Category: hermeneutics

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hermeneutics human salvation scripture study

What Is Faith (According to The Bible)?

abraham-faith-isaac

What is faith? I’ve seen answers that range from another religion (for example “one of many faiths”) down through some sort of fairy-tale opinion that stands opposed to science.

In the Bible, we’ll see all sorts of usage on “faith” and “belief”—sometimes even referring to when someone adheres to the doctrines that make up Christianity. One of the best usages of faith is the one that is tied to the concept of justification.

Faith is just an archaic word for trust. What I love about seeing faith, or trust, tied to justification in texts like Romans 4 (see more of the Romans study), that it explains the nature of the concept even while using, basically, case-law. No more fuzzy lessons grounded in someone’s personal trust issues, but rather taking the structure of Hebrews 11:1 where it says “faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen” and garnishing it with doctrinal meat.

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apologetics hermeneutics human

How The Bible Really Talks About Fellowship

Today, “fellowship” is a weird word. If you’ve been paying attention, you might’ve heard it in Hollywood: the Fellowship of the Ring. More often though, it’s a church word, even if it just Christian-speak for something else.

You might hear it in reference to some time at church, maybe between meetings, or perhaps on a Saturday evening, when Christians get together over snacks, coffee, a meal, a game, or a movie. Sometimes you hear some folk talking about their time hanging out with Christian friends at the golf course, saying “We had some good fellowship yesterday.” Once, a guy described to me his date from the previous night as “fellowship”. Scare quotes not intended.

It seems Christians call hanging out with unbelievers “being with friends”; if only Christians are involved it’s “fellowship”.

Some Christians, feeling that something is off, try to patch it up. Instead of a hangout time, they’ll set aside a special time.  Since, they figure, koinonia (fellowship in Greek, if you care about original languages) means holding things in common with a spirit of unity then we need to grow to love each other—and that means liking one another. These special meetings will allow people to grow in knowledge and spiritual support of one another. See my rant about small groups.

The main mistakes in all of these ideas are that (A) they’re hopelessly bent inward and (B) they ignore the Biblical focus of fellowship.

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hermeneutics human scripture

When Is A Door Not A Door?

The other day, my buddy Keith Keyser sent me a link to an article by James Hamilton Jr., an associate professor at Southern Baptist Seminary whereby Hamilton lays down what he sees are the logical ends of adhering to dynamic equivalence theory (going forward I’ll refer to it as functional equivalence) when it comes to Bible Translations. In the end, he says, the translator has decided to translate what he thinks the author means over against the words the author uses. His main examples were grounded on the “glory” language of the Gospel according to John and the importance of retaining that sort of thing. His closing thoughts are that if one doesn’t know the original languages then one should stick to a formal equivalence translation.

I’m torn because I’m a bilingual Hispanic American.

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apologetics eschatology hermeneutics human philosophy

What About Hell I Don’t Know

Textually, as I covered in a couple of posts before this, I must affirm a literal hell which consists of judgment, separation from God, punishment, eternality and should be rightfully shunned. I think it is dangerous to say the place doesn’t exist when the volume of Scripture teeters with the weight of the matter. I also gave some responses to the nay-hellsayers and some broad theological reasons why we should affirm a hell. This was all consistent with the broad philosophical reasons I gave earlier which allow the doctrine of hell.

But in this last post, I wanted to touch on the fact that although we know certain things from the text, there are certain things we don’t know and can’t even really be sure. We might be able to posit careful answers but even then, those answers might need a lot of nuancing or niggling when we’re not forced to appeal to mystery. So if you wish, these are questions that may or may not have answers but I may not be as confident on them as the textual basis already listed.

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eschatology hermeneutics history human

Get The Gehenna Out of Here?

People love talking about the love of Jesus. Man, that Old Testament was brutal—the God there equally so: ordering death of people, constantly warning of impending judgment, horrid stuff. But the Jesus of the New Testament is fundamentally different: loving, warm, drawing all men to himself, eating with sinners and judging no one! Not like that nasty Pharisee Paul.

But these folk forget that the person who spoke about hell most was not Paul or James or even good old Peter: it was Jesus. Metaphor after metaphor, story after story, constantly making the point of a judgment to come and a punishment to follow. This same Jesus who would sit with sinners is the one who would tell sinners that it was better that they rip their eye out of their socket and throw it into hell than their whole body gets thrown into the fiery hell (Matt 18:19).

Of course, the word there isn’t technically hell: it’s Gehenna.  Nay-Hellsayers are quick to point out that it’s a Greek transliteration of a Hebrew term which is Hinnom Valley. This valley was a deep ravine near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem where trash was thrown.  The stuff there was cut off from the life of the people and sent over there. Jesus, the master of metaphor, knew the place well and had no problem using it.

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