose good for before this boy will know enough to refuse evil and choose good the land whose two kings you dread will be
33:33
forsaken there is historically this means the destruction of the kings of Syria and Assyria or Sy Syria isra is oh yeah
33:45
that's right this is this is this is Judah this is Judah um and so Syria and Israel are are laying Siege basically to Hezekiah in Jerusalem and so this
33:55
Prophet not it wasn't Hezekiah it was um yeah and because he wouldn't he wouldn't tempt the Lord and yeah and it kind of ticked Isaiah off um and so he says you
34:05
want to ask for a sign I'll give you a sign and that sign is that a virgin will be with child and by the time that child is old enough to refuse good or refuse evil and choose good these two kings
34:16
land will be desolate okay will be forsaken well if he's a true Prophet then that had to come to pass which it did in fact that's recounted okay so
34:26
historically that's what that passage means right also the word virgin simply means young woman Maiden it has no indication as to whether or not really she'd ever known a man I mean
34:39
the indication the indication is it it could very well be used of a young married woman in fact it may have been Isaiah's wife shortly afterwards we
34:50
have that birth of Isaiah's child okay so within the context and the syntax we don't get the Virgin birth of
35:02
Christ you see what I'm saying now the Virgin birth of Christ doesn't just grow right out of the Tex statue no you're saying yes it doesn't
35:12
in fact the historical grammatical method would not give us that conclusion at all but my Bible has a star in the margin infallibly indicating that this
35:23
is a Messianic prophecy right how many of you have a star an ex some indication that this is a Messianic prophecy how do we know that well because Jesus was born of a virgin okay but that's again the
35:35
historical grammatical method is necessary we need to establish this actually happened and God validated the prophet Isaiah by giving him a son and
35:49
destroying the Kings of Israel and Syria which Syria which validated the deeper prophecy okay so but what how do we know the
36:00
deeper prophecy well we don't until scripture continually progresses in Revelation Isaiah is fairly early among the prophets okay compared to certainly
36:11
the Minor Prophets and well some of them are about the same time and the post exilic prophets are obviously much later but I think Isaiah is like um 9th century or 7th seventh nth 7th eth
36:23
Century so he's pretty early on um and and what he has to say is very remarkable in fact he's so early in the calendar that liberal Scholars cannot
36:33
accept that there was only one Isaiah because his prophecies are so accurate for things that happened centuries later those who ra deny the rationality of
36:45
Prophecy simply say Well it must have been a different writer dudo Isaiah and tritto Isaiah right then it was all pieced together um so um what what we're dealing with here
36:57
than is a historical grammatical method is is is is good as far as it
37:21
far do you think the aute Israelite have caught that as part of the pattern of impossible births where the son of the promise comes out of an
37:32
impossible birth situation or extremely unlik I think it's I think I think I think not only I mean yes the Holy Spirit could have revealed to some like
37:44
Simeon you know of course he's much later the difference is we know nothing of the of the mother on the in the other passages with the nearly impossible birth we're told
37:55
about the barrenness of the mother right or the advanced age of the mother um as far as we know there's nothing wrong with Isaiah's wife that the birth of a
38:05
child was simply a trigger for the Fulfillment of the prophecy of the destruction of of the of is of judah's
38:16
enemies so I guess I'll put it this way if I was there no I wouldn't have seen it I mean that's what I'm trying to say when we read scripture as it was at the time and we use the historical critical method we
38:28
come up with an interpretation but it's not usually the interpretation that is then given to it later especially by the New Testament writers which tells us
38:38
either the New Testament writers were very imaginative and just used these passages because they kind of worked you know they they went to their they they searched Bible Gateway and came up with
38:50
a word that can me virgin and so hey Isaiah 7 you know that's what it means none of us think they they did that which means if if um if the New
39:02
Testament writers are honest and true to God's word which I firmly believe they were then the meaning that they're deriving from a passage is in that
39:14
passage and biblical theology or canonical theology is what allows us to trace that Passage through the ark that then arrives at its culmination New
39:27
Testament and its fulfillment in Jesus Christ it's not just a matter of them oh this works let's let me use this one and a lot of people think that's what they did at least the
39:38
reformed Believers use the New Testament to shine that laser
39:48
Pointes but they they they shine their laser passage on this passage but what I'm saying is that's illegitimate according to their own professed hermeneutical method
40:07
well and yeah and and we do that and we can't help but do that and certainly when the New Testament writer says this is what that means well a priori that's what that means but that doesn't mean we can necessarily see why it means that
40:19
and if we go back to that text itself like hosiah 11 we're often styed that it that's not what it meant
40:29
now this leads to um a term that is very very important within uh reformed hermeneutics and
40:45
authorial intent this is also very important in all literary studies what did the author intend when he wrote that what did Dickens intend when he wrote Great
40:56
Expectations in this character and this line okay line okay allegorizing contemporized Dickens by bringing his message into a modern
41:07
situation that's a form of allegorizing it's really not concerned with what the author intended what it's concerned is what the reader needs to hear so it's
41:18
the author and the reader tend to be the polls of literary studies okay does that make sense what do the author mean what does the reader understand okay well the author wrote 200 years ago
41:31
and our situation is different and therefore when we read Bleak House or whatever I keep going back to Dickens but when we read Pride and Prejudice you know we could do the historical grammatical method and go back into the
41:42
regeny era and understand kind of how they lived back then right but if we if we want to apply Jane Austin to our life today we don't ask what did she mean
41:52
because I don't think she meant to be applied to our life today um maybe she did but we want to know what what is relevant to our life situation so
42:02
there's the author there's the reader okay the problem is with scripture how many authors are there well there's to Any Given passage right
42:15
there are there are two right but ultimately one and why I say ultimately is because every one of these passages has been
42:32
concatenated into a Canon right that was never pronounced officially by any legal body of the church but rather recognized by God's people as the word of God so that you
42:44
have these individual authors and yet overarching all of that tying it all together there is one author of scripture God now that doesn't take away
42:55
the individual author I'm just saying that authorial intent intent emphasizes the individual author too much we don't necessarily know even what the original
43:07
author understood by what they were writing Peter indicates that now there are different ways of of looking at what Peter says let see if I can First Peter
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chapter 1 I believe um but it does indicate that there was an element we already know from the writer of Hebrews that God spoke in parts and portions through the prophets right so we already
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know that what they got was not the full monty that that was awaiting the revelation of God's son then
