Hermeneutics Part1| Dr. Conrad Vine

say but if you have your Bibles you’re going to need them in your hands. We’re going to look at some examples as as we go through as we go through this this

process together. And so um [clears throat] we’re going home is the study of interpretation. And we all

engage in hermeneutics or interpretation whether we like it, want to admit it or not. And um if you hear a teenager

saying to you, well that’s your interpretation or um that’s your understanding, but I have a different understanding. Um then you know that

that that teenager is an academic and and is engaged in the study of hermeneutics. Um, some of you are shaking your heads at me, but that is

kind of what is happening here. So, uh, we’re going to look, um, at at hermeneutics, how scripture was interpreted, um, from the Old Testament

um, all the way through to, um, hopefully to the late 1800s this morning. And, uh, so it’s going to be a hop skip and a jump through history.

And, um, many of the names I’m going to talk about are going to be familiar to you in their approaches. And then um tonight I’m not going to do the second

part of hermeneutics which is Millerites in Adventist hermeneutics but I’ll do that tomorrow for Sabbath school. We’ll have a regular sermon tonight. And so um

that’s our some discussions uh yesterday. We kind of switch those around. So um we’re going to discuss the principles of interpretation here this

morning. So uh let’s bow our heads and ask for the blessing of the Holy Spirit.

Our dear Lord in heaven, we thank you for the blessings of this day. We thank you for the blessings of this camp meeting. And now, Lord, as we share

together, I pray that your Holy Spirit will fall upon us and give us insight and understanding, that you’ll better equip us to understand the world in

which we live, how to respond with love and grace to those around us. And I pray, Lord, that we will grow in our own understanding of how we interact with

the word of God. Uh so Lord, um guide us with your spirit now. We ask this mercy in Jesus’ holy name. Amen. All right.

So, um, hommeneutics is is kind of it’s the study of it’s a study of texts and it’s a study of how you interpret a

text. And, um, in every Sorry, I’m all caught up here. I don’t

want to don’t want to pull anything down. Um, in in every in every discussion

about this, there’s always a text There’s always a an author and there’s always a reader.

And [clears throat] um every time you read a text, you are the reader and you read a text, you’re also thinking about

the author and what was the author intending with this text? What were they trying to communicate with with with that text? Now, I’m not talking here about texting on your phone. All right?

Although with a teenage kid, you may get a text and you may be wondering exactly what they were trying to communicate.

Okay? But in general, I’m talking about printed text here, published text, and you there’s always an interplay between the reader of the text and the author.

And and it used to be it used to be before the reformation that the focus was on the author. And from Martin

Luther onwards, the focus was on the text. What does the text say? And in the modern world the focus is on the reader

uh as a and we talk about reader response criticism but today the focus is on the reader and they have authority over the text and the author has no

authority over them at all. That’s kind of the modern worldview. And so when it comes to the reader that’s why you have for instance things like um a woman’s

devotional Bible, a men’s devotional Bible, there’s a there’s a bodybuilder’s Bible. um there’s a teenage Bible. And

why do we have these Bibles published for certain segments of society is because we’re accepting the idea that

the text is no longer supreme, but the reader is supreme. And so we see these these shifts taking place around us in

how we engage with with scripture. So, um I’m going to start out um and I need to draw a little chart up

here on on the board so we can all see where we are in the flow of time. We’re

going to look at Old Testament, New Testament,

and then we’re going to look at um the uh early church.

And then we’re going to look at the Middle Ages.

And then we’re going to look at um the Reformation.

[gasps] And then we’re going to look at the Enlightenment. Enlightenment.

And then we’re going to look at um higher criticism. higher criticism.

And then we’re going to look at um postmodernism.

Can you all read that by the way?

Okay. If I tell you what the word means and you know what it means. Okay. So the author is telling you that this text means postmodernism. All right. This is

a hermeneutical exercise. So that’s the kind of the journey we’re going to make this morning. uh from Old Testament, New Testament, Early Church, Middle Ages,

Reformation era, the Enlightenment, the era of high criticism and postmodernism and postmodernism. With that comes deconstructionism, uh when you look at

the text. So, uh that’s kind of the the journey we’re going to make today. And so, you may want to take some notes if you have your Bibles handy. We’re going

to look at some examples as we go through this. So, let’s focus out by uh looking at the Old Testament here. And

um in the Old Testament, the the Jews in Old Testament time, they engaged in the interpretation of the texts that they had. You know, they didn’t just have the

text, but they engage in the active interpretation of those texts. And those those interpretations are known as midrash.

Midrash. And there were different kinds of of interpretations. You see this for instance in Ezra chapter 7. And it comes

from the verb darash in Hebrew which means to seek or to seek the meaning or to ask. And so there were there were two

kinds of midrash. There was hake hake and there was I’m trying to remember

what the other one was called. Um hagadek hagadic.

And what was the difference between the two? So, Hak Midrash was scholars commenting on the on the law of Moses

and Hagadic Midrash was scholars commenting on the other writings of the Old Testament. So, um uh the the the

Jews divided the Old Testament. I mean, they call it the Torah, but they really call it the Tanaka.

And this this stands for Ta is for Torah. Na is for Naveim prophets and ka

is is short for the writings. So that’s um the first five books of the Bible. Um that’s the the prophets major and of

minor and those are the histories. So Tanaka that’s how the Jews would refer to this. And so the midrash were commentaries on the Torah and the

Hagadic Midrash was was commentaries on these things here. And those things we still have those to this day. And um

they uh when you for instance if you look at the sermon on the mount when Jesus says you’ve heard it say thou

shalt not kill but I say unto you. Jesus is engaging in hak midrash. He’s discussing the Torah the meaning of the

law. So Jesus is definitely within the stream of Jewish interpretation.

And uh and so the the sermon on the mount is really an example uh we don’t read it as such but it’s Jewish halak midrash. And so uh there were certain um

there were certain assumptions behind this but uh the fundamental assumption was that the Jews believed in the oral

Torah and the written Torah.

There was the oral and the written. And so um what they believed was that God gave Moses the law on Mount Si, but God

also gave Moses the interpretation of law orally. So how do you apply this? And so um we have this in our church.

You might say that we have the Bible and then how do you apply this in practice and how we deal with one another? We have the general conference working

policy and we have the church manual which is kind of a form of like oral Torah as far as the adventists are concerned. So the Jews believe that from

the time of Moses there was there was the there was the written text the Old Testament or starting with the the

writings of Moses first and then there was always an all Torah interpretation

and uh as we have today they they were conservatives and there were liberals and there were streams of interpretation and there were the conservative rabbis

who interpreted the the the Old Testament a certain way and there were the liberal rabbis who interpreted the the the Old Testament or the Torah or Tanaka as they called it in their way.

And so this is why um when when you get to Christ uh the the people are astonished that Jesus spoke with such

authority because what would happen is if somebody said to a conservative rabbi at the time of Christ, “Is it okay to light a candle during the Sabbath

hours?” That’ll be the question. All right, this is a real question. Um it’s in the Talmud. They they do they do discuss questions like this. Is it okay

to light a candle during the Sabbath hours or is that considered work and you’re not allowed to do it? And a conservative rabbi would say, “Well,

Rabbi Ben Yehuda said this, Rabbi Ben Ysef said this and Rabbi Ben Elaza said this and Rabbi Ben Israel said this and

he must take into account this.” And so the conclusion of the matter is possibly.

