Who's Herman? Hermeneutics: The Art and Science of Biblical Interpretation

Uh You're entering. Outer brightness How can you look upon this ender with such love? Grace overflows my cove. All of my soul and my heart have been revived in you. I'm saddest watch.

Hey, Fireflies. This week we will be discussing a topic with a big scary name. Hermeneutics. No, we aren't talking about the monsters. According to D.A.

Carson, Hermeneutics can be simply defined as the art and science of interpretation. Biblical hermeneutics is the art and science of interpreting the Bible. And this is from Carson, Must I Learned How to Interpret the Bible. When it comes to understanding what a text says, it is unavoidable that we are interpreting it. As much as we talk about there being a quote literal understanding of a text, Two people may read something quote literally, yet can arrive at different understandings.

This is partially due to having multiple lenses through which we read and interpret it. First, we read the words on our page. Our brains then interpret the words and form images and ideas in our minds based on our personal experiences, biases, education, etc. And then we use our higher functions on reason to take those thoughts and ideas and form conclusions based on that information.

So how do we reach a consensus on understanding what a text says when there are so many factors and lenses for the interpretation of words on a page? This is the task of hermeneutics. And specifically biblical hermeneutics is the topic of our discussion today. We hope it will be an exciting and educational dive into how we have learned as post-Latter-day Saints to read and understand the Bible consistently. We will also address how we as Christians deal with differences in some interpretations of scripture.

So we are Matthew the nuclear Calvinist and the apostate Paul. Let's get into it.

So Paul, when you were a Latter-day Saint, how were the Bible and other Latter-day Saints scriptures taught to you in various classes, quorums, groups, etc.?

So like how did you read them? How did you talk about them and study from them? I think the first Time I think that most Latter-day Saint young people start to encounter their scriptures on a consistent basis is when they begin a seminary or release time when they're a freshman in high school. In seminary, you are actually encouraged to read through the whole of the text. But again, you're gonna focus in on some narrative stories if you're reading through the Old Testament.

You're not gonna get into whole lot of depth on understanding what you know what passages have meant from a on a historical theology kind of perspective you're not going to get the um the in-depth christian understanding of it there's a large focus on the narrative and then on lds theology and when i was in seminary we had a scripture mass a set of scripture mastery passages for each of the the four books in the uh lds uh what LDS call the standard works, the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price.

So we were given a little bookmark, a little plastic bookmark that had the list of scriptures that we were supposed to memorize. And there, you know, occasionally you would have tests in seminary to prove that you were memorizing the scripture mastery passages. But you were encouraged on your own to do a full reading of the book you were studying in seminary, whether that was the Old Testament, the New Testament. the book of mormon uh or Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl, a great price.

So then I think as you get older and become an adult, In the church, you start attending, at least back in my day when church was still three hours. I understand it's two hours now. But back in my day in the LDS church, when it was three hours, you would attend Sunday school and you would attend priesthood. Quorum or Relief Society, if you were a female. And in those classes, there's lesson manuals.

Sunday school for adults is called gospel doctrine. And you'll often hear Latter-day Saints kind of brag that, yeah, we study each of our books of scripture once every four years. And they kind of make that as a brag, like we really know our stuff because we're studying through the whole Old Testament, the whole New Testament, the whole Book of Mormon, and the whole doctrine and covenants and pearl of great price every four years. But in reality, you're not really studying through the whole of them. The lesson manuals for gospel doctrine, again, they focus on narrative stories.

You're going to talk about the story of Abraham and Isaac if you're going through the Old Testament. You're going to talk about the story of David and Bathsheba. You know, you're going to focus on some narrative stories to keep people's interest. And then Certain passages that support Mormon doctrine are emphasized. And in gospel doctrine, you get, as an adult, at least you used to, I don't know how it is today, but speaking to how it used to be 10 years ago.

11 years ago now, you used to get a pamphlet, a student pamphlet, a guide to help you study through and prepare for each week's lesson. And those student guides. They didn't, if you were, if you were to follow that student guide strictly, you would not be instructed to read the full. Text of scripture. They would focus on certain passages, again, narrative passages, and then certain doctrinal passages that Latter-day Saints use to support their doctrine.

And so, unless you were on your own deciding to be, deciding not to be a lazy learner, you wouldn't read through. Through the whole Old Testament or the whole New Testament. I don't know what percentage of it you would get, but it's not the whole thing. Does that help with what you were asking, Matthew? Is that kind of what you were going for?

Yeah, that was really great. You really went into a lot of depth on that. And I agree. That's pretty much my experience, too. It seemed like, in general, it was either.

Topically based, so you'd be talking about a specific doctrine or a specific idea, or you'd be talking about a set of chapters. In the one of the books of scripture, Old New Testament. Book of More Doctrine and Covenants or Paul Grey Price. And then you would kind of just glance through most of it and just pick up parts here and there or do scripture mastery.

So, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's exactly what I was looking for.

So I appreciate it. And so when we're studying these things, As Latter-day Saints, much of it is focused on topics.

So they'll bounce from passage to passage, or they'll study this part here, and then they'll bounce to another one there.

So The next thing I want to move on to is, does the LDS Church teach its membership how to read and interpret scripture?

So I'll kind of give my answer. And I think it doesn't really do that. It kind of has sort of like how a lot of modern evangelicals kind of study the Bible, where it's like when you have a Bible study, they'll pick a passage or they'll pick something and then they'll read it out loud. And then they'll kind of go along around to everybody around the table and say, okay, what do you think this means?

So it's kind of a more subjective understanding of scripture. And it's not really in-depth understanding of the various ways of how to interpret scripture itself, which are, which I think are important. And that's why we were talking about it on this episode.

So I don't think it really even explicitly, I don't think the church explicitly teaches how to interpret scripture. It's kind of like you read it and then you assume that. The face value understanding of the text is the correct one.

So, would you agree with that, or would you give a different understanding? Yeah, I largely agree. I would probably say also, though, that the LDS Church does teach its membership how to interpret scripture, but it doesn't teach them explicitly how to. It's kind of more you pick it up as you go along in these topical lessons.

So, and I would say that the way they teach you to interpret scripture is to interpret scripture in light of. The teachings of their prophets and apostles. And And/or the teachings of additional Mormon books of scripture. Um So, and the way that's done is that in these topical lessons, say you're studying the topic of faith, you will, the lesson manual will instruct the teacher to have a student read from a passage of scripture that touches on faith. Maybe you'll read through the hall of faith in Hebrews 11, right?

And then, or a portion of it. And then there'll be a question, what is faith? And then, you know, the class will be asked to kind of answer and talk about that question. And then there's a bunch of quotes from Latter-day Saint general authorities talking about what faith is. And so the kind of lesson that's taught by osmosis and kind of repetition is the prophets and apostles are going to tell you what to think and how to think and believe about what scripture says.

And so you kind of come to that understanding through guidance that I think is. Deliberate, but I don't think they explicitly teach that necessarily. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, that's I agree with you that they do understand scripture in light of the teachings of the church or the teachings of their leadership. But, like you said, it's implicit.

So, it's kind of almost like they, the way that I was trying to explain it, that didn't really make sense or it didn't really come out the way I was hoping is that. By reading a passage with all of this in your mind already understood, all the teachings from the church and from The Book of Mormon and Doctrine Conan.

So when you read a passage, You're already looking through that lens. And so when you read it, you say, oh, okay, that's what I already agree with, or it already fits with what I understand, rather than critically trying to look at the text just at what the text says. And so you read it, you read 1 Corinthians 15, 29, I think is a reference that talks about baptism for the dead. Oh, Paul's teaching baptism for the dead. And then it brings in all this association with the temple and salvation for the dead and all that.

So it's kind of like they're prepping you, they're front-loading with a lot of information so that when you see certain words or ideas, they automatically pop in from your memory. And then, so then they'll assume that, oh, that's what the text is saying. It's agreeing with what I've already learned.

So that's kind of what I was trying to explain. I didn't do a very good job with that. No, I think you did a fine job. I want to ask you a question about this, though. Certainly, I was thinking about earlier today.

So, the LDS church kind of revamped its scriptures, I think, at the end of the 1970s. And included what we used to know of as the Bible Dictionary, the topical guide. There were a bunch of study aids added, footnotes that kind of cross-reference across all of the four standard works. And then they also included footnotes that would tell you what certain Greek word, certain words in Greek meant, right?

So these footnotes were added to the King James Bible. I'm curious, did you ever have? Have in the classes you were in, like a teacher refer to those Greek footnotes or talk about them in any way? My memory, no. I do remember a discussion I did have with my mission president, my mission once, where we were having one of our personal interviews, and he pointed to the passage in.

I forget which gospel it is, might be Matthew, where the woman touches the edge of Christ's. Robe, and because she had the issue with blood, and so she wanted healing.

So she approached him and touched him. And Jesus said that he felt that in the King James Version, it says he felt that power came out of me or came from me. And then there's a little footnote there that says, like, or another translation of that is virtue, right? I mean, no, it's the opposite. It's virtue in the text, I think, and power is in the footnote.

And so then my mission president made that connection to say that virtue is power.

So even though in reality, really the translation just means power. It's not talking about virtue. It's just, you know, Christ felt that strength or energy was leaving.

So that's the only instance I can really think of where that was used. But now that I think back on it, I was like, well, that wasn't quite. Quite have that we should use that. Yeah, for sure. And I do remember a few instances, you know, where someone, like an elder's quorum, might ask what, you know, if we were looking at a passage and they happened to glance down at their footnotes, they might ask the question: okay, what are we supposed to do with this Greek footnote?

