Interpreting Scripture: Part II

As you may remember, in a previous post, I had shared what I had learned about interpreting scripture. You may read (or re-read) that post here.

I left off with a question, which thankfully no one took upon themselves to answer, so that I may follow up with a second post. Well here it is.

The question was now that we have determined that all of scripture must be understood in light of the person and work of Jesus Christ, how do we in fact do that?

Let me begin with a bit of Socratic methodology :)

In order to read scripture properly, we must read it according to what it is, right? So, then, what is scripture? According to it's own claims, scripture is God's self-Revelation through the writings of human authors. This is important for three reasons.

First, our interpretation of the bible must be concerned with discovering what God is saying, namely through human authors. We do not attempt to discover what God is saying to us apart from them, do we? We may seek to discern God's intent by discovering the intent of the human authors.

Second, since scripture is God's word, there is an overall unity to the bible, despite the diversity of authors over a long period of time. Scripture may be rightly viewed as a unified, divine, communative act, declaring God's plans and purposes.

Lastly, It is notable that scripture, not unlike God's plan of redemption, did not come to us all at once. Rather, it has been given to us over a period of time, all of which, as scripture states, are ultimately centered in Jesus.

So, we may conclude that our interpretation of scripture must be a grammatical-historical-canonical one. In other words, given what scripture is, we must always read the parts in terms of the whole and vise versa. Remember that scripture is unified throughout itself and that God's intent can be discovered under the proper exegetical interpretation.

If none of this makes sense, get a book.