JOLLYBLOGGER

How We Do Theology

For today I am reposting some thoughts I prepared for the elders in my church on how we "do" theology.  I originally posted this on February 26, 2004.  Hopefully some of this will be helpful to you.

How We Do Theology

Here's the third installment in my series on "How To Study the Bible" for the elders at my church.

I. How We Do Theology – Explicit vs. Inferential

Theology is inescapable – we are always theologizing. Anytime anyone says anything about God or about a Biblical teaching and does not quote a passage of Scripture he is theologizing. Anytime anyone reads a passage of Scripture and explains what it means, he is theologizing. Anytime anyone takes a group of Scriptures together and makes a summary statement about what those passages mean, he is theologizing.

 

Here's the third installment in my series on "How To Study the Bible" for the elders at my church.

I. How We Do Theology – Explicit vs. Inferential

Theology is inescapable – we are always theologizing. Anytime anyone says anything about God or about a Biblical teaching and does not quote a passage of Scripture he is theologizing. Anytime anyone reads a passage of Scripture and explains what it means, he is theologizing. Anytime anyone takes a group of Scriptures together and makes a summary statement about what those passages mean, he is theologizing.

The Problem of Over-Exegesis

As a young Christian listening to radio preachers and reading commentaries I developed a love for expository preaching and a real admiration for those who could "dig out" the meat of a passage.  And I made it my ambition to do the same when I became a preacher.

This is a worthy ambition, but it never ocurred to me that it is possible to overdo exegesis until I read the following words by Moises Silva.  The following comes from pages 11-14 of his book God, Language and Scripture, and in a bit of a comical way he shows how it is possible for "in-depth exegesis" to actually obscure the meaning of a biblical text.  I originally posted this in February of 2004.

How to Study the Bible - the Epistles

For those of you who read yesterday's post on "How to Study the Bible," here's the completion of that post. It's the chapter summary notes I made from the book "How To Read the Bible for All It's Worth," on the chapter on interpreting the epistles.

How to Study the Bible - Read it carefully!

This post is ending up very differently than it started. I'm finally getting back to posting on my ongoing series on "How to Study the Bible." If you haven't read any of the other posts in the series, this is part of ongoing training for the elders at my church. We are studying the book "How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth" by Fee and Stuart. These posts of mine are basically summary chapters of the book. I have to admit that my enthusiasm for this book has soured quite a bit with the new addition and its glowing recommendations of the TNIV and NRSV. But, there are still some good things to be had in the rest of the chapters.

This past week we studied the chapter on the Epistles and I intended to post the chapter summary notes I gave to our elders along with some introductory comments. But, my introductory comments got the better of me and have become a post in themselves.

When I do get around to posting my notes from the book, you will notice that they are not very fancy and not very deep. The basic advice for understanding the Epistles is to learn to read them in the context they were written. The main steps are to read the entire epistle in one sitting, then go back and read it paragraph by paragraph, summarizing each paragraph in a few sentences and looking for the logical flow of the argument. Pretty basic stuff. Then there is some advice on how to handle problem passages. About the only tools that Fee and Stuart recommend are a commentary for problem passages and a Bible dictionary or something that can give you information about the historical context.

Bible Study sans Bible

I started to write this blog entry in a very sarcastic tone, but I assume that it is the Holy Spirit that is working to cause me to repent of this attitude. However, I must say that I am deeply troubled by the implications of the article Inhabiting the Biblical Narrative: How I Learned to Stop Doing Bible Studies and Start Loving the Bible Again by Tony Jones, on the Youth Specialties website. In reading some other stuff by Tony, it is clear that he has been deeply influenced by postmodernism, which I am deeply at odds with, but I also can see that he doesn't write as a know-it-all who has all the answers. Tony has a great love for and wants to impact the lives of students with the gospel and he wrestles with how to do this in a postmodern context. In this article Tony makes it clear that he is on a journey and he welcomes the conversation and is willing to learn. It is clear that he is a man of integrity and humility and a man from whom there is much I could learn. So, though I disagree with his ideas this in no way should be read as an attack on his character.

Having said that, the article I am referencing above is his story that basically advocates Bible study without the Bible. I am sure that Tony would argue that the truth of Scripture is being communicated, but I would contend it is not, and this is deeply troubling.

Translation Issues, Part 2

Here's my next post in the continuing series on "How To Study the Bible." As you can see, right now I am fixated on the debate between formal and dynamic equivalence translations. At this point I am playing point-counterpoint with the books How To Read the Bible for All Its Worth, by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart and The Word of God in English, by Leland Ryken. In my mind, Ryken is winning the debate.

Presuppositions in Bible Study

Tim at Challies has a great post on the presuppositions we bring to our study of the Bible. You can read it here.

Tim basically exhorts us to approach the Bible objectively, laying aside our presuppositions. And, he gives a great illustration involving the Loch Ness monster that illustrates the perils of presuppositions. That's good, creative writing when you can get a Bible study principle from a study of the Loch Ness monster.