All right? And when they asked Jesus these questions, he didn’t say, and there’s nowhere where Jesus said, “This rabbi said this, and that rabbi said

that, and that rabbi said the other.” He said, “You’ve heard it says, “Thou shalt not kill.” But then he says, “But I say to you,” like Jesus did not quote any of

the traditions of the Jews. He says, “But I say to you,” and the people are amazed because he spoke with authority because the Jewish rabbis, they they had

their authority. If they could show for centuries what people had said about it.

Now, uh those oral Toras, we still have them to this day. Um and for the um

there’s the m the the collection the collection of the oral traditions of the Jews

um uh for from the Jews who were stayed in in in in Palestine or Israel, it’s known as the Mishna.

And for those for the Jews of the dispersion today, it’s known as the Babylonian Gamara.

And when we add those two things together, you get the Talmud. You heard of the Talmud?

Many, many volumes of books. And so we know what the traditions of the Jews were at the time of Christ because the

Talmud is a is a is a collection of the Mishna which were the oral interpretations of the law of Moses from the from Palestine from the time of

Christ and before and the Babylonian Gamarra. Those are the traditions of the Jews of the dispersion who went to Babylon and never came back. And so we

know what the traditions of the Jews were. And what was Jesus’ view of the traditions of the Jews?

[clears throat]

Mark 7 Corban. Remember that?

Yes. Yeah. If you turn your Bibles, Mark 7, Jesus was not in favor of the traditions

of the Jews because he said, “You replace the law of God with the traditions of the Jews.” He said in Mark

7 and verse 8, Jesus says, “You abandon the commandments of God and hold to human tradition.”

Verse 9, he said to him, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandments of God in order to honor your commission, your your tradition.” Now,

Jesus was condemning whenever the traditions of the Jews overrode the plain reading of the of the commandments

themselves. Now, you start to understand why Paul wanted to kill the followers of Jesus. Why? Because reading Galatians

one that Paul was zealous for the traditions of the Jews.

So, so Paul his whole life was focused on the oral Torah, the traditions of the Jews. Those are the things that Jesus

explicitly condemns in Mark 7. So Jesus and Paul, now did Jesus and Paul meet before the road to Damascus? We don’t

think so. But Paul was a student in Jerusalem about the time of Jesus’ ministry.

In AD34, he was a member of the Sanhedrin. He was in Jerusalem. He’d been studying with Galiel who was in Jerusalem. It’s almost certain that Paul

was a contemporary of Christ. And this this wandering Galilean preacher was going around saying to people, you do not need to follow the traditions of the

of the Jews. You need to follow the commandments of God. And everything that Paul has built his life around is Paul was zealous for the traditions of the

Jews. In fact, he was so zealous he was willing to kill people for them.

So it was only a matter of time before Paul came into confl conflict with the followers of Jesus. It’s why Paul stood with approval at the stoning of Steven

because the whole Jewish religion religious system was based on not just the written Torah but the oral Torah. So

the Jews had their oral Torah and um they were conservatives and they were liberals um and um they had different

views on things. Uh well, one practical example is on divorce. Uh in Deuteronomy, it says, “If a man finds anything displeasing with his wife, he

shall write a certificate of divorce and send her away.” And the Jews said to Jesus in Matthew 19, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?”

And that for any cause, this is a this is a rabbitic debate about that passage in Deuteronomy. If man find anything displeasing in his wife and there were

two views in Judaism at the time of Christ. The conservative view which was held by a guy called Shemi that he was a famous rabbi at the time of Christ. He

said you cannot divorce your wife except for physical adultery. And Hillel was the liberal of his time because the

every generation there was a liberal and a conservative wing in Judaism like we have today in Adventism. And Hill said um if your wife burns a proverbial toast

you can divorce her. that’s anything displeasing.

And what had happened in Israel by the time of Christ was more and more people were take men were taking the liberal divorce like no you might say say almost

like a no fault divorce but if the wife burnt the toast if she looked at him the wrong way you know I don’t know she

expressed her own views on something like like I divorce you I divorce you I divorce you and off you go and so there was a liberal divorce and a conservative

divorce now we may say the conservative divorce is Well, it’s it’s a lesser of two evils,

but Joseph was a righteous man in in Matthew chapter 1.

And he was going to put away his wife Mo, his fianceé Mary, but he was opting for the liberal divorce

because if he said, “This girl is pregnant and I’m not the father,” he could have asked for her to be stoned. So, he wasn’t claiming adultery.

So when Moses when Joseph decided to put Mary away, he chose the liberal divorce option so he could say, “It just didn’t

work out. You know, see no evil, hear no evil. I don’t see the bump in her belly.

Um, nobody knows about that.” And I’m not going to bring any hurt or shame on this young girl. It was bad enough for her anyway. So he opted for the no fault

divorce in Matthew 1. And he’s called a righteous man. So we should avoid the the the the instinct that says if it’s conservative, it’s good. If it’s

liberal, it’s bad. Joseph is considered a righteous man because in his desire to separate from Mary, he chose the least

bad option for Mary, which was the no fault divorce. So anyway, that that’s kind of Old Testament. And um what they

would do, there’s an example of this. Um if you turn to there’s an example of how the rabbis thought. Turn to Hebrews chapter 1. And Paul’s a rabbi. I know

it’s old New Testament, but you have an example here in Hebrews chapter 1 of of um midrash.

This is classic Jewish midrash. This is hagadic mid midrash. And um Hebrews chapter 1:es

1-4 you have the proposition

and he’s talking about who Christ is and he says he’s superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is more

excellent than theirs. And then that’s chapter 1. And then chapter 2:es 1-3.

What what word does chapter 2 begin with? Therefore, so this is the conclusion of what he’s been saying in chapter 1.

So chapter 1:es 1-4 is the proposition. This is the divinity of Christ.

This is Christ equals God. Let’s put it that way. X is Christ. Okay, that’s how Right. So, just so you know, Christ is

God. The conclusion is that we must pay attention to the gospel that we’ve heard.

But how does he get from the proposition to the conclusion? Um, from verse five all the way to the end of chapter 1, the

Apostle Paul has a string of verses from the Old Testament and it’s called a haraz, which is it’s like a string of pearls. And so imagine that this is one

side of the river bank and that’s the other side of the river bank and you’ve got to jump on stones to get from here to here safely across the river. Instead

of jumping in taking a logical sequence of texts like we would in the West today, Paul doesn’t do that. He takes a

series of texts like like this there. So you kind of

kind of zigzag all over the place. And in in the way the the the rabbis would think is rather than having a straight A

bcde EFG approach to the texts, they would have an AQR STB approach to the texts. And the more seemingly

disconnected the texts were, the greater the rhetorical impact of the conclusion was going to be. And so if you look at those texts, we’re not going to do it

today, but in those in that chapter of chapter one of Hebrews, Paul is quoting from all over the New Testament. number one. And number two, he actually changes

what the Old Testament says. And number three, he actually changes who’s speaking to who in those verses. So it’s like, how does he have the right to do

that? Well, this is what Jewish scholars did. And he was under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And if you were to try and do it today, people would say, don’t

do that. It’s like Jiu comes home from, you know, from the battle and he sees Jezebel looking out the window and he says, “Who’s on the Lord’s side?” And

two unics appear at the window and he says like, “Throw her down.” Okay? You cannot use you cannot apply that to, you know, arriving at your mother’s-in-law house and say like throw her out the

window. Okay, we’d say that’s not a that’s not a solid interpretation of the text, but it may be within a Jewish

Jewish context. So, Hebrews 1 through um 1:es 2 1-3. Um this is known as a string

of pearls. And and so this is this is midrash. And uh if if you want to check it out for yourself sometime next week,

check out those verses in Hebrews 1:5 to verse 13, those verses there, and write down who does Paul say is speaking

there. And look in the Old Testament and see who is actually speaking. So in some cases in the Old Testament, God is speaking to Moses, but Paul has Moses

speaking to God. In some cases, the Old Testament is David speaking to God. And in the way Paul puts it, it’s God speaking God the Father speaking to God

the Son. So Paul uh completely kind of jumbles it all up there. And that’s a good example of Jewish midrash um uh at

the in the time of Christ. So there are some other things that we find in the Old Testament, how the Old Testament

actually interpreted things. And so you find explanatory notes.

