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Biblical Interpretation Quotes

Browse 13 quotes about Biblical Interpretation.

Biblical Interpretation Quotes

“He gave me a new German translation of the Bible and opened it to the first page. There I read again and again: 'Und die Erde war Wirrnis und Wüste. Finsternis allüber Abgrund. Braus Gottes brütend allüber den Wassern.' It could have been written about me, I thought. I thought that the beginning had been like this and I kept on hearing these words sound in my heart.”

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Book:Lili: A Portrait of the First Sex Change
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“For instance, in the matter of the inspiration of Scripture, he fixed first on the obvious fact, which was forgotten by four furious centuries of sectarian battle, that the meaning of Scripture is very far from self-evident; and that we must often interpret it in the light of other truths. If a literal interpretation is really and flatly contradicted by an obvious fact, why then we can only say that the literal interpretation must be a false interpretation. But the fact must really be an obvious fact. And unfortunately, nineteenth-century scientists were just as ready to jump to the conclusion that any guess about nature was an obvious fact, as were seventeenth-century sectarians to jump to the conclusion that any guess about Scripture was the obvious explanation. Thus, private theories about what the Bible ought to mean, have met in loud and widely advertised controversy, especially in the Victorian time; and this clumsy collision of two very impatient forms of ignorance was known as the quarrel of Science and Religion. (chapter 3)”

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Book:Saint Thomas Aquinas
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“There are good theological reasons to reject making authorial intention the goal of the interpretation of Scripture. First, we must recognize that what has traditionally been considered authoritative for the church is Scripture, not the intentions, real or imagined, of the original authors. Yes, Christian interpreters throughout history have talked about what Paul or some other biblical writer may have meant to say, but that has traditionally not been taken to limit the meaning of the text to that intention. Thus, even if the psalmist intended to speak of David or some other king of ancient Israel, the church has always considered it legitimate to interpret the psalm as referring also—or even only or supremely—to Christ. Even if the human authors did not intend to affirm the Trinity in the first century, the church may legitimately interpret Scripture in Trinitarian terms. The church has traditionally not located the site of inspiration to be in the mind of the human author but in the text of Scripture itself. The shift to concentrating on the intentions of the human author is something that only happened in the modern era, with the rise of historical criticism.”

ChristianityBibleScriptureInterpretationHermeneuticsBiblical InterpretationHistorical CriticismAuthorial Intent
Book:Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation
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“Good docents often begin by asking the viewer, “What do you see in this work?” The idea that the expert should be allowed to constrain the interpretation of others rightly offends our sensibilities about museums and art. It ought to offend us just as much when applied to Scripture.”

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Book:Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation
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“I urge not that we assume that love will provide a reliable foundation for knowledge but that we nonetheless keep the requirements of love of neighbor foremost in our interpretations of Scripture. We should consider, for example, love to be a necessary criterion (a minimum) when defending an interpretation of Scripture even if it cannot be a sufficient criterion that will guarantee ethical interpretation.”

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Book:Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation
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“The Bible is not a free-floating book of ageless wisdom, an interesting historical document, or a weapon that can be put in the service of any political goal. The Bible is a gift from God to the church, given for a particular purpose: to shape that community into the kind of people who can fulfill their commission to make disciples of all nations and steward God’s good creation, anticipating its final redemption.”

ScriptureRedemptionStewardshipBible InterpretationPolitical CommentaryThe ChurchBiblical InterpretationThe Great Commission
Book:The Ballot and the Bible: How Scripture Has Been Used and Abused in American Politics and Where We Go from Here
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“What is government? What is the relationship between theology and politics? How should Christians think about their political participation? These questions typically get lost in our conversations. We jump into the juicy fight of the moment, whip out our favorite Bible verses, and completely forget to ask if we even agree on the nature of human government or the relationship between the church and earthly governments.”

GovernmentTheologyGovernment QuotesChristian WorldviewBiblical InterpretationPolitics And ReligionBible And Politics
Book:The Ballot and the Bible: How Scripture Has Been Used and Abused in American Politics and Where We Go from Here
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“It is well known that Pentecost reverses Babel. The people who built the tower of Babel sought to make a name, and a unity, for themselves. At Pentecost, God builds his temple, uniting people in Christ. Unity – interpretive agreement and mutual understanding – is, it would appear, something that only God can accomplish. And accomplish it he does, but not in the way we might have expected. Although onlookers thought that the believers who received the Spirit at Pentecost were babbling (Acts 2:13), in fact they were speaking intelligibly in several languages (Acts 2:8-11). Note well: they were all saying the same thing (testifying about Jesus) in different languages. It takes a thousand tongues to say and sing our great Redeemer’s praise. Protestant evangelicalism evidences a Pentecostal plurality: the various Protestant streams testify to Jesus in their own vocabularies, and it takes many languages (i.e. interpretive traditions) to minister the meaning of God’s Word and the fullness of Christ. As the body is made up of many members, so many interpretations may be needed to do justice to the body of the biblical text. Why else are there four Gospels, but that the one story of Jesus was too rich to be told from one perspective only? Could it be that the various Protestant traditions function similarly as witnesses who testify to the same Jesus from different situations and perspectives?”

ChristianityReformationPentecostEcumenismBiblical InterpretationChurch Unity
Book:Biblical Authority after Babel: Retrieving the Solas in the Spirit of Mere Protestant Christianity
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“The Qur’an does not hesitate to retell biblical incidents with modifications—or to introduce entirely new vignettes around iconic biblical figures. As a book purposely not constructed around a formal narrative, the Qur’an leverages these allusions primarily to emphasize a moral value rather than re- veal an origin story. Every time the Qur’an presents a story, it always follows with terse analyses synthesizing key takeaways.”

Biblical InspirationBiblical SeriesBiblical InterpretationBiblical MessageBiblical Principles
Book:The Life of the Qur'an: From Eternal Roots to Enduring Legacy
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“The irrational bias of the myth of progress can be seen in the tendency to criticize orthodox church fathers for reading Greek metaphysics into the text, while overlooking Baruch Spinoza's rationalism and Bruno Bauer's Hegelianism on their own biblical interpretation. Is this because "Greek" metaphysics is bad, but "German" metaphysics is good? According to the history of hermeneutics as told from an Enlightenment perspective, if it were not for the pagan Enlightenment, Christians would still be reading Greek metaphysics into the Bible like Augustine and making it say whatever they pleased like Origen. Is it not rather bizarre that this narrative asks us to believe that it took the pagan Epicureanism of the Enlightenment to rescue us from the "subjectivism" of the Nicene fathers, medieval schoolmen, and Protestant Reformers?”

PhilosophyChristianityMetaphysicsHermeneuticsExegesisBiblical InterpretationMyth Of Progress
Book:Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition: Recovering the Genius of Premodern Exegesis
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“In the wake of the Reformation, as the correct reading of scripture became a matter of increasingly high stakes, Hebrew, as well as Aramaic, Samaritan, Ethiopian, Armenian, and other languages that preserved versions of scripture and documents of the early church, became essential weapons of theological warfare.”

Orientalism2013ExegesisProtestant ReformationBiblical InterpretationCounter Reformation
Book:Egyptian Oedipus: Athanasius Kircher and the Secrets of Antiquity
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