Knowable Word

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What Do We Mean by the Word ‘Meaning’?

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In a recent Look at the Book video, John Piper clarifies what we mean when we talk about the Bible’s “meaning.” According to Piper:

The meaning of a text is what the author intended to communicate with his words.

The key idea is that meaning comes from the author, not the reader. In particular, the meaning of a text is NOT:

  • Whatever comes into our head
  • What we feel
  • All the ways we may respond

These beliefs arise from thinking that meaning comes from the reader, not the author.

Piper explains what he means, and then he gives examples of how the Bible assumes this definition of “meaning.” It is very important that we understand this as we come to study any passage of Scripture.

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8 Habits of the Excellent Bible Teacher

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Whether you are a parent teaching your children, a small group leader, a Sunday school teacher, or a pastor, how can you strive for excellence? Professionals pursue continuing education, athletes need personal training, and academics submit to peer review. What does excellence look like for Bible teachers?

According to Andrew Hess, Bible teachers must develop 8 habits if they want to endure in bringing honor God in their teaching. The 8 habits are:

  1. Preparation
  2. Love
  3. Prayer
  4. Learning
  5. Mastery
  6. Limit
  7. Humility
  8. Gratitude

I appreciate Hess’s decision to call these “habits” and not “tips” or “behaviors.” The habits on this typically feel mundane, but the cumulative effect they will have over a lifetime would be difficult to overstate. Read Hess’s article to see why.

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Hone Your Ability to Focus on the Bible

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If we can’t focus on anything, we won’t be able to focus when it’s time to read the Bible. Along those lines, Scott Slayton has a few suggestions well worth considering:

  1. Shut out distractions.
  2. Read actively.
  3. Read in a consistent place and at a consistent time.
  4. Hone your concentration in other areas.

Slayton fleshes out these principles in his blog post. They sound like simple principles, but in his blog post, Slayton presents some challenging applications that are worth considering.

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The Problem With Bible Reading Plans

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Writing for the blog of Southern Seminary, Joseph C. Harrod describes one common approach to Bible reading plans: reading one chapter at a time from different parts of the Bible. One famous reading plan does one chapter a day from Genesis, one from Ezra, one from Matthew, and one from Acts—then moving on from there each day through the Bible.

I have followed such a reading plan from a lectionary, for many years. I use this in addition to my annual read-through, as well as ongoing voluminous reading of whatever book I’m studying at the time (currently Isaiah). One benefit of the “various chapters” reading plan is that it keeps the whole of Scripture in the forefront.

But I’ve also seen a drawback to such reading plans: They train you to think only in chapter-long chunks, where you can easily miss the context of whole books. And Harrod identifies another drawback I hadn’t thought of: Such plans train you to think it takes a very long time to read through books. So, for example, Genesis takes almost 2 months (50 days) to get through, when, in fact, if you read only Genesis, you could finish it in 3.5 hours.

Harrod shows how even the longest books of the Bible can be read in about the same amount of time we’d take to watch an epic film or a sporting event. It’s worth devouring these books in one or two sittings. Harrod has some helpful insights in this first article on the problem with most Bible reading plans, and in a second article, he shows how you can read half the Bible in 30 minutes!

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Rethinking Our Proof Texts

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Mike Leake has some important thoughts about how and when to reconsider the way we use our proof texts. As a young believer, Leake often used Phil 1:6 (“he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion”) to support the doctrine of eternal security. While he hasn’t rejected that doctrine, he has reconsidered his use of Phil 1:6 to support it.

Why? Simply because the context of Philippians 1 strongly suggests this verse is not speaking to that topic.

And why ought we to be willing to do this: to back down from using some of our favorite verses to support our favorite teaching?

First, it matters because truth matters. We cannot be loose with the truth. If we teach a right doctrine but do it the wrong way with the wrong text we are training ourselves and our people that truth is fluid and that the end justifies the means. That will not only have an impact on the way we do theology, it’ll even have an impact on the way we live our lives.

Second, it builds trust. If people know I believe a certain doctrine but see that I’m willing to concede a particular point for the sake of the truth, then it ought to build trust for the places where I’m not willing to concede a point.

The point I’ve been making for weeks now, that context matters, is not about looking superior to other people, being argumentative, or splitting hairs. This is about hearing God’s voice and not confusing it with our own. This is a matter not only of what the Scriptures say, but also of how we know what the Scriptures say.

Leake’s post gives a great example of how to think (and re-think) through these things with a particular text. Check it out!