It says it means this word can also be translated as this other thing. And nobody really ever knew. what to do with that. I just find it interesting that the LDS Church put all of that work into. Putting those Greek footnotes in there and didn't give their instructors really any guidance into how to make use of that.

Yeah, that is something to think about because I think Latter-day Saint ideas on the Bible are starting to shift where. You'll see more and more Latter-day Saints quoting from different translations of the Bible instead of just the King James. Whereas before, it's like, well, the King James is the only one that we can really trust, and the other ones are kind of corrupted, or the other ones are not so trustworthy. But it seems like that's shifting now.

So maybe they'll be more trained or more willing to use those footnotes in the future. It's interesting. I was listening to one of Jeremy Howard's podcasts the other day. It was one of their bonus podcasts from the Dew Theology podcast, and he had gone to Kansas to present.

Some information about Mormonism to a church there at a conference. And I know our Latter-day Saint listeners are going to kill me for pointing that out because they're always like, ah, you. Your pastors preach against Mormonism, but yeah, I mean, you know, there's conferences, right? And I've listened to Jeffrey R. Holland preach against the Trinity, so it goes both ways.

But Anyway, Jeremy made the point about the King James Bible being the one that the Latter-day Saints use. Um And he said that if they wanted to use And I'm going to butcher it because I don't, I'm not as familiar as I should be with who owns the copyright on each of the Bible translations. Is it Zondervan that has the NIV? Yeah, Zondervan has NIV. Yeah, so that's the point Jeremy made: if they wanted to use the NIV, they would have to get permission from Zondervan to make the changes that they made to the KJV, but they don't have to do that with the KJV because it's in the public domain, at least that version of it that they use.

So he was basically making the point that. That they wouldn't really be able to use any other biblical version, Bible version, as their official version because no Christian publisher would allow them to do it. Yeah, I remember years ago they made their own Spanish revision of a pre-existing Spanish version that kind of already existed. I remember them making a modified version of that, and I was like, oh, great, maybe they'll do that with the French version. I was hoping for that, but it never came out.

And so I wonder if they did that for that reason. You know, maybe the Spanish version of whatever text they're using wasn't in the public domain. I don't know. It's hard to say. Yeah, that's a good point.

Okay.

So when we were switching now to when we were transitioning from the LDS church to where we are now, so when we were questioning and When we led our way out of the church, so during this transition period, did your reading interpretation of the Bible change over time or did it stay relatively the same? Yeah, it definitely changed.

So I've mentioned before that as a Latter-day Saint missionary, I read, I made it my kind of my goal to read through each of the standard works in full.

So I read through all four while I was on my mission. And then after my mission, I wanted to keep that up, but my focus was more so on the Book of Mormon and reading that as many times as I could. Because of the Latter-day Saint, that's kind of the crowning scripture in the way that you view it.

So When I was leaving the LDS church, Uh I really wanted to dig into the Bible. And kind of ironically, I guess, I had gone while I was still a Latter-day Saint, I had gone to. Award, I guess they called it a yard sale, maybe, or a yard award. Uh Parking lot sale, or it was held in the cultural hall at the LDS ward where we attended. And everybody kind of brought their stuff that they wanted to sell and bought and sold to whoever wanted to come.

So I had gone there, and somebody had brought this book by, I think he's. I don't know if he's Australian, but I think his ministry was in Australia. His name is Jay Sidloe Baxter, and he wrote this pretty big volume of commentary on the Bible called Explore the Book. And working, I started reading through my KJV at that time because I wasn't yet really ready to venture out into other versions. Other translations.

So I started reading through my KJV and using Explore the Book as kind of like a guide. And he presents Study guides on each chapter. Of the Bible and does some exegesis as well within his study guides. And by exegesis, for those who aren't familiar with that term, the idea there is to allow the text of scripture or allow the meaning of the text of scripture to be read out of the text of scripture rather than interpreting scripture in light of your own biases and presuppositions, which would be eisegesis or reading your own. thoughts and views into the scripture.

So, the difference is between the question: what does this passage mean? and what does this passage mean to me? What does this passage mean is restricted to What did the author intend to convey when they wrote? What does this passage mean to me can be anything I want it to be. And so, kind of encountering J.

Sidloe Baxter doing some exegesis within his writings and reading through that, and realizing that there was a different way of looking at scripture than I had looked at before. When I was first doing that back in late 2009, early 2010, I didn't have. the the theological Or biblical studies understanding that I do now to really see what Baxter was doing, I could just tell that it was very different than what I had encountered before. And so you would say that that's one of them.

So, would you say you still interpret scripture the way that you were studying from him? Or would you say it kind of changed since then or you know, do you do you feel like it was still pretty m instrumental and how you interpret scripture now? He was instrumental because, yeah, and he was instrumental because For for two reasons. One, the exegesis, but two, uh, the f the s the commentary on each chapter of the Bible. He wasn't leaving anything out, like like we talked about earlier with some of the LDS study guides.

With with Baxter, nothing was left out. I mean, it's like 800 pages long. His His book, you know, and he's given you everything. And there were, you know, I read through the Bible as a whole as an LDS missionary. But there are things you don't and can't see as a Latter-day Saint.

Even if you're reading through the entire text, even if you do. Slow down and go, wait, what? Wait, that doesn't fit with my theology when you read over a passage. You get kind of the cognitive dissonance set in where you're like, I'm not going to allow myself to really think about that. I'm just going to keep on going until I find one of the smoother passages that works with my theology.

So. Uh Yeah, you either see some of that stuff and ignore it, or you just don't see it at all because you're so focused on looking for your theology in the Bible. And I did that a lot as a Latter-day Saint, looking for my theology in the scripture rather than. Rather than interpreting scripture in the way that it means. And I'll give you a quick example of that.

There's a passage in the Book of Mormon, and I'd have to look it up to. to see exactly what it is. Which passage it is. And I won't do that now, but for the sake of time. But I'll just say, kind of to give you the gist of what the passage says.

It's talking about the writing of the Nephite records, and that out of the writing of the books, out of the writing of these books, these records, the world would be judged, right? It's kind of the gist of the passage. I was on my mission. And there was a missionary who had become kind of a friend of mine. In the MTC, and we never served kind of in the same area much while we were on our missions.

We were always in different cities.

Well, not always. There was one time when I was in Budapest and he was also in Budapest, but different parts of the city.

So we would occasionally see each other on P-Day. preparation day. But for the most part, we were in different cities. And this missionary had gotten into some trouble out in one of the smaller towns where he and three other missionaries were serving. They had had a pool party.

with uh some of the uh teenage Uh young women in the branch there. And Of course, for missionaries, swimming is forbidden. And so is fraternizing with females.

So it was kind of a big deal. All of the missionaries were transferred out of that area to other areas of the mission. And he had called me to talk about it. And you know, kind of express his regrets. And I, you know, I got off the phone call with him late one night.

I was feeling pretty concerned about him, you know, just wanted to make sure he was okay. You know, I was. He was upset about the whole situation and. I went and started praying and reading through the Book of Mormon. And I came across that passage, and I was like, wow, that's awesome.

Out of the books that are written. The world shall be judged.

So then I started writing in my journal about how good this elder was and how good I knew him to be. He was a good guy. You know, he got caught up with some elders who got him into trouble, you know, because I was like, oh. Out of the books that are written, the world shall be judged.

So the record I make. Is going to impact how God judges this elder, this missionary. You know what I mean? And that sounds pretty naive, but that's esegesis in a nutshell. That's looking at the text and bringing your own emotions, your own thoughts, your own experience to it, and making it mean something to you rather than understanding what the text should mean from what the author intended it to mean.

Yeah, another, thank you for that story. That's another classic example that's abused even by Christians is. Philippians passage that says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And you know, that's just been abused and used for passing tests and eating a five-pound burrito or whatever, you know. When in the passage, it's talking about persecution, you know.

So it's not talking about doing whatever, you know. It's not talking about you becoming all-powerful to do whatever you want to do. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

So thank you for that.

So, yeah. I would agree. I would also say that. The way I understand and read scripture is different from when I was a Latter-day Saint. And I think one of the most instrumental books to help me was a book that I read shortly after starting to either consider or actually start attending.

a Reformed uh church. I believe it was in 2017.

So yeah, that was when I started attending. Is a book called Getting the Garden Right by Richard Marcellos, and I recommend it all the time to people to read. It's a really great book. It kind of talks about the doctrine of creation and the covenant of works and covenant of grace. And we've talked about that with.

Ben Haynk and Darren Caldwell in our episode on covenant theology and what about what is covenants.

So I recommend that episode. And so I mentioned it in that, and that just really opened my eyes to understanding. How to understand and think covenantally, reading the scriptures in terms of how God relates to mankind in terms of covenants, but also just interpretation of scripture, because he starts off in that book by saying, Look, you know, we need to interpret scripture consistently. We can't just. Like you said, read a passage and put our own emotions or our own thoughts into it.

We have to understand and pull out what it actually wants us to understand. And so it talks about several. Reformed hermeneutics principles that we'll get into in the full discussion. And that just helped me to understand: okay, yeah, there are a set of rules that can help us to read scripture and understand it the way that it was intended to be understood. And to interpret it consistently rather than just reading it as a big jumbled pile of books written by fallible men, which is how a lot of critical scholars view the Bible.

So yeah, so I would say that From the perspective from now to as Lenonde Saint, I think I try to look at the Bible more critically, although you'll never be able to completely overcome your own biases and your own. You know, your own experiences when you're reading the scriptures, but we should at least be conscious of them and try to interpret the Bible regardless of. Our experiences and our biases to try to interpret what God wants us to really know rather than putting what we want, what we feel like we want to know into the text. We should be willing to be molded and changed by what the text says. Yeah, yeah, good, very good points.