My only addition to what Tim says is to say that I doubt we can ever rid ourselves completely of our presuppositions. While we strive for objectivity we ought to admit up front that we will never attain it. If we can admit our presuppositions up front, this gives our critics an opportunity to critique not only our positions, but our biases, thus doing a better job of sharpening us.

Cornelious Van Til taught that one can examine the faith from within the citadel of faith. Having presuppositions does not necessarily prevent us from understanding the Bible, as long as we lay them on the table, as best we can, and let others critique them.

Thoughts on Biblical Exegesis

Josh Davey at Letters from Babylon has a couple of good posts on biblical exegesis here and here.

The gist of these is to say that the interpretation of Scripture is not merely a matter of saying "we should interpret the Bible literally." There is literal language in Scripture and there is figurative language in Scripture and we need to interpret any passage accordingly. He has some good thoughts on the historical and literary considerations we need to take into account when interpreting any passage of Scripture, and how this is going to influence things. He may have said this in there, I don't remember, but I would add that we also want to consider genre. Poetry is very different than prose and should be interpreted accordingly. If you read his posts you'll get some good thoughts on this.

There is one friendly clarification I would like to add to his thoughts and two additional comments.

Translation Issues, Part 1

I'm finally back in the saddle on the stuff I am writing on "How to Study the Bible." If you have followed any of my previous posts on this subject you may remember that I am leading the elders of my church through a study of the book How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth, by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart. Basically, I'm just reading the book, digesting it and summarizing it for the elders. We have now come to the third chapter on using a good bible translation.

When I read this book a few years ago, in this chapter they were recommending a bible using the "functional" or "dynamic" equivalence theory of translation, and they came down strongly in favor of using the NIV. They brought out, what I thought at the time, were some valid arguments against the "formal" equivalence theory of translation that you see in translations like the NASB and KJV.

Since that time, I have reconsidered what they wrote, and what I believe about this, especially in light of my current reading of the book The Word of God in English, by Leland Ryken. This is an important topic and I have decided to go slowly through this material, and not present a finalized critique until I finish reading Ryken's book and can compare it with Fee and Stuarts.

What I can say, from a preliminary standpoint is that the meaning of "dynamic equivalence" is very dynamic. The dynamic equivalence of today is not your father's dynamic equivalence. Whereas the NIV was the first of the dynamic equivalence translations it was a very conservative one, and even with its problems, it actually preserved the forms very nicely for the most part.

However, with the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), the New Living Translation (NLT), and Today's New International Version (TNIV), dynamic equivalence has taken a quantum leap (forward, it's advocates would say - backward, I would say). While I was in Californial recently I picked up the new edition of Fee and Stuart's book, and in perusing it I find that they are now advocating the NRSV and TNIV. This is a whole new bayliwick. The TNIV has taken dynamic equivalence to new levels. And, even though Fee and Stuart seem to be suggesting that the NRSV is more of a "formal" equivalence translation, it has imported some dangerous ideas from the "dynamic" theory.

That being said, what follows is a lesson I presented to our session as a preliminary thing. This is just to explain the different translation theories and to illustrate dynamic vs. formal equivalence with a particular verse.

Multiple Bible translations and difficulty in memorization

It's been awhile since I posted on the category of "How to Study the Bible." If you looked at any of my other posts you may remember that I am taking our elders through a study on this subject this year, using the book How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth by Stuart and Fee.

I haven't posted on this subject because I was out of town for a few weeks, then when I came back we had other things come up. But, we are getting back on track - at our next meeting we will be back on track.

In preparation for this I am coming to the chapter in the Fee and Stuart book on Bible translations. I will be re-reading it, but in reading it a few years ago I remember them making a convincing case for the superiority of the dynamic equivalence theory of translation. As background on this there are two main theories - formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence. Formal equivalence seeks to render the form of the words in the original languages in their nearest equivalents to the English language. It aims, as close as it can, for word for word accuracy. Dynamic equivalence aims more for meaning. Where words in the original are more obscure to us, they will place a greater emphasis on conveying the meaning than the exact form of the words. That is a grossly simplified explanation but hopefully it is enough to get started.

Right now, one of the hottest books going on translation is The Word of God in English by Leland Ryken. John MacArthur says that this is th e last word on translation theory. I am also aware that Ryken comes down in favor of a "mostly literal theory" of translation and is a harsh critic of dynamic equivalence.

So, I have been trying to read this before doing the next lesson so I can compare and contrast. What I have read today doesn't address the issue explicitly, but Ryken had one thought provoking quote regarding a problem we now face with so many translations.

We have lost a common bible for English-speaking Christians. The Christian community no longer speaks a universal biblical "language." And with a loss of a common Bible we have lost ease in memorization of the Bible. After all, when a common Bible exists, people hear it over and over and "memorize" it virtually without consciously doing so, but this ease is lost when translations multiply (p. 62).

This makes sense to me. How many songs do I know by heart that I never tried to memorize. I just know them from hearing them all the time. As it is today we rarely get to hear the same words twice, so they never really get a chance to sink in.