“I think a preacher should never take a text and extract from it, as a dentist would a tooth from the jaw, something which, however true in itself, is not the plain literal meaning of the inspired words” (Ryle, Simplicity in Preaching, p. 8).
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I don’t know. So the allegorists went overboard a little but I am not so certain. There are second meanings to texts sometimes.
Yet in a similar vein within the metaphor, some people, pundits and preachers manage to pull pigs teeth from any text!????
Always an amazing literary, oratory or blog comment feat!
I’m surprised you would use a quote like that one. It’s not doing you any favors in discussions about baptism or eschatology.
Spurgeon broke this rule with wild abandon.
Bible would have been shorter had Scripture writers followed this advice.
This is the most fundamental principle in teaching or preaching the Word. The allegorists makes the preacher into a cryptanalyst who is enamored with an almost indecipherable incantation. The uninitiated, although filled with the Spirit, give up hope of ever being able to ‘truly’ understand God’s Word. Rather, the glory of the Reformation is that we rediscovered the perspicuity of God’s Word. Clearly, there are helpful allegorical ways of meditating on God’s Word, but power to change lives comes when a preacher allows the inspired author’s main point to be the main point of his sermon and exhortation. The power… Read more »
I agree strongly with your principle that the author’s main point should be the focus. That’s exactly where the over-enthusiastic allegorists went wrong. It’s still often an issue today – on these very pages I’ve seen Luke 7 taken as an affirmation of military service and the Roman occupation, or Genesis 1 taken as a scientific treatise on the age and early moments of the universe, when it’s obvious that in neither case was that what the author was highlighting in the passage. Unfortunately for the quote’s wording though, in many cases “author’s main intention” and “plain literal meaning” are… Read more »
Correct. Maybe instead of ‘literal interpretation,’ we should speak of the ‘literary interpretation.’ In this way we can account for the nuance of genre and still come to a reasonable understanding of the author’s intentions.
If Luke 7 is silent on those things (and they are applications, BTW, not allegorizations), we might still affirm them.
Obviously Genesis 1 is not a “scientific treatise” in the sense of ancient or modern theorizing. Genesis 1 is a Spirit-inspired description in ordinary language of the acts of God in creating all created things, “in six days” (as Exodus 20:11 puts it).
People seem to think that stating the obvious fact that Genesis is not a scientific treatise dispenses with the problem that it is after all an historical narrative of God’s acts. “Louis Pasteur discovered microbial pathogens” isn’t a scientific treatise, either, but it is an historical statement intended to be taken as such.
Of course, the mere fact that Genesis 1 was clearly not written as a scientific treatise does not automatically mean that it isn’t supposed to represent historical fact. It does mean that if someone continuously uses it mainly for science and even revolves their sermon, not to mention their career and life goals, off of something that is clearly not the object of the text, they’re likely a bit misguided, as we were just talking about in the “author’s intention” or “literary interpretation” discussion right here. In order to determine that Genesis 1 is not likely to be meant to… Read more »
I’ve never heard of anyone who uses Genesis 1 “mainly for science.” What I have seen, a lot, is people using science falsely so called to attack the doctrine of creation. In response, I have seen a lot of scientists and engineers examine the text closely to show that it does not, in fact, contradict anything that science has shown to be true.
When the primary manner in which someone discusses Genesis 1 is in the context of science. Or they start an entire organization devoted to their interpretation of Genesis 1 as science. Or their occupation and source of income is primarily devoted to trying to prove Genesis 1’s validity of science. Or they preach a sermon based around Genesis 1 as science. Then I believe they are using Genesis 1 “mainly for science”. I guess what you mean by “science falsely so called” is to claim that science cannot investigate the validity of historical events, because historical events are not repeatable… Read more »
Y’all, I don’t think it’s referring to finding meanings other than the plain, literal truth. To take the quote that broadly is to ignore the way it’s constructed.
There’s a qualitative difference between searching through something and finding more than was visible on the surface, and taking a forceps and yanking a tooth out of a jaw. If he had meant a careful, thoughtful search, I doubt he’d have used that language.
Here it is in a little more context: “Beware, for the same reason, of taking up what I call fanciful subjects and accommodated texts, and then dragging out of them meanings which the Holy Ghost never intended to put into them. There is no subject needful for the soul’s health which is not to be found plainly taught and set forth in Scripture. This being the case, I think a preacher should never take a text and extract from it, as a dentist would a tooth from the jaw, something which, however true in itself, is not the plain literal… Read more »