Just to kind of piggyback off of that, do you think that as a Latter-day Saint that you were taught to read scripture in a way that the question is kind of always, what does this mean to me? Yeah, or how does this? How does this confirm the teachings of the restoration or something like that? Yeah. Yeah, there's, I have a couple of thoughts on that.

There's a passage. I know we're kind of going back to the second question, but it just kind of, the thought struck me. There's a passage in the Book of Mormon. It's early on in the Book of Mormon. I think it's supposed to be Nephi writing, right?

And it says that they reckoned all the scriptures unto themselves. Are you familiar? Remember that passage? Yeah, I'm trying to. Where they reckon, not reckoned, they reconciled all the scriptures unto themselves.

And that passage is shared with you quite often as a Latter-day Saint. And in lessons, so one of the things about... Uh Latter-day Saint teaching and culture that some Christians may not be familiar with who have never been Latter-day Saints is that. In Sunday school and priesthood quorums and relief society, the teachers are called from among the lay members of the congregation. And that's not always the case in Christian churches.

Often you might have elders who are teaching those classes. Or if you do have someone who's more of a volunteer, it's someone who has some training in teaching often. At least from my experience. But with Latter-day Saints, that's not the case.

Someone can be called to teach gospel doctrine maybe because they're a good orator, maybe because they're a good teacher. They can keep a class's attention, but they don't have training in teaching necessarily. And that's especially true in Elders' Quorum, where you're a. You're either an Elders Quorum president or you're an Elders Quorum. You're in the Elders' Quorum Presidency as a counselor, and you're just kind of designated as the instructor for the group.

And you have the lesson manual that you follow. But I think a lot of times, and my wife mentioned this about Relief Society as well, a lot of times, because there's these instructors and teachers who don't really have a lot of training, they will often fall back onto the question: what does this passage mean to you? Or what is whatever we've just read, whether it's a passage of scripture or a passage of or a quote from a general authority, what does it mean to you? And there's also the culture within the LDS faith that testimony is really, really important, your own personal testimony. Once a month, there's fast and testimony meeting where members of the congregation are encouraged to stand up during the main service on Sunday and share their own testimony.

And that is very personal, it's very subjective. As to what is shared. And so that carries over into those classes.

So when the question is asked, what does this mean to you? It's wide open for whoever to say what they think it means or how it's impacted them. And you can get far astray of what the intent of the writing actually is in those classes.

So, just another way that kind of LDS culture kind of teaches you implicitly to interpret scripture in light of yourself. And I think that passage from the Book of Mormon, we reconciled all the scriptures unto ourselves, is another passage that kind of invites you to do that. Yeah, it's a great point. And I think it's because, yeah, they're so focused on application that it's almost like that's kind of immediately where they skip to. They don't skip, you know, we will talk about the different steps of understanding a passage, but it's like they want to skip all of those and say, okay, well.

How does it apply to us? They just want to get straight to the final destination. And it's not that that's bad in and of itself, but first you need to understand what the principle is being taught here and what the background is and the culture and the circumstances themselves, and then drawing out the principles from the text rather than just saying immediately going immediately to application, because then you can get, R.C. Sproll himself said in a series, I forget which one, he said that. There's only one true meaning of a text in terms of what the what the author is actually trying to convey.

But the way that that could be applied is many different ways. And so, you know, depending on circumstances, depending on the principle has applications to a lot of different things. But the way the text is meant to be read and understood is only really one way. But it seems like the way you're describing and the way that I also experienced, it's like, well, there isn't really a single way, there's many different ways. And as long as you're within the barriers of these boundaries of what the LDS Church teaches, you can kind of take what you want.

You can interpret it however you like. And you're not really seeking after one single understanding. You kind of have some leeway there, I guess. Yeah, and if you don't um if you skip straight to application and you don't have a solid understanding of what the text is meant to convey, um Then you can have the idea that I can eat a five-pound burrito through Christ that strengthens me. Yeah.

Yeah. Yep, exactly. Yeah, some great thoughts. Did you have anything else to add? All right.

So, moving on to our fuller, longer discussion, let's see.

So, in the introduction, I quoted D.A. Carson who stated that biblical hermeneutics is the art and science of interpreting the Bible.

So, first off, let's talk about why we think it's an art.

So, I have a kind of nebulous idea.

So, maybe, Paul, you can help me out with making it maybe more concrete.

So, why do you personally think it's an art?

So, it's an art because communication is flexible, right? Words. Do have various meanings in various contexts. And sometimes mechanical and rigid application of rules can distort the meaning. An example of that, that I would give, and we'll get into talking a little bit more about.

Literary genres later, but the Bible contains. Various literary genres. And there are various ways of interpreting each type of literary genre. You interpret a parable different than you interpret a narrative passage that's historical. Right.

The passages in Acts that talk about Luke and Paul traveling from city to city, Paul being imprisoned, Paul writing letters to churches. Paul traveling to Jerusalem. to meet with The Jerusalem Council, right? Those passages are meant to be historical passages, a historical record of Paul's and Luke's. traveling and preaching.

The parables of Jesus Are not meant to be interpreted in the same way that those historical travels are. There's uh you know they're they're uh Two kind of differing schools of biblical interpretation early on in Christianity: the Alexandrian and Antiochian school. The Antiochian school kind of took lots of things as Metaphorical, so you can. Um, and I was listening to a podcast the other day about uh Mary, and the question being debated was: was Mary sinless? None of you Caught that gospel truth debate or not, Matthew, but it was a Roman Catholic and a Protestant debating: was Mary sinless?

And the Roman Catholic was pretty Presenting some views from early Christian interpreters from the Antiochian school of biblical interpretation. And so, Uh, he was making the case that, oh, Mary is like the Ark of the Covenant, right? And so you have a historical figure, Mary, who becomes kind of like a metaphor. And so uh and has metaphorical Metaphorical approach to the that school had a metaphorical approach to scripture, so you know. The application then of that understanding then becomes: oh, Mary was sinless because she bore the Son of God and she was she was holy like the Ark of the Covenant, right?

Um, so that's that's that's one way of interpreting scripture. Um, but is that being uh true to the original meaning of any passage about Mary? Is the question that you kind of have to ask there, and that that gets into the genre.

So, but yeah, art because it's because communication is flexible in that way. Um But then the other part of the other side of that coin is why is it why does DA Carson say it's also a science? Science because it has rules. That can be classified in an orderly system, right? There's rules of syntax, there's ways of understanding different literary genres, etc., that make it a science as well as an art.

Yeah, that's great. That's really great summary. I was thinking of it in terms of like art, in terms of like a painting, you know, and if we were, if it was just solely an art, well, you could take that paint, you could take the same paintbrushes and ink or whatever it is you're using to create your art. And you can make whatever you want. You know, there's no real rules.

But it's also a science because. We have certain presuppositions about scripture, and they're not just presuppositions that we add to the text, but to Scripture itself says that it's God-breathed and that it's true. And so we have to understand scripture in light of those facts. And we have to understand that we can't just have an acid trip and just stare into the pages of scripture and be like, well, I think this is talking about that, or I think it's talking about, there are rules, but there is a certain level of flexibility. Like you said, there's a lot of cultural understandings that we may not be privy to entirely.

I think we are learning more and more about these ancient cultures as we find more and more documents and artifacts, and we're learning. and we're getting access to more scientific information. About these cultures, we're starting to understand, kind of pull that veil away to see, okay, here's how they might have understood, might have understood this text, and there's still debate. On perhaps different aspects of scripture.

So, yeah, there is. There is a lot of it that we just don't have a perfect, you know, precise, clear understanding of what maybe a particular passage says exactly.

So there is a lot of room there for growth, there's a room there for. Maybe some even creativity, if you want to think of it that way. Like, okay, put yourself in the mind of a Jewish person in this part of the world at that time and place. how might they understand it so there is kind of a little bit of a creativity that are involved as well.

So moving on.

So we've talked about the word exegesis, and it comes from a Greek word which basically means to X, you know, like when you think of exit from a building, you know, it's to pull something out.

So exegesis is to pull out the meaning of a text. It's reading a text and understanding what it's trying to say.

So, when we're performing exegesis of the Bible, what are some basic do's or don'ts to a consistent reading and understanding of scripture? We've already talked about, I'll give a couple. We've already talked about how exegesis is trying to pull in. Or pull out a reading from scripture rather than shoving in a reading into scripture.

So, yeah, the burrito idea from through Christ, all you know, I could do all things through Christ who strengthens me. It's going in and understanding the context of the text, what the surrounding passage is talking about. What is the speaker talking about and trying to pull that out? Another don't is to just not, we should try not to just pick a single phrase out of the context and just say, okay, well, I think it means this. Context is very important.

And I think that's one thing that I felt like was lacking when I was training as a lottery saint. I felt like sometimes in seminary, they might give you a little bit of background for a particular passage or chapter, but. We didn't spend a lot of time on that. It was kind of like, well, the writer is Paul. He's writing to the Colossians.

You know, he's going to be talking about this, and they might have a small discussion, but there's really not in-depth context for all of those passages that you get in a lot of really solid exegetical. Commentary or preaching.

So, those are just couples that I have off the top of my head.

So, how about you, Paul? What are some do's or don'ts? when trying to interpret her. pull out the meaning of scripture. Yeah, I think you gave some really good ones there.

