Category Archives: Hermeneutics

Bible interpretation

Issues in Dispensationalism: Was Jesus in the Old Testament or in the New Testament

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My buddy Trint privately messaged me and asked for my take on this particular blog post: I’m Possessed.  The author of the post wrestles with how he should apply the content of the post and looks for an out so that he doesn’t have to wrestle with the guilt of not fulfilling Christ’s command.  The good news is that I think that there is a very simple and low-guilt out: hermeneutics (AKA Proper Bible Interpretation).  There is also another out: Grace (AKA the fact that you’re not under the Law any more, as you have died to this world and its systems with Christ if you are a believer).

While on the surface it looks like this post may be about money and possessions, its really a about the issue of which dispensation Christ was in and how we deal with the life of Christ before His death, burial, resurrection and ascension.  How do we as believers address the complexities of what Jesus did and said verses what we’re called to do as His possession?  I believe that fundamentally the question that was asked by the author of the aforementioned blog post is flawed because it presupposes that everything that Christ spoke was directed towards the disciples, the New Testament church, and the believer today.

I’m co-teaching a class on Bible Interpretation at church (Link to Series for download) and rather than start in the middle of why this is a poor approach to interpreting this passage I’m going to go through the processes we’re teaching and attempt to see if I come to the same application that the author of the post comes to.  Join me as we look at observations, interpretations, applications and appropriations.  For the record I don’t for some second think that the author of the other post is attempting to misrepresent the passage, I just want to challenge myself and all believers to be consistent in our interpretation and theological calling to be noble minded like the Bereans (Acts 17:11).

Observation of the passage calls for evaluating language, culture, history, context and as many pertinent facts as we can observe objectively about the passage and its contents.  Lets go through those systematically and see what objective elements pop out.  We’ll also want to ask who, what, where, when, why, and how to make sure we’ve got the right focus of the passage.  I’ll be using the resources publicly availabe at blueletterbible.org for you to follow along with if you want to check my references.

Context

The context of the passage appears to be Christ speaking to his disciples and in verse 13 one disciple asks Christ to speak to his brother so as to instruct the brother toward equality in dividing the inheritance that the man was to receive.  Christ then launches on a series of principles that seem to outline first that Christ was not interested in making that call about the inheritance (v. 14).  Instead Christ was interested in motive and source of life (coveting v. 15).  Christ’s parables subsequent to motive point out God’s provision (vs. 16-31).  Seeking the things of God will show God’s provision for the needs of the believer.

Language

The language of the Luke passage is Greek.  I’m not going to delve into each Greek word, but I will highlight the bits and pieces that seem to carry the most weight in the selected verses.

Fear Not:  The Greek here is two words: phobeō mē.  We’re all familiar with the English transliteration and adaptation phobia, and the Greek carries with it just such a context [BLB].  The verb tense is present, middle, imperative, which means that the person listening to Christ is to take the command to heart.  The negation of the fear indicates that we should not for any reason let fear rule in the context of this passage.

little flock: The Lord uses a metric indicator to reflect the size of the disciples despite the first verse of the chapter reflecting that a general throng had gathered around the smaller circle of the disciples.  Flock was used analogously of the group of disciples and is apparently common figurative language as all five times that it is translated that way in the KJV the figurative subject is a body of saints (vs. Luke 12:32, Acts 20:28, Acts 20:29, 1Peter 5:2-3).

your Father: interestingly we see Christ identifying the disciples as being sons of the Father.

good pleasure: The Father’s pleasure is is aorist, active, indicative which indicates to us that it is a past action with ongoing results, it is being done by the father to the disciples and it is spoken factually.

the Kingdom: if you want to see theologians argue bring up the kingdom.  However, the disciples, as best as we can tell, would have recognized the kingdom as the coming kingdom of the Messiah [Grk reference].  A rulership that would entail political power, peace, and a fulfillment of the New Covenant (See Jeremiah 31:31).

