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Video Transcript: Cultural Differences and Biblical Interpretation

When you think of Jesus, how do you picture him? There are a lot of different people in the world with a lot of very different pictures of Jesus. And often, one's picture of Jesus depends on what your cultural background is and what your racial background is, for instance, if you come from African background, you might picture baby Jesus and his mother Mary, like this, or Jesus hanging on the cross, looking very much like an African person with African women at the foot of the cross, weeping and his friend, John, looking very much like an African watching our Lord on the cross. However, if you're not from Africa, you might portray Mary and Jesus like this, if you happen to be from China, and Jesus and His apostles are dressed very much like Chinese people, and look like Chinese men, and even have their hairstyle a little bit more like the Chinese would. Now, if you come from Native American background, here's mother, Mary, and baby Jesus, and then a picture of Jesus as an adult looking very, very Native American. If you happen to come from Northern European background, where people tend to be blond and blue eyed, well, then Mary is blonde, and Jesus is blonde. And that's how you tend to picture him. 

And because Christianity was quite dominant in Europe, for a lot of years, many people associate what Jesus looked like with a somewhat Northern European Jesus, if you were from the Middle East, you might picture Jesus a bit more like these images do. The one on the right, by the way, is an image drawn by some artists to try to give kind of a racial composite of what he thought his best guess would be at what a Jewish Jesus at that time, would have looked like. That's probably not the way most people picture Jesus in their minds. And it's probably not what he looked like either, because none of us has a snapshot of what Jesus looked like on Earth. At any rate, my point is that your picture of Jesus is very much shaped by who you are, and by the cultural context, and ethnic group that you come from. And this has an influence not just on art portraying Jesus, it has an influence on how we think about Jesus when we read the Bible, and when we apply the Bible to our own contexts. And so I'd like to think with you a little bit today about how cross cultural awareness is very important when we're seeking to interpret the Bible as well as when we're trying to apply the Bible to other situations. 

Biblical exegesis involves understanding the original author's meaning within that author's original ancient cultural setting, as much as you're able to you try to get your mind and your spirit into that ancient setting to hear those words, with the meaning they would have had back then. And careful biblical exegesis seeks to kind of recreate what the meaning was in its original context. Now, when you preach the word that also involves making God's word understandable and applicable for people in their cultural setting today, so you're standing between two worlds, you're seeking to understand God's word as it was originally spoken in that context back then, and then you're trying to communicate it into today's context. And exegesis involves original understanding, and application and preaching involves understanding your culture now, and every sermon involves exegeting the scriptures and exegeting, the audience that you're trying to connect with. 

To proclaim God's word, a sermon must be rooted in accurate exegesis of an ancient text, or you're not really representing the Bible accurately, and it must connect with people in a very different setting today, or else you're not doing the preachers job. So a preacher always stands between two worlds. In fact, that's the title of a fine book on preaching by dr. John Stott, between two worlds. Now, when we seek to understand these different cultural worlds, a number of matters are at stake. For instance, just put yourself now in the situation of a cross cultural missionary, and you are bringing the Word of God to a new setting. You're a missionary in South India, translating the Bible into Telugu. Now, how are you going to translate the word God? If you've studied your original languages,

you may know that The word for God is El or Elohim in Hebrew and say Theos in Greek. But what word do you use when you're translating the Bible into Telugu? You've got three main choices. deva, and Parameshwara, and Brahman, you say, Well, I really don't know much about any of those words. So I'm just going to have to wing it. Well, as you think about those three choices, it's going to be a challenge as to how you translate. Let's say, for instance, that you're thinking about translating the word God as diva. a diva is the word for a god in general terms, divas are kind of the highest personal beings that are out there. And there are a lot of them, a diva can come down as an avatar, to help people, he can come down kind of in a human form. But that's not really the same as Christian incarnation of Jesus. divas are not ultimate reality, they turn out to just be an illusion, these divas themselves will be absorbed into the ultimate reality of Brahman. And so they say that God is diva. Well, there's some pretty serious shortcomings in the whole idea of a diva. And so one more shortcoming divas can do both good and evil. And you really don't want to represent God as doing evil. 

So you say, Well, how about parameshwara? How would that work, word work in translating the word God from the Bible? Well, part of parameshwara is the highest class of deities among the various gods, the parameshwara are at the top. But it's still a little too much like diva. It doesn't mean a supreme being who is the ultimate reality and creator of the universe. There's just no concept into liberal culture that matches the idea of created reality as founded in the Bible. As God is the Creator, you say, well, then there's a creation. But in Telugu thought, even the creation itself, the whole world is just a dream.

And so it's very hard to say that parameshwara is going to be a good enough word. Well, then how about Brahman? Well, it's the ultimate reality, then which nothing is greater, or more basic. And so you think to yourself, Well, now we're getting somewhere because God is the ultimate reality, nothing greater or more basic than God. But Brahman is a force, not a person. Do you want to pick a word that says, God is impersonal? And having an earth are not creations that exist distinct from Brahman? They're just dreams of Brahman. And yeah, there we are, those are your only choices, deva, parameshwara, or Brahman, or else you just gonna have to make up a word. And so when you're a missionary, sometimes you have to pick a word with many inadequacies, and then say, Okay, I picked that word. But here, here and here is how the real God is different from the word that I pick just to start out communicating to you. By the way, that may be the case with Elohim. 

Or what's the Theos. Theos is the same word that the Greeks would have used if they're a bunch of gods. And El or Elohim is used the veil and a whole bunch of the other ancient gods as well. So even in the Bible itself, it would use the word that was kind of common coin, and say, there's only one, there's none like him. And here's who he really is, and what he's really like. The understand though, that, in every culture, a word comes with a whole bunch of baggage, a whole bunch of freight. And it's a very challenging thing to get the true meaning of the reality connected with the word. Speaking of the word In the beginning was the Word, John 1:1. Now, this is written by someone who was Jewish or Hebrew, and in the Hebrew Bible, the word Dabar or Dabar, is word, and Yahweh, created and commands all things by his Dabar. Well, a Greek reader of John and it is written in the Greek language, what think, well, the logos In the beginning was the logos NRK, well, ainhoa logos. The logos is the universal rational and moral structure behind all things, and it's not really referring to something personal, but it's the, the logic of the universe, if you will, or the structure of the universe. And Hebrews and Greeks both would be shocked by John 1:14, they might hear in the beginning was the word a little differently. 