To add to that, um I would say, you know, that, and not everybody has, you know, there's scholarly interpretation of scripture, and then there's Lay interpretation of scripture, right? And, you know, just your everyday Christian. Relies a lot on commentaries written by others. And we talked earlier about. Of how Latter-day Saints go about teaching in classes.

You know, there's Maybe a passage of scripture, and then lots of passages, lots of quotes from general authorities or from other. Parts of Latter-day Saint unique scripture that kind of gives you this idea of this is what this biblical passage should mean. It should be interpreted in light of all this other stuff, right? Christians can fall into a similar danger zone, I think, when it comes to commentaries. Because Uh, there's steps to exegesis and steps to hermeneutics, right?

Uh, steps that you go through. Um, so when I was in a Christian seminary, the book that we used was called uh hermeneutics, it was by uh Verkler and IAO, are the two authors, and um. You know, they say this about exegesis: that in the order of operations for scholarly biblical interpretation, exegesis follows a study of canonicity, textual criticism, and historical criticism.

So, there's other steps that you kind of go through before asking the question: okay, what is the meaning of this text? Right? Uh in in kind of uh working through that on your own. There's various steps that you go through in hermeneutics, right? There's historical cultural analysis, which you were kind of touching on, Matthew.

What was the overall historical milieu in which this passage or book of scripture was written? Who's the author? what was believed by the The readers or the hearers of this. Passage of scripture? What would they have understood from it?

Those kind of questions, contextual analysis. How does it fit within the overall argument that the author is making if you're looking at a single passage? What are the What are the other related Statements or doctrinal arguments that the author is making that or makes elsewhere in other of that same author's writings that you could use to try to understand what is being said in a particular Particularly difficult passage. Then there's lexical syntactical analysis. What are the words?

mean that are being used? Are there other possible meanings that these words hold that are different from the meaning that I understand on face value that may play in here? We talked a little bit about that earlier with the Greek footnotes and the LDS scriptures. This Greek word can also mean this other thing. That's what you're doing with lexical syntactical analysis.

And then there's theological analysis, looking at, like I said before, what the original hearers or what the writer. believed what what was their overall theological outlook um Once you've kind of gone through all of that, then you're at the point of asking the question: okay, what does this passage mean? You've set yourself up with some tools to try to understand what the passage means in context. And then you can kind of look at how do I read out from this passage what the author intended, which is the ultimate goal of hermeneutics. Because the The Christian view of scripture is that it was breathed out by God, right?

That comes from the writings of Paul, Theop Nustas. It was breathed out by God. And so The ultimate goal is to understand what God is. Intends to convey through the writing to his His people. And so, the last step in hermeneutics is to then, once you have done all those other things, historical cultural analysis, you've done your best to try to understand what context this was written in, what the words mean, what the writer believed theologically or understood theologically.

Then you've gone the further step and said, Okay, what do I think this passage means based on all of that work? Then the final step is to Compare what you understand with other interpreters. Latter-day Saints kind of, they skip to that very last step, right? Here's this passage. And then, how is it used in, or how is it used or interpreted by other Latter-day Saint scripture and Latter-day Saint general authorities?

So they skip right past. Any kind of cultural, historical, lexical, syntactical, theological analysis, and go straight to what do the interpreters say, right? And like I was saying when I started this section, is that Christians can fall into that same trap with commentaries. They skip over if it's a good commentary, you'll have those steps. Walk through for you.

But, you know, if it's not, you can fall into the trap of just kind of. Glomming onto what one interpreter means or thinks a passage means, and not really getting at what the passage actually means. You're just getting an interpreter's take on it. Yeah, it's a great point. I was going to say.

I was going to ask you, so how do Christians avoid that? But it seems like you kind of already answered that. You want to make sure that. If you're reading from a commentary, that they do try to approach all these different aspects of interpreting the text. And sometimes I don't think it's necessarily bad to have a commentary that doesn't include all of those, as long as you go in understanding that you may have a limited or biased view.

Of the interpretation of the scripture based on who wrote it.

So sometimes I might want a Lutheran understanding of a. Of a text, or I might want an Orthodox view of a text. Like, I have an Orthodox study Bible. I have several Roman Catholic study Bibles. And so sometimes I'll just be like, okay, well, I want to understand how someone else interprets this passage.

And so I'll read their commentaries. And sometimes they don't do all that legwork.

Sometimes they just Give, you know, in particular, like Roman Catholic commentaries, a lot of times will reference like the catechisms, the Roman Catholic Catechism, or from different councils, different statements, rather than go through all that, do all the legwork, like you said, of the background and the lexical syntactical analysis and all that.

So they can be of value, they're not completely worthless, but we have to be. Conscientious of what kind of information they're providing, and if it's if if they've given you given you as the reader all of the un understanding and and uh Data in order to come to a conclusion yourself. Commentaries are very valuable, but. I think it's also great that we understand how to use commentaries because, yeah, like you said, sometimes we can just treat. the commentaries as a second Bible.

We just read it and take it for what it says and don't really analyze it critically and that can be very bad.

So, we're not knocking on commentaries. Commentaries are great. Got several commentaries that I read and reference.

So. Did you have anything to add? Yeah, no, just great points. Just be aware of what the theological. Backgrounds are of the authors of the commentaries that you're using.

You know, I have, I have, I'm like you, Matthew. I've got Roman Catholic study Bible. I've got the Orthodox, Greek Orthodox study Bible. I've got all kinds of different study Bibles. I've got the ESV Theological Study Bible, which is one of my favorites.

And it has, you know, as you read through the text of scripture, it has various theological little articles at the bottom of a page if there's a particular passage.

So for example, at John 1.1, it's got a theological article at the bottom that talks about the Lagos and kind of what that means. But it's a systematic theology study Bible.

So, you know, you have to understand that. What you're getting there is systematics, right? Which should follow after. Biblical theology, which is taking into account all of the steps of hermeneutics, but you're getting a systematic theology from a particular point of view, and in that case, the reformed point of view. It's just important to understand what it is you're using what the tools are that you're using.

It doesn't mean that they're necessarily. Worthless or dangerous, just be aware of what they are. If you're aware of what they are, you can read them for what they are and understand them for what they are. And realize that in some places you may need to go and do.

Some deeper digging to see how did they arrive at a particular theological position. Um so yeah. Good points. Yeah, great. Thanks for that, Paul.

I appreciate it. All right.

So We've already talked about how genre, the genre of literature reading in the Bible. When we're interpreting the Bible, it is very important.

So, part of reading and interpreting scripture is examining what kind or genre of literature the passage belongs to, or the book, or the chapter. There are various kinds of genres. And it seems like different authors categorize them differently.

So, here are some of the categories that I've seen: there's historical or narrative, there's didactic or instructive, basically just teaching. There's prophetic, there's allegorical, there's poetic or wisdom literature, like uh like Proverbs or Ecclesiastes. And there's also apocalyptic literature.

So, parts of Daniel and Revelation in particular are apocalyptic in terms of they're talking about late end times, the end of the world, things like that.

So we talked about that it's important, but maybe let's give a counterexample of why what would happen if we were to misinterpret a passage or a book for the wrong genre of literature.

So what do you think about that, Paul? What if you were to just completely take like a narrative book of scripture and think that it's all allegorical?

Well Why would that be dangerous?

So, if you were to take a narrative passage of scripture and think that it was allegorical, It uh It takes away some of the power that is found in the narrative passages where you see. uh God acting to uh sustain his people. To watch over his people and care for his people. If you take that and make it an allegory, you're going to completely miss the power of narrative. And that the same kind of thing goes for misinterpreting other types of literary genres within scripture.

There are poetic and wisdom, there's poetic and wisdom literature, right? And interpreting that rightly means not necessarily interpreting it as historical, right? Poetic literature can be epic. It can cover historical uh events, but not all poetry does.

So it's important to understand the type of literary genre that you're looking at within. within the Bible. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I was thinking if you take something that actually happened and say, well, this is representative of certain truths or it's meant to teach a lesson.

And like you said, it robs it of some of its power. I mean, what if we were to take the sufferings of Job and just say, well, Job wasn't an actual person. It's just demonstrating how God blesses you if you're faithful or something like that. Then we couldn't really look to Job as like an actual person who is a strong, faithful man of God who went through all the suffering. And yeah, he struggled, but in the end, he was still faithful.

So you lose the message there in terms of what is meant to convey. You know, it's not just meant to teach truths. That's part of it, but it's also giving us an example of a man who was given the grace to stay strong regardless of everything that was thrown at him, losing his children and suffering from boils and all these terrible things, but he still remained faithful.

So we can still look to him as kind of like a Okay. An example to bolster our faith when we're struggling with the problems that we have in life.

So, I mean, there's all different kinds of problems that you can run into. I remember in my mission, I we tracked it into a Jehovah's Witness home and felt kind of bad admitting it, but like we were just knocking on doors all day, had no success. You know, I think it was like a work day too.

So we were exchanging between missionaries.

So I was with someone else. I was with my normal companion and we just had no success. And I was so tired and hungry. And I was just like, man, like, can we just talk to somebody? And somebody let us in and we talked to him.

He's like, hey, you know, I've got some Coke and cookies. You know, if you guys want to talk for a little bit, and I think we might have had another meeting coming up or something like that that we had to rush off to. But I was like, well, you know, maybe something will happen out of this. Plus, you know, I'm kind of thirsty.

So let's talk to this guy.

So we talked to him. And yeah, it turned out that he was Jehovah's Witness. He showed us these books that he had, and like it was really weird. I remember seeing like books with pictures of the 10-headed dragon and stuff like that from Revelation, as if it were like a real dragon that's going to appear in the last days or something like that. And I just thought that was so weird that it's like, wait, you think there's like going to be a literal dragon that's going to happen?