We’re going to call them glosses.

So if you have your Bibles with you turn so some could somebody turn to Genesis 23 and verse 2. Genesis 23 and verse two. And this is an example of a gloss.

And a gloss assumes that the readers are so far removed from the original story that the author has to had an

explanatory note to the text. Okay? and and it tells you that even within the Old Testament they were explaining it

for the readers because centuries had passed from the time of the writing from the and from the original events themselves. So Genesis 23.2 verse two does somebody want to read that for us?

Sarah died in the same as Herab in the land of Canaan

and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her.

All right. Thank you brother. So Sarah died in Beeba. Is that right? Oh Sarah

died in Kirath Arba and then my version says that is Hebron. That’s in parenthesis.

Okay. So the writer Moses is saying that Sarah died in a place that was called Kirath Arbor at the time but now

centuries have passed. Now he’s going to call it Hebrrons. That’s the modern name. So you see these little explanatory notes as you go through the

Old Testament. Um, another thing you find in in in the in the um in in in the

the writings of the Old Testament is um uh uh let’s say juositions. Let’s call it that.

And in juxositions they put two they put two stories side by side. One story is good, one story is negative to let you know that there are two sides to this

story and there are two sides to the coin. So as an example um 1st Samuel chapter 8 um is critical of the origin

of the monarchy the people demining a king and 1st Samuel chapter 9 is favorable on the creation of the monarchy among God’s people and so by

putting those two the author puts two stories side by side one one one one is a positive interpretation one is a

negative interpretation and the reason they do that is to remind us that that human institutions can either be forces for good or forces for evil. And that

actually if God was still the ruler of Israel, they wouldn’t have these problems. They they wouldn’t have this this blurring of what is good and right.

And then the other thing you find in the Old Testament is is is echoes.

So let me ask you a question. How many times in the Bible does a man meet a woman at a well?

I mean just this like I mean a lot of a lot of times. Yeah.

And so, um, have you ever noticed on like sitcoms, they’re very formulaic.

[clears throat]

Romantic comedies are very formulaic.

Every movie has this structure. Every movie, situation, complication,

resolution.

Every movie has that structure. Every single novel has that structure. Every movie starts with a situation.

Happy family has a complication.

Somebody gets kidnapped. Resolution is dad finding his kids again. Every movie has that basic structure. And so there there are literary structures that work

across time and we all recognize it. Um poetry has certain structures. Literary uh novels and stories have structures.

And we all recognize, we all recognize this basic structure. Now, sometimes a movie will actually kind of jumble it

all up. So, they’ll tell the story in fragments and they leave it to you to piece it together. They won’t work in a linear way. They’ll give you a bit of

this and a bit of this and a bit of that, then back to here, then over here again. Some movies do that because it’s forcing you to kind of think through because if you’re not quite sure where

this is going, it keeps you on tend hooks to the end of the movies. That’s what some movies they literally um slice and dice the parts of the story. So they

jumble up those three basic um components of any human story. But in the in the uh in the in the Old

Testament and the New Testament, you okay, the New Testament, you got Jesus meeting a woman at the well in John 4.

And Moses met his wife at a well, and Jacob met Rebecca. Uh no, who met

Rebecca? Isaac. Um, Eleaza met Rebecca at a well and who else met somebody? Um, Jacob met Rachel at the well. Jesus met

a woman at the well. And so when you see a story of a man meeting a woman at a well in the Bible, you realize that that

that they’re kind of using a standard that this is a standard narrative that that that um that people understand why.

Because for a man to meet a woman in private would be a shameful thing if she weren’t his wife. None of these meetings were between husbands and wives.

They were always between a man who was unrelated to the woman. And for a man to have a conversation with an unrelated woman in private would be considered an

immoral event. So they’re meeting at a well to show that they had a meeting but this was this was in the normal course

of life. Okay. So it’s making sure that the event is not viewed as being immoral. And the reason that this does so that’s one of the reasons why you

have echoes. Another thing that you have in echoes is you have one story echoes another. So um Genesis 19 is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Sodom and Gomorrah.

And then Judges 19 is the story of

okay in here Sodom and Gomorrah you have a non-resident alien known as um Lot

who’s living in Sodom and he welcomes two guests from the marketplace into his house and the men of the city gather and say throw them out. We want him to get

to know them tonight. And in Judges chapter 19 you have a non-resident alien. He’s an Ephraimite traveling through Gibian,

which is Benj Benjamite territory. And he welcomes um uh he uh he uh he he’s welcomed as a guest into the house of a local man who’s an Ephraimite as well.

He’s not a resident. And the men of the city bang on the doors and say, “Throw out the man that’s there.” And the Hebrew of Genesis 19 and Judges 19, nine

verses is almost word for word identical. So you read one, it’s like a cut and paste job. And the point about this is it forces you to ask the question, why has Judges 19 done this?

This is the end of the time of the judges. And it concludes in at the end of chapter 1. The last verse says, in those days there was no king in Israel.

Every man did what was right in his own eyes. Now in in the story of Genesis 19, this leads to God’s judgment for the

wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah.

So the end of Judges chapter 19- 21 which is a very similar story almost identical the Hebrew the question is is going to be is God going to bring

judgment on his own people now because morally they’re indistinguishable from the original inhabitants.

So that’s kind of like that’s when you put like two stories you have an echo from one story to another. So that’s kind of what you see in in in the Old Testament. And um any questions on that

or comments before we go on to the New Testament? Is this interesting by the way?

Yeah. Okay. So, yes. In what sense?

Yeah. So, you have you have the par you have the parallelism of the prophecies repeated throughout Daniel. Yes. They’re placed side by side. 2 7 8 9 10 through 12. Yeah. Those chapters. Yeah.

Yes. So, all right. So, let’s move on to the New Testament.

So, we’re having to move pretty fast because we’ve only done this and it’s already quarter to 10.

So, have to kind of hop, skip, and jump through this stuff.

The New Testament,

[snorts]

uh, the New Testament has, uh, Christianity rose within Judaism.

And so, uh, the New Testament, uh, how they interpret the scripture, um, there’s a lot of proof texting.

in the preaching of the apostles. Um Isaiah 53.

That’s a major source of proof texts for Jesus being uh the Messiah of God. He’s a suffering servant of God. And um they

they would they would take these um Old Testament texts and apply them to Christ um uh almost kind of like at will in in

the preachings and the writings of the apostles. But Isaiah 53, that was the primary source of evidence that Christ was the Messiah of God. Um, you then have um allegorories.