But when John says, and the Word became flesh, people would be astounded and say, How can God the Word become flesh and the Greeks say, Well, how can this logic Have the universe Be a man? And yet, John, in John 1:1 is saying this, he's taking something that to both Hebrews and Greeks would be understandable at one level, and really quite astounding, and almost inconceivable at another level. Now, let's just take that and now move into a Chinese setting. The Chinese have translated in the beginning was the Tao, and the Tao was with God, and the Tao, was God. Or the Chinese just turning Christianity into Taoism? Because Taoism is a religion. And the Tao is kind of like the logic or the life and force of the universe. And so they take that concept and say, well, that's about the closest thing we could come up to the with to the Greek concept of Logos. And we'll say that, in the beginning was this dow that Chinese already believe in all the it's a little different than what they believe about it. And the Tao was with God, and in fact that Tao was God, and the Tao became flesh and dwelt among us, and his name was Jesus Christ. 

Again, speaking, the truth of God in a very different cultural settings can carry some very misleading ideas if you're not careful. But you have to start somewhere and speak in language that people will understand. It's not just a matter of vocabulary and translation, either. Sometimes, it's just the way you hear a particular statement or sentence. For instance, in talking about prayer, Jesus encourages us to pray. And he encourages us by saying that our Father in Heaven is so good, he knows what we need, he wants what's best for us. And Jesus is wishing you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, we'll give him a snake instead. And those of us who disliked snakes very much and have some excellent grilled fish would say, yeah, of course, a good dad is going to go with the fish,

and not that nasty, venomous snake every time. Well, in certain people group, they would answer Well, every good Father gives his child a snake, not a fish, because in that particular people grew up in Asia, the fish are little itty bitty minnows that aren't worth a hoot as food and the snakes are big and juicy. And you can make a fantastic stew and lots of other great dishes out of those snakes. And so when they hear Jesus statement, it requires a little bit of explanation of what is meant by Jesus, they're gonna say Jesus would want the Heavenly Father to give us a snake, not a fish. Or take another example, one of the great images in Scripture, John the baptist said, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And throughout the book of Revelation, Jesus is often called the lamb. Now, a people group in a certain region has never seen a sheep, they have no idea what a sheep or a lamb is, what they do have a different kind of animal. Pigs are their best food source, and for generations in their religion, pigs have been what they sacrifice in their religious rituals. 

Should a Bible translator say, Behold the Lamb of God? Or would behold the pig of God be okay? Well, I, in my opinion, behold, the pig of God would be too much of a stretch, and you just got some explaining to do, you're gonna have to explain a few things that people aren't going to understand immediately, you're going to say, well, in that situation, there's these animals called lambs. And they're kind of used like your pigs have been used. And they were the most important food and the thing that was sacrificed. And we're saying that Jesus is the the great sacrifice, you've got to do quite a bit of explaining where there's not an exact equivalent in a particular culture that you're talking to. At any rate, I'm not trying to give the definitive answers on these. I'm just trying to give you some of the challenges of communicating cross culturally. Here's another question should whole families and clans and villages be baptized all together? Well, a good Baptist person would say absolutely not. Baptism occurs only an a personal individual response to the gospel. 

Well, I don't happen to be a Baptist, but yet, I'd still be a little nervous about baptizing whole village at the same time. But anyway, Baptist missionaries were quite individualistic in their understanding, and they were communicating the gospel in a certain setting and making very little progress emphasizing individual conversion because they were doing this in a very group oriented society, and group oriented societies. You don't just wake up one morning and make up your own mind, whatever anybody else thinks. decision making, occurs very much in consultation with others. So, Baptist individualistic evangelists in a Thai village, don't call for individual decisions right after a gospel presentation. They urge people to talk it over with their families, talk it over with their fellow villagers, and then let the evangelists know their decision. And they also leave room for people to opt out if they don't want to walk with Christ. And they try to figure out what's a good way to go with this. But they understand that they're not addressing a society that is as individualistic as the one the missionaries came from. Now, think about the Bible for a moment. The Bible sometimes brings the gospel to households and entire cities and not just individuals the way we might think of it. Cornelius was told by an angel about Peters coming with the gospel, and Cornelius this Roman century and was told Peter will bring you a message through which you and all your household will be saved. 

The epostle Paul told a suicidal jailer, Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved you and your household, you see that household is being swept up in in all at the same time with the head of the household or think about villages. Sometimes a village can come under judgment, Jesus said you Capernum, will you be exalted to heaven, you will be brought down to Hades, Jesus told his disciples when they went out preaching, wherever they do not receive you, when you leave that town, shake off the dust from your feet, as a testimony against them. It's a judgment on the whole town, not just on this particular individual, or that particular individual. So once again, the income from a highly individualistic culture,

Well, that's going to shape how you hear the Bible, and you're going to maybe read it more individualistically than if you came from a culture that involved decision making more at a group level. Well, anyway, those are some of the complications. Let's just have a little fun here. Sometimes when you're studying the Bible, you're told here's what the culture was like. And here's all the meaning of these ancient rituals. Sometimes you need to take some of that with a grain of salt as well. Here's an excerpt from something called Freud football and the marching virgins by Thomas Hornsby Ferril. He writes with his tongue in cheek obviously football is a syndrome of religious rites, symbolizing the struggle to preserve the egg of life through the rigors of impending winter. The rites begin at the autumnal equinox, and culminate on the first day of the new year with great festivals identified with bowls of plenty. The festivals are associated with flowers such as roses, fruits, such as oranges, farm crops, such as cotton, and even sun worship, and appeasement of great reptiles, such as alligators. In these rites, the egg of life is symbolized by what is called the oval and inflated bladder covered with hogs skin. 

The Convention of the oval is repeated in the architectural oval shaped design of the vast outdoor churches in which the services are held every Sabbath in every town and city. Literally, millions of worshippers attend to the Sabbath services in these enormous open air churches. The rites are performed on a rectangular area of green grass oriented to the four directions. The grass symbolizing summer is striped with ominous white lines representing the knifing snows of winter. The White Stripes are repeated in the ceremonial costumes of the whistling monitors who control the services through a time period divided into four quarters, symbolizing the four seasons. The ceremony begins with colorful processions of musicians and semi nude virgins, who move in and out of ritualized patterns. This excites the thousands of worshipers to rise from their seats, shout frenzy, poetry in unison and chant ecstatic anthems. The actual rites performed by 22 young priests a perfect physique might appear to the uninitiated as a chaotic conflict, concerned only with hurting the oval by kicking it and then endeavoring to rescue and protect the egg. However, the procedure is highly stylized. On one side, there are 11 young men wearing colorful and protective costumes. The group in so called possession of the oval first arranged themselves in an egg shaped huddle, as it is called for a moment of prayerful meditation and whispering of secret numbers to each other. 

