Category: Hermeneutics

Greg: Don’t be so literal

A good reminder that reading the Scriptures well consists of defining words and discerning how those words are being used in a given context, especially when we’re talking about God and his works:

Some things mentioned in the Bible are not factual; some factual things are not mentioned; some nonfactual things receive no mention there; some things are both factual and mentioned. Do you ask for my proofs here? I am ready to offer them. In the Bible, God “sleeps,” “wakes up,” “is angered,” “walks,” and has a “throne of cherubim.” Yet when has God ever been subject to emotion? When do you ever hear that God has a bodily being? This is a nonfactual, mental picture. We have used names derived from human experience and applied them, so far as we could, to aspects of God. His retirement from us, for reasons known to himself into an almost unconcerned inactivity, is his “sleeping.” Human sleeping, after all, has the character of restful inaction. When he alters and suddenly benefits us, that is his “waking up.” Waking up puts an end to sleep, just as looking at somebody puts an end to turning away from him. We have made his punishing of us his “being angered”; for with us, punishment is born of anger. His acting in different places, we call “walking,” for walking is a transition from one place to another. His abiding among the heavenly powers, making them almost his haunt, we call his “sitting” and “being enthroned”; this too is human language: the divine abides in none as it abides in the saints. God’s swift motion we call “flight”; his watching over us is his “face”; his giving and receiving is his “hand.” Indeed every faculty or activity of God has given us a corresponding picture in terms of something bodily.

– St. Gregory of Nazianzus, The Fifth Theological Oration (Oration 31:22) “On the Holy Spirt”

That is, literally, not the way language works

Boy 1 & 2 are reading through a textbook on worldviews which includes this, uh, embellishment of Gen 1:31.

After creating humans and imbuing them with purpose, God said it was “very good” (v 31). In Hebrew, the phrase is “meod tob.” It is almost impossible to exaggerate the resonant awesomeness this phrase is meant to convey. It literally means “exceedingly, heartbreakingly, abundantly, richly, loudly, immeasurably good in a festive, generous, happy, intelligent, charming, splendid way.

To paraphrase Alice’s response to Humpty Dumpty: that’s a great deal to make one phrase mean.

Assumptions are hard to break

In what looks to be an otherwise solid book for those preparing for marriage, I found a curious explanation of the meaning behind God’s declaration that “it is not good for the man to be alone” (Gen 2:18). In fairness, the author’s presentation falls comfortably within the bounds of popular consensus in spite of the broad assumptions:

Here is my question: in light of all we just said, why is it not good for the man to be alone? What is God seeing and talking about?

The problem that God identifies, and wants us to see, is that Adam has no one of his nature and substance to think about. He has no one in his likeness to love, serve, and honor. Left alone, his thoughts would be too wrapped around himself. This was a problem. This is what God called “not good.” In his alone state, Adam could not reflect the complete image that God wanted him to reflect. He was not as full an image-bearer of God’s glory as God desired.

Two questions. First, where is the support for this interpretation in the text? Second, if this is the problem that God identifies in 2:18, what does this mean for the singles in our midst?

Maybe we assume too much in this verse.

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