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The Presence of God Qualifying Interpretation

Judaism.

The modern scholarly spirit does not live in this ancient atmosphere. Rather it

objects to that atmosphere by pointing out that the door is then opened to aberrations. And
indeed many aberrations did arise. One can imagine that one is hearing the voice of God in
an idea that is generated by the text, when in fact one is still going astray and blind.
Someone imagines, for example, that the seed of the woman is Sun Myung Moon rather
than Jesus Christ. Similarly, in ancient times, the Sadducees, according to Jesus, did not
know either "the Scriptures or the power of God" (Matt 22:29). So, proposes the modern
scholar, the remedy is to be found in the objective rigor of a grammatical-historical
interpretation that focuses solely on the human author.

But that is not what Jesus implies in addressing the Sadducees. The problem with

the Sadducees is not that they lacked intellectual acuity or intellectual discipline or
hermeneutical rigor or information about the contents of the Old Testament. Their problem
was that they did not know the power of God. Or, to put a point on it, they did not know
God as they should. And not knowing God the divine author, they failed to have a route to
understand his mind as expressed in the Scriptures. Their problem was spiritual.

Much the same can be said for the followers of Sun Myung Moon or other heretics.

The Apostle Paul teaches that the fundamental problem is spiritual darkness due to
bondage in the kingdom of Satan:

God may perhaps grant them [opponents] repentance leading to a knowledge of the
truth, and they may escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him
to do his will. (2 Tim 2:25-26)

Now the Spirit expressly says that in laster times some will depart from the faith by
devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the
insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, ... (1 Tim 4:1-2)

In their case 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)

Only through knowing God does one find humility. And only through knowing

God in humility does one find oneself in a situation in which one can listen patiently for
what God was doing long ago through human authors, and thereby use the insights that we
associate with grammatical-historical interpretation.

But grammatical-historical interpretation cannot serve as the fundamental remedy

for interpretive confusion about the Bible. Look at the historical-critical tradition. It is
determined to use grammatical-historical interpretation. And the result is a multiplication
of options. Historical-critical interpretation remains in darkness about the true import of
the very Scriptures that it studies so minutely. One can repeat concerning historical-critical
tradition what Jesus said of the Sadducees, "you know neither the Scriptures nor the power
of God." The remedy is spiritual, now as always. The remedy is repentance and turning to
God, through which one knows God and then begins to hear aright God speaking in
Scripture.

The church through the ages has known this. But modern skepticism and the