Then they rearrange themselves in relation to the position of the egg. In a typical formation, there are seven priests on the line seven being a mystical number associated not with the seven last words, but actually with the sublimation of the seven deadly sins into the seven Cardinal principles of education. At the end of the second quarter implying the summer solstice, the processions of musicians and semi-nude virgins are resumed. Each of the virgins carries a wound of shining metal, which she spins on her fingertips and tosses playfully into the air, and with which she interweaves her body and most intricate gyrations the virgins perform another important function throughout the entire service. This concerns the mystical right of conversion, following success of one of the young priests in carrying the oval across the last white line of winter, at the moment of convert, as the moment of conversion approaches, the virgins kneel at the edge of the grass, they're either faces in the earth, then raise their arms to heaven, in supplication, and so on. Well, some others would hear all that about football and simple. That's not even real football, we know what real football is. And it's what those dummies in America called soccer. Now, again, the whole point of this is that different cultures have very different understandings. And sometimes cultural understanding is a very tricky thing. Some anthropologists or some biblical exegete might watch the rituals of football, and think they had figured out all the understandings of a whole new religion. 

Let's face it, there is a little bit of religion in football. But the fact of the matter is you can take certain cultural customs, and completely misinterpret what they're about. And when you're doing biblical exegesis. And sometimes when you're reading commentators who have found one or two artifacts of this or that, and claim to understand many things based on that, you have to take it with a little bit of a grain of salt and at the same time you do try to be as informed as you can. By understanding the cultural setting of the biblical meanings. The Bible is a missionary book, I've been speaking of some of the challenges missionaries face in cross cultural communication, but the Bible is a missionary book. in it. God speaks through words originally addressed to cultures that are unlike ours in many ways, and God is seeking to bring his truth and to invite people of every culture in the relationship with his son. 

Now the thing to keep in mind for those of us who are English speakers, English is just one language among many. And each language has its own meanings and its own limitations, which make it harder to understand the original biblical meanings. My American mindset is just one of many cultural varieties. It's not the way all normal right thinking people think, local context differs a much. And we each need to be understanding of how our own context our own personalities shapes, how we hear the Bible. How does my culture affect my exegesis? We all need to understand how we see Jesus differently based on the culture we come from, and how we read the Bible differently, partly shaped by the culture we come from. And as we communicate the gospel and preach it to others or speak at others in personal conversation, we have to ask now, how are biblical words and churchy words the kind of words that are common among church people heard by people who live outside of my church culture, I've got to understand how those words sound to them, and whether they make any sense to them. Or if they're totally misleading to somebody who hasn't been brought up in the church. cross cultural communication is vital in hermeneutics and exegesis and biblical interpretation. 

And it's vital in communicating with other people. So again, we live and communicate between two worlds and all of it underneath that great world in which God is sovereign. And that great world where we seek communicate the reality of God and heavenly realities to people here on Earth. biblical exegesis involves understanding the original author's meaning within his original ancient cultural setting. And biblical preaching involves making God's word understandable inapplicable for people in their cultural setting today. And as we proclaim God's word, a sermon must be rooted in accurate exegesis of that ancient text. And it must connect with people in a very different setting today. There are a lot of challenges of thought involved in this. There also simply the great challenge of prayer, that God by His Holy Spirit, will understand what he was saying back then, and what he wants to say right now.

Video Transcript: Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics (Part One)

Hi, I'm David Feddes and in this presentation, I'd like to walk through the first part of the Chicago statement on biblical hermeneutics. Now, the Chicago statement on biblical hermeneutics was prepared after the Chicago statement on biblical inerrancy by the same group of evangelical scholars, and after stating, very clearly the inerrancy the error free nature of the Bible. This group of scholars also wanted to show what that means for Biblical principles of interpretation. Now, the statement is available in print, and it's available in print with a good commentary by Dr. Norman Geisler in which he offers a few paragraphs of explanation for each item in the Chicago statement on biblical hermeneutics. I'm going to walk through it with you in more of an oral presentation. You can read Dr. Geisler, some of his language may be a bit more technical, and in some cases more helpful than mine. 

But best, perhaps, is simply to use both go through this and listen a little bit and then read it through in the printed form with Dr. Geisler his comments, if you like the first statement in this is about the divine authority of the Bible. Article One says we affirm that the normative authority of Holy Scripture is the authority of God, Himself, and is attested by Jesus Christ, the Lord of the church. So when the Bible says something, God is saying something, when God commands something in the Bible, then it is God's own voice. And Jesus Christ Himself said, scripture cannot be broken. And Jesus said that the scripture pointed to him. And therefore, we deny the legitimacy of separating the authority of Christ, from the authority of Scripture, or of opposing the one to the other. There are some who say, well, scripture is kind of a helpful witness to Christ. But what we really listen to is Christ Himself. Somewhat simplistic approach in the same vein is to say, well, we really focus on those red letter passages of the Bible that are said to be Jesus Himself speaking, and those are more important than other parts of the Bible. Sometimes you'll hear an argument, well, the words of Jesus say nothing about homosexuality, so it doesn't matter very much. 

Well, the words of Jesus say nothing about molesting children either. But that doesn't mean Jesus approves of it. The fact is that the whole Bible is the Word of God. And Jesus Himself said that the whole word of God is divinely inspired and applies to him and that it cannot be broken. So let's never separate Jesus from the Bible, or the words of Jesus from the words of the prophets, or the words of the of Jesus from his apostles, such as the Apostle Paul, which is another favorite. folks say, oh, Paul, misunderstood Jesus, and we believe Jesus, but a lot of Paul's stuff we don't buy. The fact of the matter is, the whole Bible, there's divine authority and is given to witness to Jesus Christ and bears the authority of Jesus Christ. The Bible is a perfect union of the Divine and the human, we affirm that as Christ is God and man in one person. So scripture is indivisibly God's Word in human language. And we deny that the humble human form of Scripture entails arrogancy mistakes, errors, any more than the humanity of Christ, even in his humiliation entails sin. So here there's kind of an analogy or comparison between the nature of Scripture and Jesus Christ as God and the man. Jesus was completely without sin, even during the time of his humiliation here on earth. And as Jesus could be both divine and human, conceived by the Holy Spirit from his human mother, Mary. 