Sell: The Greek here is imperative and active.  You sell your stuff as soon as is expedient.

alms:  Alms would be a gift.  A benevolent and generous gift that was not earned by the recipient.

a treasure: A storage place for valuables, or the valuables in the storage place.

in the heavens: The dwelling place of God above all of creation.

where your treasure is: is is present, indicative.  It reflects the fact of where your treasure is now.

Culture

The Jewish culture generally operated with the mindset that material blessing was a sign of spiritual right relationship.  God promised material blessing to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and to the Hebrews if they followed Him and made Him their God.  Christ’s apparent countering of this by saying sell this sign of blessing would have had some sort of shock value.

History

Historically wages were earned with hard labor.  There were not normal cases of overnight millionaires (figuratively speaking) and an inheritance was a valuable thing to receive because it may allow you to break free of debt, help establish a stronger business through investment capital, or could be used in various trading businesses to increase overall wealth.  Many households had very simple possessions and were not lavish.  Tax collectors like Matthew would have come into the house and evaluated the apparent wealth based on the possessions and then demanded a payment for Rome.

5 W’s and an H

Who: Christ is speaking to the disciples about God’s character

What: earthly possessions, heavenly possessions, faith

When: every day life

Where: wherever the disciple is

Why: because the disciple was concerned over the inheritence

How: God’s provisions

Interpretation

The interpretation is a summary or re-statement of the passage or verses that attempts to collect the observations into a coherent statement.

My close disciples and followers, you should have no fear over earthly provisions because the Father in heaven will give you the food and clothing and shelter that you need as He brings about the fulfillment of the kingdom.  Take the worldly things that are of value and sell them in faith because those things rust, fade, and lose value.  Instead look forward to the treasures that are in heaven by walking in an abiding relationship with the Father because where you treasure is, and that should be in heaven, there your heart is.

Application

Application looks at the passage at hand and looks for a subjective principle, a fact that can be relied upon, a truth that can be enacted, or an appropriation.  There are two kinds of applications: direct and indirect.  You will need to determine if there is a direct application for you by looking at the intended audience of the interpretation!  If you are not the intended audience (and in this passage you are not)  then there may be an indirect application of principles or truths to rely on.  I’ll list a few applications based on the interpretation and you can meditate on this as well and bring up other suggestions.

Direct application

  • The disciples could rely on the Father for provision
  • The disciples could abide in the Father (see John 15) and that intimacy would build up or store treasures in heaven that would be rust free
  • The disciple who had asked the question about his inheritance could relax about equal distribution because the earthly blessing would eventually lose value even if it had short term value

Indirect Application or Principles

  • The believer can rely on God for provision
  • This passage confirms our need to be heavenly minded just like Paul instructs the believers in Colossians 3:1-3
  • We need to rely on the Lord for our value and not on our stuff

Conclusion

You can see that while these two lists are not exhaustive, the New Testament saint, because he is not the specific recipient of the instructions from Christ has nothing to fear about not fulfilling this passage’s imperative commands.  We can look at other New Testament passages such as Acts 2:44-45, Romans 12:13, Philippians 4:18-19 and evaluate God’s commands regarding provisions in the body of Christ.  There are plenty of opportunities to serve the Lord as we abide in Christ and walk by the Spirit, but we don’t need to worry about commands for Old Testament Saints (and even though the gospels are under the New Testament moniker, they are not directed towards New Testament Saints).

By carefully applying hermeneutics and by making sure that you understand the context of the passage you’re studying you can walk in confidence that you are under grace, you can walk confidently in your position in Christ, and you can boldly assert your Christian liberty.  This doesn’t liberate you from righteousness empowered by the Holy Spirit (see: Romans 6), but it liberates you to be motivated by grace, which is the only true motivation in the life of the believer.

Oh, and I do lift up before our Lord the provision of the autistic son of the author of that post.  We come before you Lord in confidence that you have brought us all together as believers to seek out opportunities to server one another.  We pray (even via the Internet) for your provision for the autistic child, Your peace in the life of the parents, and we pray for the doctrine of agency to be manifest in the lives of your flock.  Amen.

