Just Another Poor Hermeneutical Principle

I love good preaching and teaching of the scriptures. I get off on people expounding about the truth. I can only imagine that the feeling is what enthusiasts of spectator sports experience when watching a good game. Likewise, I want to yell at the players during the game when they drop the ball or at the ref for making a bad call.

One such time is when poor hermeneutical principles are employed. They seem forgivable when the preacher/teacher manages to score despite playing badly, but I cringe realizing that it was a fluke. Poor hermeneutics do not typically generate tenable teaching.

One such bad hermeneutical principle I have heard could be stated as such that the more a topic is mentioned in the Bible, the more important it is. To be sure, I can’t seem to find a reference to this in formal hermeneutical teaching anywhere, but I hear otherwise good preachers appealing to this principle all the time. I won’t name names, but a classic one is “1/3 of the Bible is nothing but prophecy. Therefore, it must be important to God.” Now, prophecy might be important but it’s not because of how much of the Bible could be considered prophecy. An argument could be made that the whole Bible is prophetic. To be sure, if this principle is applied consistently, then we must conclude that the doctrine of the trinity is irrelevant and the virgin birth is relatively unimportant. And the gifts of the Spirit were mentioned only once, but there is a whole book dedicated to the Levitical law! Haw many times are all those sacrifices repeated? I lose track when I’m reading through.

Rather, my desire is for preachers and teachers to make arguments for significance based on the reasonable certainty of a doctrine and its place in supporting the focus of scripture on the overall message of the gospel.

More On Concept Categories

John Piper didn't go into this in his article, but I had a couple of additional thoughts about concept categories after I had written on this last night.

First, some Christians don't have a grasp on all the concept categories. It's a refining process and more in line with sanctification than justification as our minds are ever more subject to Christ.

Second, there are concept categories that are either useless or downright false. False categories abound. Name a false dichotomy such as "science versus faith" and you have a clear example of one that needs dispelled.

But useless concept categories intrigue me, because understanding them leads to useful concept categories. I'll give two examples: relativism and theological tension.

One would think that relativism is a false concept category, but the core of the relativistic worldview is a misunderstanding of the nature of truth rather than an overt departure from it. That's why relativists can be so blind to their own lack of logic in thinking that absolutists are wrong. The fundamental premise is to confuse truth with preferential opinion. In other words, relativists believe that something is true because they prefer it to be true. They have no thought as to whether something is true regardless of their opinion such that it can be asked, if a truth grows in the woods and no one thinks about it, is it really true? Relativism, therefore, is existential in nature. However, few relativists and absolutists have that concept. Therefore, it doesn't play a part of their presuppositional construction. In other words, even most absolutists are absolutists because they prefer to believe that truth is absolute, not because they truly understand the full implications. Therefore, relativism is a useless concept category.

Theological tension is not a category in and of itself, but are a class of categories that are theologically paradoxical or dubious. These categories actually are useful, but only in the sense that if you are an absolutist, you will notice the tension and try to rectify it by discovering the concept category that truly reveals God. I'll use worship as an example because it's been on my brain lately:

While we may observe that the common debate over worship is merely about style rather than substance, the historical debate over worship is between the Regulative (RP) and the Normative (NP) principles. I've written on this before, but I'll reiterate: the RP holds that we should only worship according to what is explicitly prescribed in the Bible. The NP holds that we may worship in any way not prohibited n the Bible. The problem with framing the debate according to this concept category is that it misses the real focus of worship. Ostensibly, it's about God, but only insomuch as it seeks to prescribe form and method. However, it's only a partial answer to say that worship is all about God. What does worship say about God? Both the RP and the NP focus on our behavior in worshipping God. If our purpose is to exult God, then our worship must focus on what God does for us. We can bring only our brokenness. That is the concept category we must teach.

Conceptualization Rather Than Contextualization

In preaching or teaching, it is important to understand that the lesson be taught with the goal not of simply contextualizing the information but for creating new conceptual categories for apprehending and internalizing the message. I'll give part of my testimony as an example:

The two years after I realized my salvation in Christ were tumultuous. I ended up in a church whose idea of discipleship was to teach kids the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer and the Apostle's Creed, ask if they believed it, give them a book of worship, and call them saved. I, for one, was not well equipped to spiritually survive and I floundered. I knew I needed a good framework for understanding the truth of the Bible so I took a few Bible classes to get an idea of the big picture of the Bible. Then I started studying to form an integrated theology. You see I knew the context of the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer and the Apostle's Creed, but I didn't have the proper conceptual categories for normalizing any theological truth one could glean from them.

John Piper wrote on this recently. Here are some excerpts:

As we think seriously about contextualizing the message of the Bible, let’s remember that we must also labor to bring about, in the minds of our listeners, conceptual categories that may be missing from their mental framework. If we only use the thought structures theyalready have, some crucial biblical truths will remain unintelligible, no matter how much contextualizing we do. This work of concept creation is harder than contextualization, but just as important.

Here are a few examples of biblical truths that most fallen minds have no conceptual categories for conceiving.

1. All persons are accountable for their choices, and all their choices are infallibly and decisively ordained by God.
2. It is not sin in God to will that there be sin
3. What God decrees will come to pass is not always the same as what he commands that we do, and may indeed be the opposite.
4. God’s ultimate goal is the exaltation and display of his own glory, and this is at the heart of what it means for him to love us.
5. Sin is not primarily what hurts man but what belittles God by expressing unbelief or indifference to his superior worth
6. God is perfectly just and orders the complete destruction of the inhabitants of Canaan.
7. The key to the Christian life is learning the secret of acting in such a way that our acts are done as the acts of Another.

Please read the entire article here.