Principles of Hermeneutics - A Diagram

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Visiting Professor

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

3 August 2011

The Bible requires a proper way of interpreting it. In main scholars are either doing it with tools from above or from below, from the objective or from the subjective. What is necessary is that one understands how our own lives fit into this book we hold in our hands. Before we can understand the Bible, the Bible understands us. Before we can translate the Bible, the Bible translate our lives. Truth targets us, not us the Bible. When we do so, it has already targeted us. Realizing this, we take off our shoes and are on our knees. Suddenly it is not a book any longer. Suddenly my experience is placed behind me, my dogmatism, my own selfish opinions is laid aside, humbly I pray before I open the book. Because this book is written by the Holy Spirit who incepted information to the prophets, who used their own grammar to describe it but leaning over their shoulders the Holy Spirit as Editor read it one more time to make sure that the description is the intent that He had in mind with the content before He revealed Himself to the prophet. It is not only actions but also words that the Spirit reveals since God speaks and acts. The Bible interprets itself and so my baggage of Bultmanianism, Hegelianism, Heideggerism, Troeltschism, and any other taboos, likes, dislikes, hates and loves are laid aside for a while, because the Bible will deal with them its own way. The Holy Spirit free the person of his/her own presuppositions and now with a clean reason, with a faithful cleansed reason, the saved sinner can open the Bible by which he/she was targeted to begin with. But opening the Word of God or the Bible book, is going to expect us to have faith and to act. Faith and practice goes together. What God says He does not say just for esoteric intellectual nicetees for the brain or thoughts. It is to affect our whole life and whole being. Content leads to commitment. Information leads to Transformation. Faith in reading the content becomes doctrinal actualizations. We want to be baptized, we want to keep the Sabbath, we want to pay tithe. It is the living Word of God who interacts with our own life. What it meant becomes a continuation with what it means and there is no break unless clearly so declared, like the transformation of the tabernacle services of Jesus the High Priest and Lamb of God.

And so the diagram can help us as a navigation reading books related to the Bible since all scholars are classified in three groups indicated vertically on the left side. Adventists are in the lower register. The others higher up are degenerated or secularized Adventists or no Adventists at all, but only working at our institutions for the salary.

If one plays with a snake it will bite. Higher Criticism in all its forms is a snake and Adventists are cautioned by Ellen White and also by the Bible to stay away from it. We cannot utilize just a little of it, as some secular Adventists wants to claim, just as one cannot be a little pregnant.