# Ralph Venning's Rules for Understanding the Scriptures



## VirginiaHuguenot (Aug 10, 2008)

Ralph Venning, "The New Commandment Renewed," in _The Puritans on Loving One Another_ (Soli Deo Gloria, 1997), pp. 31-36:



> _Rules for Understanding the Scriptures_
> 
> RULE 1. _The Father, Son, and Spirit, as they are one, so they agree in one (1 John 5:7-8)_. They have but one design. The Father, Son, and Spirit are not like the gods of the heathen (which, indeed, are not gods), always quarrelling one with another, clashing against and contradicting one another. Though they will many things, their will is but one.
> 
> ...


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## py3ak (Aug 10, 2008)

> RULE 4. Take heed of distinctions. Though there may be use of them, yet, for the most part, most distinctions arise from darkness and ignorance, or from willfulness. Therefore, take heed of them and admit none that are not well-grounded on the Scripture. If we spoke more punctually and distinctly to all points, there would be fewer distinctions.
> 
> It is common with many who cannot or will not (oh, that there were not such as will not) understand the truth to raise distinctions and evade that way. When men cry "Distinguish, we must distinguish!" Then "material" and "formal," "strict" and "late" (poor threadbare terms) are tossed up and down like tennis balls.



Does anyone have an example of the sort of thing Venning had in mind here?


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## py3ak (Aug 10, 2008)

> RULE 6. Seeing God in Scripture speaks much in a little, interpret Scripture in the largest sense. Scripture is like laws of favor which are to be extended as far as may be. We wrong many a text of Scripture by confining, bounding, and limiting it in a narrow compass.
> 
> The Evangelists look upon several texts as fulfilled in their days, which were fulfilled long before, such as Matthew 2:17: "Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah saying..." Now this was fulfilled literally in Jeremiah 31:15, when Ephraim, who came from Rachel, was in captivity, and fulfilled here by allusion. It is as if he had said, "We may now take up the words of the prophet," as if that place was not fulfilled till now. And so you shall often find several texts upon several occasions applied to several uses, which shows that the sense should not be confined. For instance, that text in Habakkuk 2:4, "the just shall live by faith," is applied in several senses, as appears by comparing it with Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11, and Hebrews 10:38, in all of which places it is quoted.



I like that resounding smack at interpretive minimalism!


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## Presbyterian Deacon (Aug 10, 2008)

py3ak said:


> > RULE 4. Take heed of distinctions. Though there may be use of them, yet, for the most part, most distinctions arise from darkness and ignorance, or from willfulness. Therefore, take heed of them and admit none that are not well-grounded on the Scripture. If we spoke more punctually and distinctly to all points, there would be fewer distinctions.
> >
> > It is common with many who cannot or will not (oh, that there were not such as will not) understand the truth to raise distinctions and evade that way. When men cry "Distinguish, we must distinguish!" Then "material" and "formal," "strict" and "late" (poor threadbare terms) are tossed up and down like tennis balls.
> 
> ...



It's interesting to me that Rule 4 Is Take Heed of Distinctions. And then He gives rule 8 which tells the reader to distinguish between things:



> RULE 8. Distinguish between things spoken properly and things spoken figuratively, between things spoken literally and things meant spiritually. The prophet Malachi said (4:5) that Elijah must first come, which was spoken of John the Baptist, as Christ clarified in Matthew 17:12. So the words in Matthew 16:6, "beware of the leaven of the Pharisees," are not meant properly but figuratively.
> 
> If a man should take Matthew 5:29 literally ("if thine eye offend thee, pull it out") he might be guilty of self-murder. Therefore it is to be understood spiritually of anything that is near, dear, and tender as our eye to us. Origen, who interpreted almost all other places of Scripture mystically, understood this place literally (he said that some make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of God) and therefore gelded himself. But surely Origen did not have that from the beginning; it was not instituted by God, therefore it must not be executed by man.




I think what he says positively in Rule 8 helps us to understand his meaning in Rule 4. He is speaking in rule 4, I think, of petty, unimportant, and even questionable shades of difference in interpretation, the proverbial "distinction without a difference," or what some call "antics with semantics."


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## py3ak (Aug 11, 2008)

Sterling, that's true. But some of the terms he mentions are terms of distinction that would have been very much in use by the Protestant scholastics.


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Aug 14, 2008)

Reuben -- I have an idea about what Venning is getting at but I've been waiting and hoping that someone more knowledgeable about the Puritan era would weigh in before speaking up.


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## py3ak (Aug 14, 2008)

Looks like you're on the spot! Fire away.


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