Hermeneutics and Knowing Where You Need to Study

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I was chatting with my Uncle Eric earlier today and had asked him where he got his deep insights into God’s word and he wrote some tidbits of wisdom into the IM window and I just had to share:

“Part of it is that I just read an awful lot. I also try to place myself in the place and culture and circumstance of a passage and let that tell me what areas I am just ignorant of and where I need to do more research. Until my knowledge of a situation can actually animate the characters and speak the words, I know I haven’t got the right information on the background. All too often we let our modern American preconceptions animate the characters and their motives.”

And later in the conversation:

“The thing lacking in our protestant hermeneutic is historical imagination. I don’t mean the wild, guessing kind. I mean the ability to drop ourselves into a situation and imagineer it into reality so that some interpretations are rejected out of hand, and others are cultivated until the real one is coaxed out.”

Good stuff, I thought. In short we need to think about what we do know so that we can begin to dig deeper into what we don’t know.

Theological Reductionism

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Reductionism is the concept of taking a biblical doctrine and reducing, summarizing or ‘boiling the doctrine down’ to one finite statement that could very well be an oversimplification.  Worse than that reductionism may be ignoring the entire counsel of the Word of God in favor of one passage.  One premium example of this would be the polarized views of Calvinism or Armenianism.  Both of these views (when taken to their logical extreme) can be examples of reductionism.  The scriptures put a great amount of tension on the subject of God’s undeniable sovereignty and man’s undeniable responsibility for sin and other actions.  Are these two different ideas mutually exclusive?  No.  The scriptures present a paradox wherein God is sovereign and man is responsible for his actions.  This isn’t inconsistency, its the complication of mankind being created in God’s image and therefore having a will and God’s being God and not having any of His power lessened by man’s ability to desire and will various things.

Reductionism is what fans the flames of fanaticism or doctrinal narrowness in areas where the scripture presents a message that is more broad.  Baptism’s relationship to salvation is a good example of people reducing all theology down to a few passages even though other passages in no way require water baptism.  Or furthermore the idea that tongues is a heavenly prayer language… their is only one text that could be gone to for proof text and that is not what the context of the passage that I Corinthians 13 is referring to.  Reductionism is what allows bad theology to stay bad and what keeps believers blind.

When you study a doctrine make sure that you review what the whole word of God says about that doctrine and in the correct context.

Extrapolation

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One of the common points of division in the body of Christ, from my own experience, has been theological extrapolation. Calvinists don’t get along with Arminians because of the extrapolation from what is written in the Bible. Don’t get me wrong, logic is important, but it isn’t the be-all, end-all of hermeneutics. You see, if you have only some of the facts, content, culture, history, language understanding and you start to form doctrines you can come up with some errant ideas because you have started to fill in the ‘blanks’ [even if they weren’t blank, but you didn’t study] with something else that you have brought about by deduction. When you have some ideas that work for you, it is probably a great idea to pursue discussions with mature believers and seek out wisdom. Homogeny isn’t always the most important thing (truth is!), but others who have studied a topic may be able to point you towards some verses that will help you in your studies and find a fuller understanding of what the scriptures say on a subject.  Homogeny can also be dangerous because a whole group has agreed on something but not looked into it.  That being said, discussion with other believers is critical.

When you study God’s word there is a term for inserting your own meanings into a text, its called eisegesis (pronounced like ice o’ Jesus, which is probably what Martha was getting when she complained about Mary listening).  It is important to know what the scriptures say and to apply consistent hermeneutics for this very reason.  If you look at a text and are forcing your own modern context and ideas on the text, you’re not learning from God’s word, you’re changing it.  That’s not extrapolation, but its not useful time with the Bible.

