Let’s take the following statements out for a walk and see if they bark:
Any interpretation of scripture that equips us for Christlikeness is a valid one. I don’t care what your professor told you, there is a difference between a “right” reading of scripture and a “good” reading. Any reading of Scripture that shapes us positively into the image of Christ is a good one. Truth must be defined more by its ability to transform than its theoretical correctness. Biblical truth that doesn’t transform isn’t really true. An interpretation of scripture should be judged as “true” based upon the kind of life it motivates the church to live, not on how many scholars agree with the interpretation. You shall know an interpretation by its fruit.
Agree or disagree? Why?
Telling Stories, Asking Questions, Learning Lessons
Ouch, the more that I read this entry, the more that it made my head hurt. I think that am going to chew on this one for a while. Question: are you saying that if a “truth” does not transform that it is not a “truth”? Is the test of the convers a test of validity?
Wade,
Can you give me an example of what you mean by this statement, “Biblical truth that doesn’t transform isn’t really true.”
I’m tracking with you . . . btw.
Shawn–I’m not thinking about a conversion experience as much as I am the long steady transformation that could/should come from Bible study. In one sense, the gospel is true whether anyone believes it or not. In another sense, the truth revealed in the scriptures is true to the degree that is brings about a transformation into Christlikeness.
Josh-One example would be of someone who knows a lot about the Bible, can quote book, chapter, and verse, and parse all the different greek words that we translate as “love.” Yet, if their study has not made them into a more loving person, then can we say that their understanding of what the Bible says about love is “true”?
Isn’t this one problem with certain Hermeneutics — that we tend to be capable of justifying whatever makes us better people, while overlooking obvious discrepancies in our interpretive methodology. My take is that both are necessary conditions — interpretation that is based in fallacy is steeped in invalidity. However, I also think the opposite — simple knowledge without transformation is useless.
The question is what is fallacy in interpretation, and does my hermeneutic simply compensate for being an extremely fallacious reader?
MLR – you crack me up. You went off to Duke and got intellectual on me.
Transformation is so complex.
Willard’s material in Renovation of the Heart is so deep at times – It leaves me wondering if there’s any interpretation that is completely “true”.
I find the difficulty in this is that there are so many facets of “Christlikeness”.
I’ve seen many who get one aspect “good” and miss another aspect. But they’re still fruitful believers in some areas, right?
Then I’ve seen many who think they got it all “good” and “right” and their fruit is controversy, conflict, and arrogance.
Lord have mercy on our hermeneutics.
We’re not as smart as we think we are.
Only God knows wheat from weeds in regards to the “good” and “right”.
I’m only responsible for my conscience as I can understand it.
Fro — You’ve done gone pentecost on me — and scary pentecost at that.
Its all narrative. Its all about how we read things. Even the things we read are subject to the rules of narrative. The way we read as a community is what determines our sources of rightness and transformation. Thus as we read poorly, we create communities that have little chance to be truly transformed. Of course, since the narrative we are reading is also subject to the forces of narrative, we end up basing our theology more on our hermaneutic than any understanding of truth. As you say — lord have mercy on our hermaneutics.
Only responsible for your conscience? I’m slightly scared as to what that means.
P.S. Here is something we can agree on — Dorsey was Robbed — should have gone no. 1, but what else do you expect from an org that’s stupid enough to invest in Saban.
But what if there are two people who have the SAME interpretation of scripture, but one has been transformed, and the other is not living it out?
Based on the assumption that “a good/right reading changes you,” then what’s wrong with the person that didn’t change, and yet interprets the scripture in the same way as the “changed” person? Does this mean that the interpretation is a bad one? What about the other man who has changed and interprets it the same way?
Does this question/argument make sense (other than in my own head?)