And maybe that wasn't the case. Maybe it was just an illustration, you know, for to kind of help you understand what the passage was saying. But if we take apocalyptic literature, which is highly symbolic and it uses numbers and it uses colors and figures and animals. to demonstrate Or talk about certain truths, talk about certain events that will occur in history that could be precise moments in history or could occur over long periods of time. If you think that they're literal, you're going to come off with a completely wrong understanding of what the passage is trying to talk about.

And so, and even if you have the same values or same hermeneutics. There's still debate as to what these apocalyptic books of literature are trying to say, which is why you have different views of the end times in terms of the millennium. And so, Christians have to kind of go with those passages with. Broader willingness to be wrong about those passages, so they have to be, you know, kind of have a sort of humility in going to these apocalyptic passages.

So, there's a lot, there's a lot that needs to be done when you go to those specific passages versus something like in John chapter one, where it's very, very clearly talking about how Christ is God in the flesh and how He was the light of the world, and He's to save those who come into Him in faith. To them, He gave power to become children of God.

So, they're much different passages of scripture, and we shouldn't confuse, we should do our best to try not to confuse different genres of literature. You're listening to Outer Brightness, a podcast for post-Mormons who are drawn by God to walk with Jesus rather than turn away. Outer brightness, outer brightness, outer brightness, outer brightness. There's no weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth here, except when Michael's hanger that is, hanger that is, hanger that is. We were all born and raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, more commonly referred to as the Mormon faith.

All of us have left that religion and have been drawn to faith in Jesus Christ based on biblical teachings. The name of our podcast, Outer Brightness, reflects John 1.9, which calls Jesus the true light which gives light to everyone. We have found life beyond Mormonism to be brighter than we were told it would be, and the light we have is not our own. It comes to us from without. Thus, Outer Brightness.

Our purpose is to share our journeys of faith and what God has done in drawing us to His Son. We have conversations about all aspects of that transition, the fears, challenges, joys, and everything in between. We're glad you found us, and we hope you'll stick around. All right.

So, in addition to understanding what kind of literature passage is in the Bible, there are different rules in reading and interpreting scripture, and we've kind of alluded to them or referred to them specifically.

So here is a set of different rules that's or different types of analysis. There's the historical cultural analysis. How does the passage fit into the context of history and in the culture in which it was written? There's the contextual analysis, how the passage fits in with the passages surrounding it. There's the grammatical and syntactical analysis.

What is the grammar? What are the words used in the original language? What do they mean? What could they mean? And the theological analysis.

So, how do we take the context and grammatical syntax of a text? And interpret this in terms of our beliefs.

So, um, Maybe we don't need to go through All of them in depth, but maybe we should just go. I guess we can go one by one. I just didn't want to take a whole lot of time on this one.

So for the historical cultural analysis, we already talked a little bit about that. Would you like to talk more about why that's important? Why it's important to do the historical cultural analysis? Yeah, so. Like you said, historical cultural is.

looking at um The historical milieu in which an author wrote in order to understand his allusions, references, purposes.

So there's a There's a time gap between us and the authors of The Bible. There's a cultural gap between us and the authors of the Bible.

So, those gaps have to be bridged somehow in order for us to get to an understanding of what the author intended. And the way historical cultural analysis helps you to bridge that gap. Contextual analysis is also, it's kind of a substep in historical cultural analysis. And it considers the relationship of a passage to the entire passage surrounding it.

So, you know, a lot of times you'll hear Christians in discussions with Latter-day Saints say context, context, context, because it's not a good practice to just take a Rip a passage out of context of what the author is saying because you might miss the meaning of that passage. By kind of myopically looking at that passage rather than looking at the whole. of the passage around it. Can you think of an example of a passage that Latter-day Saints do that with? Yeah, well, one that they use a lot is Acts chapter 2:38, 39.

I hear that a lot to show that, well, you need to be baptized. And confirmed to receive forgiveness of sins. If you're not baptized and confirmed, you can't receive forgiveness of sins. And they'll usually. Point to that verse specifically.

And never I don't think I've ever once heard a large Really talk about the context of Acts chapter 2. That's Peter speaking, he's speaking to those who. those Jews who had kind of They may have either willingly or overtly consented to Christ's death, or they may have just been passive, or maybe they're people that are worried that because they came to the realization of their sins and that Christ, their Savior, had died, you know, and so maybe they're a little bit worried that their day of salvation is past and there's no salvation for them. And so there's all this contextual, interesting, great, awesome stuff that is lost. It's not really divulged.

And you just skip straight to chapter 2, verse 38 and 39. And use that as a proof text, and you miss a lot of, yeah, just a lot of the richness in the background and what's actually being taught there. And there's still maybe some debate even amongst Christians about exactly what's being said there. But at the same time, I think just not even trying at all to do any of the textual analysis is just really bad. It's just not being faithful or being respectful to this text.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. One that always springs to my mind is John 5:19. When I was kind of freshly out of the LDS church and kind of beginning to try to witness to Latter-day Saints as a Christian, I remember talking to one guy online about LDS views of theosis and becoming gods themselves. And he threw this passage at me in John 5:19, which says, So Jesus said to them, truly, Truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only that what he sees the father doing, for whatever the father does. That the sun does likewise.

And he Implied that what that passage means is that. The son is going through a mortal probation just like the father did, because this is the way that Joseph Smith uses this passage in the King Follett Sermon. And I remember kind of feeling like I was pulling my hair out with this guy. Like, I kept asking him the question: you know, like, so are you saying that the son can do nothing of his own accord that except that which he sees the father doing?

So, he does he's doing exactly what the father did in his mortal probation. You know, there's this whole other meaning that is kind of dropped into this passage. And, you know, if you zoom out and look at the whole passage of John 5, what's being talked about there is the healing at the pool on the Sabbath. Right. Jesus heals a man at the pool of Bethesda.

And then he starts getting criticized by the Pharisees for having done so because he did a work on the Sabbath. Right, and so when Jesus is saying, you know, look, I My father's working, and I'm working until now in verse 17. And then in 19 says, truly, truly, the son can do nothing of his own accord. He's making a case that the father is healing, right? And he's healing also.

He's not making a case that he's coming to earth to do exactly what the father did on his earth. You know, so like you can really get lost in what a passage means if you just myopically look at that one passage and don't zoom out to look at the context. And then there's also the. Psalm 82 and John 10 reference, it says, This is not saying your law, you are gods. That's so often quoted to prove that we are either literal offspring of God or that we can become gods.

So, yeah, that's uh, and we've even talked about how we have different understandings of that passage too, Psalm 82, but but. Both of us in the various Christian understandings I've read. Don't come to the same conclusion that Latter-day Saints do.

So, even if we do disagree, even if we might not come positively to the same understanding of a text. We can rule out what it doesn't say by trying to do our due diligence and doing our homework to understand the text, what it's trying to tell us. What about the grammatical and syntactical analysis? Why do you think that's important? You're the seminarian, so you know the original languages perfectly, right?

Not definitely not perfectly. I am no expert. I've taken two semesters of each Hebrew and Greek. That does not make me an expert. It makes me just enough, know just enough to be a little dangerous.

But the lexical syntactical analysis, grammatical syntactical analysis, it's important because, as we talked about before, words have different meanings. They can have different meanings. They can have different meanings in different contexts. Right, the context of how words are used can change their meaning. And also, they can have different meanings at different historical period in different historical periods of time.

I think everybody, all our listeners, are probably familiar with the way that the meaning of words shifts over time. Slang. Shit, you know, the meaning of slang shifts and other words as well. It just can come and mean different things at different times. And so that's why lexical syntactical analysis is important: to take a look at: okay, who is the author of a particular book of scripture?

When was it written? And what did the words of those uh the words used by the author mean in that particular Time and history. And the way that that is studied is by looking at, so you know, Paul uses. Paul the Apostle uses words In ways that, and it even creates some words, right? Like the apnustas.

Um That you don't find anywhere else. But then he uses lots of everyday Pointe Greek words, right, that you do find in other contexts, in other Greek writings of that same historical period. And so you can go back and the scholars can go back and look at how this word is used in these other writings of the same period to understand. what Paul might mean by it. But even then, you have to look at The way that Paul uses those same words in other parts of his own writings.

To understand, is he using a particular word in a way that is idiosyncratic to the way it's used in broader Greek culture? And can you tell that from the way he uses it throughout his writings?

So that's why that step is important. Yeah, that's great. Like, I don't really have any studying of the original languages, but I watch programs like I watch James White's Dividing Line. I watch. Uh, I really like watching the Ligonier's uh teaching uh series and things like that, and they'll talk about how there's a semantic domain now that like each word will have a range of possible meanings, like you've been talking about.

And so, trying to it's it's sad because I see a lot of Christians do it too, not just Latter-day Saints, but I see a lot of Christians do it where they see the word somewhere and then they look at Strong's you know concordance and they'll pick the word that they want to use. They'll be like, Well, here's one of 20 different possible meanings, so that's the one that most fits what I want it to mean, and so that's what I'm going to use. Rather than you know, like you said, trying to do the analysis and say, Well, here's a possible range of meanings, and maybe eliminate a few here and there, or make connections to different passages, or like you said, the historical cultural context around them to see if he's using it the same way the culture around them used it. Instead, we just want to pick the word that fits the definition that fits what we want it to say, and so that's another thing we should not be doing. We're doing that kind of analysis.

Let's see.

So, what about the theological analysis?

