Alternative Hermeneutical Perspectives

Herman Hermeneut: So now we have it. Three Steps. Is everyone satisfied?

Missy Missiologist: Do people from every culture go about interpretation in the same way? Might we have overlooked important cultural differences?

Amy Affirmationist: Even within our culture I don’t think that every Christian goes about it this way. Could the Holy Spirit give people more than one method?

We can represent God’s speech as spread out in time. But since God is present to his people in all times, this particular manner of representing the communication is not exhaustive. If we wish, we can also represent the entire hermeneutical process as within the sphere of the presence of God in Micah’s time, speaking to all subsequent generations in a single act. Or equally, we can represent the entire hermeneutical process within the sphere of the presence of God to us now. Let us see how these two approaches work.

An alternative perspective: God speaking to his people once for all

God through Micah wrote to the people of Micah’s time. But God is Lord of time. Unlike human beings, God does not limit his vision to the events or customs or thoughts of one time or culture. Even human beings can write books or make records “for posterity.” Human beings have at least a limited ability to think about other times and the ability to undertake to communicate forward to later times. This ability is, of course, an image of God’s eternality, his mastery of all times, and his presence to all times. God certainly has the ability to write to posterity as well as to the people of one time. Did he do it? He did.

These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. (1 Cor. 10:11)

For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. (Rom. 15:4)

After Moses finished writing in a book the words of this law from beginning to end, he gave this command to the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord: “Take this Book of the Law and place it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God. There it will remain as a witness against you. For I know how rebellious and stiff-necked you are. If you have been rebellious against the Lord while I am still alive and with you, how much more will you rebel after I die! (Deut. 31:24-27)

God purposes to include later readers. We may apply this truth to Micah. God includes all the readers of all future generations in the audience that he addresses when he writes Micah.

Under this viewpoint, the task of interpretation is simply to realize that we are part of the original audience and to identify with the audience of Micah’s time. The whole of interpretation seems to collapse into step 1. But the collapse is only apparent. Once we focus on the composition of the audience, all the differentiations in steps 2 and 3 will be rediscovered.

Let us first think about human authors and their intended readers. Good authors know that there are differences of knowledge and viewpoint among the intended readers. Authors may deliberately include a spectrum of materials in order to appeal to a broad spectrum of readers. They know that not everything will appeal equally to all the readers at once. In addition, some authors may deliberately include allusions or secrets or more precise formulations that can be detected and fully understood by only a part of the readers. I know one Christian speaker who deliberately tries to give up to three messages at once, one to non-Christians, one to comparatively ignorant Christians, and one to theologically informed Christians—in order that all three subgroups of his audience may retain interest and be further challenged and informed.

Similarly, it is in principle possible for God to provide a different fullness of truth and communion to different portions of his audience. In fact, we know that he sometimes does. In the Parable of the Sower Jesus reveals to the disciples the “secret of the kingdom of God,” while veiling the secret from others (Mark 4:11-12).

Thus, we must be prepared to differentiate among various parts of the total audience. The differentiation can take place along many lines, including intellectual gifts, loyalty versus antagonism to God, spiritual maturity, social status, sex, historical circumstances, and so on. Fullest absorption and appreciation of God and his word occur when the different parts of the audience share their insights, impressions, and emotional responses with one another. Such, indeed, is what the church does according to the description in Ephesians 4:11-16 and 1 Corinthians 12.

Of course, direct communication backward in time is not possible. But it is still useful and important to project ourselves backward in imagination, as it were, in order to try to anticipate what they would understand. The people from earlier times cannot give fresh responses, beyond what has been preserved in literary form and in other material evidence. But the process of imaginative projection still has important similarities to the attempt to understand other people whom we meet and talk to now. In both cases we try to some extent to see things from the other person’s point of view. And that attempt frequently allows us to learn what we might not learn if we were rigidly confined to our own individual experience.¹

To put matters theologically, communion with the saints in the church includes not only communion with the saints who are now alive and are part of our local church. It includes communion with others through other means of communication. We are in communion with the saints of the past ages.