So the scripture can be given by the Holy Spirit through its human authors, and be completely divine and yet be in completely human words, and totally without error. Because you see, we sometimes say To err is human. But that's not true. Jesus was human, and he did not err he's still human, and he does not err. The humans who are made perfect in heaven, do not make mistakes or errors. So it is possible to be fully human. In fact, only in our full humanity, are we without error, and God has chosen to speak through human words by the work of the Holy Spirit, and those human words are without error.

Now, sinful humans ordinarily make many mistakes and mislead in many circumstances, but not when those humans were guided by the Spirit of God, to write the words of Scripture. Scripture is fully human, and yet fully given by God, and by His Holy Spirit. A third thing, scripture is Christ centered, we affirm that the person and work of Jesus Christ are the central focus of the entire Bible. And we deny any method of interpretation, which rejects or obscures the Christ centeredness of Scripture, such an interpretation can't be correct. Jesus is the main point of the Bible. God gave the scriptures to focus our attention on Christ, the Old Testament Scriptures to prepare for the coming of Christ, to foreshadow the coming of Christ, to set aside the people in God's plan to which Christ would come and the New Testament explains and unveils the full revelation of Jesus Christ. And if you rummage around in the Bible for answers to this or that question, without paying attention to its Christ centered nature, you're going to go very far astray. We need to understand the main focus of the Bible, Jesus Christ. 

Article four, we affirm that the Holy Spirit who inspired scripture acts through it today to work faith in its message, we deny that the Holy Spirit ever teaches to anyone, anything which is contrary to the teaching of Scripture. Scripture is given and breathed out by God, the Holy Spirit through the human authors. And that same spirit who wrote the Bible, through those human authors comes to our human hearts and minds, to help us to grasp, to understand and to embrace and receive the scriptures and without the work of the Spirit who inspired it. We can't understand fully or, more importantly, accept and delight in the truths revealed in Scripture. And this unity of spirit and word is also where we get the denial. The Holy Spirit does not contradict himself. I have more than once heard people who were involved in an adulterous relationship running out on their spouse and shacking up with somebody else say that the Holy Spirit gave them a piece about it. And they knew this was the right person, and the right thing to do. I know what the Holy Spirit says about adultery, Thou shalt not commit adultery. 

Adultery is a behavior that characterizes those who have no part in the kingdom of God. I know what the Holy Spirit says about that. And if you happen to think your adultery is okay with God, well, you are simply fooling yourself that's not from the Holy Spirit, we deny that the Holy Spirit ever teaches anyone, anything which is contrary to the teaching of Scripture, scripture is always the test of any thought or idea or inclination that we have. We affirm that the Holy Spirit enables believers to appropriate and apply scripture to their lives, we deny that the natural man is able to discern spiritually, the biblical message apart from the Holy Spirit. No one understands the Word of God in the mind of God apart from the Spirit of God. And nobody can really appropriate the Scripture, accept it or know how it applies to their lives without the work of the Holy Spirit. Basically, what's being said here is don't treat the Bible as a book off by itself that you can just kind of scrutinize and rummage around in and gain your own wisdom you need constantly to be depending on God's Holy Spirit, because apart from the spirit, you cannot understand what he is saying. We affirm that the Bible expresses God's truth in propositional statements, and we declare that biblical truth is both objective and absolute. We further affirm that a statement is true, if it represents matters as they actually are, but is an error if it misrepresents the facts. we deny that while scripture is able to make us wise unto salvation, biblical truth should be defined in terms of this function. And we further deny that error should be defined as that which willfully deceives a few words about this article. God speaks in human sentences. That's what's meant by truth in propositional statements. Some people nowadays are allergic to propositional truth, and they want truth to be very subjective, but truth is an objective fact whether you believe it or not, certain things are true. And those truths and facts and realities don't change from culture to culture. 

It's not just all relative, it's absolute. A statement is true. If it represents matters as they are sometimes that's called the correspondence theory or correspondence understanding of truth, and it is an error if it misrepresents the facts that would seem hardly to need stating, but it does in the world in which we live, where many people believe there is no such thing as objective truth, that there is no such thing as a fact. And that truth is, whatever works for you. Or truth is, whatever helps you to get your way and assert your will to power no truth is what represents matters as they really are. Now, the Bible does have the purpose of leading us to salvation. But that is not its only purpose. And that is not the definition of truth whether it happens to be helpful on the road to salvation, truth is defined as whether it corresponds to real factual reality. And some have tried to say, well, the Bible is wrong about some things, but it never tries to deliberately mislead anybody. 

It contains mistakes, but they're innocent mistakes, and they're not. They're not willfully deceiving anybody. Those authors weren't willfully trying to trick or fool anybody. And therefore we can say that they were fully truthful, even though they made quite a few mistakes. This article says, No, no, no, no, no, we don't define error merely as that which willfully deceives Of course, to willfully, deceive, does communicate error. But you could also communicate error even if you weren't trying to. And the statement here says the Bible not only refrains from willfully deceiving, but it also has no mistakes, period, no mistakes, not just no willful deception. Article seven, we affirm that the meaning expressed in each biblical text is single, definite, and fixed, we deny that the recognition of this single meaning eliminates the variety of its application. So what we're trying to do when we look at a Bible passage is to understand what its meaning is, and to get more and more accurate and understanding of what that one meaning is, and it is a definite meaning as given by the author, the human and divine author, it is not whatever things we want to dig out of it. And there may be many applications of a meaning, but the meaning itself is fixed. I'll take an example, when the Bible says Thou shalt not kill. The meaning is that you should not deliberately murder a person. 

Now, there may be a variety of applications, you should not walk up to somebody or ambush them and kill them. An application that has become more recent is you also should not give people lethal injections when they happen to be quite sick, or you should not abort unborn babies. Those are a variety of applications that flow from the one single, definite and fixed meaning of the command, you shall not kill. Each text has its meaning. And then the range of applications that flow out of that text may be various. But the purpose of the interpreter is, first of all, to understand what the original meaning is, and then figure out how God wants it applied. We affirm that the Bible contains teachings and mandates which apply to all cultural and situational contexts. And it contains other mandates, which the Bible itself shows apply only to particular situations. Paul writes and bring the scrolls to me when you come now, not every Bible reader should say, Boy, I got to find those scrolls and bring them to Paul, it's very obvious that that is not a universal mandate that everybody should go looking for Paul's lost scroll and bring it to him. But by the same token, there are many universal mandates that do apply to all of us love your neighbor as yourself to take an obvious case. we deny that the distinctions between the universal and particular mandates of Scripture can be determined by cultural and situational factors. 