So, I kind of summarized it as taking the context, taking all this analysis and interpreting it in terms of our beliefs. kind of what it means uh theological analysis or is it slightly different? It's more like looking at what the theology was of an author of a book of scripture.

Okay.

Because not all authors, so you and I have different understandings of theology, right? The authors of scriptures, scripture are the same way, right?

So. I'm going to have to do some compare and contrast here, I think, to make a point.

So, Latter-day Saint views of how scripture comes to be are influenced by the way that Joseph Smith produced scripture or the way that Joseph Smith produced his writings, which are accepted by Latter-day Saints to be scripture. If I'm going to be. speaking clearly from my current perspective. Um, so you know, whether you're someone who believes that Joseph Smith had plates in front of him and put on a breastplate with some. Spectacles that were blessed by God to allow him to be a seer and read an ancient language that he didn't know personally, or you're someone who Believes that Joseph Smith put His seer stone into a hat and put his face into a hat, and the words that.

The analog to what was written on the plates were presented to him within the hat, and he would then dictate that. Whatever method you believe Joseph Smith used. That is not the method Christians believe God used to breathe out scripture to the authors of the Bible. Christians do not believe that God used Uh, the authors of scripture like a dictaphone, and that he removed their autonomy, and they wrote exactly. What he wanted them to write.

Christians believe that God used the authors of scripture and their own personalities and their own understandings to breathe out what he wanted to convey. Ultimately, God is the author, but not in a dictaphone sense. If that makes if that's if that's understandable.

So the theological analysis then is taking a look at an author of scripture. And it involves looking at their other writings to understand what they might mean.

So it would mean if you're looking to interpret what Paul is talking about in Romans, you're going to take into account the rest of his theology presented in his other letters. Because you might come to a passage in Romans that is a little bit hard to understand.

Well, what might Paul mean here?

Well, Galatians might help you understand what he's talking about there.

So that's what you're doing there with theological analysis. Does that make sense? And you would also take into account the Old Testament, right? Because Paul would have been trained in the Old Testament. Exactly.

Yep. Scriptures that came before, scriptures that came after. It's the idea that scripture is consistent, right? Because it's breathed out by God. There is ultimately one author, but it's not done in a dictaphone sense.

So you can gather a better understanding of what Paul might mean or what Jesus might mean in some of the sayings of Jesus that are recorded in the Gospels by looking at the way he used the Old Testament. Yeah, that's what you're doing there with theological analysis.

Okay, great. Yeah. And so it's important because if, if, unless if Paul's just like bipolar and just a crazy person, and he means something in one passage of scripture completely contradictory to what he says elsewhere. It's important to know why he said what he says in one place versus another. Sure.

We don't we don't believe he's he's bipolar or, you know schizophrenic, you know, we believe that when he writes something somewhere, he's consistent with what he writes elsewhere. Yep, and maybe an example will help.

So Jesus says, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up, right? Theological analysis of that statement: you're going to ask, What did the apostles who heard him say that? What would they have understood? What would the Pharisees have understood him to mean, right? Given what they understand of understood of theology and the revelation of God.

And the author who records that statement of Jesus clarifies for us, right? He says, He was speaking of his body. He was speaking of the temple of his body, right? He gives us that theological analysis that, hey, the apostles who were traveling around with Jesus as he preached, they didn't understand that at the time. They didn't understand he was setting his face towards Jerusalem for a purpose.

And so, you know, would they have understood what he meant at the time? No, but the author who wrote later. was able to say he was speaking of the temple of his body.

So do you think it's possible, and it kind of came up in our discussion with Ben and Darren on the covenants.

So do you think it's entirely possible that we can study how someone would have understood what they were writing themselves? But they didn't quite have the clearest or fullest picture of what they were actually writing or what they were inspired to write. Yes. Yeah. Um, yeah, I think I think that's definitely a possibility.

Yeah, I think I think that has to do with also with their next question, which talks about how we believe in the dual authorship of scripture. That scripture is not just written by man, but it's also written by God. And so there may have been things that they wrote that they saw or heard or understood, but they didn't understand fully the clearest understanding of what God was trying to convey or was trying to inspire. And we see that too with like the images and the types of the shadows in the Old Testament, the animal sacrifices. Maybe Moses himself didn't even understand the fullest extent of what all of the different symbology in the sacrifices and in the Ark of the Covenant, what that was pointing to, which is ultimately Christ.

So he might not have understood. I mean, we don't really know. But I think there was enough there that he did understand that he was a believer, you know, that he appointed to Christ and trusting God's promises of the Messiah that he was saved.

So, moving on to the next question.

So, like we've been talking about since the beginning, and you referenced this passage in 2 Timothy 3:16 through 17. It says that all scripture is breathed out by God. And profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. And another passage is 2 Peter 1:19 through 21. And Peter says, Here, we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

Knowing this, first of all, 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.

So, these are kind of proof texts that are used. And I know that might seem kind of contradictory to what we've been talking about: like, oh, you can't just take a passage out of context and use it to prove what you're saying. But if you want to go into more, you know, more context and read commentaries, these are basically both affirming the God-breathed nature of scripture, that God spoke through these prophets and they wrote what was inspired, given to them. When we look at this fact alone, and we've talked about it a little bit more, but maybe let's go more in depth about why it's important.

So, how does scripture being breathed out by God, or Theop Nustas, as you said earlier, how does that inform how we interpret scripture versus another book that is not breathed out by God?

So what do you think, Paul? Yeah, I mean, it means that Scripture has something to say to us that is of real importance. You know, you can read other books, you can read Harry Potter, you can read The Lord of the Rings, any other book that's not inspired scripture, and it can be inspiring to you, right? You can read about the courage of Sam Gamgee. Right.

And be inspired by that to Want to be courageous in parts of your life that That may require you to be courageous to stand up and do something brave. But scripture comes to us with the idea that it is God-breathed. This is the message that God wants us to have. It's not just meant to be inspiring to us. It's not meant to inspire us to eat five-pound burritos.

It's meant to reveal to us the nature of God. His plan for humanity, his ultimate victory over evil.

So, yeah, it's the idea that God breathed out this message to the world. It definitely informs how we should read it and how we should seek to interpret it and understand it. Yeah, for sure. Thank you for that. I appreciate it.

And to add to what you said, I think when we look at those who view the Bible as just another set of books written by racist or sexist men or whatever, you know, a lot of times modern critical biblical scholars will not try to look at the text with the Understanding that It's inspired by God, and that means that.

Well, this book doesn't have to agree with that book, or this one doesn't have to agree with that one. They can be contradictory. There could be lies, there could be falsehoods, there could be all kinds of. Just bad ideas, bad teachings in here. And so, we don't really have to follow them, we don't really have to believe them.

But when we look at it as something that's also inspired by God, we can't really have that understanding, can we? I mean, can we look at, unless if we want to believe that God is also contradictory or God could. Produce lies. If God is telling the truth, then He says, Well, this is what I'm telling you. We're kind of obligated at that point to believe.

What the book says, that it is true. That doesn't, obviously, it doesn't mean that. Everything when we, when Christians say that the Bible is true and that it's the. You know, it's our Sole infallible rule of faith and practice for the church. We're not saying, yeah, we practice the law of Moses, you know, we're Sacrificing lambs and doves and grain offerings and stuff like that.

That's not what we mean. I mean, there is historical. Uh redemptive historical teaching, you know, we believe that Christ fulfilled a lot of the The requirements of the Mosaic law. But what we're saying is that everything in it is taught is true.

So it doesn't mean necessarily we practice everything we do in it. There's a lot of things in there in the book that are, you know, sinful. Like, you know, there's examples of people that committed sin against God. That doesn't mean that's not an example or teaching that we should also do the same.

So we have to be careful in how we interpret scripture and not just say, well, I believe it. And so I do everything it says because. If you do that, you could end up in some weird places. But when we read it, we should say, okay, this book is consistent. When God says something in one place, He's gonna be true and correct.

In another place, he's not going to go against what he said elsewhere. And so, where there might be some. potential Conflicts or tensions in texts where it seems like it may be contradicting us where it says what it says elsewhere. Maybe it just requires us to dig in deeper, look at the original languages, look at the possibilities of how a text may be read or understood. Instead of first coming off with the idea that, hey, these are just contradictory, you know, the Bible contradicts itself, you know, and move on, try to understand it more deeply and see, okay, how could we reconcile these passages?

Is it possible that they aren't contradictory and that they can be reconciled?

So there's a lot to this point that we could spend a lot of time talking about. But did you have any more ideas on that or thoughts on that, Paul? No, I think you did a great job of filling in places where I missed.

So yeah, really good. Right. Yeah. There's there's entire sermons that talk about how scripture is God breathed that you can check out on sermon audio.

So yeah, there's we're trying to just get a like a high level view of hermeneutics.

So we hope this is helpful to to those are who are listening.

So, in the next section, let's talk about.

So, I had to throw in my little, you know, my little chips in here because they're different views of different views of hermeneutics.

So, I wanted to throw in my chips in terms of four major principles from specifically reformed hermeneutics. And these are what I learned when I was reading. Richard Barcelos is The getting the garden right. He talks about these four principles and how these were four of the major principles that. Many of the reformers followed when they were interpreting scripture.

There's other rules, but these are kind of the four most fundamental ones.

So, one of them is that the only infallible interpreter of scripture is the Holy Spirit. There's also the analogy of the scriptures. There's Latin terms for this, and I'm not going to butcher them, so I'll just give you the English equivalent. The second is the analogy of the scriptures, which is where basically you defer to clear passages on the same topic if there's a passage that is less clear. There's the analogy of faith, where it's the concept or the belief that scripture is consistent and we should examine all of scripture together.

