Monday, April 1, 2019

The Importance of Plenary Inspiration to Logical Hermeneutics

I believe in the PLENARY INSPIRATION of Scripture. Plenary Inspiration simply means that the whole Bible is inspired, not just parts of it. The substance of this belief has a tremendous impact in the art and science of  hermeneutics which should sometimes be explicitly called Logical Hermeneutics. By logical we follow ordinary rules or conventions of communication, most important of which is the context of the speaker/author, why he used the words he used and the intent of his message.

Divine revelation has to follow the same conventions of communication at even a higher standard. That standard is that of leaving as little room as possible for alternative meanings which could divert from the original intent of the communicator.

The communicator must be logical and the recipient must be logical as well as follow the same logic as the communicator.  The end result should ALWAYS be that the mental picture or concept that the communicator wishes to convey should be replicated in the receiver's mind as close as possible in order for full understanding to be realized, communication to be successful and for our context, revelation is accomplished with intended results.

Because of Plenary Inspiration, the logical interpretation of a part of Scripture should never contradict the big picture of Plenary Inspiration. Word studies are pointless if they lead to contradictions against the main intent of the Word of God. No New Testament interpretation should contradict the Old Testament but instead complement it and should be logically synthesized to remove apparent contradictions. Recall that Jesus Christ Himself authenticated the Old Testament as the Word of God in Matthew 5:17-19.  While there are contradictions that seem to exist within an interpretation, the exegesis should be considered faulty and should never be used for doctrinal application. Otherwise, cultic interpretations will abound.

Because of Plenary inspiration, I believe in a "qualified" verbal inspiration of Scripture. I use the word "qualified" because I have seen those touting verbal inspiration go to the extreme so as to almost imply by their method of exegesis that God actually dictated the words of Scripture. That viewpoint is a Biblical anomaly.

Peter himself declared in 2 Peter 1:20-21 that "no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit."  It was the "men" who "spoke". This clearly means that the very words were chosen by the human author as they were "carried along by the Holy Spirit". If we were to go back to our "replication of mental pictures" principle of successful communication, the Holy Spirit revealed to them a vision, a mental picture or concept or truth that needs to be conveyed, BUT IT WAS THE HUMAN AUTHOR WHO CHOSE THE VERY WORDS to communicate the revelation given by the Holy Spirit. This would be based on the author's language (crude or primitive as it may be), education (or non-education), background, experiences in life, perceptions. The Holy Spirit's main role in the human process would be to quicken their minds so as to make them sharp enough to be sensitive to His voice or promptings enabling them to perceive these truths and in order to communicate them properly or appropriately with clarity BASED ON THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE and CONTEXT.

I highlighted above, "BASED ON THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE", because countless times, due to the differences and limitations of the translated language, much is lost in translation especially when it impacts doctrine and the kingdom lifestyle. These are not necessarily mis-translations but anemic translations due to the limitations of meaning. A good example for example is that there is no Filipino Tagalog word for the English "stress". So if a Filipino were to translate the English into Tagalog, he would have to find the closest word equivalent. However, and quite unfortunately, whichever word he choses will never be exactly what the original language means. This makes scholarship and analysis necessary in order the rural Filipino to fully comprehend and appreciate what it truly means.

St. Paul, for example, was purely opinionated when he told women to be silent in churches. The culture was patently chauvinistic and had women mostly with no education whatever. Fortunately, Paul was inspired to declare the full revelation thereof when he declared in Galatians 3:26-29:

26 for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave[g] nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise."

And Paul follows this up with another final revelation as to the gifts of the Spirit in Romans 12:5-11, 1 Corinthians 12:4-11; 28, Ephesians 4:11=14 of which there is no explicit distinction as to gender such that only men get certain gifts. Note that these are the "prison epistles" which he wrote when he was "older and wiser".  Probably he remembered the words of Joel decades before Him and quoted by Peter in Acts 2:17-18:

"17 “‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
    and your young men shall see visions,
    and your old men shall dream dreams;
18 18 even on my male servants and female servants
    in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy."

For those who believe in Plenary Inspiration like me, that the Bible is a logical whole without contradiction, I propose the following guidelines to determine the FULL (plenary) intent of Scripture:
  1. What is the chief end of God? What is God's project in history and time?
  2. Why did God bother to create?
  3. Why would a perfect God create imperfect creatures (The President Duterte question!)?
  4. What is the chief end of man according to Jesus Christ? This cannot be the Westminster Confession answer because the chief end of man should COMPLEMENT the chief end of God and if God created just to get glory, then that paints a self-centered God directly contradicting the revelation of the LOVE of God which dominates the WHOLE of Scripture. Here's a clue: LOVE is the substance of the Great Commandment. Hence the answer to the chief ends must center around love and nothing else.
  5. Confirm this for yourself: The Bible is centered around God's Kingdom project: The Kingdom of God. The Kingdom will be comprised ONLY of people of faith who "naturally" obey the Great Commandment.



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