Fundamentals for Maturity

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As I’ve grown in my walk with the Lord there are a list of concepts that I have found to be revolutionary and rooting in my walk:

  1. Identificaion Truths
  2. Positional Truths
  3. Abiding
  4. Hermeneutics
  5. Understanding of Covenants and Dispensations

Identification Truths
This is the concept that is presented strongly in Romans 6 and various other places confirm and expound on the idea that we were identified with Christ in His crucification, death, burial and resurrection. We were identified with Christ and so we therefore are not slaves to sin. We still will sin due to our bodies being strapped to the sin nature but that is why Paul writes that we should reckon our bodies dead. Instead of focusing on the flesh we should set our minds on the things above (Colossians 3:1-3).

Positional Truths
This is the concept that my position is in Christ. Right now I’m hidden with Christ (Colossians 3 again) and no matter what I do in this human body I am baptized into Christ and cannot be seperated from Him. My relationship with Christ should be consuming and not my keeping track of my condition. My condition is what I’m experiencing now on the earth. My position is perfect in Christ due to my identification with Him, but my condition can at times not match my position. However, as we walk in fellowship with Christ we will have our condition match our position. This is the process of sanctification, there is no hindrance to our sanctification we will be conformed to the image of Christ, even if we have ‘Jonah’ moments where we walk in the flesh and try to walk away. Ephesians 2:10 says that God has good works planned for us, which means that even if he needs to bring about a large fish to relocate us, get a donkey to talk to us, or bring us to the bottom of things in our condition, He is sanctifying our lives and conforming us to the image of Christ!

Abiding in Christ
Instead of trying to figure out what righteousness looks like in a to-do list fashion we should be focusing on our relationship with Christ. This guarantees us a righteous walk and that we will exceed any set of rules or laws that we may be able to construct. Instead of trying to live down to laws, which only put us into bondage, we need to abide in Christ (see John 15) and this will produce the fruit of Christ in our lives. Don’t get distracted by junk that you can do, but instead be focused on Christ who will do pure and rewardable things in your life!

Hermeneutics
This is a consistent and methodical approach to reading and understanding scripture. Inconsistancy in interpretation is one of the major reasons that there are differences in believer’s theology (that’s a rather obvious statement, sorry). Paul tells us that we need to be united in our doctrine and I think that one of the big issues that I see today in the church is that we don’t recognize that the author of scripture (the Holy Spirit) had one intended meaning for what He inspired through the human writers. I have written about hermeneutics before, you can read it here.

Understanding of Covenants and Dispensations
Understanding the major sections of scripture and the agreements God made with mankind helped me get a feel for the plan of God for the world. Understanding the Noahic covenant was critical in grasping God’s plan for grace, capital punishment, God’s provision for eating meat, and God’s faithfulness in not destroying the world with another flood. Then you learn about Abraham’s covenant, which is really God’s covenant with himself to Abraham and his descendents. After that you learn about God’s covenant with Israel, God’s covenant with David and then the New Covenant in Jeremiah. Grasping these covenants, seeing who they relate to, when they relate to and how they fit into the timeline of scripture is awesome and something I suggest every believer study and grow in.

From there you can grow in many, many areas because of God’s word being so amazing, but those things really helped me grasp my relationship with God and helped me understand the Bible more wholely. Reading scripture (or listening) and understanding what your reading makes it easier to grow as well as discern when others are teaching law or mis-understanding God’s word because you know what it means with certainty because you have a consistent method and a broader knowledge of the Bible.

Resting in Him,

Randy Peterman

The Semitic Totality Concept and the New Testament

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More than once in my life as I was growing up did I read the New Testament book of James and walk away wondering how on earth salvation wasn’t some how tied to works. I finally just reconciled it with a passive answer that really did not deal with the problem. Recently, under the tutelage of my dad, I was introduced to the Semitic Totality Concept. This is the idea that was held by the Jews (thus the term ‘Semitic’) that if something was spiritually true, it was to be lived out without question. The Western concept of having something as true not meaning you lived it was absolutely foreign to the Hebrew way of thinking. Thus when God inspired the Law of Moses the Jews lived it out actively. The Western idea of a dichotomy was a foreign concept both culturally and philosophically.