That means our own cultural situation, we may hear a command which may have been intended universally and we say, well, but that can't apply to us. No, that's not how you interpret scripture. Scripture itself makes clear that this was intended just for one of Paul's friends, or only for a local church, but for no others of them. We can say, Well, that was not a universal command, but only a situational command that we don't say, well, it just doesn't seem to fit our situation. We don't like that command very much anyway, then you're denying the authority of the Scripture, we further deny that universal mandates may ever be treated as culturally or situationally relative. 

Once we know that a command from God is intended for all, we don't have the freedom to tinker with it, or scale it back or eliminate it, because our own cultural situation doesn't happen to like it very much. It is always the case that the spirit of the age will find many things that don't fit very well with Scripture. But the point of Scripture is to help us to live according to the Word of God, and not just according to what happens to feel comfortable in our given situation. We affirm that the term hermeneutics which historically signified the rules of exegesis, and which is the way we'll use it, often in this course, the rules of exegesis, but hermeneutics may properly be extended to cover all that is involved in the process of perceiving what the biblical revelation means and how it bears on our lives. So hermeneutics gives you rules for accurate understanding and exegesis of the Scriptures. 

But you can also use that word hermeneutics a bit more broadly, to say that we're also trying to figure out how it applies to us. We deny that the message of Scripture derives from or is dictated by the interpreters understanding. The aim is to understand what the original author says, not to impose our understanding on the original author that's called Eisegesus. Thus, we deny that the horizons of the biblical writer and the interpreter may rightly fuse in such a way that what the text communicates to the interpreter is not ultimately controlled by the expressed meaning of the Scripture. This means that we can't go to the scripture just with our own questions with our own desire to find something there and think that suddenly, we've kind of merged with the original author and that he's got the same agenda we've got, we need when we go to Scripture to first of all, seek the meaning of the author, and not make it fit what we think it needs to mean for our own benefit. The Bible is God's truth in human language, we affirm that scripture communicates God's truth to us verbally, through a wide variety of literary forms. And we deny that any of the limits of human language, render scripture inadequate to convey God's message. 

It is true that there are limits to what are stated in the Bible, and there are limits to what human language can convey. But that does not mean that the Bible is inadequate to convey what God wants to tell us there is much about God that perhaps may never be known by humans, and could not possibly be understood by humans, because God is so vast, transcendent and great, and beyond any human capacity to fully understand. But the fact remains, we can understand something of God what he chooses to reveal to us. And that something that he chooses, is conveyed in human language, different kinds of human language, different styles, different forms of communication, but what God chose to use is adequate and he speaks to us verbally. Again, there are some who say that words don't do the job and human words can't possibly convey God's revelation. But the Bible does convey God's revelation in human language. This truth is translatable. We affirm that translations of the text of Scripture can communicate knowledge of God across all temporal and cultural boundaries, and we deny that the meaning of biblical text is so tied to the culture out of which they came. The understanding of the same meaning in other cultures is impossible.

Christianity is quite different from Islam. In this respect. Islam says that only in the original Arabic Do you have the Quran, and the prayers you learn even have to be spoken in Arabic to really be prayer at its best. Christianity says God is a missionary God, all cultures have been created by God, and God's word is translatable into those different cultures. An excellent book on this whole matter is Laman Sanis, translating the message and how the Bible has transformed cultures and how it's not locked into the understanding of any one particular culture. The Bible is translatable, and this is wonderful, good news. And it means that we have to be very cautious about thinking that the ancient cultures block us from grasping God's message in the Bible because it was written for those cultures and address them in their language. We also We're careful of thinking that our own culture is the be all and the end all that has it all together. When the Bible is translated into other cultures, sometimes those cultures will understand things from God's word that we may not have understood quite as fully, but the Bible is translatable. 

Now, having said that, Article 12 says, We affirm that in the task of translating the Bible and teaching it in the context of each culture, only those functional equivalents which are faithful to the content of biblical teaching, should be employed. Now, what's that phrase functional equivalents mean? It means that in translating, there's often no word for word way to do it, that there isn't an exact correspondence of each word in the ancient Hebrew, or Greek to an English word, or that a particular phrase in the ancient Greek may need to be translated with something that captures the meaning, though the wording might be slightly different in the translation. And so when a translator is working on things, they want to be faithful to the content of the biblical teaching, we deny the legitimacy of methods which either are insensitive to the demands of cross cultural communication, or distort biblical meaning in the process. So you can have two extremes. One is to just come with some wooden translation that doesn't even try to speak in the kind of phrases that the receptor culture has, but the others, the other end opposite distortion is to say, Oh, you know, people here don't understand much about sheep. So let's instead of saying the Lamb of God will say the pig of God because they know a lot about pigs. Well, you have to be very careful when you try to translate things that you don't distort the biblical meaning in the process of translation. So that's the first big chunk of the Chicago statement on biblical hermeneutics. We'll consider more in the second part of our presentation.

Video Transcript: Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics (PartTwo)

The Chicago statement on biblical hermeneutics helps us to see what it means to approach the process of interpretation with the conviction that the Bible is the inerrant the error free Word of God. And here in part two, we're going to look at some more of the articles of that Chicago statement. The Bible contains various kinds of literature, we affirm that awareness of the literary categories, formal and stylistic of the various parts of Scripture is essential for proper exegesis. And hence, we value genre criticism as one of the many disciplines of biblical study. Well, that's kind of a mouthful with some difficult phrases. So let's look at that a little more carefully. The Bible contains different kinds of literary categories. Sometimes, a parable will be told, there might be a poem here and to understand a poem as though it's a very straightforward historical statement is a big mistake. 