You don’t get much of that in the New Testament, but you find it in Galatians 4 between Hagar and Sarah and Jerusalem.

[snorts] And um so uh allegorories basically said that uh beyond the literal reading of the text, there’s a

deeper spiritual meaning. And it’s up to you to figure out what that is. The problem with allegorories is that there is no control mechanism over whether

your allegor allegorical interpretation is correct or not. It’s kind of like what you say it is. And it may sound logical, but it’s very hard to prove

that the the allegorical interpretation is correct. And of course, by about the fifth century in Alexandria um in in

northern um Egypt, you we come to origin actually in the 3rd century. Um on once you get to origin origin o r i g e n

it’s not doesn’t mean he’s the original it’s just that’s his name origin.

He argued that the spiritual interpretation is always greater than the literal interpretation.

And whenever you read scripture, you should be looking for the spiritual allegorical interpretation rather than taking the scripture at face value. Of

course, this prepares us for Catholicism. But um that’s what origin was arguing by the third century about

um how how you how we are to interpret scripture. And then um another thing you find in the New Testament is typology.

We have the particularly say the first Adam and the second Adam that you find say in Romans 5:14 that Adam was the

type of the one who was to come and so you have typology proof texting um or they some sometimes it’s called

testimony you have allegorories and you also have um Christ centered interpretation and that really starts

with Jesus himself Christ centered so reinterpretation of

the old Testament and this starts with Jesus on the road

to Emmas because if you if you turn your Bibles to Luke’s gospel Luke chapter 24

when Jesus was speaking with those two disciples on the road to Emmas it says in verse 27 then beginning with

Moses and all the prophets he that is Jesus interpreted to them interpreted to them all the things about himself in all the scriptures.

So Jesus uh he he shifts from the Jewish midrash um to to saying that everything in the scriptures as the old testament of that

of that time that we call it the old testament everything was pointing forward to Christ and so you have a christ centered interpretation so first

of all you start to use the old testament to prove that Jesus is the messiah and then you come to everything in the old testament points to jesus and

that’s how that’s what you find happening in the time of the new testament and So this is kind of what you find how the old how the apostles

use the old testament and um so Luther exemplified that attitude. He said that

um scripture was the main which the babe Christ was laid and so which is kind of going based on Luke 24 there um what

Christ said to those two disciples. So when we ask ourselves then so how did how did they put together the New Testament? Um how did the early church

by the end of the first century how did they put together the New Testament? And if you look in the writings

by Ranius, one of the church fathers, he writes down that there were two basic two basic um factors the church

considered. Um, something had to have apostolic authority for it to be included in the New Testament.

And it had to be consistent with the apostles teaching with the

sorenius uh he he kind of describes how the New Testament was put together. He doesn’t describe the process, but he describes two basic principles that

something made its way into the New Testament only if it could be traced back to one of the apostles. And the other thing he argued was that um it had

to be consistent with what he called the rule of faith which was preached by the apostles. Now

um there were certain certain books were not included in the New Testament like the gospel of Barnabas is a great example of that. Um, and there were

other gnostic gospels, the gospel of Jude, the writings of Judas allegedly and so forth. But the other um the other writings that were out there by the end

of the first century didn’t make their way into the New Testament because the the early church, the early church, they didn’t have any councils to discuss

this. They kind of evolved. um things received were were recognized as divinely inspired if it was directly tied to an apostle such as Matthew’s

gospel or John’s gospel or if it was consistent with the apostles teaching.

So you got Matthew and Mark. Matthew and John are apostles but then you’ve got Mark and Luke.

And Mark is considered to be the eyewitness account of the Apostle Peter for a whole variety of reasons we won’t go into today. And Luke is is is is um

he’s done his historical accounts, but he was a close traveling companion of the Apostle Paul for his missionary journeys. And so both both Mark and Luke

are tied to these two apostles. And Matthew and John are apostles in their own right themselves. So this is kind of how the how we we read in history how

the New Testament was put together and why certain books were included and why other books were not included in the New

Testament. And so um behind the the writings of the apostles um you start

out with certainly for the four gospels you start out with oral traditions

that are passed on and those oral traditions make their way into into written documents

and we say well those old traditions over a long period of time. Well, not really because um let’s say Christ died in AD.31

and the last of the of the of the Gospels, John was written in the ’90s AD

and um Mark was written during um before Peter died. So that’s about say AD60 and Luke is written when Paul’s around.

So that’s going to be about the same time AD60 for that. So what you realize is that the old traditions from the time of Christ, there are living witnesses by

the time the gospels are actually written. And so they they can cross reference. This isn’t like oral tradition over centuries that there’s

there’s a very close period of time between the death of Christ and the writings of the of the gospels and that the the the time distance is covered by

oral tradition. Uh people passing on the sayings of Christ and um we should not think that people in those days had bad memories.

So if you were a a Jewish boy in the time of Christ, it was expected of you that by the age of 12 to to be to to get

to a bar mitzvah where you become a man, um Jewish boys were expected to have memorized the entire Old Testament

and they memorized the whole thing. It was it was just considered normal in society.

And we’re just astonished at this like they managed to do that and we can barely remember where he verses.

they memorized the entire thing that was that they considered normal. So their ability to memorize and pass on accurately was absolutely astonishing.

And so um so the fact that there were 30 years between the death of Christ and the start of the production of the gospels is really neither here nor

there. We go from oral traditions to written documents and um we’ll come on to those in a bit more detail um as we

go through this. So, uh, let’s move on to the the New Test, the early church now.

Look at what was happening in the early church. And we’re talking the second to the fifth centuries.

And the second to the fifth centuries were times of chaos in the in the Eastern Mediterranean

because um there were new translations coming out. There was the Syrian translation, the Aramaic translation,

the Coptic translation, and the Armenian translation. And the church um was being overwhelmed not just by large numbers of

pagan pagan converts coming in who brought paganism with them but um they were also finding political power as

well. And when when the gospel became mixed with political power and persecution, some days they were in favor, some days they were not. Um then

then church leaders started acting not just not so much as apostles but they started acting as you might say ambassadors for the body of Christ and

then as persecutors of the body of Christ when they wanted to when they wanted to um to impose their view on

other people. So you’ve got some um you got some various ideas at the time doseticism

which doeticism was a gnostic heresy and um it suggests that Christ only seems to be human but he really wasn’t human and

you have mystery religions mystery religions

now the Greek word for knowledge is gnosis What English word do we get from gnosis?

And it’s not notchi.

Gnostic. Yes. Yeah, we get the word agnostic from that.

And what is an agnostic?

Yeah. Well, it’s it’s kind of like um gnosis means knowledge. And if you are an agnostic, it means you don’t know

whether God exists or not. The word ah in Greek means without.

So [snorts] the word theos that’s theos in Greek that’s what it looks like. Theos that means god.

And if you add the word ah in front of it you have aos or atheist. That means you believe there is no god. And gnosis

means knowledge. An agnostic, that’s how we say it in English today, means you’re not quite sure whether God exists or not. You’re not going to commit one way

or the other. So you have these mystery religions in the time of the first century BC and AD

and some whoever cleans this up later, my apologies. This is this board here. But you have these mystery religions where

you had levels of knowledge kind of like the um the um um Sorry, I’m having a senior moment here.

Please cut this out of the YouTube.

Thank you. Um, Freemasons, all right, with the levels. And so with the mystery religions, the uh the idea was that

salvation comes well in the gospel, salvation is

coming through repentance and faith.

