Does truth have any place on BH? If so, what is its place and how might it be worded so as not to offend unnecessarily?

Question

I, for one, do not have a corner on the truth. (Does anyone?) From my perspective, however, truth would seem to be the payoff for a thoroughgoing hermeneutic. If as interpreters we do our job well, we are entitled, I think, to say with at least some measure of confidence, "Thus saith the Lord," and not just "Thus saith the text"!

The approach to hermeneutics which limits itself to a dry intellectualism may--no, it does--have its place, but biblical hermeneutics must not stop with "This is what I believe the text says, and what it says makes sense contextually, and here's why." No, biblical hermeneutics must continue with "This is what the text means in the larger context of the entire Bible and how it applies to our lives existentially."

As Jesus said,

"Sanctify them [, Father,] through your word; your word is truth" (John 17:17).

The former approach I find to be sterile, lifeless, and like salt which has lost it savour, should be rejected.

Some contributors to BH beta, however, seem to think we need to halt our interpreting at the point where we feel we have "made our case" as to what the text says. That approach may have its place, but it seems--to me, anyway--to stop short of truly applying God's truth to our lives. Furthermore, even the most cerebral approach to hermeneutics comes with presuppositional baggage, and when we take umbrage with a contributor's truth claim, we may fail to realize we ourselves, however unconsciously, cling to our own version of truth.

I've expressed quite clearly in some of my comments on the site that I am perfectly willing to precede each of my contributions to the website with a caveat to the effect that

"The following material will likely be of interest only to Christians, and it is based on the doctrine of the Analogy of Scripture, which to some Christians means the Bible comprises both the Tanakh and the New Testament, the former of which laid a foundation for the latter in true Judeo-Christian fashion, and both of which are not in conflict with each other, but rather are characterized by complementarity."

Jesus' hermeneutic in Luke 24 (v.27, "he explained") was not some dry exposition on the ten commandments of helpful hermeneutics, but a step-by-step exegesis of the "things [in Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms] concerning Himself" (vv.27, 44). As a result of his Bible lesson with the two disciples on Emmaus Road, their hearts burned within them (v.32). That's not dry intellectualism but a fire in their bellies from the paradigmatic vista which Jesus had just opened to them.

Sorry for my prolix plaint, but there's a question in there somewhere, I think.

Answer 1

The approach to hermeneutics which limits itself to a dry intellectualism may--no, it does--have its place [...]

And this is that place.

I disagree that it is - or must be - dry intellectualism, but it should absolutely be rigorous and focused. As with all sites on Stack Exchange, this site exists to help folks with specific interests solve specific problems: in this case, those interests are centered around specific texts, and the specific problems are those directly involving the interpretation of that text.

Y'all have other interests as well. And there are other problems related to the text... But this is not the place for those. If this site has a purpose, it is to equip its members with the knowledge and tools necessary to make use of these texts elsewhere: on other Stack Exchange sites, on other forums, in their work, their ministry, devotion or education.

And if you lose sight of that, you're doing your fellow members - and yourself - a disservice.

Consider a situation where you needed knowledge of some other discipline in order to do some important bit of work. Say, mathematics. And you found a place dedicated to teaching math, but it was clogged with teachers who spent their time telling stories about how useful math was to them, and all of the great things math had been used to accomplish, and they were wonderful stories and well-told but... At the end of the day, you still didn't know enough math to do your job. Would you go back? Would you recommend this place to others who needed to learn this subject?

In various conversations here today, you've mentioned the teachings of both Jesus and Paul, both of whom are fine examples to follow indeed! But you realize, both were extremely well-versed in the text and its interpretation... The text tells us of Jesus as a youth, sitting among the teachers, listening and asking questions. And of Paul's years of study. Long before they stood up to preach, they sat and listened and learned the history and the law. Dry though it may be, upon this foundation they built something awesome.

Let us work here to offer such an education to those who may later go on to use it for great things elsewhere. If we can do even that, it will be enough.

Answer 2

This request is nothing new, users have weighed in over years so I will not retype what has already been written extensively elsewhere. I will merely quote existing meta posts that have been upvoted by the community.

