****The Randy White Guide to Hermeneutics
Session 5 | Philosophy of Language
The Lesson, In a Nutshell
**Your principles of language will determine your understanding of the content of the text.
Having determined the content of the text by making decisions about the original language (source) and the translation principles used to get the Scripture into English (or its target language), the student of God's Word must determine their philosophy of the English language in order to determine how they are going to understand the text.
Language: A Relatively Simple Tool
Language has been with mankind from day one. We read of God's communication with Adam in Genesis 2. From all we can tell, Adam was created with language. Contrary to some opinion, we are not aware of any era of human history in which language did not exist. Mankind has never had to survive in community with grunts and groans. Mankind has always had words.
And words have always been relatively simple tools. Within a year, an infant will develop rudimentary language, and by two years of life a child can often communicate effectively even to people who are not in their everyday circle.
Both language and communication can advance in difficulty based on subject matter, but the rules of language are mostly the same whether between children and their parents or professors and their students.
Perhaps the most basic of rules of any language is that words have a certain and objective meaning. No language ever known to humanity has been void of a dictionary, or the basic principle of the meaning of sounds gathered and voiced in a certain pattern.
“What part of no do you not understand?" This little saying illustrates the simple meaning of words. As a child develops in language, they may ask what a word like hyperbaric or miniscule means. The ability to use greater precision and depth in language is wholly based on the principle that simple words have meaning, and every word simply means what it means.
Certainly, words can change in context, but even then there is objective meaning. Without this basic principle of the simple tool of language, life together would be simply impossible.
*This is good news for Bible students. Since words have meaning, grammatical structures further define the interrelationship between the meaning of the words, and dictionaries and other resources are available to discover the meaning, we can read and understand God's Word!*
In post-modern society, there is a movement to eradicate the meaning of words. In her confirmation process, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown famously refused to define what a woman was. In many circles of leftist society, gender words like man, woman, male, female, along with economic words like inflation and recession and even words like homosexual have been shed of all meaning. Why is there a concerted effort to rid words of meaning? To do so robs humanity of the most essential too they have: language.
I am convinced that the spiritual forces of darkness behind this campaign are aimed at making the Word of God to be meaningless. A frontal assault on the Bible would be too problematic, even in our post-modern world. But a reductionism of language itself can accomplish the same thing.
Will We Understand The Bible To Be Literal?
The attack on the meaning of the Bible has been ongoing from the earliest days of Christianity. Origen of Alexandria (c. AD 185-253) was one of the most prolific writers of all time, writing at least 2,000 treatises on the Christian faith. But Origen interpreted the Scripture allegorically rather than literally. The English word allegorical comes to us directly from Greek, where it was another (allos) marketplace (agoras). An allegorical interpretation of language looks for something beyond what the words themselves say.
“a deeper meaning" is tempting, but most often disastrous. The Bible is such a simple book that it literally tells us when there is deeper meaning to be found. If the Bible does not announce it, there is no reason to look for it!
Frankly, if we interpret the Word of God allegorically when the Bible does not explicitly tell us that allegory is being employed, we abuse the Word of God to the extent that we just as well not have a Bible. Further, not only do we abuse Scripture, but allegorical interpretation for literal language is an abuse on language itself, and is dangerous for a prosperous ongoing society.
Here are some examples of taking the Bible literally:
Genesis 1 is the testimony of God's six-day creation.
Luke 14:1-5 is a warning about the manner of death that Jesus' hearers on that occasion would endure if they did not repent (thus a prophecy of A.D. 70).
James 4:1 is a description of the twelve tribes of Israel during the mid-First-Century (cf. James 1:1).
Revelation 20:2 speaks of a literal 1,000-year period.
WARNING: if you carry out this rule, many long-held doctrines of man will crumble. This will set you free in your understanding of God's will and ways but will put you on a collision course with most of the Christian world.
What Will We Do With Pronouns?
“place-holders" for nouns. They include words like we, you, us, them, this, that, etc. The student who takes them literally will search the context to determine the proper identity of the place-holder.
In simple terms: *just because it says“us" does not mean that we are included!* Only a study of context can determine the identity of the placeholder.
When we determine that we will let context announce the identify of pronouns, it forces us into closer Bible study than we have ever done before. No longer can we assume identity, but now we must search for revealed identity. But doing this work will enable us to know what promises are ours, what obligations are ours, what chastisements are ours, what blessings are ours, and so much more.
Finding these pronouns is not always easy. To do so, start from the beginning of a book and let the first-use of a pronoun become the default. But in most books the default will not hold true throughout, as context changes.
A simple example can be found in Joshua 1:“name it and claim it" that often comes from this passage goes away.
A meaningful example can be found in the book of Ephesians. In Ephesians 1:1-12 there is a consistent use of the first-person plural (we/us). But in Ephesians 1:13 Paul switches to the second-person plural (ye/you). The entire epistle comes alive when the pronouns are read carefully.
A more difficult example is the book of Romans. This book contains many first-person plural (we/us), as well as second-person plural (ye/your), and also many third-person plural (they/them). A close study will reveal that the we/us refers to Jews (often in the homeland), the ye/your* *refers to Jews living in Rome, and the they/them often refers to Gentiles. However, there are very notable exceptions, and every pronoun must be taken in context.
But when they are, the truth of the passage jumps from the page, and will make you free!