The problem with ‘good’ is it’s subjectivity. I don’t think the Bereans were pouring over scripture to see if Paul’s sermons were good, but rather to see if they were right. Seems like if God inspired the text, then regardless of what that means, the right interpretation will necessarily be good. Of course, this assumes that we can agree on which is the ‘right’ interpretation…
I’m not sure the power of transformation is in truth or in the proper determining of it. Transformation seems to be powered by God, granted or given to those willing to surrender their heart, regardless of what they do with a text.
Practically, I know people on both sides of the hermeneutical spectrum who I would label as “Christ-like”.
I’m going to hold on to transformation being a God thing, accomplished despite all our hermeneutical gymnastics.
That statement about conscience was a little vague… I’m responsible for alot more than my conscience; however, I was trying to state that all I can control is me and live according to what I know, believe, and understand… and I don’t do that as well as I would like.
Again – Lord have mercy!
Wade,
Like others, I am mulling over your thought. In one since, I think I understand and agree, but in another sense, I am forced to step back and say, “Truth is of God”, so it has to be good. Truth is transformative. Bad things transform us too.
You stated, “Biblical truth that doesn’t transform isn’t really true.” I don’t know if I can agree with this or not, but then again I might not be understanding you. Let’s not forget that we have an amazing ability to reject truth, not allowing it to transform us. Does the fact that one rejects it make it untrue?
I should have reread my post- “since” should be “sense.” Sorry.
This is an interesting post. There seems to be a spiritual reading, in which you advocate, and a doctrinal reading which you suppress. There is a part of intellectual knowledge, if not applied would hint that it was never ever comprehended. But I would not react to the over emphasis of personal spiritual reading, in a sense is true, if it helps the person grow, and the doctrinal reading, if it is not applied is not true. But the better read, is to discover the meaning of the writer and apply the truth for transformation. This should not be a either/or but a complete reading.
http://www.matthewsblog.waynesborochurchofchrist.org
The problem with this theory is that we as humans will “transform” this to say the scripture that makes me feel good is true. This allows us to pick and chose our doses of Christianity. We’re hot or cold, there is no middle ground Paul says in Revelations. All scripture is true (God breathed), and profitable…I think I read that somewhere.
Dangerous topic here, in my opinion.
the neo-foundationalist in me has been mulling this over for a few hours now. here’s where i land on it:
christianity isn’t true because it works; christianity works because it’s true.
i’m still hanging on to the correspondence theory of truth!
Hmm. How does 1 John 4:1-3 [link] relate to this? 1 Jn 4 seems to be a progression from testing the spirit(s) and culminating in v21 (whoever loves God must love his brother).
Do you suppose it’s fair to think of one’s interpretation as a “spirit” to be tested? If so, it seems that a spirit passes the test if it rightly acknowledges Christ….and its teaching leads to transformation.
Another thought . . . the original thesis was that the validity of an interpretation can be determined by the results alone (more Christlikeness).
That’s about the same as saying the results are the only thing that matter. What interpretation you use to get there doesn’t matter. Somehow, I’m not quite comfortable saying that.
There’s part of me that wants to scream out “I agree”. But reality seems much more complex and messier than that simple thesis allows.
To all–thanks for great comments and discussion. I’m going to do a 2nd post that fleshes this out a bit more with a specific example of how a less than “right” reading of a text has produced a “good” result. But first, I have to finish writing a sermon that I hope is both right and good (and funny).
We cannot exclusively base truth on its fruit, particularly if the fruit is a life that is conformed to the likeness of Jesus.
I say this because Jesus’ life is something we also interpret from the Scriptures, therefore our hermeneutic of Him needs to be right to judge whether what it produces is right.
The statement essentially communicates that the ‘truthiness’ of our hermenuetic is tied to another potentially subjective hermeneutic. If the standard is Jesus, and the point is transformation, how do we rightly interpret Jesus so we can know if the life being transformed is truly becoming Christlike, and not some image of Christ we have creatively interpreted ourselves?
So let’s interpret Jesus outside these transformational constraints, establish a faithful portrait of who he is, and then we can start unpacking the rest.