In the mystery religions, salvation comes through enlightenment as you learn the mysteries of the

universe and so forth. And so the mystery religions were very popular in the first century. And um and they they

they influenced the the the church in the first, second, third centuries quite significantly. And so um there was a real push back in in the second, third

and fourth centuries against these mystery religions and gnosticism and doseticism. So they would say that Jesus

when he walked along the Sea of Galilee on the beach, he left no footprints. He appeared to be human, but he really wasn’t human at all. And so you have

these mystery religions uh ornostics and you have um you have um the doseticists

um out there and you’ve got two different pathways to salvation. This enlightenment comes through knowledge

and this salvation from the gospel is repentance and faith. So it’s two very very different pathways to salvation that are being offered here. So parallel

to this you have some incredible debates about the nature of Christ and and the nature of Christ. Um today we debate

today we debate um western scholars they debate or deny the divinity of Christ.

That’s how modern scholars they deny they accept the historicity of Christ but they denied the divinity of Christ.

But in the early church people accepted the divinity of Christ but people debated the humanity of Christ.

That was the big issue of debate. So this is we our modern scholars debate this the skeptics and back then that

says humanity um they they would they’re focusing on this thing here and there are various ideas about the nature of Christ. Now the word nature doesn’t

appear in the New Testament. So we we had these arguments and they were kind of persecuting each other in some cases killing each other over these debates.

And so they they would have various ideas such as modalism that there is one god and he appeared in the old testament

as the father the new testament as the son and in the apostolic era as the holy spirit. Um some people then you had the

rise of aranism the idea that Jesus is a created being um and he’s not self-existent. Uh then you had um um modalism, adoptionism, apollinarianism.

Um you had all kinds of debates about um is the does Jesus have two natures, human and divine? Does he have a blend

of human and divine? Is the divine over the human or is the human over the divine? And there’s all kinds of fancy names for these which we won’t go into

today. But the bottom line was in the in the time of the early church, the church was split every way possible by debates about the nature of Christ and was

Christ human or and if he was if he was if he was human, was he truly human or did he appear to be human? Was he like a

spirit walking around? Um did he kind of walk through doors as he did to the disciples after his resurrection? And was was he like that all the time? So

there were these debates about the nature of Christ and those debates got really fierce and they were killing one another over these debates and various

bishops would take one position or another until finally you get in all this chaos you get a guy called Vincent.

Vincent he was a monk [clears throat] in the fifth century. there you are fifth

century and um he came out with a statement that kind of put an end to a lot of this

discussion and he says the line of interpretation of the prophets and apostles must be directed according to the norm of the

ecclesiastical and catholic sense and you say well what does that mean that means is that the church determines

the meaning of scripture i.e. The bishop of Rome determines the meaning of scripture. And rather than the church being subject to scripture, now the

scripture is subject to what the church says about it. And so after the chaos of the second, third, and fourth centuries

where there was theological chaos, this monk says, “Okay, time out everybody.” Basically said, “Whatever the bishop of

Rome says, that’s how it’s going to be.” And no more discussion. What the bishop of Rome says, that’s how it is. And that

becomes known as authoritative interpretation.

Authoritative interpretation.

And that the uh the meaning of scripture must be according to what the church says it is.

And so you have the start of like the idea of like papal supremacy and we tell you what the Bible says and you don’t question if we say it’s dogma then you

have to accept it. Now the um the prompings of the Holy Spirit are no longer supreme in guiding you into all

understanding. Now it’s the the the ecclesiastical councils of the early church. They’re the ones who are going to determine the meeting the meaning of

scripture. And so, but what what you find as as you look through the history of of Christianity almost all the time, every time

something arises like authoritative interpretation or let’s say the reformation um or the enlightenment or higher

criticism or postmodernism, every one of these phases in in in in Christian history is always a reaction to what went before.

So the authoritative interpretation of the fifth century was an attempt to draw a line under the chaos of the second, third and fourth century early church

interpretations. Okay? And so when when some when the pendulum swings one way then something happens and it takes the

other we need to draw a line here. And so the reformation was a reaction to the corruption in the papacy of the middle ages. Without the corruption of the

papacy you wouldn’t have had the reformation. And so one was a response to the other. So you find this throughout throughout the the history of

of Christianity. So um the Roman Catholic Church claims supreme authority and biblical interpretation. We see that

in the councils of the Middle Ages. Um, and so these days, if you buy a Catholic book,

um, you want to look in the in the look in the front pages, the the date

where it’s published and the publishers details and if this book is officially approved by the Catholic Church, um, if it’s consistent with dogma, then you’ll see the phrase nhil obstat.

Nhil means nothing. obstat is we get the word obstruction from that. So nothing stands in the way of the publishing of this book. So if if you buy a book,

let’s say say a famous Catholic theologian Hanskung who was kind of like a reformer within the Catholic Church in the 60s um yeah they do still have them

you know there are people who still protest but his writings don’t have the nickel obstat because he kept calling

the papacy out for its corruption in the 1960s and 70s. So his writings don’t have that but if you write if you read

like the the books by Joseph Ratzinger before he became pope um his writings have the nil obstat in the front page

and so what what that nhil obstat means is that this book is consistent with the authoritative interpretation of the

catholic church and so that’s what nhil obstat means there um so then you come to uh then you come to um Augustine

we’re just going to mention very briefly here. Um Augustine said that um not all may be learned but all may be Christian.

I was a pretty good quote actually. Not all may be learned but all may be Christian. And we’d agree with Augustine on that. He also said that some things

you can never understand unless you first believe and vice versa. Some things you can never believe unless we first understand.

And so, um, to give you an example of that, if you see a, um, a stained glass window from the outside of a cathedral, if you look at it from the outside, that

stained glass window is always like murky gray. Yes. But if you walk into the church and look up at the same stained glass window from the other side of the glass, it’s a brilliant picture with colors in it and it tells a story.

And so, like that kind of, as Augustine would say, if you enter the kingdom of God, then truths of scripture make sense

to you. But if you’re outside the kingdom of God and you’re unconverted, this is just like the the murky gray stained glass windows from the outside.

So that’s how he how he kind of rationalized that. So then we come to um

uh the Renaissance and uh so before we go on to the

Renaissance because I need a break for my voice, just talk to the person to your left or right. Did you learn anything new in the last half hour? And

maybe something um maybe something you want to kind of explore further. Maybe something you never thought of before.

I’m just have two minutes to share just so I can get my breath for a few seconds here. Need some water?

No, I’m okay on the water. No, thank you.

Yeah.

[snorts] All right. So uh we’re going to come to um

we’re going to come to 1453 and that’s the fall of Constantinople

which was a major major event constant

no okay modern [snorts] day Istanbul the court The fall of Constant Constantinople

was the end of the Byzantine Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean and that the supremacy of the Orthodox Church and it brought the Ottomans to the control of

modern day Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean. They were Muslims. Now um if you ever want to read a tragic story, read about the fall of Constantinople.

It’s a tragic tragic story. It’s a painful history to read. The Muslims were at the gates outside the walls of Constantinople. And the people of

Constantinople were divided into all these theological factions. They couldn’t stop fighting each other, let alone the Muslims outside the gates.

It’s a terrible, terrible story. But what happened when when the Muslims were attacking Constantinople and when

Constantinople fell, there was a flood of manuscripts, MSS, there was a flood of manuscripts from the Greek because

they spoke Greek there. There was a flood of manuscripts from Constantinople. They made their way into Western Europe. Western Europe, these are mostly in Greek.