To put it into perspective the Gentile mind could not conceive of a God that was moral and had truth because their gods were completely immoral and were often prayed to for things like the ability to steal better. So when Paul writes in the New Testament about various things needing to be done on a moral level it is having to do with the logical conclusion of what Christ has done in the believer’s life positionally and not assumed that the Greco-Roman mind would automatically take truth and apply it. To a Gentile (non-Jew) truth was not directly related to application. They lived in a world of hypothetical philosophy wherein actually proving out the philosophical assumptions to prove them was considered below the intellectual. Thus, Gentiles would pursue philosophy and knowledge but never stoop to prove their principles due to their arogance. The Jews could not relate to this given their view that all that was true should be applied and worked out.

So, when James writes in chapter 2, verse17, “Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.” he is speaking to Jews (as is evident in Chapter 1, verse 2) and it would seem that the Semitic Totality Concept is in play. This is surely not a scapegoat in that we need to apply proper hermeneutics to all passages when we read them, but it helps us apply proper hermeneutics knowing historically what the culture knew to be normative for Jewish Christians. We can look at the context of whom is being written to about what and understand their cultural tendency and grasp the depth of the content in context rather than trying to mash it into a modern 21 century context.

In short the Semitic Totality Concept is something that was cultural that helps us understand the author’s perspective. It does not necessarily represent a doctrine, but explains why the doctrines are represented the way they are.

Why Eldership is for Men

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A reader of my I Timothy 1:3-7 post asked:

In reading this I do not see the interpretation that only men may lead the church and hold positions of leadership/elders.
This is a stumbling block in many churches, and in many cases [is] the reason some [choose] to leave the church. Not their faith but the church. How can it be explained that within the word of the Bible the intent of our Lord is as you describe here. I understand you to say that it is actions, faith and purity that makes a leader and gender isn’t specific in the teachings of the Holy Spirit. Can you help explain?

Gender is clear for the leadership of the church. However, teaching and growth are not gender specific in certain contexts. There are several parts to your question and I intend to address them seperately so that the issues don’t get blurred together. I would break them up as follows:

  1. Is this interpretation the only interpretation, and if not, is it the correct interpretation?
  2. Male only eldership causes people to leave the church [not meaning leaving the faith]. Does this make the doctrine wrong?
  3. Is this doctrine only derived from this passage or do other passages teach this? [What is the whole teaching of the word of God?]

Is this interpretation the only interpretation? If not, is it the correct interpretation?
No, the interpretation I hold to is not the only interpretation. However, using a consistent hermeneutic (interpretation process) as generally outlined in my article on hermeneutics I believe it is the most scripturally consistent view of the passage. I believe the most common views are

  1. That there should be plural elders when possible, these elders should be men [the view I hold]
  2. That there should be one elder, he is to be a man. This man is usually called the pastor or bishop
  3. That there are to be no elders, this is just something Paul was writing to Timothy about, but is not a doctrine applicable to the church today.
  4. Men or women can be leaders of the church and it is a good idea if they meet most of the requirements of this passage
  5. If the men don’t step up the women should step up to lead the church

This is hardly an exhaustive list of the various types of church leadership. Some of these ideas are based on this passage and some of these ideas don’t have any scriptural backing whatsoever. Alister Begg once shared in a message I heard that he visited a Baptist church in the south where the pastor was doing verse by verse exposition and then got to that section and declaired to his congregation that since they didn’t have elders there that this passage was not for them and so they’d skip it. I think that skipping a passage based on the ecclesiology (doctrines of the order of the church) of the church is really problematic because that passage may point out an area where your ecclesiology needs to change!