The apostles of Christ may serve as our primary example of this communion. Christ gave the church the apostles partly for the purpose of being definitive, authoritative witnesses to his life and his resurrection (Acts 1:21-22). Today we may have church planters and highly respected leaders, but in the nature of the case we have no more apostles. Have we then lost forever one of the necessary aspects of church life described in Ephesians 4:11? No, though the apostles have died, their voice lives on through their writings. We still receive their foundational instruction again and again. In a subordinate way, the gifts of understanding, teaching, and ministry that God gave to saints in past ages are not useless to us. Their gifts helped to build the church and helped it to persevere up to our time, and the gifts of understanding and teaching often survive through the writings of these saints.

Bible study today should include communion with the apostles, of course. They laid the indispensable, inspired, authoritative foundation for our faith. But Bible study needs also to be a dialog with Bible students of all previous ages. Indeed, we must include the people of Old Testament times as well as New. For there is only one way of salvation. Abraham is an example to encourage our faith (Heb. 11:8-19, 39-40, 12:1).

The hermeneutical arch and the three hermeneutical steps from the previous chapter are spread out in time. So it is interesting to ask how the total audience of the Bible is differentiated in time. There are many ways in which the passage of time and one’s situation in time make a difference. We need only dwell on the areas that are more obvious.

First, people differ in their situation. Cultural differences exist between the Hebraic cultures of the Old Testament, the Judaic and Hellenistic cultures of the New Testament, and modern cultures. More important, the coming of new redemptive acts of God, and above all the coming of Christ in the flesh, make a decisive difference in the situation in the world. Christ’s resurrection is the firstfruits of the final resurrection and the renewal of the world. It is truly cosmic in its implications. One of the implications is that, although Mosaic Israel was required to keep the special food laws, we are not. Jesus has made all foods clean (Mark 7:19). In fact, the implications are quite profound, for the whole law is not only fulfilled but transformed through its supreme expression in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.²

Second, people differ in their persons. At Pentecost Christ pours out the promised Holy Spirit on his church. The reading of the Old Testament is now illumined by the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 3:15-18), and by the law written on the hearts of believers (Heb. 8:10). Of course, the Holy Spirit was at work in Old Testament times, but not with the fullness with which he comes at Pentecost (compare Deut. 29:4 with 1 John 2:20-27). He now comes bringing the resurrection power of Jesus Christ and uniting us to Christ Jesus in his heavenly glory.

Third, people differ in their access to the word of God. Later inspired writings appear after Micah’s time. Later people, but not earlier, are able to compare Micah with a fuller set of communications from God. The total import of a passage depends on what kind of literary context and how much literary context an author provides. If the author provides quantitatively more context, the readers may be able to learn more about the author and thereby understand more deeply the import of a particular passage. Similarly, later readers of Scripture may have greater knowledge of God through the contribution of later inspired writings. Moreover, the later writings and redemptive events may throw light on promises and prophecies that originally were less specific in character.

These differentiations in the audience that God addresses mean that steps 2 and 3 from the transmission perspective are tacitly still part of the total process of interpretation. The changes in situation imply that it is legitimate to break off the modern audience for special reflection in step 3. The changes in access to the canon imply that we may ask questions about systematic theology from the whole canon. The changes in situation and in persons with the coming of Christ and Pentecost imply that it is wise to ask many questions about the Christocentric fulfillment of Scripture. Hence, this new perspective on God’s speech potentially includes all the aspects given in the former perspective, the transmission perspective. It includes in principle the concerns of the three hermeneutical steps. It differs mainly in the arrangement. Instead of viewing God’s speech as a process of transmission through a long period of time, composed of three distinct speech acts, we view God’s speech as a single unified affair. Instead of a transmission perspective we have a once-for-all perspective.

The new perspective has several advantages. First, it expresses more forcefully and vividly than the transmission perspective the fact that God’s intention in speaking is united and coherent, and that his speech to his people is a unified act. By contrast, the transmission perspective may give the superficial misimpression that God’s speech is decomposed into three unrelated acts or stages. This impression, of course, is only an artifact of the picture. God who is Lord of all history holds together all times in his speech.

Second, the once-for-all perspective emphasizes more vividly the importance of the original context and the authority of God’s speech in this context. The understanding by all subsequent audiences is still bound to this one time of utterance.

Third, the once-for-all perspective promotes an appreciation for the role of the Holy Spirit in understanding God’s word. The Holy Spirit is the one who unites us with believers of all ages, who distributes his gifts to these believers, and who enables us to enter into fellowship, communication, and spiritual communion with them through the records that they have left behind. Without the Holy Spirit the picture would pale into a desert-like situation where all we would receive today would be a merely human tradition about what God spoke once back there.

