Biblical texts-past and future meanings

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Mar 2000 by Pinnock, Clark H

I. THE TEST OF CRUCIALITY

Millard Erickson has remarked: "I think that the issue of contemporizing the biblical message is possibly the single most important issue facing evangelical hermeneutics today."1 He is referring to what 1 would call the test of cruciality. That is, in order to follow Jesus in our generation, we need to have an ear for the word of God even as we listen to the word of God. We need to be able to speak a timely word in our modern situations and circumstances. This is not so easy for evangelicals who have a certain fear of new interpretations owing to the trauma of the experience with liberal theology, but God is calling us nonetheless to grow as hearers of the Ward of God.2

Same readers seem content to be antiquarian with regard to Scripture. Once they have established (as they suppose) the past meaning, they think the job is finished, but it is not. We have also to be concerned about the Word coming alive in new contexts. Scripture ought not to remain a dead letter but constitute a living challenge to people of every present time. When I speak of "future" meanings of the Biblical text, I refer to the ways in which the Bible addresses us today. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once asked: "Who is Jesus Christ for us today?" To be sure, one could say that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Nevertheless, the proclamation comes to people in ever new ways through the Spirit, The present context always represents an opportunity for a flesh hearing of the gospel, and Bible reading that is mature requires the readiness to consider fresh interpretations and applications, even if they shake us up.

Cruciality, then, is a test of theological faithfulness. It means that we ask not only whether a given interpretation is true to the original meaning but also whether it is pertinent to the present situation or an evasion of what really matters now. Is this reading (we ought to ask) what God wills or not? There is the original meaning of words, and there is the truth toward which they are pointing. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a sense of this when he wrote to fellow clergymen from a Birmingham jail and said it was the time for white churches to stop standing on the sidelines and take a stand against racism. In his discernment of the will of God, he named the truth toward which the Scriptures were pointing at that moment, and time has confirmed his conviction. He was alive to Jesus' distinction: "You tithe mint, dill, and cummin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith" (Matt 23:23).3

Having listened to the text and having attempted to grasp what it is saying in its own context, we have to let it speak to us. The language of "applying" the text to a situation is too weak an expression to render what needs to happen. More than a rational exegetical decision, God must be allowed to challenge our very being and impact our world through the text, if we have ears to hear. Hermeneutics has the responsibility to reflect on the word of God in relation to contemporary experience and context. Not to do so is to invite Jesus' critical question: "You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky-why do you not know how to interpret the present time?" (Luke 12:56).4

II. FUTURE MEANINGS

Witnesses to the gospel cannot be content with past meanings in an antiquarian way. In order to be timely in our testimony, we need to be able to access future meanings as well. That is, we need to cultivate an eye and an ear, not only for the meanings of human authors in their various historical settings, but also for the directions and trajectories that belong to the flow of God's historical redemptive project. While making use of literary and historical scholarship, we are not the prisoners of a textual past, but listen for the word of the Lord and watch for the fulfillment of God's promises that are still outstanding.

Historical study of Scripture can help us to hear God's word, because God has made himself known in the particularities of history---in specific persons, places, and events. Naturally we want to know as much about them as we can. So it is with Jesus Christ, the Word was made flesh. Because we respect his humanity, we want to know as much as we can about his historical career. In the same way, we respect the human reality of the Biblical witnesses and pay close attention to how they express themselves. At the same time, we want tn avoid being like the scribes of Jesus' day who studied the text carefully but were blind to the ways in which its message was being worked out in their own generation. They were Scriptural positivists, as it were, in relation to the past meanings of texts. They were not sensitive to the fact that the reason we engage the narratives of Scripture is not just to refresh our memories but also because the history of salvation of which they speak is not finished and we anticipate greater actualizations of the promises of God.

Tom Wright offers a nice analogy. Suppose we discovered a Shakespearian play (he suggests) whose fifth act has been lost. The four extant acts contain a wealth of characterizations and dynamics of plot, and so the work cries out to be performed. What would we do? Wright suggests that we would not try to write a fifth act in a detached scholarly way but rather commit the text to experienced Shakespearian actors who, having immersed themselves in the four acts, would work out what the fifth act might reasonably be like, had the Bard himself written it. Based, as it were, on the authority of the first four acts, the drama could be brought to completion in an appropriate manner. Living as we do after Acts 28, it is our responsibility to fill in details of our faith and practice out of a watching and waiting on God.5