I am going to use some of the details that will be in the section about the whole teaching of scripture and these two sections will overlap some. I believe that since doctrine should be rooted in the clear teaching of scripture and that doctrines that are presented in multiple places should (generally) take importance to believers in comparison to doctrines that are more vague. This doctrine is clear throughout scripture. Being a dispensationalist, that is a believer who interprets the Bible literally but understanding that the scriptures written to the Jews are for the Jews and do not have a direct baring on Christians in the current time frame of scripture, I am going to quote heavily from the New Testament and only reference the Old Testament where Apostolic precedence does so. To put it simply: I don’t think that I can justify male eldership based primarily on Old Testament passages.

Passages that teach male leadership within the church or give a clear precedence

Acts Chapters 1 and 2
These two chapters show the beginning of the church. Prior to this time the Jewish system and Law were in place for all of those portrayed in these passages (estimates are that Gentiles were rather foreign to the church until about 15 yeas into the church age). Christ gathers the men (disciples) together and instructs them in what they should do: wait. Then the Holy Spirit elected a new disciple to take the place of Judas Iscariot. One of the requirements was that it be a man who had been with them the whole time.
I do understand that these are disciples and not elders, so this is taken as a weaker reference. However, it does set a precendence and hold as a principle that leadership for the church was to be male at its inception.
Acts 14:21-34
This passage shows the apostles at work and before they left they set up elders. It would seem hypocritical for Paul to set up elders that did not meet the requirements of his letters to Timothy. Again, this is not a direct statement that men should be the elders but works in concert with later verses.
Acts 15:22
This passage clearly says that from the group of elders (presumably men), men were chosen to go. I recognize that this one is slightly more direct than previous passages, but is still not saying, “Men Only.”
I Timothy 3:1-7
This is probably one of the foundational passages that outlines the male requirements for being an elder.

It is a trustworthy statement: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do.
An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach,
not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money.
He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity
(but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?),
and not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil.
And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.

“If a man…” seems like a clear statement of gender in contrast to the roles of deacons (verse 8) and deaconesses (verse 11). The male elders shepherd the church while the deacons (male) and deaconesses (female) serve the church. The requirements for an elder are stringent and are too clear for all of the other details to ignore the masculine gender they start out with.

Titus 1:5-9
This passage too clarifies the male nature of the role of elder. The clarity in these verses is hard to ignore. Chapter 2 clarifies that in general older men are to instruct the younger men in godliness and that older women are to instruct younger women in godliness. The leadership of the body as a whole, however, remains to the men as set before in the earlier verses.

Other verses beyond this talk about elders, but like some of the verses in the list above do not specify gender.

I cannot find one instance of a female leader of the church body in all of the New Testament. It seems consistent with the Timothy and Titus passages to have male elders only.

What about culture? If the culture of that time allowed for only men, but todays culture allows for women, shouldn’t we just attribute this male only doctrine to being cultural?
The cultural argument is a toughy because there are things like women wearing make-up that are common in todays churches. Other issues like women wearing head coverings (see I Corinthians 11) and greeting each other with a Holy Kiss (I Peter 5) have gone to the wayside. I Timothy 2:9-15 points out that Paul recognizes an order for things within the genders. This gender order does not mean doormat, second rate citizen or inferiority. A difference here does not have to create bitterness and to that end Paul wrote Colossians 3:18-25. Specifically that women are to submit to their husbands, but that husbands are not to provoke their wives (or children). The order of the church should be already working in their homes: the men should be heads of their households.

Pages: 1 2 3 4

Salvation Throughout the Scripture

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It can be confusing when we first study God’s word trying to understand the requirements of salvation in each time period of scripture. I picked up a handy acronym in an intensive that should be useful. The acronym is COMB came from Dr. Arnold Fruchtenbaum and it stands for Content, Object, Means and Basis. It is important to understand that salvation was always by faith [and not by works], but the elements of faith varied throughout the dispensations (or time periods associated with covenants in scripture).

Content
This element of faith changes, this involves what you have to believe to be saved.
Object
Always God.
Means
Always by grace through faith.
Basis
Basis of salvation was always the substitutionary work of Christ.

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