In my last post,
I tried to lay a foundation for an understanding of some ground-level
issues relating to hermeneutics, or principles of interpretation of
Scripture. Like I mentioned there, studying hermeneutics is rather
tricky, because it seems circular to attempt to interpret Scripture in
order to glean biblical principles of interpretation. You know, chicken
or egg?
I
suggested that the way out of this conundrum was to consider the nature
of Scripture itself, particularly as defined in the opening verses of
the book of Hebrews. From those verses we learned that God spoke, and thus Scripture is fundamentally communication. And based on that, the interpreter’s default orientation to the text is to understand it in its plain, normal sense, just like he does with other communication.
John MacArthur summarizes the point well: Read it HERE
