p 77 -- Appendix B -- OTHER METHODS OF INTERPRETATION
The history of any church body is also the history of its interpretation of Scripture. By implication a shift or change in the method used for interpretation of Scripture by a church, its scholars, or others within it inevitably would be accompanied by a shift or change in its course, doctrines, self -understanding, purpose, and mission. (Biblical Interpretation Today , p. 1)
During the first fourteen hundred years of the Christian era, two methods of Biblical interpretation competed for acceptance. One was developed at Antioch in Syria known as the grammatical -historical method. This school of thought insisted on the literal sense or meaning of the Scripture, and placed emphasis on grammatical studies. In contrast to this approach the school at Alexandria in Egypt adopted an allegorical method which claimed that all Scripture had a spiritual meaning, but not all had a literal meaning. Thus of the two, the most important was the spiritual. The concepts of the school at Antioch were eclipsed by the Alexandrian perceptions; however, during the Reformation these were revived as a basis for an understanding of the Word of God by Luther and the other Reformers - Calvin, Zwingli, and Melanchthon.
Following the Reformation period, arising out of the age of Enlightenment and rationalism in the 18th Century, a critical method known as the historical-critical method, developed. This became the method of interpreting the Bible by modern Protestantism. Its objective was to destroy the conservative orthodox view of Biblical truth and history. Today certain scholars trained in this method, and who used it, now declare it "bankrupt" and having run its course must be considered to be at an "end." This method reduced the Bible to a dead letter And destroyed faith in its divine origin.
"Until about 1940, practically all Adventist Bible study relied on what is known as the proof text method. Today, most non-scholars in the church still follow that method, whereas almost all Bible scholars follow the historical method. The SDA Bible Commentary in the fifties (1952-57) was the first major Adventist publication to follow the historical method as its guiding principle." (Spectrum, Vol. 11, #2, pp. 17-18)
This same writer (Raymond F. Cottrell) in a way which demeans the "proof-text" approach compared the two methods. He wrote:
The proof text method of Bible study consists of a study of the Bible in translation (English for instance), of reliance on the analogy of Scripture on the verbal level with little if any attention to context, of giving, at best, inadequate attention to the historical setting of a statement or message and what it meant to the people of its own time, and of permitting subjective preconceptions to control conclusions arrived at deductively.
By contrast, the historical method consists of a study of the Bible in its original languages, of accepting the literary context of every statement and message as normative for its meaning, of determining what the messages of the Bible meant to the various reading audiences to which they were originally addressed, in terms of the intention of the inspired writer and the Holy Spirit, of accepting that original meaning as a guide to an accurate understanding of their import for us today, and of reasoning inductively, arriving at conclusions on the basis of evidence. (Ibid. p. 18)
There is nothing wrong with the study of the Bible in the original languages. It is to be commended. In fact, through the Review and Herald in the last decade of the previous Century, an attempt was made to give instruction in New Testament Greek for the ministry and laity of the Church alike. Neither is it wrong to
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understand the context in which a passage of Scripture was written and the message intended for the one or ones for whom it was written. BUT, it must be kept in mind that the Holy Spirit was giving, in many instances, messages for a different time and in a different context. Further, the Divine instruction in doctrinal concepts was laced throughout the entire Bible. These statements must be brought together so as to formulate a complete and accurate concept of a given doctrine.
All of this points up the simple fact that we need to know beyond question what we believe, and why we believe it, based upon the Bible as the sole and infallible source of truth. And the method of interpretation one uses will determine how he will arrive at the formulation of that truth. TOP
TERMS AND THEIR MEANINGS
Connected with the historical-critical method of interpreting the Bible are various approaches which have been used by modern scholars to find what could be called the "bottom line" in determining the origin of the written Word. To familiarize you with these names and the meaning of the terms used, we list the following:
Source Criticism attempts to discover the sources of a passage of Scripture. It assumes "that the production of Scripture was conditioned historically not only by the fact that it had combined documents with a prior history of their own, but also that wider movements in human life had influenced their content." (Tucker, Form Criticism, p. iv.)
Form Criticism attempts to discover the literary style and structure of a unit of literature as it relates to the sociological setting out of which it arose. It "presupposes that, however unwittingly, all Israelites over many centuries contributed to the making of the Bible; that it was simply a result of their having had a communal existence as Israelites." (Ibid, p. vi)
Tradition Criticism attempts to trace the process by which a piece of literature moved from stage to stage until it reached its final form. It "assumes that the whole community, in all expressions of its existence, participated in giving shape to the tradition and in handing it on, generation after generation." (Ibid.)
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Redaction Criticism attempts to discover and describe the theological themes on the basis of which the redactor selected, modified, and shaped the materials in their final form. It "assumes that the final collector(s) of the document was himself an author working within and conditioned by a specific socio-political-economic religious life setting."
With all of these methods at work, one can well understand how the Word of God has been reduced to a dead letter in apostate liberal Protestantism by adopting even in a modified form some of these approaches.
(The data for this essay was taken for the most part verbatim from the illustrated appendix of the syllabus - Current Issues and Revelation-Inspiration - by E. Edward Zinke, prepared for the 1985, . World Ministers Council, New Orleans. LA.)