34 Quotes About Hermeneutics

With regard to the gospels, biblical scholarship has mixed-up theology with history, thereby turning the eschatology of the epistles into memoirs.

The saints are the true interpreters of Holy Scriptures. The meaning of a given passage of the Bible becomes most intelligible in those human beings who have been totally transfixed by it and have lived it out.

Je kunt niet zomaar iets uit een vers halen, zonder eerst de context te bepalen.(Dutch for: You can't easily get something from a verse, without determining it's context first)

Scriptura Scripturae interpres - Scripture is the interpreter of Scripture...-Karl Barth, Gifford Lectures (1930)quoted in Webster, Barth's Earlier Theology, 108

The literal sense of the author was "creation is the orderly act of a loving Creator God." What the modern reader often hears, however, is "The universe was made in six 24-hour days." This is as wrong-headed as taking me to mean I actually stood in line a million years or that my cardiac tissue has been torn in half or that Christ had delusions of being a grape plant.-- Making Senses of Scripture

There is a notion that complete impartiality is the most fitting and indeed the normal disposition for true exegesis, because it guarantees a complete absence of prejudice. For a short time, around 1910, this idea threatened to achieve almost canonical status in Protestant theology. But now we can quite calmly describe it as merely comical.

In my view, the gospels are true, not historically, but theologically, or, as I would argue, prophetically! What we have is, the Messiah’s history written in advance in story form.

What is the difference between my view and the classical Christian perspective? I am convinced that there are not multiple comings and multiple returns of Christ, but only one decisive coming at the end of the world, which includes the resurrection, the rapture, and his appearance in the sky!

The question concerning Jesus: do you want to know the real story, or just the allegory?