The Place of the Holy Spirit in the Exegetical Process

The cold, dead, overly rationalistic methodology of the Enlightenment period spawned an existential hermeneutic desperately seeking for a faith that was alive, vibrant, and personal. We cannot fault the desires of these Romanticist exegetes, only their methodology that led to a nihilistic subjectivism.

 

V. Conclusion

What is needed, and what we have suggested all along, is a methodology that is critically sound and “experientially” alive. In order to accomplish this goal we must embrace the best of the grammatico-historical-syntactical method which is the reasonable use of our God-given capabilities. Likewise we must acknowledge our utter dependence on the Holy Spirit’s role in illuminating the Biblical text. Without His help the spiritual cravings of man will never be met. Critical methodology without the illumination of the Spirit in the final analysis is bankrupt and devoid of real significance.

Therefore, those who engage in the task of interpreting the Bible because of a conviction that it sets forth teachings that are true and beneficial must spare no effort to perfect their skills of exegesis. But they must also look to God to enable them to have and maintain the humble and contrite spirit (Isa. 57:15) that will welcome what the Bible teaches. Otherwise the deceitfulness of sin will cause even the most skilled exegete, by some legerdemain, to modify the meanings yielded up by the historical-grammatical data so they will not offend the ego. Even though the teachings of the Bible are manifestly reasonable, our reasoning powers are not sufficient to suppress the awesome power of sin which predisposes us to glory in ourselves. Only God, through the Holy Spirit, overcomes this power of sin, so that we are willing to love from the heart what our minds can tell is reasonable.²²

Sin then is a powerful pre-understanding that we as interpreters need to address as a lethal bias that distorts the textual meaning of scripture and makes it spiritually irrelevant. But thanks be to God who with the giving of the Spirit has also given us the ability to overcome biases that would otherwise distort His intention. Illumination therefore is indispensable for man to embrace God’s word that “confronts man with a message that strikes at the very core of his sinfulness.”²³

 

PR

 

Notes

¹ For an Evangelical over-view of pertinent issues in inspiration and inerrancy see The Foundation of Biblical Authority, cited by J. M. Boice (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing Co., 1978).

² Daniel P. Fuller, “The Holy Spirit’s Role in Biblical Interpretation.” in Scripture, Tradition and Interpretation, ed. by W. Ward Gasque and William Sanford LaSor, (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s Publishing Co., 1978), p. 190.

Tags: exegetical, holy, place, process, spirit

Category: Biblical Studies, Winter 1999