Archives For Hermeneutics

August 30, 2012

Whom Shall I Fear? Rescuing Daniel from the Children’s Books

by George Lawson

flannel graph danielOf course you know about Daniel and the Lions’ Den.  Even if you didn’t grow up with a high-tech flannel graph presentation in your Sunday-School class, or use your creative genius to turn a paper lunch bag into a ferocious man-eating beast, you could rehearse the story in vivid detail.

But although we are familiar with Daniel’s rescue from the Lions’ den, he still seems to be trapped in children’s books, and is placed on the shelf between Mother Goose and Aesop’s fables.  The 6th chapter of Daniel is more than a bed-time story, and if I can be honest with you, for a long time I missed the main point. Continue Reading…

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May 14, 2012

Impromptu Prompting: The Spirit’s help in persecution

by Clint Archer

A member of our flock once invited a fellow believer to visit our church. The reply was an interesting question:

“Does the pastor use notes to preach”
“Well, yes he does.” [I actually preach from an iPad!]
“Oh, then I won’t listen to him, as he is only preaching his own message, and not listening to the Holy Spirit and the Bible says in Luke 12: 12 ‘For the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.’”

This is not the first time I’ve encountered the meme that it’s more spiritual to prepare a sermon on your knees (i.e. opening the Bible on your knees while you’re sitting in church during the opening hymn, trying to slap together a message).

It may behoove us to have on record a suitable reply. 3 points to consider…

Continue Reading…

in Hermeneutics, History with 8 Comments
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March 2, 2012

Prophecy and the Uniqueness of the First-Century Church

by Mike Riccardi

Motivated by the conversation from yesterday’s thread regarding the dangers of so-called “fallible prophecy,” I kind of want to piggy-back on Nathan’s post by addressing a hermeneutical weakness I perceive in a certain argument for the continuation of prophecy.

In a nutshell, this particular argument seems to be that since Paul speaks directly about prophecy in the New Testament—giving directions about its proper use in the church and even commanding that the gift be sought—everything he says automatically applies to the church today in the same way that it applied to the church in the first-century. Continuationists appeal to these passages of Scripture as “biblical support” or a “preponderance of Scriptural evidence” that the miraculous gifts are to be normative for today. For those of us who believe that there are no prophets in the church today, it is asked how we avoid deliberately disobeying Paul’s injunction to not despise prophetic utterance (1Thess 5:20). Didn’t he command the Corinthians to “earnestly desire” the gifts, and “especially that you may prophesy” (1Cor 14:1)?

Continue Reading…

in Hermeneutics, Theology with 36 Comments
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February 29, 2012

Leap Year Engagements & Hermeneutics

by Clint Archer

[In the non-conformist spirit of leaping over tradition, Clint is venturing out of his regular Monday slot just for today.]

It takes more thought than you’d think to figure out which years are leap. Years divisible by 4 are  leap, except for the Century. I.e. years ending in -00 are not leap years, unless first 2 digits are also divisible by four. Got it?

So 1700 is not a leap year, but 1600 is. That’s why the year 1900 was not, but 2000 was. Don’t stress, you won’t have to worry about getting it wrong until 2100 (which is not leap).

When Pope Gregory XIII declared the first leap year to be 1588, the Protestants were ruling England and they rejected the law, saying it was too Catholic. The problem was that on the day after the 28th of February the rest of the world had calendars that acknowledged the 29th. So Protestant Brits just ignored the day, as if the law and custom didn’t apply to them. So a superstition arose that the other laws and customs didn’t apply either. Hence the name ‘leap year’ as it was the day that ‘lept over the law.’ Sometimes non-conformity can be taken too far.

One such custom which was lept over, was that of marriage proposal etiquette. It was customary
for a gentleman to propose by sending a glove to his true love. If she was seen wearing it at church the following Sunday, she had accepted the proposal.

But on the 29th of February the custom didn’t apply. Continue Reading…

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February 6, 2012

Tattoos and Skin Deep Hermeneutics

by Clint Archer

It used to be easy for Christians to formulate an opinion about tattoos. Sailors had them. And some prisoners. Other than corpsmen and convicts the only ink you saw in church was on the page.

This is not a pointed tirade against tattoos, nor a defense of them; it’s a jab at bad hermeneutics. I have found that some like to decorate their arguments with Bible verses that have no place in the debate.

These are the three usual suspects…

1. Thou shalt not tattoo thyself.

Leviticus 19:28 ”You shall not make any cuts on your body for the dead or tattoo yourselves: I am the Lord.”

This one is the biggie. It is literally the only verse in the Bible to actually employ the word ‘tattoo.’ So if you can’t get this one to play for your team, you don’t have a team.

 

Continue Reading…

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January 30, 2012

The 100th Monkey & Exegetical Fallacies

by Clint Archer

The following phenomenon has been reported as scientific discovery. But though I was born at night, it wasn’t last night, so I’m demoting this meme to “legend has it.”

Legend has it that Japanese scientists were studying the macaque monkey in some obscure Pacific Island. Picture the Dharma Initiative while hiding from the Others. They noticed that a young, probably OCD macaque began to scrub the dirt off his sweet potatoes before scoffing them down. Soon the other youngsters pulled a monkey-see-monkey-do act, literally.

The new fad took a while to catch on, but soon all the youthful primates were hooked on clean veggies. Even some of the old guard ventured to try this new-fangled trend. Eventually the whole troop had taken to washing their food. It would only be a matter of time before the other families on the island heard about the Joneses antics and the fashion would spread.

But then something happened which was far more remarkable than could be predicted by Japanese science, or even scripted on LOST.

Continue Reading…

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