The language, that’s the Eastern Church.

The Western church, they they they’re working in Latin.

The Vulgate is in Latin from about 420 AD. The western church, the papacy is working in Latin and the eastern church

is working in Greek. And with the fall of Constantinople, there’s a flood of manuscripts from Constantinople starts

penetrating the western world, the western Europe. And this brought about a huge change in attitudes when people got

their hands on original manuscripts of the New Testament. It was had a huge impact because almost every Christian in

Western Europe was using the Latin version that is the Vulgate. You know Wickliffe did his translation into English in the 13 uh 1300s or so. But it

it had some impact on England. They kind of prepped England [clears throat] for the reformation but the vast majority of Christians in Western Union had access just to the Latin. And how many people

spoke Latin back then? It was marginally above 0%. Even the priests couldn’t speak Latin. So the Bible was a closed

book and people if they wanted to know what the Bible said you just looked at church dogma rather than looking at the Bible it said but the fall of

Constantinople it led to a flood of Greek manuscripts all across Western Europe and this this um this stimulated

thinking. There was a couple of other things happened just before this. You have the Black Death.

The black death wiped out about a third of the population in Western Europe just gone. It was a bubonic plague

and um we have these it affects us today. You know the children’s rhyme round and round of rosies. How does it go?

Bocket full of posies. A tissue. A tissue. We all fall down.

How does it go?

Yeah. In England we say a tissue. A tissue. like you sneezing and then you all fall down like you’re dying of the black plague. That’s where that little rhyme comes from. Okay. So, you have the

black death which wipes out a large part of the population. What does that do?

The black death leads to the end of feudalism.

And what it means is the peasants become economic assets. Everybody wants to get their hands on peasants because so many of the peasants died. Nobody was left to

work the land. And the land was a basis of all wealth. So before the black death, you were t if you were born in this part of Washington, you could not

move from this part of Washington for your entire life if you were a peasant.

But after the black death, peasants were now um employers tried to find them from all across Europe. Like we need labor.

And so you start you find labor mobility. You have the end of feudalism.

You have the rise of um merchants, the merchant class. In Europe, rise of

merchants and city states because central authority from feudal

system have broken down. Now um what does this mean? It means that different city states have got different policies.

So if you look at the story of Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo, they found sponsors in independent city states in northern Italy that were outside of

papal control because these city states were now powerful. Um, you find Arasmus

and he’s in Rotterdam in Holland and Rotterdam was basically a freethinking commercial city and they said we don’t accept Catholic control.

If you’re a freethinker, come to Rotterdam and so he went to Rotterdam.

And so the black death brought about a lot of changes. And the other thing that happened about this time was printing

and the invention of the printing press um accelerated the fl the dissemination knowledge. Before printing if you wanted

to get an education you had to travel to Rome or Vienna or some big city but most people couldn’t do it because they were

tied to the land. With the invention of printing, knowledge can be disseminated across the entire continent and you can be a peasant but still read Tinddale’s

new Tinddale’s English Bible or you can still read the writings of Luther. So knowledge is disseminated in a way that it’s never been done before. And we have

the we have today the same social conditions as postco as they had for the reformation.

We’ve had our own black death. We have the rise of powerful merchants, Elon Musk’s, the Jeff Bezles of our world. We

have an information revolution, AI and in the internet and um we have we have the death of an old way of old ways

of working. That’s why they talk about you know build back better or you know various little slogans that go with this. So we’re facing a similar situation say so why does all this matter?

All this matters because Arasmus down in Rotterdam, he starts producing transl um v translations of the New Testament and

he first he produced his first Greek New Testament in 1516 and as the manuscripts start coming in

from from Constantinople and they kind of get smuggled their way west. So Arasmus was every year he’d produce an

updated version of the New Testament as the manuscripts are coming in and he’s updating and and there were times when he didn’t have a Greek manuscript and he

would just translate from the Vulgate which was Latin into Greek which was not a very good thing to do but he did it but as as years went by Arasmus started

um replacing the the translations from the Latin Vulgates into the Greek with the original Greek manuscripts as they

came across his hands. And so Arasmus was really essential for the for the Reformation because without Arasmus’ translations,

the New Testament, it’d be very hard for Martin Luther to start teaching what he did. So Arasmus um argued that you need

to have a personal religion rather than a religion dominated by the Catholic hierarchy. He wanted a personal spiritual walk with God for his for

people who who wrote read read his New Testament, but he didn’t want to have a scripture dominated by the dogma of the

church. And so um what he what he argued was um the purpose of scripture is not

perfect understanding but moral transformation.

And we’d agree with him in some sense on that. Now um Arasmus [clears throat] uh he’s an interesting character for

many reasons but we we’ll move on from him to Martin Luther and [snorts] Martin Luther starts writing

now we need a few boards for Martin Luther but it’s 20 10 all right

[clears throat]

yeah we’re now coming into reformation

[clears throat]

Martin Luther starts lecturing in 1515 to 1518.

His lectures, they’re on the Psalms.

My writing is terrible. I’m apologizing.

Psalms and Romans in particular 15

1515 to 1518. So Luther’s getting access to Raasmus’ New Testament and it’s

really transforming how he thinks. Um, and during these lectures, Martin Luther

starts to come to an understanding of righteousness by faith, RBF, not so much from Romans, but from the the Hebrew of the Psalms.

So, he starts to come to an understanding of righteousness by faith.

An early understanding, he kind of evolved through the years. Now, [clears throat] um, for Martin Luther,

um, scripture was only canonical. It was only accepted. He only accepted a book if it pointed directly to Christ. So

Martin Luther actually dismissed much the epistle James. He argued that much of the book of revelation didn’t point to Christ even though I think it all

points to Christ. And he wasn’t in favor of much of the Old Testament either. He argued that quote the centrality of

Christ was essential. So um with Martin Luther you start asking some difficult questions.

So the the first question is this, which Bible should we be using? Should we be using the Vulgate, the Latin, or should

we go back to using the Arasmus’ New Testament Greek and the Hebrew Old Testament? That has a big impact on how

you translate it. The the Vulgate says do penance. The the New Testament in Greek says be penitent. There’s a big

difference between doing penance and being penitent.

So what translation used has a big impact and the Vulgate was the official translation of the Catholic Church. Then he asked the question well which book

should we be using? Should we include the Apocrypha or not include the Apocrypha?

The answer is no. But the Catholic Church said the Apocrypha is basically like Uncle Arthur’s bedtime stories.

They’re moral tales. But some doctrines of the Catholic Church such as praying for the dead are taken from fourth Mcabes. They’re not taken from anywhere

in scripture. Then um the question of indulgences come along. Are indulgences biblical? Yes or no? According to Luther

in the New Testament, you don’t have indulgences. And according to the Catholic Church, which says that the the decrees of the church, the councils and the scriptures must be combined.

Indulgences are acceptable. And then um then the question arose, which language should people be expected to read the Bible in? should be should the peasants

be expected to read in Latin or Hebrew or Greek or maybe revolutionary idea maybe in German maybe in German

and then the next question comes who has the right to read the Bible if it’s in a language that you understand if it’s in German and not just Hebrew Latin or

Greek um who has the right do only the clergy have the right to read the Bible or do the ley also have the right to

read the Bible and so Luther’s asking lots of awkward questions As we saw before in the hermeneutical

triangle, you’ve got the author and the Catholic Church focused on the author and they had authoritative interpretation of what he said. Then you

have the text and you have the reader.

