Session 2 | Preconceptions About Content
The Lesson, In a Nutshell
Your preconceptions of the content of the Bible will dictate your interpretation.
In the last session we covered how your view of the nature of the Bible determined your hermeneutic. In this session we learn that preconceptions determine what kind of hermeneutical principles you will use.
Major (and Minor) preconceptions
There are two major preconceptions that determine hermeneutical principles. Both are preconceptions, and both can lead to a wrong interpretation.
But before we get to the majors, let's look at some preconceptions that are not common among evangelical believers.
Second, a mystical concept of the content of Scripture is found commonly in more charismatic circles, and increasingly in evangelicalism. Mysticism has the preconceived notion that Scripture has no fundamental, objective meaning, and therefore principles of hermeneutics are largely rejected altogether. The preconception is that all Scripture has an intimately personal meaning and can only be discovered in harmony with God.
The two major preconceptions of Scripture's content are Covenant Theology and Dispensational Theology“Progressive Dispensationalism") attempt to harmonize the two.
Covenant theology gets its name from a set of preconceived covenants that are not explicitly found in the Scriptures but are understood by its adherents to be theological truths. These preconceptions fundamentally affect the hermeneutic a person uses.
According to The Gospel Coalition (a highly-reformed coalition of Calvinists), Coventant theology takes place as follows:
The three major presuppositions of Covenant theology are that there were three covenants established in a Trinitarian council. These covenants are called the Covenant of Works, the Covenant of Grace, and the Covenant of Redemption.
The theoretical Covenant of Works“original sin" doctrine in which Adam becomes a so-called “federal head" of all of humanity. As this “federal head," all of humanity for all time is guilty of breaking the covenant should Adam do so. The covenant was that God would provide eternal life in the paradise of the Garden of Eden unless Adam ate of the forbidden fruit, and if he did so, God would punish him with death.
The theoretical Covenant of Grace promised eternal life by grace to all who would believe. Most in Covenant Theology would argue that mankind is so depraved that none would believe, therefore God made a certain elect few to whom He would give the Holy Spirit to bring them to belief. Salvation is the same for all the elect through the ages, in both the Old Testament and the New.
Finally, the theoretical Covenant of Redemption is an agreement between God the Father and God the Son in which the “Federal Head" of all those who come to be “in Christ" in all ages to come. As Federal Head, the Son will suffer and die for the elect. The Father, in this imaginary scenario, promises to resurrect the Son from the dead and to give Him a people and Kingdom all His own.
Covenant theology, therefore, is built on the idea that man (through Adam) was once offered Salvation by works but failed in those works. Then God determined to save some through Jesus Christ and made Jesus to be the coming Savior, promising Him certain benefits in return.
The Preconceptions of Dispensational Theology
The major preconception of dispensational theology is that there is a discontinuity in the way in which God has dealt with mankind, and this discontinuity is easily recognizable by an objective reading of Scripture. For example, it is not hard to recognize that God dealt with mankind differently after they were cast out of the Garden. Further, God dealt with mankind differently after He selected to work exclusively through Abraham. There was, much later, a discontinuity in the way he dealt with Abraham from the way He dealt with mankind after Moses.
The challenge of a dispensational preconception is to solidly get the discontinuity“standardized." While the concepts are not wrong, the dividing points between dispensations (the start of discontinuity) have been blindly accepted as true, sometimes with little Scriptural evidence. This is the same problem with the acceptance of the theological covenants within Covenant Theology.
My own requirement for the beginning of a new dispensation is when God gives a new revelation that is so fundamental that it changes the very nature of God's relationship to man. I do not see such a revelation given in Acts 2, which is often considered the start of the dispensation of grace. The Acts 2 view disregards the revelation of the mystery given to Paul (Eph. 3:2, for example). In the Acts 2 dispensational model Paul was simply given a better understanding of the dispensation of grace and became its spokesman, but the dispensation began with the Jewish day of Pentecost in Acts 2.
How The Preconceptions Determine Your Hermeneutic
The preconceptions of covenantalism cause you to see all the Bible as about a single topic: salvation. This is because the underlying preconceptions (covenants) are all about salvation. Such a hermeneutic causes the student of the Word to miss the broader storyline of Scripture. It also causes one to read himself into each Scripture and thus fail to see the overall plan and purpose of God.
The preconception of dispensationalism determines a literal hermeneutic. If God has made certain revelations that change His relationship to man, then one reads the Bible looking for these fundamentally new revelations. The challenge is to read the Bible rather than the theology book to determine when these revelations take place.