And then there's the scope of scripture, which is that scripture is ultimately Christ-centered, so it's Christus-centric.

So, what do you think of these principles, Paul? Do you think these are valuable, or and you would you agree with them, or would you modify them slightly? Yeah, I think they're very valuable. I don't, um, let's take them one by one.

So, the only infallible interpreter of scripture is the Holy Spirit. Um, I agree with that 100%, which is why uh comparison with with other interpreters is the last step of hermeneutics. Because the goal of reading scripture and studying scripture is to allow the Holy Spirit to impress upon you. The meaning of scripture in a way that changes your heart. in a way that if you were not a Christian leads you to the heart transplant that makes you one.

And if you are a Christian in a way that leads you to. A life of holiness and sanctification and being. Cleansed by the Holy Spirit. Uh from from sin.

So, yeah, the only infallible interpreter of scripture is the Holy Spirit. I agree with that. A passage from the Bible that touches on that is John chapter 16, verse 13. This whole passage through there, through this section, Jesus is talking about the work of the Holy Spirit, what the Holy Spirit will do once Jesus leaves his disciples and ascends to heaven, and the Holy Spirit descends. And he says in verse 16, Sorry, verse 13: When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.

For he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine, therefore, I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. That's verses 13 to 15 of John 16.

So, yeah. He will guide you into all truth. The only infallible interpreter of scripture is the Holy Spirit. The analogy of the scriptures deferred to clear passages on the same topic if there is a passage that is less clear. I don't disagree with that.

one whit. Do you have a thought on an example that we could give for our listeners that would that would show that principle? Sure, yeah.

So one thing that I always point out is A lot of times, when talking about Latter-day Saints, they'll point to a parable of Jesus to try to use that as the formula for how we are justified. Or something like that, you know, you might point to like the parable of the talents, and you'll say, well, you know, one person came back with 10 talents, one came back with five, you know, and try to use that to backfilter and to say, well, you know, there's no such thing as justification, you know, you have to give to Jesus back. What he gave you, or else you'll be, you know, you'll be like the one who hid the talents in the floor, in the ground, and then you'll be condemned. You know, so you have to, you have to give exactly what you get back. You know, you could try to use that kind of understanding, but that's not really what it's talking about.

And that's not really talking about the topic of justification.

So that's why you should defer to a passage like Romans, for example, where Paul is explicitly, it's a didactic passage, specifically chapters one through five. I mean, the whole book, but one through five in particular, he's leading up to: okay, how are we right with God? How are we found righteous? Is it by works? Or is it by faith alone and through grace?

And so you should refer to passages like that when you're talking about justification because it's very clear. It's intentionally an instructive book on that very topic of justification. And that's like one of the clearest passages you'll find on the topic of justification.

So we should refer to passages like that. And then when we understand justification, then we can go back and understand the parables of Jesus and other passages and understand: okay, either this is not talking about justification at all, or we have to understand that in light of what Paul has given later. To understand what the full picture of what God is trying to teach us about salvation.

So that's kind of just one idea I have off the top of my head. All right, good. Yeah, that was a good one.

So, the next principle, the analogy of faith, scripture is consistent and we should examine all of scripture together. Yeah, I mean, that's similar to theological analysis, right? The idea being that, like you were saying before, Paul is not. Uh schizophrenic. He is that the term you use?

Or did you use a different term? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. So Paul's not schizophrenic.

He doesn't mean one thing. in one place and another thing in another place. Um and neither does God uh in breathing out the scripture so um I, yeah, I agree with the analogy of faith. And then finally, the scope of scripture, scripture is Christ-centered. Uh yes, uh agree with that 100%.

Um When Jesus walked with the disciples on the road to Emmaus after the resurrection. He is said to have Opened the scriptures to him or to them and said to them that they all speak of him.

So, yeah, the scope of scripture is Christ-centered because Christ is God's plan of redemption for humanity.

So, yeah, I really liked all these principles. And I couldn't find any problems with them either. Uh, I, when I was reading this for the first time, I was like, Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, it's kind of like it's kind of like a no-duh if you think about it. You know, it's kind of like a no-duh moment when you're reading, you know, when you're reading a manual for operating something.

It's like, yeah, obviously, duh, you're gonna have to put the electrical cord in the right way in the outlet, or else you're gonna get electrocuted. But at the same time, A lot of times things aren't. Quite that obvious, and you have to be by explicitly stating them, it all clicks and it all makes sense.

So it's like, well, yeah, of course, you know, the Holy Spirit is the only infallible interpreter of scripture. But then once you realize that and understand it, you say, oh, okay, so when The New Testament quotes the Old Testament and then gives you the understanding of what that passage means. That's the meaning of the passage.

So we should take that as what's the correct interpretation and not some other interpretation. And so when you really start to understand these hermeneutical principles and put them in practice, it really starts to open up the scriptures, at least it has for me. I could certainly do better, but you know, at least being conscious of them has really helped me. And these aren't these aren't extensive. These aren't the only hermeneutical principles, but these were kind of like the basics that a lot of the reformers agree, excuse me, agreed upon.

And even Even nowadays, I think it's still valuable, especially like we've talked about with critical scholarship. A lot of these are kind of just been kind of thrown out the window. Like they'll see the Old Testament is not Christ-centered, it's writings from somebody who had some kind of ideas or some. Spiritual experience and then Christianity came later and took these writings and then Use that as the backstory for their new religion, Kenneth.

So, but since we do believe in God and do believe that He inspired all of scripture and not just parts of it, then we need to view it as such. We need to view it as a consistent book of inspired writings.

So do you have anything to add about this part? No, I don't think so.

Okay.

It seems like I hope I'm not repeating myself a lot, but uh You know, sometimes talking about it gets the juices flowing. And even if you repeat yourself, sometimes they'll kick something in the gear that'll, you know, so we've talked about how many times, even if you have the same interpretation of methodologies or principles, that you could, you know, several Christians could come to a text of scripture and not understand it completely the same way.

So even if they understand the type of literature it is or and the What kind of text is it, and use the same principles, they still might come to different conclusions.

So, do you have an example of a passage where Christians may interpret it differently? And could you explain why do you think it's interpreted differently? And is this a problem for Christian unity? Yeah, so I think maybe James chapter two is a good good one maybe to look at. Um let's see my friend the passage.

Um so this is a this is a common one that that Latter-day Saints use. Um but but also uh some Christians may use as well, depending on their view of how One is saved. Um uh James chapter two verses uh seventeen verse seventeen eighteen Um 19.

So, also, faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, You have faith, and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one, you do well, even the demons believe and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?

Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works.

So This passage is often thrown up to suggest that the idea that one is saved by grace alone, through faith alone, is a false. teaching because here you have James clearly teaching against that, so some think. But I kept reading because I think that's important. We talked about doing contextual analysis. Right.

I kept reading because It's important to read not just, you know. Verse 17, where he says, So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. Or verse 24. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. Latter-day Saints really like.

Verse 24, because they're like, This is the only time that faith alone is. Words faith and alone are found next to each other in the Bible.

So clearly. The idea that you can be saved by grace alone through faith alone is not true. But James is pretty clear, I think, about what he's talking about. He's talking about someone who claims to be a believer. And doesn't have any works.

And he's not saying, I don't think that your works save you. He's not saying, Hey, you have to do these works to be saved. He's saying that if you have true faith, if your heart has been changed, that will be reflected in your works.

So, if someone is saying, I have true faith. True faith, and their works do not reflect the life of a true believer, then they're not a saved person. And The point that he makes about Abraham, I think, is really important because he says, Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works.

He stresses there the kind of the intertwined nature of what we're talking about, right? When you have the heart transplant, when God changes your heart and you have a change of mind and you repent and you rely fully on the grace of God offered through Christ, your life changes, your works change. And, you know, just as Abraham trusted God, right? He believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness, as Paul. Emphasizes from the Old Testament story of Abraham.

It's trust and that trust Is worked out through faith, which includes good works, the kind of good works that Paul, or that James is talking about throughout this chapter, which is. The works of love towards one another, right? And so. That's one passage I think of offhand. What do you think of, Matthew?

Yeah, that's great. Thank you for diving into James chapter 2. Yeah, the one passage that immediately comes to mind is the one that caused the ecclesiastical division in the early Reformation, which is John chapter 6. When uh Oh man, it wasn't the Diet of Worms, or which one was it? I forget, I forget the council that they met, but basically Zingli and Luther met to discuss the topic of the Lord's Supper.

They agreed on multiple points of doctrine throughout. But then, once they got to the point of the Lord's Supper and the nature of the real presence in the Supper, that's where they had the disagreement. And there's various ideas or accounts of what happened, but You know, there's one account where Luther just kept pounding on the table over and over again and saying the Latin words that the priests, the Roman Catholic priests, would use. To say, this is my body, you know, hacus corpus me. And he was just pounding on the table, or he wrote it on the table.

There's different accounts.

So, yeah, what does that mean exactly? John chapter 6, when, or not John chapter 6, sorry, the institution of the Lord's Supper, when Jesus said, Eat, take, eat, this is, you know, this is my body, or take, drink, this is my blood of the new covenant. Is he talking about this literally? Is he talking saying that his physical body and blood are present in the Lord's Supper? Or is he talking about symbolism only, that this is symbolic of his body and blood in the supper?

Or is he talking about a spiritual presence, which is kind of what? Calvin had and Luth and Zwingli had a different kind of spiritual presence.

So What is this? What is the nature of the real presence of the Lord's Supper? And that. That debate historically was the first real division of Christians in the Reformation, you know. When they just couldn't reconcile over that, Zwingli and Luther.

