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The Presence of God Qualifying Interpretation

fact corrupted by sin (Eph 4:17-19). Secularism also assumes that the mind is autonomous,
insulated from the thoughts of other intelligences except when we encounter those
intelligences through the medium of speech or the printed word. But that is simply not
true, as the phenomenon of demon possession illustrates. Even apart from actual demon
possession, the Bible indicates that Satan and his agents exercise a startling influence: "the
god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the
light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God" (2 Cor 4:4). The entire
secular model of autonomous independence in the mind is actually a radically inadequate
model.

If such is true, we really understand very little of the capabilities of the human mind

in an evil direction. But, by symmetry, neither do we understand the capabilities of the
human mind in a positive direction.

Human beings sometimes think extraordinary, surprising thoughts, and dream

extraordinary dreams. The furniture of your own dreams is sufficient to prove that you
know very little about what could come into your head, or where it comes from. Even
within states of consciousness that seem quite ordinary, intelligent people can sometimes
commit stupid logical fallacies without observing what they are doing. What accounts for
these gaps in our thought? And what accounts for creative thoughts? Many times they
seem, as far as conscious observations goes, to come out of nowhere.

The human authors of Scripture are in one respect ordinary human beings. But in

another respect they are not ordinary. They operate under the inspiration of the Holy
Spirit. Since the Holy Spirit is God, he exercises more extraordinary capabilities than do
the demons. What are human minds capable of, when under the extraordinary influence of
the Holy Spirit? We really do not know. And it is this kind of mind that God employs in
writing the Scripture. How do we control what is or is not possible? We cannot. Rather,
as scholars, we simply pretend that ancient human authors were pedestrian, that they can
hardly do a thing that goes beyond what our petty version of rationality could potentially
explain. Is the worship of Reason alive and well among evangelical scholars, when they
attempt to calculate the limits of thought in what they read?

Limits on historical understanding

We also encounter limits in understanding the ancient historical environments from

which the writings came. We are indeed better off than previous generations because of
the gradual accumulation of texts and artifacts from Ancient Near Eastern civilizations.
We continue to learn about the Graeco-Roman environment and the Jewish environment of
the New Testament. But there is much than we do not know because of limitations in the
surviving evidence. And, given our limitations on understanding the human mind, there
are also limitations on understanding other cultures.

But in the area of history we confront extra mysteries. Let us consider what we

mean by the historical part of grammatical-historical interpretation. We look at the
historical environment. But how broad an environment? God sees and plans beyond the
chronological limitations of a single human lifetime. In his words and in his deeds within
Old Testament times, he was already working on our behalf, as the above quotations from
Paul testify. It is therefore a mistake to consider a text of the Old Testament as if it could
be isolated like a dead butterfly within a historical time-span of a few years.