More on Biblical Chastisement and 'Paideia': Hermeneutics Effects Everything

In the wake of recent deaths which have been associated with his child discipline and corporal punishment program, Michael Pearl appeared on Anderson Cooper's daytime talk show to discuss what Pearl prefers to call “Biblical chastisement.” 

Because we draw religious meaning and systems of belief from a document that was written in a now ancient culture in several foreign languages that are no longer commonly spoken, special care and consideration must be paid when discerning the meaning of Biblical text. This process and academic discipline is called “hermeneutics,” a consideration of great importance and discussion on this website. Concerning Michael Pearl, perhaps nothing draws more attention to his own preferred hermeneutic or lack thereof more clearly than does his authoritarian-style focus upon and interpretation of the term “chastisement.” It is also a demonstration of how language can manipulate thought. (Read about the term “Biblical” as a thought-stopping clique.)

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Problems with Proper Context And Misreading the Bible

A few months ago, I wrote a post about the problems of context when an author uses a common term but applies and uses the term with a different definition than is commonly understood. Redefining a term and clearly communicating your new definition (without changing the term) does not constitute an informal logical fallacy in itself, but it does set one up for slipping into a linguistic booby trap and sets up a high probability for falling into an error of equivocation and ambiguity. The listener tends to slip back into a common understanding of the term. James Sire touches on this issue in his book "Scripture Twisting: 20 Ways the Cults Misread the Bible," though Orthodox or Evangelical Christians with the highest view of Scripture can also fall prey to these same pitfalls and errors as well.

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Evaluating Deconstructionism Using Responsible Hermeneutics

Five years ago on this very date, I sat with a now deceased laptop computer in the University of Texas Library, writing an essay. I'd been asked to present how thought reform played into the Vision Forum mindset from the vantage of one who attended a Presbyterian church with the followers of Doug Phillips and, on rare occasion, with Phillips himself.

I believe that I watch the world from an interesting and unique vantage. Though I was born in the first year of Generation X, I don’t bear all of the same qualities as most Xers. Perhaps because my parents missed the hippie mentality by what probably amounts to a few months and owing to slower life in a rural community, both my parents and I think much differently than our peers of the same age. I identify more strongly with Baby Boomers born later in that generation, as though there is a bridge period between Boomers and Gen X that theorists never define or capture. My most comfortable niche places me in an category with those born roughly somewhere between the early fifties and mid-sixties. I tend to march in tune to that drum rather than the drum of my same-aged peers. Though I am Christian first, I think like and communicate best with a modernist and tend to relate to others like a postmodernist living in a postmodern world.

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Theological Name Calling?

When Spiritwatch Ministries notified me that they had revised my Video Lecture on Patriarchy, I checked to see if the tag at the end of the video had also been altered. Scanning to the end of the video, I stopped at a point where a gentlemen (the president of the unnamed apologetics organization) makes a comment that caught my attention in a way that it had not previously.


When the organization became "concerned" about the video and the ramifications of the material contained therein, the term "name calling" entered the discussion at two specific points. Though I have strong opinions about the nature of these teachings, and especially in that forum, I assume that people perceive that I have called certain teachers and organizations "heretics" as this term was a major point of discussion in the Question and Answer Session following the lecture.

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Troubling Teachings About the Trinity on St. Patrick’s Day

I recently spoke at the 2008 EMNR Apologetics Conference, and I received some criticism over the nature of the Trinitarian teachings of some Evangelical Christian groups. I was pressured to state that the teachings of specific individuals were taken out of context by the patriarchy movement in order to support their views concerning gender. I was unwilling to make that statement. 

Whether the gender debate fostered this view of Trinity (one my husband terms a “sub-Christian” view of Trinity) or whether these views of Trinity came first and just conveniently support some contemporary gender arguments, I believe that Christians should be very concerned about the ramifications of the teachings. They argue that the Trinity is a hierarchy, quibbling that Jesus does not hold the “primacy” or an equal level of authority within the Godhead. In terms of authority (but also in function or “role”), Jesus is not co-equal with the Father.

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Theology and Experience

From the February 2008

"Trinity Review"

Number 274
pg 4:

The Fruit of Biblical Theology

The old paradigm taught that if you had the right teaching, you will experience God. The new paradigm says that if you experience God, you will have the right teaching. 

This may be disturbing to many who assume propositional truth must always preceed and dictate religious experience. That mindset is the product of systematic theology and has much to contribute... However, biblical theology looks to the Bible for a pattern of experience followed by proposition" (Leith Andersen, "A Church for the 21st Century").