We discuss the text, not the things to which the text applies

The majority of users have agreed that:

Questions are on topic if they are focused on the text, rather than things to which the text may apply.... Questions that seem to be seeking to apply the Bible are off-topic.

We do indeed "stop short of truly applying God's truth to our lives," that is a well-defined guideline for participation here:

We stop short of application when answering questions about the Bible (which means we don't fully exegete the text in the religious sense of the practice).... Questions about the application of the Biblical texts are best asked on sites devoted to specific religious traditions such as Christianity.SE or Judaism.SE. We try to avoid eisegesis as much as possible.

This is a university, not a church/synagogue

As articulated in our (highly upvoted by the community) site distinctives under point #4:

We are interested in questions about Biblical texts and the process of translating and interpreting them, not absolute truth(s). We want to know how things are and have been—what they should be is your concern.

In the university, the Bible (viewed as an academic text of literature rather than as 'scripture') is taken up as an object of philological, moral, aesthetic, and antiquarian interest.¹ The university’s goals are "to avoid controversial ideologies, outmoded systems of thought, dogmatism, and extreme positions on either end of the theological spectrum."²

Imagine being observed by a bunch of professors who know the Bible, but don't necessarily believe it (at least not in the same way that you do). That is your audience—even if many of us are adherents of a religion. In a university setting (such as a rigorously academic seminary), truth is often less important than how you arrive at it. A quote from the movie Indiana Jones comes to mind:

"Archaeology is the search for fact... not truth. If it's truth you're
looking for, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall."

That is not to say that truth isn't important (indeed, those of us who adhere to religious beliefs and practices are very concerned about truth in our lives)—it's just secondary to scholarship in this context. We make the Internet a better place by bringing rigorous scholarship to bear on the real questions people have about the Biblical texts and the process of understanding them (stopping short of the application of these texts).

The good news is that there are other places on the web that welcome modern religious interpretations of texts that focus primarily on absolute truth—this is simply not that place. We offer something different.

Stay on target

Another meta post points out that historical, linguistic, and literary questions about the Biblical texts are primarily what we ask about here, while religious, theological/doctrinal, ethical, and liturgical questions about the text are best asked elsewhere. Questions asking about linguistic features of a text should receive linguistic responses, not theological ones, and so on. In other words, answers should stay on target.

This isn't because these other aspects of the text are unimportant, but rather because this site has chosen to focus only on specific aspects of it because there are plenty of other websites focusing on the aspects we exclude. This helps reduce to the signal-to-noise ratio, resulting in this site making the Internet a better place by providing well-researched, scholarly, and 'on-target' answers that are hard to find elsewhere.

This also makes our answers useful to a much broader audience (which is important considering that we explicitly "welcome Jewish, Christian, Atheist and other viewpoints as long as they take seriously the process of understanding the Biblical texts").

Showing work helps minimize "presuppositional baggage"

You also mention that "even the most cerebral approach to hermeneutics comes with presuppositional baggage." I fully agree with you here. We can't eliminate all bias. But we can expect some of it to be bracketed in the interest of welcoming all perspectives, and we also require that users show their work so that we can understand how someone came to various conclusions, not just what they think:

...we try to minimize unstated presuppositions in questions and answers. For this reason, we expect good questions and answers to lay out a logical argument beginning from the Biblical text. This is like mathematics homework: you shouldn't give an answer without showing how you derived it.

As also explained elsewhere,

What makes us different from those sites is that here, our focus is primarily on the process of hermeneutical analysis, not the final output of that process. This distinction is significant and critical for users of this site to understand, but in practice the degrees of implementation are often subtle.

We are different, but we're glad you're here!

I will close by quoting the final point in our site distinctives:

We are different, and sometimes it takes a little bit of a paradigm shift to adapt. Every student who enters an academically rigorous seminary feels that way at some point. Having your assumptions challenged, your motives questioned, and your contributions edited is not always pleasant. However, if you endure the initial 'poking and prodding,' you'll quickly realize that you have found a community that cherishes the Biblical texts and desires to understand them in a unique way not found anywhere else on the Internet—and you'll learn a lot and make some new friends along the way.