Luther starts shifting the focus from the author to the text itself.

And it’s a huge shift. It’s a huge shift in how the principles you accept for interpretation. Now um Luther believed in the quadrea. It’s called the quadrea.

The quadrea was the four-fold interpretation of scripture. So he kind of adopted somewhat Augustine said um in the 4th century AD. So a thousand years

later Luther is talking about the quadrea. Arasmus accepted part of the quadrea as a as a framework for interpretation of scripture. So um what

was the quadrea? So, I’m just going to write some on board cuz I can’t remember all of this. All right. So, the quadrick said there are eight ways of looking at

scripture. There’s there’s historic

and there is um prophetic

and then you have um literal, you have allegorical,

you have tropological and you of anagogical or es let’s call

it esqueologgical and you have that

you have that here and you have it here you have it here you have it here you have it here you have it here you have it here you have it here so you actually

end up with eight ways of interpreting any given verse and we think one way is bad enough so

Luther is arguing for the use of the quadrea as a way of breaking down the understanding of scripture.

So according to Luther, if you read the Bible purely as history, you miss the point of scripture.

Um he argued that you need to read the Bible under the guidance of the Holy Spirit in order to find the deeper meanings of scripture which is kind of allegorical.

And so for instance, the literal prophetic that’s the sense of scripture refers to the person of Christ in history, the historical Christ. The the

allegorical is the sense in which Christ comes brings to aid to his church.

Tropological refers to the work that Christ does in the individual believer and anagical or esqueological refers to

the esqueological completion of God’s work on earth. And so Luther had this quadrant as he called it. But the quadric wasn’t invented by Luther, but

he had this eight-fold way of interpreting scripture. Um, which was um it’s it’s quite quite complicated

basically. Um, and we don’t really follow this much today, but we use some of these things ourselves as as Adventists. We major on the prophetic

esqueological down here. That’s we tend to major our interpretation. We talk about the the prophetic tropological.

What does that mean? That means that’s that is Christ in you. That’s The righteousness is not just being declared, justification is not just

being declared righteous, but this is the work in Christ to sanctify the believer. So we we we we use we have different terminologies for this kind of

stuff. Um the literal prophetic would be Daniel 11. Will that be the papacy imposing Sunday laws or will that be the

papacy invading Jerusalem and building a a tabernacle a palace um between the Dead Sea and and

the the Mediterranean? So we debate that in Adventism. This is kind of um um Christ our righteousness message you might say from an adventist perspective.

This would be um uh the book end time events by Ellen White. So we certainly have some of these ways of interpreting scriptures Adventists but we we’re not

as systematic as Luther was. He had multiple options that we we just don’t really think much about these days. So

um from 15 uh 15 Luther believed that um salvation wasn’t just what God did for

the believer but it’s what God does does in the believer and it’s not just the believer’s response to God. And then um

in in 15:15 Romans 1 chapter 6 16-1 17 um this is

the just shall live by faith and Luther added the word alone and I grew up with that with Luther’s translation in my head. I thought Romans 1:17 says the

just shall live by faith alone. Have you ever heard that? It ain’t there in the Greek. It’s Luther added that word for

emphasis in his translation but it’s not there in any Greek translation. It’s just the just shall live by faith.

And so, um, that’s kind of Luther’s go like he’s aiming that at the Catholic Church. It’s faith by loan and it’s not by obedience of the church or the traditions of the church and so forth.

And so, um, our time is up here for our morning session. So, we’re going to have to draw this to a bit of a we’re not going to get to the rest of it today.

Um, Luther after the diet of worms, where did Luther go?

Yeah. The castle, Wberg Castle. And what did he do in the Waltberg Castle?

He translated the New Testament, then the Old Testament into German. The September Testament as it was called.

And um, this was this was a momentous moment in salvation history. Why?

because Luther was putting the the the scriptures into the language of the common man.

And just as the King James has shaped the English language, so the German his his translation of the New Testament is

really the foundation for the modern German language as well. It’s profoundly shaped and influenced it. Now,

[clears throat]

um, Luther believed in what we now call exegetical optimism.

And in a sense, it really was optimistic.

Um, up until Luther, you have the authoritative interpretation of the church from Vincent through the Middle

Ages. But Luther argued that the people should have the Bible in the vernacular.

That is the common language. And he argued that everybody has the right and the responsibility to read the scriptures for themselves in their own

language. And that God will give them sufficient understanding for salvation.

They’re not going to understand everything that there is in the Bible, but God will give you sufficient understanding for salvation, which is the point of scripture anyway. These

things are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the son of God and through believing in him you may have eternal life. So the point of scripture is not that you know everything about

the past. The point of scripture is that we rece we accept and receive the gift of eternal life from God. We can be reconciled to God for eternity. So the

scripture is a bridge from from the fall to eternity. And so Luther argued for exegetical optimism. And so the Bible

was spread all across all across Germany. And the peasants read it and they said, “Hey, we don’t see any divine right of kings to rule in the Bible.”

And we don’t see the right of dukes and nobles to run our society. And so the peasants revolted and they were a bunch

of revoling peasants. And the um the English had their peasants revolt in about 1453 or so. And the Germans had

their peasants revolt um in the early 1500s.

And um this led to chaos. And the Catholics, they said, “You see, Luther, your teachings have led to basically

social chaos and civil war and killings all across the country. And the peasants were burning down monasteries and they were killing church leaders they didn’t

like. And they were fighting against the nobles and the knights. And the Catholics, they blamed Luther and said, “This is the result of your teachings.”

So there were three there were three basic positions by the end of Luther’s life. There was AI, that stands for authoritative interpretation.

[laughter]

There was EO, that’s exeetical optimism. And then there’s a middle ground.

I’m not sure what I’ve called this before.

Um, [clears throat] so um well, I’ll explain. So we all we all

know now what authoritative interpretation is. Yes. That is the church tells you what to believe.

Exegetical optimism says every man, woman or child figures out in their own language from the Bible what they’re going to believe. And that apparently led to the chaos of the peasants revolt.

So Luther goes from here all the way to here in the reformation.

He produces the German Bible. Because of the chaos it unleashes.

Luther comes back to a middle position here which is basically what we have as Adventists today which is we we practice

exeetical optimism. We just call it Sabbath school.

[laughter and clears throat]

Really?

That’s what we practice. We believe that you every member here today has the right to have the Bible in their own language to read and study it for themselves and God will guide you

sufficient for your salvation. That’s exetical optimism. So we um so maybe we’ll become revolting peasants one day.

But anyway, in the [clears throat] pandemic we kind of veered back to this and don’t quote me that on scr don’t put that on YouTube please. So that that’s

the exact of the Adventist church. And out of this comes the RR not not Rolls-Royce the radical reformation.

And out of this you’ve got other groups like the Anabaptists for instance and the Hutterites etc.

And they are very much within the exegetical optimism or radical reformation. But Luther, he said, okay, he recognized there were problems with

every man being a master of his own interpretation. So he came back to a halfway position, which is where we are pretty much as Adventists today. And he

argued that that okay, everybody can can try and read read the scriptures themselves. But then you bring the light

that you believe God has given you to your local church and you you submit it to the considered view of the elders of your church. They’re going to say, “Brother, you’re that that sounds good.

