Archived Daily Manna | Rejoice Fellowship | A mission to release people to rejoice in the world.

Message: One of the most difficult and most important challenges in reading the Bible is conforming our minds to the Word of God, rather than rewriting the Bible so that it reflects our own thoughts. The temptation to ignore or distort a passage we do not like, or to read an idea we do like into a passage that does not really support our idea, or to extend (“explain” or “interpret”) a passage by using a personal opinion, is a chronic detriment to Christian faith, love, and unity. The Word of God is immortal, inerrant, timeless truth. The thoughts of human beings are not only inherently faulty, but also distorted by a wide range of factors: self-interest, bias, conformity to culture, emotion, etc. How, then, can we know God’s Word? When we read the Bible, we have thoughts about it; and in fact, human interpretation of some sort is required, or we could not read or understand it at all. How can we read God’s Word as He intended us to read it, distorting it as little as possible? Rabbit in illuminated Macclesfield Psaltery Today we are going to look at one tool that helps enormously: thoroughly understanding the difference between “imply” — to suggest something without saying or showing it plainly — and “conjecture” — to draw conclusions that are neither explicit nor implied, or to form an opinion about God’s word based on incomplete information. It takes some effort to grasp, and even more effort to apply, but the rewards are commensurate to the effort. I promise! I want to use “imply” in the narrow sense of a “necessary implication.” That is, when interpreting the Bible, an implication must be intentional and, therefore, must be provable by reference to something in the Bible itself. Here is a valid implication: Jesus says sin leads to death. Jesus says that adultery is a sin. The Bible therefore implies that adultery will lead to death. Conjecture is one of the primary means by which people distort the Bible. When we hear somebody say “this passage implies such and such,” it raises a red flag. Almost invariably what follows is not something the Bible implies, but an inference the commentator supplies from his own mind: perhaps what he wants the Bible to say, or perhaps what he mistakenly thinks the Bible says, when it does not say that at all. Old family Bible Conjecture and speculation are not the word of God; they are the product of the reader's mind. Many who practice this do not even realize it; most people have great difficulty distinguishing what the Bible says and what their mind adds or subtracts to it. But it is a serious matter. In Galatians 1:6-8, for example, Paul calls a gospel that has been distorted by human additions “anathema” — accursed. James 3:1 says, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.” The technical term for correctly interpreting the Bible, by reference only to itself, is “exegesis,” which literally means “to bring out.” We correctly take meaning out of the Bible. The opposite term, “eisegesis,” means “to read into.” It is a good term, if you can remember the word, because most people understand what “reading something into” a statement means. So we should learn these two Greek terms: Exegesis means “taking out,” understanding what is actually intended by the author. Eisegesis means “putting in,” reading something “into” a passage that might not be intended. (It helps to remember that exegesis is actually related our word “exit”.) The Importance of Genre Once we have firmly fixed the difference between “implied” and “inferred” meaning, and we grasp the dangers of the latter, we can back up just a bit and pick out passages where inference is proper. Parables, by their nature, require interpretation. Christ told us that there would be people able to understand His parables correctly (e.g. Matthew 13:1-23.) and others who would not; and I suppose, we will not know the difference until after we die. There is another five dollar word for being led by the Holy Spirit to correctly interpret passages like parables: “Illumination”. rider with harp on dragon More generally, we are not going to discuss interpretation of prophecy (e.g. Revelation), poetry (e.g. Psalms), or wisdom literature (e.g. Ecclesiastes), for these often invite eisegetic interpretation (inference). Since we are learning about Pauline epistles, then, let’s confine ourselves to historical or doctrinal passages in the New Testament. For here, we must be most careful to avoid reading our own thoughts into a passage. “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” (1 Peter 2:1:21) “All Scripture is inspired by God.” (2 Timothy 3:16) So how do we tell when we are reading something into an epistle that is not there, as opposed to working out an implication God intends us to see? In our next lesson in Galatians, we will take the rules we have learned and apply them to Paul’s great rhetorical introduction to Galatians 3.