To understand a parable in that manner would be a big mistake to take a vision with lots of symbols in it as straightforward. A history would be a big mistake. So there's a variety of literary categories. And we call those different types of literature genres. The word genre is just another word for a type of literature. And genre criticism is not the process of boy, I really critical about genres. I'm really grumpy about those genres, and I'm going to say bad things about them. The genre criticism is a very careful analysis of the literary types of different kinds of writing in the Bible. And so genre criticism is a valuable thing so that you don't miss understand certain things in the Bible. I'll take a historical example. A man named Origen was one of the great thinkers in the period of the early Christians. He lived about 200 years after Jesus and Origen sometimes had difficulty understanding genres, he would read straightforward history, and find all kinds of hidden, allegorical meanings. But he took a phrase of Jesus where Jesus spoke of being Unix for the kingdom of God, and castrated himself. Now, that's a very strong example of the difficulty of not having your genre understood properly, and genre criticism, the process of finding out what type of literature we're talking about here? Is this a parable? 

Is it exaggeration for the sake of effect, also known as hyperbole? If so, then we shouldn't take it in just a straightforward go do this sort of manner as Origen did when it came to castrating himself or Jesus words, pluck out your eye and throw it away? does Jesus want you to just rip out your eye and cut off your hand anytime you face a temptation? No, you need to understand that that's a genre way of communication of exaggerated effect. And so genre criticism is the kind of study that helps us to grasp that sort of thing. Now, in light of all that, nonetheless, we deny that generic categories which negate historicity may rightly be imposed on biblical narratives, which present themselves as factual. So there are different kinds of biblical literature, including parable, and figurative speech, even a few allegories, and so on. But we can't take those categories and use those to wipe out the historical nature of the history in the Bible. That's what the denial is saying. There's a kind of misuse of genre criticism, which is why, you know, we kind of think that Genesis just doesn't make much sense to us anymore in light of new discoveries that we have. And even though it presents itself as history, we know that it really had to be kind of a parable, or just a folk tale. 

No, if the Bible presents stories as history than they are to be taken, as factual, biblical narratives, are telling true stories, biblical parables or poetry might be using figures of speech, and you need to understand them as such. But don't claim that any historical narrative that makes you a little uncomfortable, must have been just a parable or a poem. We affirm that the biblical record of events, discourses and sayings, though presented in a variety of appropriate literary forms corresponds to historical fact and we deny that any event discourse or saying reported in Scripture was invented by the biblical writers or by the traditions, they incorporated. Sometimes people will say, Jesus didn't actually say Some of these things, but the later authors seeing some of the needs in the church of their time just made up sayings and put them in Jesus mouth. 

Or they told a story about a miracle that Jesus didn't actually do. But that miracle kind of came in handy to make a point that the later author wanted to convey. No, when scripture presents something as a matter that was said or done, then it was said, and it was done. And it corresponds to historical fact. We affirmed the necessity of interpreting the Bible according to its literal, or normal sense. Now, we got to be very careful about that word literal. Because nowadays, we take the word literal, mostly to mean that it's just a direct statement of fact. Well, that's not what literal means quite. In this context, it means rather than normal sense of understanding what the author is saying, so if the author is telling a parable, you take it as parable. And that's the literal way to understand it. If the author is using a figure of speech, you take it as a figure of speech. And that's the literal way of understanding what he was trying to convey. So we affirm the necessity of interpreting the Bible according to its literal or normal sense. And the literal sense is the grammatical historical sense that is the meaning which the writer expressed. 

So to be literal, is to take the writer as he intended his words to be taken that in that involves listening careful carefully to his grammar, and to the historical setting in which he was conveying his message. And therefore, we take him literally when we're understanding what he's trying to say not when we assume that every vision with a dragon in it means that there are really dragons flying all over the place. interpretation, according to the literal sense, will take account of all figures of speech and literary forms found in the text. we deny the legitimacy of any approach to Scripture, that attributes to it meaning which the literal sense does not support. And so when you have a straightforward, biblical narrative, be careful about putting all kinds of allegorical meanings onto it. Take an example, when David goes out to fight Goliath, and picks up five smooth stones. It really means the five books of Moses, with which we go out with truth to smite the enemies of truth. 

No, it doesn't, it means he picked up five rocks, so that he had some spare ammo. If the first one missed, he picked up five rocks, and he fired one of them that Goliath and kill him. And it is not the meaning of that biblical text, that the five books of Moses are somehow contained in those five stones. We denied the legitimacy of any approach to Scripture, that attributes to it meaning which the literal sense does not support, you understand now, what's meant by literal doesn't mean that every figurative idea needs to be taken literally in the way that we sometimes mean. Literally, it means taking the normal sense, and trying to understand what the writer was expressing. And once we grasp what the writer is expressing, we don't try to invent all kinds of other hidden meanings that might be contained there.

We affirm that legitimate critical techniques should be used in determining the canonical text, and its meaning. There is a whole discipline of study called textual criticism. And again, it's not saying bad things about the text are being critical. In that sense, textual criticism is trying to determine from the many, many manuscripts of the Scripture that we have from ancient times what the most accurate text is. And another kind of criticism is involved in just careful study of the text and its meaning and so we affirm that there is a legitimate place for the techniques that you use those careful analytical techniques. That's what's meant by the word critical, careful and analytical, and that they should be used in trying to figure out the best text from the original manuscripts and the most accurate meaning that we deny the legitimacy of allowing any method of biblical criticism to question the truth or integrity of the writers expressed meaning or have any other scriptural teaching. 

There's a distinction here between what is sometimes called lower criticism and higher criticism lower criticism is good. In this case, and higher criticism is bad. Higher criticism is the kind of critic that raises himself above the biblical text. And after he's determined what the original manuscripts were, and what the original writers meaning is, then decides whether he finds that meaning to be true or acceptable or not. Well, that's not a valid kind of way to approach the Bible. We do not sit above the Bible in higher criticism. Lower criticism is a humble effort to grasp what the original text is, and then what it means. But having grasped that, then to accept it, to believe what it teaches to obey what it commands. And so there are legitimate techniques to understand, but it is illegitimate to use any technique which calls into question whether the writers knew what they were talking about, whether what they set out to be believed. Scripture interpret scripture, we affirm the unity, harmony and consistency of Scripture and declare that it is its own best interpreter. 

We deny that scripture may be interpreted in such a way as to suggest that one passage corrects or militates against another one, there is no clash of one part of Scripture with another. we deny that later writers of Scripture misinterpreted earlier passages of Scripture, when quoting from or referring to them. Sometimes, the higher critics accuse New Testament authors of distorting or misquoting or twisting the meaning of Old Testament passages that they quoted. Well, we believe that the Bible is a unity in the revelation of God that its truths are harmonious and consistent. And when we can't figure out how two passages fit together, we study them a little longer to see whether we miss understood one passage, whether we miss understood the other one, or if there's a way of harmonizing them that we didn't previously realize, but we don't say the one is right, the other is wrong. 