That sounds true.” or they say, “Brother, you’re going off the rails here.” And so in the Adventist church, when we study the Bible as individuals

and like a scholar writes something um or a professor writes something in a book and it turns the world upside down um we have study committees set up and

it’s studied at the conference, at the union, at the division, at the GC, at the Barri level and if there is light in it, eventually it works its way back to the world church and it’s voted as a new fundamental belief.

So we have kind of we never had this.

We started like as this in the Millerites.

Um but we actually as Luther Luther went from there to here to here. We kind of started out with this with the Millerites and William Miller himself.

But over the years we realized that there is safety in putting new light before the brethren and seeing whether this is scriptural or not. So that’s

kind of how Luther the direction Luther went in and that’s kind of um we we kind

of caught the the the coattails of that movement. We started here and have come back to this here with our fundamental beliefs that are voted only by the world church in general conference session.

That’s our official stance on these things. And believe me, it can take you 10, 15, 25 years to get something voted through the general conference. I had a

friend who was um he was the family ministries director for the GC and he was asked to produce um an updated

statement on divorce and remarage for the church.

He spent the best 15 years of his life working on that document taking it to committees all around the world. What was the outcome of those 15

years of work? Nichuetta the Russian absolutely nothing. The church didn’t vote any change. So getting stuff

through the general conference session is is like it takes a long time and it goes through many committees from people all around the world to make sure that

we’re kind of making sure this really is consistent with scripture. So that’s kind of Martin Luther there. Uh just to give an example of of Arasmus in your

Bibles, if you want to turn to 1 John 5 and verse 7,

you will see there and we’re going to bring this to a close here for this morning. We’ll continue tomorrow with the enlightenments and higher criticism.

But [clears throat] 1 John 5 and verse 7, do you all see that in your Bibles?

Now my Bible says there are these three that testify. That’s all it says. And underneath in the critical apparatus it

says other vers other manuscripts read quote there are these three that testify in heaven the father the word and the holy spirit and these three are one.

So the king has the full version. Yes. Yes.

Most modern translations don’t have that full verse.

All right. And that that verse is known as the comm yohanim for some reason. But the question is why does the King James have that full verse and almost every

other translation not have it is is because when Arasmus was writing this um the Vulgate had the full version

and he couldn’t find a manuscript in Greek with the full version in it and the Abbott from Dublin wrote a strongly

worded letter to him accusing him of denying the doctrine of the Trinity by excluding now these three that testify in heaven the Father, the Word, and and

the Holy Spirit. And these three are one. The Abbott of Dublin accused Arasmus of of denying the Trinity.

And um Arasmus wrote back and said, well, he said, it’s not in any manuscript. He says, but um whenever I find a manuscript that includes that

phrase, I’ll include it in my next version of the New Testament. And lo and behold, by miracle, the the abbott of Dublin found in his own library a

manuscript allegedly from the 7th century that included that phrase. and he sent it back to Arasmus and says, “Honor your pledge.” And so it got included in Arasmus’ next New Testament.

So that that it’s a very famous story.

It’s called the commanium. That particular um story there, but just gives you an indication of how when Arasmus was putting his New Testament

together and collecting all the sources of the New Testament, there was some kind of things going on behind the scenes. And um so if you whenever you

choose a Bible today, I encourage you to buy a Bible that has a critical apparatus at the bottom of every page

and it tells you that some versions have this and some manuscripts don’t have this because there are some stories behind some of these these differences.

And if you don’t know the stories, you should at least know where those differences occur, particularly in the New Testament. So our time is up for

today. I hope this has been helpful. Um tomorrow we’ll talk about the enlightenment and higher criticism and William Miller’s rules of interpretation

and modern adventist rules of interpretation. We’ll do that during Sabbath school. And um so as as as we go

through this historical stuff, we realize that nothing happens that is new under the sun. And the stuff that we’re dealing with in our church today,

they’ve this has happened throughout the centuries. and things tend to go in cycles or the the pendulum goes one way

then there’s a reaction to it called authoritative interpretation or the reformation or the enlightenment or higher criticism. These are all

reactions to what went before and so you start to understand the eb and flow of history and how and why we interpret the

Bible the way we do and that leads to the fundamental beliefs of the Adventist church. So if you change the way you interpret the scripture, if you change your spectacles, you’re going to get

different fundamental beliefs. In fact, the whole concept of doctrine is is a concept that doesn’t make any

sense to the postmodern mind because somebody with a modernist worldview will

see the word stop on a road sign and assume without even thinking about it that everybody on the road knows what the word stop means.

So there is a common understanding of the text.

Common understanding and a common understanding of the text

is known in theological doct circles as a doctrine of scripture.

And the postmodern looks at the sign stop on the road and says, “Well, I don’t know who the author is and nobody has any authority over me and they’re not going to enforce their view on me

and who knows what they were trying to say. I don’t want to impose my view on what they were trying to say.” I look at the word stop and in my experience and from my perspective with my unique

subjective live life experience, stop means just do a rolling stop because I live in California.

So all right. So the point about it is in the postmodern worldview where

got text, author and reader, Luther shifted the focus to the text.

Authoritative interpretation had the focus on the author as told you by the Catholic Church. But in the postmodern world where our children live, that’s

where they are. And you can only have the concept of doctrine or fundamental belief when you have the modernist

worldview and the focus is on the text. You accept you can have common understanding. Our

young people are being raised today where they don’t accept the modernist worldview. They’re postmodern whether they like it or not. And so for to them

you can have a personalized reading of scripture and that this the authority in the interpretation of the text is is not that the text has authority over me but

now I determine what the text means for me in my life. That’s my interpretation and that’s just your interpretation. We are just going to have to live with

that. And once our church is now struggling because our fundamental beliefs 28 fundamental beliefs they come

from this Luther’s worldview the modernist worldview but our young people are no longer there.

So the rise of let’s say LGBTQ stuff at Lassier Malinda. Okay. Now the reader is determining what we want the text to

mean rather than subject themselves to what the text means. [snorts] So in that in that millure in which we now live the

concept of 28 fundamental beliefs or commonly understood doctrine simply evaporates and everybody has the name Adventist but everybody believes what

they want. So that’s why we see the the dissolution of our church doctrinally.

Not because people are wicked. It’s just that everybody’s reading from different spectacles. Like the older generation, you’re still influenced by this, but my

son and my daughter, they’re reading it from this perspective. They’re postmodern. It’s a different set of spectacles. And so doctrine collapses.

The even the possibility of doctrine is is is viewed as an imposition on the reader. And so

when you think well yeah that’s your that’s your interpretation brother.

[clears throat] So but this is a challenge we face as a church now.

And so you know we it’s not just conservatives and liberals. We’re not just arguing about what the text means.

Is that if I identify as a woman and I’m a man biologically I’m going to read scripture in a way that affirms who I think I am.

And so the the doctrines we hold are from a modernist era and that era is gone.

So that means we’re going to live in have to accept an era of theological plurality and people bear the name Adventist but they have radically

different interpretations of scripture and nobody in the system is able or feels able or willing to say this is what we believe because most of our

administrators also have the postmodern worldview as well because you can’t impose your views on

somebody else. So we’ve moved a we’ve come a long way so far this morning. Um I hope you’re all encouraged by these

last five minutes of comments. Um but that is what is happening. Uh the good news is you’re not saved by virtue of being member of a church. You’re saved by your relationship with Jesus Christ.