Brandon:
You want interaction with someone on the issue of understanding the Bible for what it is saying, as opposed to reading things into the Bible from one's own preconceived notions. You want to know for a fact that the Bible is speaking to you objectively, not subject to your own, or someone else's own, presuppositions. If we are all born in sin, how can we trust ourselves to set the episitemological setting for Scripture? Does it have the setting needed to understand within itself? How do you answer those who leave you with no escape in asserting that ALL Biblical interpretation is subjective in the end?
It is an assertion that many rely on. Sometimes it sneakier than other times. Sometimes it comes to you as an answer to the problem, but is really the thing in a more disguised manner. Often, though, it merely immature theology asserting or assuming more than it really grasps.
The main thing to start with is that Scripture interprets Scripture. Read the first chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith, and you will find that this is much broader than a first reading might suggest. The Bible does not need the witness or justification of either men or the Church to be verified, for it is sufficient in itself for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. Yet this in no way nullifies or negates the role of the Church as a witness of the Spirit's presence and leading, or of the authority of Scripture within itself.
The tests of orthodoxy can be varied, depending on what is being thrust upon God's people as the gospel from man's own perceived authority. But tests of orthodoxy is not the same thing as the test for the mark of a Christian. A Christian is not always orthodox, because we all come into it a children, not knowing very much and needing to mature in the experience and knowledge of the things of faith and life. Its like having to learn to walk all over again, when one has a change in life by way of conversion to Christ's Way. But it is also both easier and more difficult as one matures in the knowledge of God. Anyone of us can be along that road of maturity, and it could be that many of us think ourselves further along or further behind than what we really are. So the test for orthodoxy is to be in accordance with a good judgment of how far along one is in the knowledge of God and The Way.
In a nutshell: Scripture interprets Scripture; Scripture reveals God through Christ; Scripture is opened to us by the Spirit's illumining presence.
See? It has everything to do with interacting with God Himself. If that interaction with a holy God is not evident in the teaching that is taught, then you must question whether it is of God, even if it has every earmark of being strictly and perfectly logical. It must bear witness to God Himself, to His glory, and to His righteousness, goodness, and truth. And it cannot, simply cannot, militate against the plain elements of faith that have been taught to us in the Church throughout history; it has to be the same faith that has been expressed by God's people right from the beginning. It has nothing to do with what one pastes over the Bible from one's own perspective.
) So I figured I would try it out asking a hermeneutical questions.