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uh okay well I don't want to I don't want to waste too much time I I do have it in the notes and maybe I can find it very quickly um looking at the notes since I indent them for is it first Peter or second
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Peter thank you there okay let me just read it from there then thank you of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully y who
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prophesied of the grace that would come to you searching what or what manner of time the spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and
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the glories that would follow to them it was revealed that not to themselves but to us they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you
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through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit okay now that that indicates that while they did did they did understand that all of this meant something that the spirit of
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Messiah was guiding them but they also understood that they didn't get it all that there was more yet to come and that would become even more clear as
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more comes so that I think the whole process is really summed up in a man like Simeon that it was given to him to
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see the the consummation of all of the Divine prophecies in the Babe Jesus okay um but he was in a
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sense one in a long line of prophets not a writing Prophet to be sure but one in a long line of prophets who looked D and searched the scriptures
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diligently but so many of them died in faith but not with a Clear Vision of what was to come they and I don't think that they would be held responsible U
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for anything beyond what their age was given okay so what we're trying to do so author authorial intent is a very slippery thing because the author's dead
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again with Dickens or Austin or Shakespeare authorial in What was Shakespeare's authorial intent to get a lot of people to come to the Globe Theater and pay you know ticket Price
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Right of people make he always make fun of people um but I don't think it was um necessarily his authorial intent to absolutely trash Rich Richard III okay
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that was a political thing to do at the time because now the tutors are in power so that's how you get people to come and the King to like your plays and sponsor you that's the Au authorial a lot of authorial intention is financially based
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not in scripture of course but I'm just saying that the whole method of trying to seek out the meaning of the author is is really bogus but
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then reader response that's the opposite reader response well boy that just opens it up to everybody okay um I do have a good
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quote from CS Lewis who was I mean we think of CS Lewis as a Christian which he wasn't always um we also think of him as the author of The Chronicles of
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Narnia um which certainly put him on the map but what was he by degree he was a literary professor and a literary critic is what he was okay and
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he says no story can be written can be devised by the wit of man which cannot be interpreted allegorically by the wit of some other
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man therefore the mere fact that you can allegorize the work before you is in it in and of itself no proof that it is an allegory okay so if we go to The Other Extreme
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and say read or response then we get to the situation that we used to have years ago in this church and it was essentially what did the sermon mean what does the passage mean to you well no it's actually what does the passage
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mean to me okay so you really boil it all down to your own personal opinion of what the passage means and what do I need the holy spirit is going to give me
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because he loves me he's going to give me what I need out of this verse and I say it and then the pastor says that's not in that verse what are you doing well the Holy Spirit revealed it to me oh no no I don't think so you get in you
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get into a situation where reader response becomes the dictating hermeneutic of much of modern
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evangelicalism piece late 7s High School student wrote number delightful from the 70s young man I and so on and asked them all of these
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things that the English professors say your work means did you mean that and 90% of them responded to him and said no no at all no never you know never crossed my mind
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and I imagine if we could you know if we could raise get the witch of Endor to raise the spirit of of Dickens we would not find out that what we think he intended he actually intended some
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things are seemingly obvious and there are certain aspects of society that he clearly didn't like and it's no it takes no genius to to know he didn't like Americans okay and for example Agatha
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Christie she didn't like Italians they are always the murderer unless it wasn't done with a knife okay could you stereotype a little more okay we are murderers but only with
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knives all right I know have a um so reader response again the the other
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end of the spectrum and really what we are getting at here uh and I say this more explicitly in the
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notes but what we are getting at here is reading the Bible as literature but not as just a piece of literature like any other ancient literature but literature in the sense that it has one author
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that's that's the point of that statement is getting back to the recognition that when we read Jonah or when we read Leviticus or when we read John we're reading God God God right and
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and that means that that this is not just a stitched together bound together uh compendium of individual books it's a
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book it's the it's the revelation of God of himself and of his purpose and and so we we need I do think we need to get back to that what we have here is we
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don't know the authorial intent not the human author auth we don't know what the human author understood in terms of the deeper meaning of what he was writing we
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we don't know in fact we know for example that the angel tells Daniel seal it up don't say anything you know just basically seal it up until the time
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which is you know 770s he didn't know what it all meant in fact he was ill for
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days okay so we we know in some examples that they did they couldn't know the fullness of what it is they were writing and and so we don't we don't
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think that they understood everything but then this this is the very popular one today this idea that what it means to me is what it really means it's kind of existential the Bible the holy spirit