---

_{¹ Michael C. Legaspi. The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies (USA: Oxford University Press, 2011), 31–32.}

_{² Ibid., 41.}

Answer 3

Thinking about this, one thing people have to understand and accept is that one person's 'truth', is not another person's 'truth'. What some refer to as the 'Truth', literally has no meaning to many people.

For example, for me (and this is not up for debate), my 'Truth' is scientific or archaeological evidence. (Hence my frequent use of the science tag).

This site allows and embraces these differences as we all explore Biblical texts as texts.

Answer 4

The following article can be found here (minus my own addendum in brackets, of course). While the theme of the article is "tolerance," it also touches on the notion of truth (see the article's last paragraph). In my opinion, the article's author, Hank Hanegraaff (aka "The Bible Answer Man"), makes a good argument for not bracketing the truth.

Today tolerance is being redefined to mean that all views are equally valid and all lifestyles equally appropriate. As such, the notion that Jesus is the only way is vilified as the epitome of intolerance. Rather than capitulating to culture, Christians must be equipped to expose the flaws of today’s tolerance, while simultaneously exemplifying true tolerance.

First, to say all views are equally valid sounds tolerant but in reality is a contradiction in terms. If indeed all views are equally valid then the Christian view must be valid. The Christian view, however, holds that not all views are equally valid. Thus, the redefinition of tolerance in our culture is a self-refuting proposition. Moreover, we do not tolerate people with whom we agree; we tolerate people with whom we disagree. If all views were equally valid, there would be no need for tolerance.

[I’d paraphrase what Hank seems to be saying here as follows: 1) a preacher of the new tolerance (what I call “the old intolerance”) cannot at the same time say, “All religions are equally valid; therefore, Christ cannot be THE way, truth, and life,” and “I’m tolerant of Christianity and its claims.” To do so is to contradict himself or herself. If all religions are valid, then so must Christianity be valid; 2) a preacher of the new tolerance cannot therefore redefine tolerance in a way that includes an element of intolerance toward Christianity. To do so would be self-refuting. Selah. As an aside: intelligent Christians--yes, there are a few of them--do not insist their religion has a corner on the truth. To many of them, "All truth is God's truth wherever it may be found." Many of them realize that no self-respecting religion can even get off the ground without having at least some truth with which to attract adherents.]

Furthermore, today’s redefinition of tolerance leaves no room for objective moral judgments. A modern terrorist could be deemed as virtuous as a Mother Teresa. With no enduring reference point, societal norms are being reduced to mere matters of preference. As such, the moral basis for resolving international disputes and condemning such intuitively evil practices as genocide, oppression of women, and child prostitution is being seriously compromised.

Finally, in light of its philosophically fatal features, Christians must reject today’s tolerance and revive true tolerance. True tolerance entails that, despite our differences, we treat . . . [all the people] we meet with the dignity and respect due them as those created in the image of God. True tolerance does not preclude proclaiming the truth, but it does mandate that we do so with gentleness and with respect (cf. 1 Pet. 3:15–16). In a world that is increasingly intolerant of Christianity, Christians must exemplify tolerance without sacrificing truth. Indeed, tolerance when it comes to personal relationships is a virtue, but tolerance when it comes to truth is a travesty.3

-Hank Hanegraaff

NOTES

1. Excerpted from Hank Hanegraaff’s The Bible Answer Book, Volume 2 (Nashville: J. Countryman, 2006).
2. All Scripture quotations are from the New International Version.
3. For further study, see Paul Copan, True for You, but Not for Me: Deflating the Slogans That Leave Christians Speechless (Bethany House Publishers, 1998); see also Josh McDowell and Bob Hostetler, The New Tolerance (Tyndale House Publishers, 1998).

In conclusion, I find it interesting that even in our post-modern courtrooms in the year 2014, there is still the search for truth:

"Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?"

Today, however, many would like to be able to respond to that question by saying,

"Uh, your honor, I swear to testify to the facts as I see them; all the facts; and nothing but the facts, so help me, Me."