Fourth, the once-for-all perspective indicates more explicitly that interpretation is a spiral process. It is growth of the whole people of God together through a complex communion. By contrast, the transmission perspective can easily be misunderstood as involving a merely linear travel from ignorance to knowledge to application.

But the once-for-all perspective also has some disadvantages. Unless we are alert, we may underestimate the changes that take place in the reception of God’s word over the ages. For example, we can make the mistake of assuming that everything in the Bible addresses us now in exactly the same way that it addressed all people of previous centuries. We might fail to observe that the Mosaic covenant was a shadow of a new and better one (Heb. 8:7-13; 10:1), and that we are not called to observe it in the same manner as were Israelites in Mosaic times. Or we could easily turn this view into a caricature, in which God drops a book from heaven. We picture God as if he was not involved in history, but rather totally ignored it. The heavenly book then speaks a system of ethical rules or propositional theology, but contains no announcement of what he does. The rules speak in a completely uniform manner to people in any and every situation. Of course there are universal ethical rules and propositions in the Bible. But we must not flatten everything out as if the coming of Christ in history did not make a decisive difference.

Fortunately, whatever view we start with, the Bible itself is capable of correcting our misunderstandings. Hebrews, for example, teaches us about the relation of earlier words to later ones. It shows both that the earlier words have lessons for us now and that the coming of the new covenant in Christ has superseded what was shadowy in the old.

An alternative perspective: God speaking now

Next, we can use still another model, in which the entire process of interpretation involves the speech of God now. We may start with Paul’s affirmation:

But the righteousness that is by faith says: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ down) “or ‘Who will descend into the deep?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Rom 10:8-9)

Paul repudiates the idea that the gospel is confined only to the Jews or only to a single location in Palestine. Undoubtedly he would also repudiate the idea that one would have to travel backward in time. We do not literally have to stand with Moses at Mount Sinai to hear God speaking. Since God's word has been recorded, we have it available now as well as then. Paul focuses in particular on the word of the gospel. It is the word of God, and is clearly available now.³ It is actually in those who believe: “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart” (Rom 10:8).

This near word might superficially appear to wipe out all consciousness of time. But actually it calls us to grow in Christ and to grow in knowing God in all the ways that we have observed earlier.

Consider. The word to which Paul refers is the word of the gospel, the word that involves proclaiming and confessing that “Jesus is Lord” and that “God raised him from the dead” (Rom. 10:9). The Lordship of Jesus Christ, when truly acknowledged, implies that we are servants and that we submit to his Lordship. We are to “obey everything I [Jesus] have commanded you” (Matt. 28:20). The aspect of authority here, along with our own creatureliness and sinfulness, drives us back to the issue of whether we are really obeying Christ and his word, or whether we just project a word out of own our present consciousness, and then call ourselves to obey our own projection. If the latter, that is, if we obey only ourselves (as with Kant’s categorical imperative), we are still our own master and we are worshipping ourselves, not Jesus the Lord.

Thus the issue of Christ’s authority forces us to acknowledge an external authoritative word, the word of Scripture. Moreover, the word of the gospel says that “God raised him from the dead,” and this proclamation alerts us to the indispensability of God’s work in history. The Bible proclaims that God worked out salvation for real people in a really desperate plight in real time and space. God, speaking authoritatively to us in the Bible in the present, tells us that time is significant. Fellowship with Christ involves fellowship with the Jesus of the past who accomplished his work for us once and for all.

Hence, God speaking in the present calls on us to make the differentiations in time that have already been made using our previous two models. God himself instructs us about how he speaks. He speaks not only in the present moment, but in the present through a message given, preserved, translated, and applied through time. Because of the fullness of God’s presence in his present speech, we know him. And knowing him, we know him as the Lord of time, space, and history. We hear his word as a word that controls and transmits itself through all times. His word has the textures of its transmission embedded in it at the very moment and in the very way in which he speaks to us now.

Let us take a simple case. Right now God says to you in the book of Micah, “The word of the LORD that came to Micah of Moresheth during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah—the vision he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem” (Mic. 1:1). Right now God instructs you that this speech of his in the book of Micah is not an undifferentiated address to your present moment. It is an address to your present moment, to be sure (Rom. 15:4). But it is differentiated as an address with an earlier location and time in which it was initiated. God in the present tells you a story containing a notice of how he dealt with people in the past.