They had a separation, and you know, I don't know if they anathematized each other or exactly what, but they just could not reconcile over it. And John Calvin and others tried to have kind of like a middle way where they, you know, tried to reconcile the two sides, but ultimately there wasn't a perfect reconciliation that happened.

So there we should talk about, we do talk about how there's Christian unity, but at the same time, there is, there have been historical divisions in terms of the churches and interpretation of this passage. But as a whole, I think if you talk to, I talk to my Lutheran friends who believe in. That Jesus' body and blood is physically present in the supper, although it's a sacramental presence. It's not the same as like Roman Catholics believe. Or I talked to my Baptist friends who.

who are not reformed and who have more of a symbolic view of the Lord's Supper or a memorial view. I don't see discussions about saying, well, you're not even a Christian, you're not even a believer over this debate, this topic. Um, we do get heated debates sometimes because we feel very passionately about our understanding of scripture, but that's not the same as saying, Well, you're not even saved, you're not even a Christian.

So, uh, we do still have a Christian unity behind the gospel and behind Christ and what it means to be, you know, saints in the body of Christ. And despite the fact that we do have this. Disagreement on the Lord's Supper. And, you know, sometimes I think, well, I'm really glad that. The denominational lines that exist on earth are not going to extend to heaven.

And so we may get there and we may realize: well, actually, there was physical presence, or no, there wasn't.

So, you know, there's just so many. Um aspects to theology and doctrine that we that we can't know perfectly. on the side of you know of heaven so There are many things we'll learn on the other side, but I think that's why we should always be testing ourselves by scripture and being consistent and reading a scripture. You know, iron sharpens iron. We should always be willing to think critically and test what we believe, and not just say, well, this is what I believe, and I'm going to stick to it.

Um, certain things in the gospel, you know, in Christ and Christology and theology, we should definitely, you know, put our, you know, hit our nails in the sand and never. give up on those things. Like Christ's divinity and the Trinity, but we should be willing to be taught by the Word of God and be willing to. be molded by it and be shaped by it.

So That's one passage that I thought was interesting and worthy of bringing up. And I think we might have talked about it in previous episodes as well. Yeah, it's good. I like it. Um, yeah, there's there's definitely passages.

Um, you know, I talked about uh James 2, another one that that uh if you're having a discussion uh with with someone who um Kind of has a faith plus works of you of salvation. Another passage beyond the James 2 passages that will often come right out is Philippians 2. Philippians 2:12. Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Um and they stop.

Dead right there. And, you know, this is this kind of goes back to that principle we were talking about, the reformed principles we were talking about earlier, right? This one goes to the analogy of the scriptures. I think. And also the analogy of faith.

Scripture is consistent. Right, so what if you're going to interpret James two. inconsistent with what Paul teaches. in say romans um then what you have to assume is that uh james is contradicting paul um and if you assume that then you've kind of given up on the principle that the holy spirit uh inspired the writers of scripture uh that that the writing of scripture is breathed out by god um and consistent so but looking at philippians 2 uh you have to you have to take that contextual step right that i did with james too you have to you have to read beyond just the passage you're talking about because verse 13 which follows directly on verse 12 imagine that um There weren't verses when Paul wrote his. His letter to the Philippians.

He didn't intend for them to take just a paragraph and ignore the rest of it. He makes a point after what he says in verse 12. And actually, it's part of the same point. Uh so work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Why?

For it is God who works in you, both to will and to will. And to work. For his good pleasure, that completely changes the way you can understand, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, and what the cause of the fear and trembling is, because God is working in you. Which is Paul's point in the whole letter of Philippians. When you zoom out even further, right?

He begins his letter to the Philippians by saying, I believe that God who began a good work in you will carry it through to completion, right? Paul is consistent in that letter, in his themes, and what he's discussing, and what he's conveying to the Philippians is. God is working in you, and that should be awe-inspiring to you, and probably a little fearsome.

So, yeah, but you touched on, and you asked me the question, and I'll answer it as well: is where Christians disagree on these kinds of things, is it a problem for Christian unity? Yeah You know, we've talked before about Ephesians chapter 4. Um Where Paul writes about, you know, that he gave some prophets, some apostles, some. pastors, evangelists, teachers. Why Paul tells us why God gave that until we come to a unity of the faith, right?

So that passage kind of assumes that we're not yet there, right?

So, are these passages a problem for Christian unity? I think they can be, right? There are times when, like you were saying, there, there, There are certain teachings of scripture that are so clear and so important. To right living, right? Right thinking leads to right living.

And so, a right understanding of what the Bible teaches leads to right living. And so there are certain things that are non-negotiable. Right. But there are things that are secondary issues or doubtful things, as you know, that's the way that Jeremy. Howard, uh of puts it in the chart that that the do theology podcast has And any of the, whether you categorize something as a primary issue, a secondary issue, or a doubtful thing.

Any of those things caused Christians can and have and do make separation issues, right? The secondary issues and the doubtful things definitely should not necessarily be separation issues. Primary things are the non-negotiables, right? If you deny a primary thing, you're not within the Christian faith. And so to answer the question, is it a problem for Christian unity?

Yeah, it can be because we're humans, we're sinful.

Some of us like to argue. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it can be a problem for Christian unity, but. You know, the idea is that we talk with each other.

We give each other grace and charity in our discussions. And we work together to understand where the other is coming from. We're humble, willing to be taught by the Holy Spirit, willing to understand that certain theological positions that I may hold today may not be what is the appropriate theological position. Stemming from what God has revealed in scripture. And so I may need to make changes to my theological positions over time.

So, yeah, it can be a problem for Christian unity. Hopefully, we're We will get to a point where it's not, but I don't think it. It's not a problem for So Just to put a fine point on this statement is that Latter-day Saints, they view Christian any any amount of Christian disunity as The result of apostasy. The church has fallen away. The church has left.

The true teachings, and so for Latter-day Saints, if they see disunity to them, that bolsters their belief that they are correct because, oh, there was a great apostasy. Look, the church fell apart, lost it. um but i don't think that i don't think that follows from uh the history of of the church or um Or from scripture, as I talked about with Ephesians 4. It kind of scripture even assumes that there's going to be some disagreements. And scripture even presents to us, even presents to us some disagreements in narrative passages, right?

Where you have the Judaizers going and causing trouble for Paul to the point where he has to go down to Jerusalem and have a talk with. The Jerusalem Council and try to understand what are we to be teaching the Gentiles about which aspects of Judaism are part of. This new movement of Christianity, right?

So. Yeah, I've rambled long enough, I think. No, that's all great stuff. Yeah, no, you made a lot of really great points there. And I think it really comes down to a lot of it comes down to: do we believe scripture is sufficient?

And so I think as Protestants, we do believe that it's sufficient, as 2 Nephi, 2 Timothy 3 says, you know, it's scriptures God breathed. For you know, it's it's uh and it's useful for preaching, for correction, for training righteousness, all those things. And even though we don't interpret it. Perfectly, I think that that's kind of going back to our topic: the principles of hermeneutics. That's supposed to try to get past the biases, get past, you know, to try to cut through emotion and all these other things that could lead us to an incorrect interpretation of scripture and try to get at what it's trying to say.

And I think if we apply that more accurately, Or more correctly, then I think it would help to get past egos as well. You know, like some sometimes we get very upset when somebody disagrees with us. But if you can kind of show, hey, I've done the legwork, we've done this, you know, we looked at this, and this is what seems like it, you know, they're trying to say, then it seems like. Will be more willing to accept what they're wanting to say rather than just reading the text and saying, Well, I think it means this, you're wrong, mine's right.

So, putting the legwork in, I think, will help us to get to that unity of faith that will ultimately only occur perfectly in the uh, you know, in glory.

So, yeah, so thank you, Paul, for sharing your thoughts on this topic of hermeneutics. Might be something we talk about more in the future, who knows? But since there's so much to talk about, uh, but yeah, thanks for sharing that with us. Do you have anything else you'd like to add? Uh, no, just uh, thank you for referencing my favorite book, Second Nephimoty, where Paul is where Paul admonishes Nephimothe not to let his elder brothers, Laman and Lemuel, look down upon him as their younger brother.

Oh, man, ouch, yeah, that could be. I don't know if you remember, but there was a mashup that MTV did where Lincoln Park did a A collaborative C D with Jay-Z. I was thinking that'd be an interesting collab, you know, Book of Mormon Bible mashup. We should get MTV on the phone. Isn't the Book of Mormon already that?

Oh, yeah. Good point. Yeah, it's already a collaboration of the Bible and.

Well, a whole bunch of stuff, I guess. Yep. All right, Fireflies. That's a wrap for this topic. Feel free to share your thoughts in the Outer Brightness Group on Facebook.

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Stay bright, Fireflies. Lord, to whom shall we go? Oh you Have the words of eternal life. And we have believed and have come to know That you are. The Holy One of God, the word made flesh, the risen Son.

Heaven and earth will pass away, but the word of the Lord endures forever. Where all of this world is in decay, but the word of our God through ages remain Lord, you promised that we as your church would remain upon this rock and the gates of hell. Will not prevail against us. Cause you have power to keep your word unspoiled in purity. Heaven and earth will pass away, but the word of the Lord endures forever.

All this world is indeed. But the word of our God through ages remain as the rain calls down from heaven and waters the earth, bringing it light.

So the word that goes out from your mouth will not return hell. Empty, but does what you desire, Lord. We hear your word and believe in you. Heaven and earth will pass away, but the word of the Lord endures forever. All this world is in decay.

But the word of our God through ages remain of God remains.