The right one is straightening out the wrong one. we deny that one passage just goes against another, or that later writers are mistaken in the way they're handling earlier passages. And a very important part of this, then is when you're studying the Bible, one of the most important principles in hermeneutics is the best commentary on any one passage of the Bible is the other passages in the Bible, before you go to this scholar, or that expert commentary, read what the rest of the Bible has to say, on the matter that you're trying to understand in a particular passage. Scripture is the best interpreter of Scripture. We affirm that the Bible's own interpretation of itself is always correct, never deviating from but rather elucidating, leaving out the single meaning of the inspired text, the single meaning of a prophets words includes, but it's not restricted to the understanding of those words by the prophet, and necessarily involves the intention of God, evidence in the fulfillment of those words, we deny that the writers of Scripture always understood the full implications of their own words. what's being said here is that the text has a single meaning. 

But sometimes there may have been more to that meaning than the human author fully understood. God Himself fully understood the meaning. Let's take an example. When David wrote Psalm 22, and wrote, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And they have pierced my hands and my feet, and they've gambled over my clothing and so on. Did he know exactly what was going to happen in the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ? Possibly not. We don't know how much David understood about what was to come when he wrote that Psalm, but God knew what was to come. And New Testament authors who draw upon that Psalm and see it fulfilled in Jesus, our right to do so. We don't have to say that David understood everything. That was to come Abraham was promised that through his offspring, all the peoples of the earth would be blessed. Did he know the name of that coming offspring would be Jesus? Did he know exactly how Jesus was going to bring those blessings and atone for sins? No, probably not. But in the things revealed to Abraham, God knew what he was revealing and the words that were written, accurately expressed, what was to come, though not fully. And the full meaning would come out as God further revealed himself in the events of Jesus life and in the writings of the New Testament. 

The point though, is that in the Bible's interpretation of things, it's bringing out the fuller meaning of the older texts of the Scriptures and God is revealing what he had in mind, even if what he had in mind wasn't fully grasped by the prophet who wrote it down. We affirm that any pre understandings which the interpreter brings to Scripture should be in harmony with scriptural teaching and subject to correction by it. So when you come to Scripture, you have all kinds of things that you take to be true assumptions that you have ways of looking at the world, your worldview. But when you come to it, those things need to be in harmony with scriptural teaching and whether or not you need to be willing to have that corrected by scripture as you come to fuller understanding. Therefore we deny that scripture should be required to fit alien pre understandings in consistent with itself. Here are some examples, naturalism, evolutionism, scientism, secular humanism, relativism. naturalism is basically the idea that miracles don't happen, that God does not intervene in his world, perhaps even the God does not exist. But there are some theologians who grant that maybe a God exists. But everything in the Bible that sounds miraculous can't be true. And the kernel of meaning is more likely to be something about moral behavior and relating to a transcendent God. 

But that's letting naturalism rule out what obviously is revealed in the Bible as miraculous evolutionism, the idea that something came from nothing, that lower forms of life produce higher forms of life, that life came from dead matter that intelligence came from non intelligent forms of life, all that kind of stuff is not in keeping with the Bible, that does not happen on its own God created. Scientism that's not meaning science itself. But scientism, which makes science, the measure of all truth, and the source of all truth, secular humanism, which makes man, the center of all things, there are many of these things which shape the way we tend to think and even if we don't embrace those as the philosophy we're committed to, we need to be aware of the degree to which they influence the way we think, and what we find plausible, or acceptable. And we have to be very cautious about those kinds of pre understandings words, which are kind of like in the water, we drink, and in the air, we breathe many times. But when we come to Scripture, and we find something in Scripture and say, oh, that doesn't make very much sense. We've got to sit back and say now, does it not make sense because I've misunderstood the Scripture, or because I had a lousy pre understanding or presupposition, based on flaws in my worldview. 

We affirm that since God is the author of all truth, all truths, biblical and extra biblical or beyond the Bible, are consistent and cohere, and that the Bible speaks truth, when it touches on matters pertaining to nature, history or anything else. We further affirm that in some cases, extra biblical data have value for clarifying what Scripture teaches, and for prompting correction of faulty interpretations. we deny the extra biblical views ever disprove the teaching of Scripture, or hold priority over it. All truth is God's truth. And not all truths are revealed in the Bible. There are many things that are true that the Bible does not state or talk about. And so we say God is the author of all truths. And we should believe truths that are outside the Bible, as well as inside it. But we also affirm that the truths that aren't revealed in the Bible do not contradict the truths that are revealed in the Bible. And when the Bible speaks about nature, or history, or other things, that is true, and it is not contradicted by the facts. Now, there are times when discovery of facts outside the Bible has caused people to say, oh, maybe the Bible didn't mean what we thought it meant. After all, when the Bible speaks of the four corners of the earth, some people might have thought that meant that the Earth was square, or when the Bible said, the Earth is established, it cannot be moved. 

Some took that to mean the earth had to be the fixed point as the center of the universe. And it turned out not to be so now is that because the Bible was wrong? No. That statement about the earth is established, it cannot be moved comes in the context of a poem, not in a straight forward discourse on the scientific location of the earth. So there are times when truths from outside the Bible caused us to look again at how we understood a particular statement of the Bible and say, Ah, it didn't mean that after all, but that doesn't mean that we can take things that don't seem to fit the Bible and say, well, then the Bible is wrong. We may have to examine our understanding, but there may be times when we have to change our understanding of the Bible. There may also be times when we say hey, are our understanding the Bible and that point is correct. And it is the other claim to truth coming from outside the Bible that is wrong. We affirm the harmony of special with general revelation. special revelation is when God speaks through Scripture and through special acts in Christ and through his prophets. General revelation is God's showing of something of himself in the things that he has made in creation. We affirm the harmony of special with general revelation, and therefore of biblical teaching with the facts of nature. 