This final model, which we may call the present-time model, has advantages and disadvantages complementary to the other two models. First, it has the advantage of vividly emphasizes the presence of God, his intimacy with you here and now, and therefore also the necessity of application.

Second, the present-time model can emphasize the universal and intimate claims of God and of Christ on you. You cannot remain an academic observer, merely analyzing information that does not concern you personally.

Third, the present-time model can emphasize the centrality of the gospel message. For this message is the central thrust of Scripture to you here and now.

Fourth, like the once-for-all model, the present-time model makes more explicit the spiral character of hermeneutics. A central commitment to Christ, growing in strength, depth, and purity, controls the entire hermeneutical process, and is in turn nourished by the word that God speaks.

But the present-time model also has some disadvantages. It can be perverted by existential theology (including neoorthodoxy) into subjectivism. In this view the word of God can supposedly never be “objectivized” but only comes to you in the moment of personal encounter with the Wholly Other. Kant’s transcendental ego encounters God in an ineffable noumenal realm. But existential theology radically suppresses (Rom. 1:18) the truth about what the word of God is to you here and now in the present. Jesus is Lord. Neoorthodoxy and liberalism, despite protestations to the contrary, evade the fact that Jesus is Lord over the standards, facts, and personal motives in modern science, modern historical investigation, modern biblical interpretation, and modern efforts at systematic theological reasoning. People may of course rebel against the Lord now. But even when they rebel, they remain subject to his judgment and his punishment. Liberalism, by failing to reckon adequately with Christ's Lordship, has swallowed modern philosophy as its fundamental guiding framework. It is not submitting to the instruction of the voice of Jesus in Scripture.⁴

The nature of alternative models of interpretation

Any of the three models that we have considered can be perverted. But when used carefully, the transmission model, the once-for-all model, and the present-time model, are actually complementary approaches to the same realities of the word of God. The once-for-all model starts with God’s authority and the giving of the word in its permanence and universally normative character. God’s word has fixed propositional content and fixed ethical demands. The present-time model starts with God’s presence now. It focuses on the mystery of human consciousness operating only in the present. The transmission-model starts with speech spread out in time through God’s control over speech and history. It focuses on the external, historical, world-context of God’s speech.

Thus each model emphasizes one of God’s attributes: the once-for-all model emphasizes God’s authority and truth; the present-time mode emphasizes his presence; the transmission model emphasizes God’s control. As usual, these emphases lead to complementary approaches. Each approach, rightly understood, affirms and embraces the others. Law (truth), consciousness (presence), and history (transmission) interlace each other. God is one in the manifold richness of his being. Hence interpretation is also one, in the midst of its manifold richness.

In principle, then, the three approaches should lead in the same direction. But human sinfulness corrupts our interpretation, and we do not always live up to the potential of any one of these approaches. Each approach, as we have already observed, is open to certain dangers and misunderstandings. Moreover, our hearts are constantly tempted to produce new idols. We can make idols out of the law, the facts, and or the persons in interpretation. Law, facts, and persons belong together in harmony, and each functions together with the others to display God’s truth , control, and presence. But in the hands of idol-makers they are distorted. Secularist rationalism idolizes the law or the rules of interpretation. Secularist empiricism idolizes the facts and interprets everything in terms of visible effect. Secularist subjectivism idolizes the persons and tries to put everything under the mastery and decision-making of a supposed autonomous human subject.⁵

Errors in secularist approaches to interpretation are so blatant that they are fairly easy to detect. But subtler forms of the same errors and the same idolatries beckon to Christian interpreters. Let us see how each of these three hermeneutical models can be misused in an idolatrous direction.

The once-for-all approach is closely connected to a focus on God’s authority and the origination of his speech. It can therefore be distorted into an idolizing of rules. Secularist rationalism tends to idolize rules of interpretation and to try to make interpretation into an objectivist science. In a more subtle form of rationalism, people ignore the historical context of the Bible, and view the Bible as merely an infallible source book for doctrine, a collection of propositions about God, man, and salvation. They see no relation to what God is actually accomplishing in history.

