Holy Scripture?

With so many Christians today being taught to only believe in the authority of the Bible this leaves them open to be persuaded by any interpretation of it, therefore we must develop a system of interpretation that will allow the text to speak to us today in a way that is true to the God that inspired the writing of it in the first place. This will require effort on the part of the reader and a responsibility to not simply read the text as a modern day writing but to treat it as Holy and therefore demanding of extra care and skill in determining the meaning of the text.

One way that I propose we do this is called the particular, universal, particular method. What this method requires of us is to first start with the particularity of the text. To realize that it was written in a particular time, in a particular place, in a particular community, for a particular situation. From there we can move on to the universality of the text. That is the eternal or timeless truth communicated by the particular situation. This could be a method or a principal that transcends the culture and place where the text was written. After we have found this timeless truth, or perhaps after this timeless truth has found us, we then can move to our own particular time, because the text was not simply written for our own timeless abstract theories but for the application in our daily lives. We can see this in the fact that the text was not written in an abstract universal way but in a particular time in the daily lives of a community of people. Therefore once we know the timeless truth we must then apply this truth to our own particular time, in our particular place, in our particular community, for our particular situation.

The way we apply it might look very different then how it was lived out in the time it was written. This is a good thing. Humanity is constantly growing, changing and learning. The way we live now is different from the way we lived 4000 years ago and the way we live now will hopefully be different 4000 years from now. The particularity of daily life is constantly changing.

The wonder of scripture is that it tells the story of God entering into the particularity of life and giving us particular examples of how to live. Because we live in a different particular time and place the way we live may appear different but in actuality the timeless universal truths are the same. That is why it is so important to not be lazy in reading the text of scripture. We cannot simply directly apply what we find in the text to life today. We must first find the particularity of that time and place, then the universality of the timeless principle behind it, and then apply the universal principal to our life today in this place. When we take the time and effort to treat the text in this way we will be less likely to misuse the text and more likely the text will speak to us in such a way that will be beneficial to our daily lives and a blessing to us all.