THE EPISTLES: THE HERMENEUTICAL QUESTION
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:
- Whether it is legitimate to extend the application of a passage to other contexts, or to make a first-century case-specific matter apply to a context totally foreign to its first-century setting; whether God's word to us in texts where there are comparable situations and comparable particulars should be limited to its original intent.
- When passages speak of the first-century issues that for the most part are without twenty-first century counterparts; when passages speak to problems that could happen also in the twenty first century but are highly unlikely to do so; whether God's word to us in texts where there are comparable situations and comparable particulars should be limited to it's original intent.
- "Sometimes our theological problems with the Epistles derive from the fact that we are asking our questions of text that by their occasional nature are answering their questions only."
- The problem of cultural relativity: what is cultural and belongs to the first century alone; what transcends culture and is a word for all seasons.
- Commonsense hermeneutics; bringing our own form of common sense to the bible; applying what we can from the bible to our own situation.
- The basic rule of hermeneutics: "a text cannot mean what it never could have meant to it's author or readers."
- The second rule of hermeneutics: "Whenever we share comparable particulars with the first-century hearers, God's word to us is the same as his word to them."
- Matters of indifference: matters that tend to differ from culture to culture, even among the genuine believers.
- Problem of cultural relativity: the problem of God's eternal word having been given in a historical particularity.
- Problem of task theology: the problem of systematically presenting the theology that is either expressed in or derived from statements in the Epistles based on sound exegesis.