Similar inclinations may also influence the complexion of our personal response to the Bible. Look at Dottie Doctrinalist. We may become doctrinalists, those who think that correct, orthodox doctrine is the heart of Christianity. And of course there is no denying that truth is absolutely essential to Christian growth (Eph. 4:15). But so is love. Doctrinalists run the danger not only of distorting and flattening the Bible by ignoring some of the multidimensionality of divine communication. They also run the danger of using pride in their orthodoxy as an excuse. They conceal from themselves their fear and reluctance to change subtle attitudinal sins of the heart. They run into a false dogmatism, over-confidence in self, and harshness towards those who do not agree with them. They can excuse these attitudes easily by labeling them as zeal for the truth. With this excuse they make their attitudes into yet another source of pride.

The present-time approach is closely connected to a focus on God’s presence and the reception of his speech now. It can therefore be distorted into an idolizing of the human recipient, the human subject. Secularist subjectivism blatantly idolizes the hearing, reading, and analyzing subject. But once again there are more subtle forms. Look at Amy Affirmationist, who affirmed everyone’s point of view. Christians may read the Bible only for what it says to them now. Group Bible studies may be conducted in which the only question is really, “What does it mean to you?” All viewpoints, even those contradicting one another, may be endorsed as equally valid “for you.” Everyone may feel cozily “accepted,” but no one is challenged by the piercing authority of God’s discipline and the ways in which he contradicts our sinful ideas.

Similarly, some charismatic groups subtly idolize the emotions of the moment of worship. Subjective feelings in the moment of worship are all that matters. The group’s vision never extends to the times and moments and wisdom of the Bible’s past or (for that matter) to other individuals and groups like scholars in the present. Despite the presence of real gifts of the Spirit within the group, the group seldom moves beyond articulating to itself what it already knows, and further extending the implications along lines to which it is accustomed and with which it is comfortable.

These inclinations may also influence the complexion of people’s personal response to the Bible. They become pietists, those who think that personal devotional life and prayer are the heart of Christianity.⁶ Remember Peter Pietist? And of course there is no denying that personal devotion, commitment, and fellowship with Christ are essential to Christian growth (Col. 2:6-7). But so is the criticism and rebuke from the truth. Pietists run the danger not only of reading the Bible one-dimensionally for its devotional nourishment, but of avoiding the hard work and doctrinal and practical wrestling necessary for fully acknowledging Christ’s Lordship over our minds (Matt. 22:37).

Lastly, the transmission approach is closely related to a focus on God’s control over the entire historical process of transmission. But it is can be distorted into empiricism or historicism, in which the facts (or really, the interpreter’s expectations concerning factuality) are idolized. Secularist empiricism is more blatantly idolatrous. But Christians may also fall into more subtle forms of the same approach. They may become “Christian” historicists. They use the fact of historical and cultural distance between biblical situations and modern situations in order to make the Bible only distantly relevant to our own responsibility in our time. Supposedly only the very broad principles of the Bible, or only the person of Christ vaguely defined, ought to be allowed to give binding direction for our situation. In actual fact the modern situation, or rather our conception of the situation, obtains primacy of place in application. Pragmatism and worldliness creep in.

We see, then, how people can twist the above hermeneutical models in doctrinalist, emotivist, and pragmatist directions. Combinations of these failings and sins are of course also possible.

Scholarship and intellectual gifts do not protect us from these sins, especially more subtle and sophisticated forms of sins. In fact, intellectuals can easily use their cleverness to develop sophisticated forms of sin that are less easy to detect. We invent sophisticated excuses for our practices and find holes in the arguments of our critics. The pride that we have in our intellectual ability prevents us from listening deeply to critics. Pride says that we are intellectually superior to the critic, and so the critic’s arguments are worthless. Pride says that we are free from sin anyway, so that the critic could not possibly be right. Pride builds defenses, carefully concealing weak points from the critics’ view. 1 Corinthians 1:27-31 and 3:18-21 should long ago have taught us the danger of intellectualist idolatry.

In particular, teachers of Bible and theology meet intellectualist temptations. Teachers of systematic theology, on the average, are more likely to be doctrinalists, because they focus on the derivation of doctrine from the Bible. Teachers of practical theology, because they focus on present application, are more likely to be pragmatists and pietists. Teachers of biblical studies (Old and New Testament), because they focus on the historical distance between situations, are more likely to be historicists.

