Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1038. Allegorical interpretation treats a biblical text as a coded surface concealing a deeper, often quite different, spiritual meaning beneath it, and it has a long and influential history in the church, particularly through the Alexandrian tradition associated with Origen and later through much of medieval exegesis. The question of whether allegorical interpretation should…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1037. Literal interpretation is the single most misunderstood term in the whole discussion of how we read the Bible, mostly because critics and defenders alike often use it to mean something it was never meant to mean. I want to state plainly at the outset what this method actually is, because getting the definition…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1036. Creeds and confessions are summaries, not sources. That single sentence answers most of the confusion I encounter around this question. A creed does not add to what Scripture has revealed, and it does not carry authority independent of Scripture. What it does is state, in careful and tested language, what a body of…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 1035. Scripture and tradition are not enemies, whatever the sharper edges of Reformation rhetoric sometimes suggest. Tradition, rightly understood, is simply the accumulated memory of how the church has read, defended, and lived out Scripture across two thousand years. The question is not whether tradition matters. It plainly does. The question is which one…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1034. Special revelation is not God’s only way of making Himself known, but it is His only sufficient way of making Himself known for salvation, and that distinction answers most of what lies behind this question. God has genuinely revealed something of Himself through creation, through conscience, and through the ordinary unfolding of history….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1033. Scripture interprets Scripture is one of those phrases preachers use so often that it risks sounding like a slogan rather than a method. In practice it names something quite specific. When a passage is unclear, ambiguous, or genuinely difficult, I let clearer passages elsewhere in the Bible set the boundaries for how the…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 1032. When I say Scripture is my final authority, people sometimes hear something I have not actually said. They hear a claim that Scripture is the only source of guidance a Christian ever consults, as though reason, experience, and the accumulated wisdom of other believers count for nothing. That is not the claim, and…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1031. biblical sufficiency is the settled conviction that Scripture provides everything a believer genuinely needs for faith and godly living, and I want to be precise about exactly what that claim covers, because it is regularly misunderstood in both directions at once. Some treat biblical sufficiency as though the Bible should directly answer every…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1029. Hebrew poetry does not work the way English poetry does, and readers who go looking for rhyme or a regular metre come away thinking the Psalms and Proverbs are simply prose with unusual line breaks scattered through them. Once you know what to look for, Hebrew poetry becomes far more accessible, and its…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1023. The ESV translation philosophy is worth understanding on its own terms rather than assuming it works exactly the same way as every other modern English Bible, because the ESV was built around a deliberate, clearly stated set of translation commitments from the outset. I use the ESV as my standard text for preaching,…