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is meeting my needs with God's word this is what leads to U the memory verses that we have in pictures and on refrigerator magnets these are the one and devotionals daily devotionals you
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know these are the ones that do something for me well I'm not saying that scripture doesn't do that I I'm very reluctant to to say that that was anywhere near God's purpose in revealing
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his will in the Bible in the Holy scriptures that we would that he would meet our immediate and daily felt needs I think there's a lot more to it than that um and so reader response is purely
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subjective and and it it really leads to a non hermeneutic there's really no guidance in this philosophy that the church as a community can follow because
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we're all individuals and yet the scripture has but one author One unifying Divine author and therefore and and the spirit that is moving the men
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who are writing these parts of that overall narrative that overall book is the same spirit that is in us and the spirit that the psalmist says is the one
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who enlightens the word okay so that that um the the giving of your spirit it it it gives wisdom so it's the same
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spirit it's the one author and therefore I don't think we can boil down every passage as to what it means to me what does remain and this is where canonical theology is so
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important what remains long after the author is gone and long before I have any say in the matter is the text
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itself and some modern writers are getting back to this concept that we're not really we're not really trying to far it out what Isaiah
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knew because we really don't know how much he knew and we're certainly not going to the subjective feel-good reader response method that is very popular in
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Liberal Christianity Liberal Christianity what we are trying to do however is
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determine what did the text intend and we can't do that solely with the historical critical method because the his or the historical grammatical forgive me I that was the
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German side of me um the historical grammatical is necessary in the beginning of an exegesis it is not sufficient for a
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complete exegesis because it doesn't follow the Arc of meaning that that passage contains
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symbolically okay did you have a comment oh okay um so the again the the intent of the text is what we're trying to get at but we
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can only get at because I think that is exactly when when Paul is speaking allegorically in Galatians let's turn to that passage in Galatians
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4 he does not mean to say hey folks this is all I came up with this and I think it's kind of neat this is all in my imagination but
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it works so we're going to run with it no he he speaks in a definitive manner that the historical events concerning
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mean this okay he he doesn't say well this is kind of analogous to what's happening today he says um verse 24 this is allegorically
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speaking for these women are two covenants one proceeding from Mount Si bearing children who are to be slaves who is she is Hagar now this Hagar is
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Mount Si in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem for she is in slavery with her children but the Jerusalem above is free
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she is our mother okay um he he's not he's not uh doing a metaphor here this is not figurative
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speech he he means means that unbelieving Israel represented by Jerusalem and the temple then still standing they
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are Hagar they are The Offspring of they are Ishmael you know when he says in Romans not all Israel is Israel he's now saying in Galatians some of them are actually
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Ishmael okay they're they're not even Isaac even though they are descended from Abraham they are and obviously they're not physically descended from Hagar he's not saying that but what he's
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also not saying is you know this is kind of like that what he's saying is this is that okay not that anybody reading that
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would necessarily see this but we see what's happened all the way through time culminating in Jesus Christ and now we understand that this is that that we are
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the New Jerusalem including Gentiles but those who are natur natur Al born are actually Mount Si and are in bondage to this day so again it's not that they um
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it's not their imagination working also the claim of of the the um antien school is that the WR and we've talked
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about this a little before but the writers of the New Testament were able to do what they do because they were Apostles this is why it was so important to establish the apostolicity of the writings remember we talked about how do
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we know that this was canonical oh it was written by an apostle or under the supervision of an apostle fact is there are some books that we don't know that right and in the Old Testament it's even
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worse we either don't know the author or the author doesn't appear to be a prophet like Ezra who was a priest and a scribe um so the what but but the the
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church is not comfortable with that we want to be able to say this is our our safe boundary of of hermeneutics and if we stay inside these walls we won't be
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in danger of allegorizing we'll be saying we got to whisper that word okay so um the the uh the the danger of
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the historical grammatical or the rigid literal method is is that we're just trying to stay safe and be in a safe
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place but we can read the Bible and accept what they did okay so the New Testament writers were okay because they weren't
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inspired well yeah that's that's right that means what they wrote was inherent we accept that but that's not what this
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statement means what it means is we can't employ the same hermeneutic that they did that they had a special dispensation that allowed them to understand and therefore
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we can only accept typological interpretation when the typology is explained for us in the New Testament all right so it's not a rigid
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literalism of every word means what it says and nothing else that's not what it is however it is a literalism that says every word means what it
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says unless a new testament writer says it means something