We deny that any genuine scientific facts are inconsistent with the true meaning of any passage of scripture. So there may be times when naturalistic, unbelieving science clashes with facts in the Bible, but genuine science true facts will not clash with the true meaning of any passage of scripture. Sometimes scientists are wrong about what the creation is indicating. Sometimes theologians are wrong about what the Bible is indicating. But when the scientists are on target, and the theologians are on target, the scientists and the theologians are going to agree. And along with all of that one of the most challenged portions of the Bible is Genesis, especially Genesis one through 11. It's factual we affirm that Genesis one through 11 is factual as as the rest of the book, we deny that the teachings of Genesis one through 11 are mythical. And that scientific hypotheses about Earth history, or the origin of humanity may be invoked to overthrow what Scripture teaches about creation. Genesis is not just an allegory, it's not just a poem, it's factual. Jesus referred to the flood in Noah's time, as a fact, the apostle Paul referred to Adam as a real person, and to Christ as the second Adam, it is very, very hard to deny the teachings of Genesis one through 11. And then take serious the teachings of Jesus and of Paul, Genesis is factual. And we must take it in that manner. Now, there are different ways of being factual. 

Let's say for instance, someone were to ask you describe the process of human reproduction from the point of conception to the point of birth, and the person asking you that was a biology professor, and you were to write that down on your biology exam, what you write down would have a certain format and to do it accurately, you'd have to describe certain details of anatomy. Now, let's say your child asks you a little child asks, Where do babies come from? You will not give exactly the same kind of answer as you give to the biology professor. But nonetheless, you can still give a true answer a factual answer, and you'll speak of mommy and daddy and their love for each other. And you may use a figure of speech here or there, or you may be a little more straightforward. But you're not going to express it exactly the same way as you would for the science professor. Now, when God speaks to us in Genesis, he's not necessarily answering in the mode that a science professor would ask on an exam, he may be giving us a simplified and clear history occasionally using a figure of speech or there, but he's given us history. Backwards illustration, Where do babies come from? If you say the start brings them Honey, you're just giving a myth. 

There is a way of expressing history in a simplified form, but it is very different from just making up a story. And Genesis one through 11 is not a case of the Stark did it honey. God did it. God is real. Adam was real. Eve was real. The creation of the world was real. The fall into sin was a real fall, God's judgment and the flood. Were a real judgment and a real flood. And we are to understand and believe those chapters of Genesis as real history, even if God doesn't go into abundant scientific detail about how he did everything, Genesis is factual. Here's an article about perspicuity. perspicuity is one of those unusual words, which just means clearness. And the perspicuity of Scripture is a long standing doctrine that scripture can be understood. We affirm the clarity of Scripture, and specifically, of its message about salvation from sin. we deny that all passages of Scripture are equally clear or have equal bearing on the message of redemption. So in believing the clarity of Scripture, we don't insist that everything in the Bible is equally obvious or easy to understand. But we do say that in the matter of human sin, and of salvation through Jesus Christ, scripture is abundantly clear to even the most uneducated reader. And we don't need a whole committee of experts to tell us what it means necessarily. 

We do however, know that not every passage of scripture is equally important, is equally related to the message of redemption. And certainly, some are not equally clear, there are some portions even as the Apostle Peter said, of Paul, that are hard to understand. And the doctrine of the clarity of Scripture or of the perspicuity of Scripture has to take into account the fact that not all things are equally clear. Now, how does this relate to Biblical scholarship, we affirm that a person is not dependent for understanding of Scripture on the expertise of biblical scholars, there's a lot you can understand from the Bible, without a lot of expert help and advice. Even so, we deny that a person should ignore the fruits of the technical study of Scripture by biblical scholars. Now, that's not a contradiction, that is simply observing two sides of the truth. The truth is that there are many portions of Scripture and much of the most important aspect of Scripture that you don't need experts to explain to you. 

You need to simply listen with an open mind with the help of the Holy Spirit, and you will be able to grasp much of it. You do not need an official magisterium for all such things as the Catholic churches claimed, and neither do you need a panel of experts from Protestant seminaries, who are the only ones who could possibly understand what the Bible means no, you're not dependent for grasping the Scripture. This is what the reformers and others have fought for the right for people to read the Bible for themselves in their own language, and to benefit from the Bible. But one can go to the opposite extreme and say, I and I alone, can understand everything that is worth understanding in the Bible, and my superior intelligence. And the obvious clarity of the Bible on all matters means that I can just ignore all those experts who needs them. The fact is, you need them, I need him. Even every Bible Dictionary and commentary that you might turn to or every map was repaired by somebody who wasn't you. So even the helps that you might use in understanding the Bible, were prepared by someone besides yourself. The translation of the Bible from the Greek and the Hebrew was done by people who were experts in technical study of Scripture, who were scholars, you would not have access to the Bible, if that work had not been done by people who understood those original languages. And so we deny that we should just say, oh, who needs them? 

Devout scholars, who are part of the body of Christ are a part of the body that the rest of the body can really benefit from, they shouldn't get their nose in the air, they shouldn't get too high an opinion of themselves and say, oh, nobody can understand anything of the Bible without me. But there are some things where some folks have put in a lot of study with a devout heart and a brilliant mind, and they have a lot to teach us. There are many passages in the Bible that are challenging. And with the help of people who have more learning than we do, we can gain a great deal of understanding in what God is communicating in those passages. So that's a healthy attitude toward Bible scholars appreciating them, learning from them, but not just deferring to them and say, Oh, I could never read the Bible on my own because only experts can grasp anything, but no, read the Bible on your own, read it over and over again. And then be willing to listen to others of more knowledge, who have also read the Bible and studied it with great care. And finally, the final article is on biblical preaching, we affirm that the only type of preaching which sufficiently conveys the divine revelation and its proper application to life is that which faithfully expounds the text of Scripture as the Word of God, we deny that the preacher has any message from God. 

Apart from the text of Scripture, a preacher who gets up and tells his funny little stories and entertains people, and is not basing his message on the Word of God has no divine authority. Likewise, a preacher who gets up and claims to preach from the Bible but got his interpretation badly wrong, is not preaching with divine authority. He's not rightly understanding the word of truth and not rightly handling it. And that means for those of us who are preachers, we have a great calling to try to understand what the text of the Word of God says, to understand it accurately. And then, when we understand it accurately, we know it is the very word of the living God Himself. And when we get up in the pulpit, we speak with the authority of the living God. And that means we can't just be lazy and short circuit the process of careful study to determine what the text of Scripture is saying to us. There are many other articles in the Chicago statement on biblical hermeneutics that we've looked at those 25 articles are each quite important for those of us who are preachers. This last one is kind of the upshot. If you're going to preach in the name of God and on the authority of God, you had better anchor everything in the text of the written word of God.