# Reformed Hermeneutic Resources: Any help?



## Romans922 (Jan 26, 2010)

Can anyone help me help my reformed baptist friend?

He is currently attending a baptist college (dispensational, arminian to the core) and he is taking a hermeneutics class. He emailed me this: "Could you recommend any reformed hermeneutic resources (books, internet, etc.). My professor of hermeneutics is teaching that that Reformed theologians teach only an allegorical approach to hermeneutics."

Isn't that funny. We teach only an allegorical approach.  Let's help him out everyone!!!


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## Romans922 (Jan 26, 2010)

wow...bump*


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## Casey (Jan 26, 2010)

The reference to allegory probably is to typical Reformed (aka, non-dispensational) readings of Revelation. Vern Poythress has helpful books on both Revelation and Dispensationalism. He doesn't shy from the hermeneutical issues at the root.


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## Prufrock (Jan 26, 2010)

Easy solution: give him a commentary or two from our old, orthodox divines, like Calvin or Willet.


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## Andres (Jan 26, 2010)

Here is a link to the list of books required for NT123: Hermeneutics class at WTS Philly. Any of these should help.


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## Guido's Brother (Jan 27, 2010)

I'm a firm believer in having Scripture determine how we interpret Scripture. I learned this from Dr. Seakle Greijdanus. I have a summary of his book "Scripture Principles for Scripture Interpretation" at my blog and resource site.

Reactions: Like 1


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## py3ak (Jan 27, 2010)

Patrick Fairbairn deals explicitly with hermeneutical principles in some detail. He has books on typology, prophecy, law and NT hermeneutics.


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## Puritan Sailor (Jan 27, 2010)

Modern guys: O. Palmer Robertson, Ridderbos, MacCartney/Clayton, Vos, Clowney, Chappel, Goldsworthy, Greidanus, Poythress, D.A. Carson, Ladd, Morris. 

Some older guys: Fairbairn, Hengstenberg, Calvin 

The stress should be on how the NT guys interpreted the OT promises, not whether or not it's "allegorical" which seems to be the common dispensational mischaracterization of covenant theology.


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## tommyb (Jan 28, 2010)

"The Hermeneutical Spiral" by Grant Osborne is very good.


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## ValiantforTruth (Jan 29, 2010)

*Reformation hermeneutics*

This is a very interesting topic. Unlike most other important areas of theology, I do not believe there is one widely-recognized "standard" work in hermeneutics.

The Reformation emphatically rejected the allegorical method. I think Luther called it "the method of a harlot", although I don't know where to find that quote, and he still resorted to it occasionally. In Calvin it is almost completely absent. The driving force for this shift in thinking was the recognition of the disastrous consequences of the four-fold interpretive scheme of the Roman Church. This is the also the origin of the WCF's statement that the full sense of Scripture "is not manifold, but one" (WCF Ch. 1, Sec. 9). Anyone who suggests that the Reformed tradition favors the allegorical method should back that up with specific theologians and their allegorical exegesis of specific texts. I don't think they'll find much. (Unless they consider typology to be a form of allegory, which is actually not unreasonable).

In my opinion, the two most important achievements of the Reformation were (1) giving the Bible back to the common people in their own language and (2) the rejection of the four-fold interpretive scheme. A Bible in your own language doesn't do much good if every single text can have any meaning (in fact, an infinite number of meanings per text in principle). That's allegory: unlimited fantasy with the text. And a text that can mean anything means nothing. Nothing could be further from the spirit of the Reformation.


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## Bookmeister (Jan 29, 2010)

Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation by Graeme Goldsworthy


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