Who among you fears the Lord
and obeys the word of his servant?
Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light,
trust in the name of the Lord
and rely on his God.But now, all you who light fires
and provide yourselves with flaming torches,
go, walk in the light of your fires
and the torches you have set ablaze.
This is what you shall receive from my hand:
You will lie down in torment.
Isaiah 50:10-11
Today we talked in class about non-foundationalist epistemology, particularly the way modernism paved the way for the Church to embrace a foundationalist theory of knowledge. The Church decided to buy into the world’s philosophy of how to know what we know, and out came many doctrines, theologies, and sometimes false teachings.
What has been increasingly clear to me is the way many Christians have been lighting fires (in the imagery of the passage above) in order to find their way, to prove their correct teachings. Fearing the Lord was assumed, and so a man-made pursuit of knowing took center stage. Or perhaps nobody really feared the Lord, because we had discovered the “right way to interpret” or the “correct theology to hold on to.”
It is humbling to read Scripture, because it refreshes us not only by invigorating our souls, but also by convicting us and drawing us back toward God. My professor spoke tonight of a person who ended up believing that his hermeneutic drove him to believe that Jesus did not really fulfill the OT prophecies of the Messiah. He was asked by some of the people who were concerned with this person who had left the faith, and my professor responded: “Find a hermeneutic that will drive you to Jesus!” His point was simply this: the hermeneutic is not the foundation of our faith, but rather what should drive us to God. I have often said that many well-meaning Christians, in an attempt to find the real meaning of the Scriptures, have made a god out of their hermeneutic. Unless God has spoken to us in the way they believe God will communicate (literally, historically, grammatically, etc.), we can’t really hear from God. Of course, there is room for metaphor and symbolism, but the importance placed on hermeneutic is quite clear: get it straight, and your theology will be straight as well.
I think I’d rather fear the Lord and rely on him, rather than on my proper method of interpretation. Because even that is man-made. God, however, is not.
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