I disagree. This line is VERY problematic: “Truth must be defined more by its ability to transform than its theoretical correctness.”
truth is always within context. truth doesn’t exist out there somewhere and if it does, then it’s irrelevant until to a discussion like this, until it enter context.
the idea that is some true floating around out there without context is popular but seems faulty to me.
Truth is always within a context. Truth is not truth because it is something out there imposed onto a context. Truth is true, because it is within real life.
So I’d say, truth that doesn’t transform is either useless or not actually true.
awesome.
reminds me of a Mcmanus quote:
http://davewainscott.blogspot.com/2008/04/accuracy-is-less-important-to-us-than.html
I think a reading/interpretation needs to be right, it needs to be good, it needs to be true.
I don’t believe there’s any best-two-out-of-three here.
But even Randy Harris changes his mind on his interpretation of certain scriptures from time to time, so maybe what’s important here is dialogue in a fellowship of believers that can help sort out the wrong, the bad, and the false.
Dang. I’ve been reading everyone else’s comments a second time. Now looking back at mine, it doesn’t make sense at all.
And I was trying to be simple.
Oh, well. “Submit Comment.”
riddle,
If Christ is Truth, something I think we can all agree on, can we really say that he exists only within context? Is he not eternal and all-encompassing?
It flows from that that if Christ, the Truth, exists outside of context, then there is “some true floating around out there without context”.
Contextualization is important, but it should be seen as a lens through which we view the truth which exists outside of it.
and he became flesh… sounds a lot like context to me.
“In the beginning was the Word.” He preexisted the context…even created it…before entering it.
and the Word was WITH God. (the preposition denotes relationship and context. God existed with himself.)
I wonder if God needs himself to be true. His very essence is true and verified by the other members of the trinity.
On the other hand, God maybe true, but many experience him as false. which is a whole nother conversation.
Well, the word was with God, and was God. If the only thing existing with God was himself, is that really a context? If so, then the idea of “context” has become so broad as to be largely meaningless.
If God is the true context that Christ exists in, outside of the context of creation, I agree with that. But it seems both Christ and God exist outside of the context that they created.
A few random thoughts:
1. This is fun.
2. the trinitarian understanding of God denotes that God is one and in three persons. God exists in community with himself. Each are one God. Each are unique and in relationship with each other.
3. Does the word truth even exist pre-creation? It seems to me that truth is a descriptive word that doesn’t come close to holding all the meaning of the truthyness of God.
4. would you say that truth is only true if there is something present that is false? Why would there be a need to declare something as true, unless it was to clarify it as distinct from untruth. (I’m wondering out loud here.) I suppose God has an accurate understanding of himself as he creates the world. It seems that the word truth takes on significance once creation is created. Gen. 1 when the trees of life and knowledge of good and evil are in fact created.
5. More on the point of the post. Truth has a pluralistic aspect to it. Certainly not all things are true, no matter how much you want them to be, but truth has many faces and can be found in many unexpected places… people, art, experience, tradition, reason, and even a book.
I disagree with the idea that “each are one God”, but believe, rather, that each person of the Trinity is the essence of God, with all of the qualities of the Godhead, but none is God alone. Our God is one.
The question of whether the word truth exists pre-creation is not important. What’s important is that the thing which is Truth exists pre-creation. Yes, I agree that linguistically the term truth is necessary only to differentiate from falsehood. But if there were no falsehood, the truth would still be true…we just wouldn’t have a word for it.
That roles into your next question, no I don’t think the presence of falsehood is necessary for truth to be true. Was God holy before the presence of unholiness? We may not be able to experience truth without its opposite, but it would still be there, and still be true.
On your last point, I completely agree. Truth can be found in many places and a number of things can be true about a certain subject without excluding each other. But what is true doesn’t become false because I choose to respond poorly (or not respond at all).
I’m having fun, too, by the way.