What the Dictionary Taught Me About Bible Study

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I don’t watch many videos online. I almost always skip them when people link to them. But when blogger Mark Ward says, “This video is fantastic,” I pay attention. Mark shares my love for linguistics and for careful, contextual Bible study, so I respect his recommendations on such things.

So I now share with you Anne Curzan’s TED talk entitled, “What Makes a Word ‘Real’?” And I echo Mark’s evaluation. This video is fantastic. Watching it may be your best-invested 17 minutes all week. I believe you’ll find the video to be quite impactful, and I wish I had some way to incentivize your watching of it.

Curzan explains how language changes over time, and she peels back the curtain on the editing of dictionaries. I appreciate her comment that the dictionary is probably the only book we’re trained never to think critically about. But we should. Below the video, I’ll trace some implications for Bible study.

What does Curzan’s presentation tell us about Bible study?

  1. Because languages can change drastically every hundred years, word studies are far less important than book studies when we come to the Scripture. Our chief goal should be to understand how each author uses his language; our goal should not be to tap into the history of the Bible’s vocabulary.
  2. “No dictionary is the final arbiter of what words ‘mean.'” This is no less true of Bible dictionaries and lexicons than it is of modern English ones. The difference, of course, is that biblical languages are now dead and no longer changing. But those languages (particularly Hebrew) changed so much over the time the Bible was written that it’s irrational to think we can look back over their millennia of use and identify the single “true meaning” of any biblical word. Just think of the American Heritage Dictionary’s contradictory entries for the word peruse.
  3. Just like in contemporary word usage, biblical authors felt free to make up new words to suit their purposes (I think of “more than conquerors” in Romans 8:37 as an example). In such cases, they likely were aiming more at emotional impact than technical precision.
  4. We must be careful not to read current theological categories back into the words of Scripture. The Scriptures must stand on their own, in their own context. For example, when the New Testament uses the word “church,” the authors do not always have in mind what we think of as “church” (a local congregation, meeting at least weekly for worship services, with a pastor, a budget, a building, a set of by-laws, and an annual meeting). “Preach” is not always referring to the sermons presented by the ordained minister on Sunday morning.

Words are beautiful things, as long as we notice how they’re used and don’t expect them to carry loads they simply can’t bear. Consider this video your invite to a fruitful understanding of basic linguistics. And please don’t defriend me over it.

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Why Context Matters

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At Stand to Reason, Alan Shlemon explains why it matters so much to consider the context of a Bible verse. After giving an example, where a Christian uses Matthew 18:20 to encourage their small group that Jesus is with them, Shlemon draws the following conclusion:

This might seem benign, but it’s dangerous. In this case, the Christian has concluded that the verse tells him Jesus is with them. You might think, What’s the harm in believing that? In this case, the belief is not incorrect—Jesus is with them—but that verse doesn’t support that belief. The believer has ignored the Holy Spirit’s inspired context and then created his own context, thus changing the meaning of Jesus’ teaching. Now Matthew 18:20 isn’t about church discipline but rather about believing Jesus is with you. That’s not Bible reading. That’s not allowing the Holy Spirit to transform you. That’s not listening to God but listening to yourself and baptizing your faulty interpretation with the authority of God’s Word. If a Christian wants a verse that supports the fact that Jesus is present with him, he can always turn to Matthew 28:20.

So we can arrive at true teaching in the wrong way. But that’s not far from using the same methods of Bible reading to reach entirely false teaching. Let’s not ignore the wishes of Holy Spirit, who inspired these sacred writings.

Shlemon is right. Context matters. Let’s continue retraining ourselves and our people to read the Bible for what it is: not a collection of memory verses, but a collection of books.

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4 Simple Language Principles

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Mark Ward writes about “4 Simple Language Principles That Will Improve Your Bible Study.” He’s writing to the Bible student who wants to learn Greek or Hebrew. Or possibly to the person who wants to use original language tools well. You know, the sort of person who can be heard saying things like, “What the Greek word here really means is…”

Ward offers some excellent advice for these folks, and for the rest of us, when he encourages us to learn first how all languages work. Then we’ll be in a better place to understand how Greek and Hebrew work.

His principles are as follows:

  1. Usage determines meaning.
  2. Usage determines meaning—no, I mean it.
  3. Look at every level of meaning, not just the word level
  4. Learn linguistic and literary labels

These principles are so important, especially the first two. Many people tend to think words have specific meaning built into them inherently, like a code. But words only have meaning according to how real people use those words in real communication. Another way to put it is that we assume words get their meaning from the dictionary. But we fail to realize that dictionaries get their word meanings by listening to people use words in conversation (for real: see this TED talk). And therefore, word meanings are constantly changing over time.

Ward’s musings on this topic are worth reflecting on.

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