Like the Biblical Theology movement, the "Emerging Church" movement is based on the irrational and Antichristian notion that event/experience/history someohow precede propostitional truth/theology.

The Bible alone is the Word of God.
The Trinity Foundation hereby grants permission to all readers to download, print, and distribute on paper or electronically any of its Reviews, provided that each reprint bear our copyright notice, current addresses, and telephone numbers, and provided that all such reproductions are distributed to the public without charge. The Reviews may not be sold or issued in book form, CD-ROM form, or microfiche.

Copyright (C) 1998-2008 The Trinity Foundation

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How Does Heresy Happen?

Christians who believe that the Bible is God’s inspired and infallible Word of God believe that the instruction in the Bible is sufficient for all of our human needs and has the ability to transcend our times and culture. The difficulty presents when we try to diligently and faithfully apply the proper meaning of Scripture to the specifics of our lives today. 

At this point, without a wise, clear, broad and well-informed perspective, we could easily fall into error. How can we keep from branching off from what God teaches us in the Word into error, be it misguided, false teachings or heresy, especially concerning central and critical doctrine.

Harold O. J. Brown has this to say in Heresies (pg 150):

“The spiritual contrast between these variant views and what we now call orthodoxy lay first of all in the goal that each sought to accomplish: the heretical positions had in common a desire to understand the mystery of God; the orthodox sought to preserve the salvation Christians find in Christ.”

Intent has a great deal to do with whether we descend into heresy. If our goal is to develop and formulate a clear doctrine about a mystery, then we are branching off into dangerous territory. Intent to meet a goal dominates and governs our actions. If our approach however concerns intent to clearly discern what the Word of God teaches us about a particular issue, then we are less likely to fall into error or predispose ourselves to error. Our primary commitment must be to the preservation of the integrity of the Word of God, following a sound hermeneutic.


Paul Elliot, in Christianity and Neo-Liberalism points out several pitfalls resulting from departure from sound hermeneutics into ones that are poorly informed or very narrow in understanding. 

“First, it is not a fixed set of principles or a defined methodology for the interpretation of Scripture.” 

In our postmodern world, truth is determined by experience and meaning is imparted by the person who deems a thing truthful, so it is not an objective measure of truth. Concerning the group that Elliot discusses in his book, these religious leaders stated that as long as their group agreed on the basics of the creeds, they were willing to tolerate the inconsistencies on other levels, sacrificing objective truth in favor of what Elliot calls “artificial confessional unity.” (Pg 248-249)

“Second, notice that the primary focus of the hermeneutic of trust is not on correctly interpreting the words of Scripture at all. It focuses instead on interpreting the words of the church’s confessional standards, and on construing them in ways that are elastic enough to permit the OPC to fit diverging doctrinal views under one big confessional tent… So the hermeneutic of trust is at least one step removed from Scripture. It focuses not on the Scripture itself but on human perspectives on Scripture… It is not only significant that the hermeneutic of trust draws attention away from Scripture, but also that it draws attention to something called the “animus imponentis”, or the intention of the imposing body.” (pg 249)

Elliot goes on to point out an example where Charles Hodge (a mid 19th century seminary instructor at Princeton) argues for the use of “animus imponentis” to maintain denominational unity and prevent a type of pluralism. Elliot says

“But with all due respect to Hodge, to use the animus impotentis as the fundamental guiding principle in establishing conformity to sound doctrine is to adopt a fatally flawed benchmark… By this logic, Rome’s doctrine of justification and the Protestant doctrine of justification have equal standing. In fact, any competing doctrines that bear the stamp of approval of their respective “imposing bodies” would have equal standing. Each imposing body is after all, its own ‘community of interpretation.’” The problem with this method is that the standards will change over time.” (pg 250-252)

Elliot concludes this section stating:

“[A]t the end of the day, what is important is not what men say the Bible says, but what the Bible actually says. For that reason, our starting point in sound doctrine must never be the secondary standards of the church, but always Scripture. It is Scripture that gives meaning to the words of the confessional standards, not vice versa. The hermeneutic of trust perverts this fundamental order." (pg 254)

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Origins of the Hermeneutic of Trust

Another Excerpt from

"Christianity and Neoliberalism"

by Paul Elliott

(pg 245 -246)

The term “hermeneutic of trust” is not new, and the concept originated not in the field of theology but in the secular field of language philosophy. The “hermeneutic of trust” was popularized by the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) in his books Truth and Method and Philosophical Hermeneutics.

