hermeneutics

The Myth of Non-Theology and Neutrality

Lisa Spencer2 Comments

reading-the-BibleAs I observed a few discussion threads over the past few days on Christian topics, a theme tends to emerge. Some Christians disdain any mention of theology, doctrine or hermeneutics. You’ll get one pitted against each such as theology vs true faith or doctrine vs scripture. A typical statement goes like this that one person told me – “theology and doctrine has its place but that is not the substance of our faith.” Yes, Christ is the substance of our but to think theology and doctrine is not is both naive and not true. Not true.

Every Christian has a theology, a set of doctrine and a hermeneutic. Everyone!

Theology is whatever we think about God.

Doctrine is what we believe that theology teaches.

Hermeneutics is how we interpret what theology teaches.

If you say the substance of your faith is Jesus Christ, then you have to come to some conclusions about what that means, who he is and how you arrive at your conclusions. This is the task of theology and without it, you have no reasonable basis to come to any conclusions about the Christian faith.

This also supposes that you have some way of interpreting the facts about the Christian faith. From a Protestant perspective, this presumes that one is basing their understanding on the Bible, recognizing that it is the testimony of Jesus Christ cover to cover, breathed out by God to give us his word through the pens, personalities, and literary style of 40 authors (2 Tim. 3:16-17).  The problem then is not knowing what it is and believing that we have complete neutrality when approaching the Bible or using other means to determine our faith. We all have some way of formulating what we believe and why we believe it. Continue reading →

Seedtime and Horror: The Prosperity Philosophy Built on Genesis 8:22

Lisa Spencer1 Comment

Genesis 8:22 has served as a foundational verse for prosperity teaching with the philosophy of seedtime and harvest.

As long as earth endures,

seedtime and harvest,

cold and heat,

summer and winter,

day and night,

will never cease

grain in bagThe idea is that our Christian life is about sowing seed to reap a harvest. So financial giving then becomes the indicator of our faith to make this happen.  An entire theology and numerous ministries have been built on this one verse.  If you don’t believe me, do a Google search. Now the promoters of seedtime harvest ministries will say that it’s biblical. But it is an egregious distortion of the Biblical text and the Christian faith.

1) The context: Putting this verse in it’s context shows that this prosperity philosophy has nothing to do with sowing or reaping. In fact, it has nothing to do with our activity at all. The entire chapter is about God remembering Noah and his family. Then he gives a promise to Noah after the flood that he would no longer destroy all living creatures as he had done in the flood (vs 21). Seedtime and harvest is another way of saying seasons and the verse as well as the entire chapter is telling of God’s control over them. In other words, the passage is saying that the earth will always experience seasons. It has nothing to do with Noah’s activity but God’s promise.

2) The canon: It is also significant to note that Genesis is a narrative. It’s telling of what happened as God progressively revealed himself to humanity. We have to examine any verse or passage according to the whole: the whole of what is going on in the OT and how that relates to the NT. To say that seedtime and harvest is central to what is being played out imposes something on the biblical narrative that isn’t there. But in context of God’s covenant promises to Abraham, his selection of a gathered people as a light to the nations, his provision for how these people would worship him through priestly activity, his rulership over them through selected kings and words spoken to them by the prophets, being ‘biblical’ points to this activity.

3) The Christ: All of this OT foreshadowed Christ. As God made promises and provisions, it was telling of the Messiah who would come and fulfill God’s promises made to Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3; Galatians 3:16).  He is the one who perfectly fulfilled God’s requirements for perfection (Matthew 5:17; Romans 8:1-4) by fulfilling the offices of  prophet, priest and king foreshadowed in the OT. The book of Hebrews sums this up nicely. During his earthly ministry, his mentioning of seed and harvest were related to those who would put saving faith in him because it was an agrarian society and that’s what they could relate to. He is the central theme of scripture.  Our sowing and reaping for blessings is not the central theme of Scripture. Seedtime and harvest puts a corrupt twist on Christian teaching and robs it of its central theme, which is what God does through his Son for fulfillment of promises.

The sad reality is that the seedtime and harvest promoters have pretty much ignored the biblical context, the passages placement in the canon and the centrality of Christ. But this is the underpinnings of prosperity teaching that has spread like wildfire. It does go to what I said in my last post of the kinds of teachers that Paul was addressing in his letter to Timothy. It was those who would distort the meaning of OT activity and infuse speculations and novelty into the Christian faith.

Why does it matter? It matters because how we read the text is how we think about God. And how we think about him will motivate how we approach him. Seedtime and harvest is guaranteed to approach him in a way not befitting of his holiness.

Is It OK to Use a Verse Out of Context?

Lisa Spencer5 Comments

It is a very common practice to use a bible verse to express whatever thoughts we have about God. One of the tragedies of the single verse principle is that the context of the passage is often ignored. Well this is important. If you were writing a story about something that happened or a letter, you would cringe if someone sliced an isolated sentence out of the body and made it mean something you never intended. Yet, there is a rampant tendency to do this today and the accompanying danger of establishing shaky foundations of faith. It’s why I’ve been impassioned to engage in ministry that exposes Christians to how the Bible was put together and how it tells God’s complete story from Genesis to Revelation, his personhood, character, work and promises.

A good example of a verse commonly taken out of it’s context would be Jeremiah 29:11 – “for I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future”. Now if we step back and see the immediate context, we see that Jeremiah is addressing Israel held in Babylonian captivity because of repeated transgressions against the Yahweh. But he is reminding them of his covanental promises. There is something beyond captivity for them and this leads to the overall redemptive work that is accomplished in Christ. Well, I confess that I have often cringed at the repeated use of this verse applied to a present day setting.

But the reality is we have a tendency to focus on contemporary settings and especially settings that have to do with wherever we find ourselves in life. We apply that verse to ourselves because it gives us hope, just as it gave Israel hope. And let’s face it, we need hope. We need to remember that whatever trial, drought or storm we may be facing is not all there is. Continue reading →