Hermeneutics

The Lord who opened the Scriptures

The word comes from the Greek hermēneuō (ἑρμηνεύω), ‘to interpret’. On the road to Emmaus the risen Jesus did exactly that.

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He explained to them what was written in all the Scriptures about Himself.

Luke 24:27

‘Explained’ here is a compound of the same verb, diermēneuō (διερμηνεύω). "Christ is the best expositor of Scripture," says Matthew Henry of this scene Matthew Henry. Long before, when the exiles returned, the Levites "read from the Book of the Law of God, explaining it and giving insight, so that the people could understand what was being read" (Nehemiah 8:8).

Hermeneutics usually asks three questions. First, what did this text mean when it was written? That means attending to words and grammar, historical setting, the surrounding passage, and genre: poem, history, law, parable or letter. Second, where does it stand in the whole of Scripture? Harder passages are read in the light of clearer ones, and every part within the story that moves from promise to fulfilment in Christ. Third, what does it ask of us now? Paul urges Timothy to be "an unashamed workman who accurately handles the word of truth" (2 Timothy 2:15). Interpretation is careful study, and it is prayer for the Spirit's illumination.

How the church has read

In the third century Origen taught that Scripture has a literal, a moral and a spiritual sense Origen, On First Principles, while the teachers of Antioch gave more weight to the historical meaning of the text. Augustine taught that obscure passages are to be explained by clearer ones and that all interpretation must build up the love of God and neighbour Augustine, On Christian Teaching. The medieval church spoke of four senses, literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical (pointing to our final hope), and Thomas Aquinas held that every spiritual sense rests on the literal, from which alone arguments may be drawn Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae. The Reformers established the plain, grammatical and historical sense and read Scripture by Scripture. The Westminster Confession (1646) says:

The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself; and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly.

Westminster Confession 1.9

In the modern period, critical methods for studying the Bible's history and text developed. Evangelical scholars gladly use the tools of language and historical research, while rejecting starting assumptions that rule out miracle and revelation in advance.

Where Christians differ

The Catholic Church still speaks of the literal and the spiritual senses of Scripture Catechism of the Catholic Church, and teaches that authentic interpretation of the word of God is entrusted to the Magisterium Dei Verbum. The Orthodox read Scripture with the Fathers and within the liturgy. Most evangelicals follow grammatical-historical interpretation, but with different emphases. Some read Christ widely in the Old Testament, others more cautiously, only as far as the New Testament shows the way (see typology); and covenant theology and dispensationalism use different principles in reading the prophecies given to Israel. See also the lesson Interpreting Scripture and How should we read the Bible?