Gadamer, though not a theologian himself, was a close associate of the existentialist theologian Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976), a main spokesman for modern liberal/skeptical methods of Biblical interpretation. [Host Note: Bultmann has been very influential in the development of the philosophy embraced by the Emergent Church.]

Gadamer asserted that the hermeneutic of trust applies to any area of society, not just theology. Gadamer denied the existence of objective truth. Correctly interpreting a text, he asserted, does not mean correctly understanding the original intention of the author. Rather, Gadamer argued, interpreting any text – whether it is a piece of literature, a nation’s constitution or the Bible – involves what he termed a “fusion of horizons.” In this “fusion,” a “community of interpretation” made up of scholars and other so-called experts decides what that community’s view of “truth” will be. Each participant contributes his perspectives to this mix. According to this bankrupt philosophy, a community standard of “truth” is the best that men can hope for. There is no objective truth.

[This reminds me to the Federal Vision concept of hermeneutics as an "intuitive art" versus the traditional view of a serious discipline. Is this Federal Vision "intuitive art of hermeneutics" actually an hermeneutic of trust? Hmmm.]

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More About Hermeneutics: The Grammatico-Historical Method

So how does one go about all of this?

I prefer the grammatico-historical method (also called the grammatical-historical method, depending on whom you ask) over a literal interpretation of text. 

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On Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics: "The theory and methodology of interpretation, especially of scriptural text." (American Heritage Dictionary)

How do we properly understand what the Scriptures Mean? I find the fact that the Word of God can speak to me on so many levels throughout so many years of my life one of the most wonderful things about study of the Bible. Though the foolish things confound the wise and the wise things are made simple through the Spirit, certain texts require a great deal of discipline. How do we go about determining what the Bible meant when it makes a certain statement in a particular way?

I believe that it is the great challenge of the Christian to rightly discern the truth about what the Word actually says (and means). If we use sound methods to investigate the truth, we are more likely to arrive at a sound doctrine and sound meaning. Just to put some of this into perspective, let me offer two examples of why a good hermeneutic bears importance to accurate meaning of a text. One of the more telling examples in literature came to me while attending a Catholic college as a born-again Christian. 

I took a literature class called “The Theological Quest” wherein we read a great deal of the existentialist writers as well as the Russian moralists. We read a book called “The Fall” by Albert Camus, an atheist who hated God, but I found in that book more references to Scripture than I find in most Christian books today. The class was taught by a former Baptist minister turned philosophy professor, so it was an interesting experience.

In reading Camus, the protagonist is named Jacques le Baptiste, though I doubt if I’ve spelled it correctly here, wherein the he laments the fact that he is subject to sin and subject to the Scriptural standard of righteousness. Any Evangelical Christian could pick up the symbolism: that of John the Baptist, but one without a savior to for whom to prepare the way—a man without purpose in life. Each page of the small paperback had at least three direct references to a Scripture, indicating the deeper meaning of the text. My previous knowledge and study of the Bible set me apart in that class because of my understanding, so the literature was easier to interpret and held deeper meaning. 

Most of my classmates lacked understanding of the Word and did not comprehend the meaning of the text without additional instruction from the professor and without considering informed commentaries on the book. 

 Fast forward a couple of years to a missions trip I took to Russia. On the plane ride home, I spoke with a Russian with whom I discussed the Karamazov. I loved the book, and I still refer to it as one of the best pieces of literature ever written, so complex and concerned with the deeper meaning of life. I barely started talking about the book, and this Russian gentleman explained to me how my limited understanding of Russian life made my deeper understanding of the text very difficult. The names of the characters were well chosen, and he spent a great deal of time with me, discussing why a particular name was used and the specific meaning it conveyed. I felt rather like those other students in my class where I first read Camus and Dostoevski! 

I lacked the cultural understandings that conveyed deeper meanings to the characters. (For very obvious example, if I wrote literature and I named a character Clinton or Lewinski, it would take on deeper meaning and would convey and connote meaning beyond my actual words.) Such is true when we study the Bible. When I studied Greek in seminary, I had the wonderful advantage of learning the language from a believer who grew up as an orthodox Jew. In addition to learning the language, I also learned how the Jews of the day used the Greek language from a unique and broad perspective. I developed a great appreciation for the perspective that this understanding brought to the text. 

I found that aspects of this study were much like my experience in medical research, following a logical and well-informed process of investigation so that one can have the broadest perspective and understand the most accurate information about my life’s greatest passion: the study of the Word. 

Stay tuned for a review of the principles of the grammatico-historical method of hermeneutics

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