But there can be many variations. Whatever their research specialty, people with a more rationalist, syllogistic intellectual bent are more likely to be comfortable with once-for-all hermeneutics. They exhibit a doctrinalist bias. Next, the informed scholars, those in touch with great masses of fact and multifaceted argumentation from modern scholarship, are likely to see the many problems and complexities associated with the many aspects of transmission hermeneutics. This complexity may encourage them to overall tentativeness, tolerance, sensitivity, and civility, but paralyzes them when it comes to condemning false doctrine or advocating definite, vigorous practical action. They are still caught in a subtle form of historicism. Finally, consider the people absorbed in the society of the present, particularly the bureaucratic, institutional church facing secular society. They are more comfortable with the pragmatics of church growth or principles of business management or secular psychological theories of personal counseling. They fall victim to a subtle form of pragmatism.

Explicitness in hermeneutics

Are we helped by the once-for-all model, the transmission model, or the present-time model? Clearly, any one of these or all of them together may be useful in encouraging us to study some aspect of God’s communication that we have previously neglected. Through any one of them we may detect areas in our thinking or in our application that have previously been sinful and untransformed by the power of God’s word. Within the diversity of gifts and members of the body of Christ, as expounded by 1 Corinthians 12, we welcome people whose gifts lead them to focus special attention on particular areas.

But no method is a panacea. No method in and of itself guarantees sanctification. Christ washes us through the word and the Spirit (Eph. 5:26; 2 Thess. 2:13; 1 Peter 1:2), not through method as such. In fact, method can be a subtle snare. We can pervert orthodox doctrine, good and sound as it is, into an idol. Doctrinalists begin to shift trust from Christ and his promises to the doctrinal system over which they are masters. Likewise, we can pervert good hermeneutical method into an idol. Self-conscious interpreters begin to shift trust from Christ and his promises to trust in the hermeneutical method, which supposedly assures that they arrive at correct interpretation. Or really, self-conscious interpreters may trust in themselves, their training, their learning, their brilliance, their methodicalness, their self-consciousness, and thus be ensnared in pride and idolatry. In addition, pride keeps them at all costs from admitting that they need intellectual and hermeneutical repentance in the innermost depths.

Rationalism and the ideal of scientifically dominating the world grew out of the root of the Enlightenment. They tempt us to desire to dominate interpretation and to make it transparent by exhaustive intellectual insight. Rationalism rejects out of hand the intuitions of the charismatic and the possibility of depth significance in texts. But such rationalism is tainted with Enlightenment idolatry, namely, the worship of the transcendent self. We end in overconfidence and arrogance. And the divine Warrior will war against that pride (Prov. 16:18; 11:2).

There is also a converse truth, namely, that the entire hermeneutical method becomes a tacit, subconscious tool for the godly person. To know God is already to know the entire process of interpretation tacitly. For interpretation, as we have seen, grows out of who God is as Speaker. To know God is to know many things about his ways with the world, without necessarily being able consciously to articulate all the knowledge. To know the Lord of history means understanding the intricacy and fidelity and presence of his speech. Or, to put it another way, knowing God promotes “wisdom,” having the practical skill of serving him faithfully in every area of life. One develops hermeneutical skill without necessarily being self-conscious about a series of hermeneutical steps. One finds oneself “doing” all the steps and substeps of the transmission model without self-consciously distinguishing them or knowing that one is doing them.

To know Christ is to know the one “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3). To know Christ is to be bonded to those in Christ, and so to stand with them as audience. Hence one experiences tacitly the benefits of the once-for-all approach. To know Christ is to have the key to the purpose of history (Eph. 1:10). Hence one experiences tacitly the benefits of the transmission approach. To know Christ is to hear him speak (John 10:3-5, 27). Hence one experiences the benefits of the present-time approach. To know Christ is to be filled with the Spirit who writes the law on our hearts (2 Cor. 3:3). The Spirit is in fact the ultimate Method whose ways are past finding out. When we fellowship with Christ, we have the mind of Christ, and hence we exercise true rationality. We have the wisdom of Christ, and so exercise true skill concerning our situation. We have the love of Christ, and so exercise true subjectivity in the Spirit. We know the Author, we know his Word, and we know the power of the resurrection transforming us through the Spirit of Christ.

But we need to grow in that knowledge (Phil. 3:10-14).