JD: Briefly discuss why there are so many different interpretations of certain Bible passages since scripture was inspired by the Holy Spirit and we as believers are in dwelt by the Holy Sprit to teach us the word.
DJ: First of all the Bible isn’t a theology textbook. The finite trying to understand the infinite in many cases. And we need to remember that even Peter commented that some of what Paul wrote was difficult to understand. And of course we’re all on a spiritual journey and it take decades to begin to really understand some of the deeper things of the spirit of God.
You know none of us really approach the Bible with a
completely unbiased and open mind. We come to the Biblical text with our own
personality and worldview and philosophy. You know there’s room for good and
Godly men including some of the best Bible teachers and scholars to agree to
disagree that they might not agree one hundred precent on absolutely everything.
JD: David what would you say are a few of the biggest obstacles
to arriving at a correct interpretation of any given Bible passage?
DJ: Well I think one of the biggest problems that so many people
engage in or that they are plagued by is they jump to interpretation before
they sufficiently observe the text. Actually, most of the Bible doesn’t need to
be interpreted rather it needs to be accepted and that’s a big problem for a
lot of people and they’re not paying attention to what the text actually says.
The other is there’s a gap between the mind of the author and
our own. There’s what he and his audience knew that we have to try to recreate that
world in our mind from the text in the historical context. And then of course
there are language barriers that include the vocabulary of the original
languages. And then you have a lack of comprehensive knowledge of the Bible as
a whole. We can take a lifetime trying to put all of these together. So, on any
given topic there can be many other passages that would shape our understanding
of the passage we’re studying but we’re just not aware of them because we don’t
have this more comprehensive knowledge of the Bible.
And finally one of the things that you and I talk about all
the time on this program is a failure to use a consistently literally grammatical
historical hermeneutic a method of interpretation. So, all of these things
could become barriers even though we’re looking at an inspired text and all
believers are in dwelt by the Holy Spirit.
JD: David James with a Biblical approach to interpreting the
Bible.
We report this information because it is setting the stage
for Bible prophecy to be fulfilled.
David James actually laid out a system by which we can come
to an understanding of what God is telling us in his word, the Bible. Remember
all scripture is given by inspiration of God through the Holy Spirit and it is
profitable for each of us, that’s II Timothy 3:16.
We must study his word to know how to live in this world
today. But also, we need to know what the future holds for us and we can study
that in his prophetic word which is one-third of the Bible.
