Herman Hermeneut: Do we need to consider the audience to which God addressed the books of the Bible?
Peter Pietist: I don’t see why. God speaks to us today through the Bible. That’s all we need.
Dottie Doctrinalist: We need to concentrate on what God says, not on the ancient audience or on ourselves as a modern audience. The audience is sinful and prone to error. Only God is trustworthy.
Curt Transformationist: But we need to reckon with how God wants the audiences to respond, to change themselves, and above all to change the world.
Missy Missiologist: In order properly to apply the Bible, we must take into account cultural setting. God gave particular commands to the first-century church, within the Roman Empire. But in another culture obedience may take another form.
Now we need to enlarge the picture to look at communication among people.
When people communicate through language, they usually communicate to someone. Hence we can distinguish the speaker, the speech, and the audience. Or for written communication, we can distinguish author, text, and readers.1 Which of these is the key to the communication as a whole? Secular circles studying literature hotly dispute the answer. Different schools advocate different approaches, with radically differing results. Some people say that readers must create meaning afresh each time they read. Others make the author’s intention the standard; others look only at the text, in isolation from the author.2
Human speech images divine speech. So there is a divine archetype for the human triad of speaker, speech, and audience. In John 1:1 God the Father is the original speaker. God the Word, the Second Person, is the speech. By analogy with Psalm 33:6, the Holy Spirit is like the breath carrying the speech to its destination. But what is the destination? When God speaks to human beings, those humans are clearly the destination, the audience. In the New Testament God promises to send the Holy Spirit to dwell in believers, in order that they may properly receive the speech (1 Cor. 2:9-16).3 In some important respects, the Spirit stands with believers in the process of hearing God’s word.
Most often the Bible speaks of the Spirit as the speaker or an instrument or one who empowers the speaker of God’s word (for example, Acts 1:16; Isa. 61:1). But can we also conceive of the Spirit as the hearer or audience for God’s word? 1 Corinthians 2:10 says that “the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God,” thus describing the Spirit as a recipient of knowledge. John 16:13 is even more explicit, in indicating that the Spirit “will speak only what he hears.” The Spirit hears in order to speak. What does he hear? He hears the truth from God, the truth that is described as “what is mine [Christ’s].” These biblical texts speak about the impartation of redemptive truth. They describe God acting in history for our benefit. But, as always, God’s action in history is in accord with who he is. Thus, by analogy, we infer that there is an eternal hearing by which the Spirit hears the Word spoken from the eternity by the Father. In this intratrinitarian communication, the Father is the speaker, the Son is the speech, and the Spirit is the hearer or audience. This Trinitarian archetype is then the basis and the original to which human communication is analogically related and which it images.
We may reexpress the truth in another way by speaking of three aspects of communication, namely, expressive, informational, and productive. The informational aspect concerns the fact that communication makes or implies assertions. It has informational content. The expressive aspect concerns the fact that through communication the speakers express something of themselves, their views, their feelings. The productive aspects concerns the fact that communication is designed to produce an effect on hearers. It may persuade, or amuse, or shock, or move people to action. The expressive aspect ties in closely with the speaker; the informational aspect with the speech, and the productive aspect with the hearers, in whom an effect should be produced. God’s speech includes all three aspects. Divine speech is expressive: it reveals the Father. Divine speech is informational: it contains the wisdom hid in Christ (Col. 2:3). Divine speech is productive: through the power of the Spirit, who is the “breath” carrying it along, it arrives at its chosen destination and produces effects.
The Persons of the Trinity coinhere. Analogously, the aspects of communication coinhere. The informational aspect expresses what the speaker believes, and hence it is tacitly expressive of who the speaker is. The expressive aspect reveals who is the speaker is, and so implies information about the speaker. The productive aspect indicates what the speaker wants to effect, and hence is tacitly expressive of the speaker. The productive aspect is information about what is desired as an effect, and so is tacitly informational in character. And so on.
Because of coinherence, the speaker, the speech, and the hearer can each provide a perspective on the whole of communication. The speaker is a speaker only because he is speaking something, namely the speech. And he is a speaker only because he is speaking to someone, even if it be the special case of speaking to himself in soliloquy. Thus the very idea of a speaker makes no sense apart from a tacit acknowledgment of the presence of both speech and hearer. Similarly, each point of view presupposes the presence of the others.4
Hence, speaker, speech, and hearer are not even intelligible in isolation. Understanding one inevitably involves the tacit presence of all three in relation to one another. Moreover, this coinherent triad is itself intelligible only through the presence (inherence) of God, whose archetypal speech grounds our own.
Most modern theories of interpretation are predominantly speaker oriented, or discourse oriented (speech oriented), or audience oriented. Likewise, when communication takes written form, we find author-centered approaches, text-centered approaches, and reader-centered approaches. Most of the fights among these approaches are vain. All three types of approach are important. In a sense all are right, and in a sense all are wrong.
On the one hand, each approach has an element of truth. Speaker, speech, and audience are each involved in the process of communication. Moreover, each can be the starting point for a perspective on the whole. It can in a sense account for everything. Coinherence guarantees that in a sense nothing of significance escapes if we could only pursue our starting point far enough and expand its vistas wide enough.
On the other hand, each approach distorts the truth. When our relation to God is distorted, we introduce counterfeiting in our theories of interpretation. The human author becomes god-like master of meaning and communication, or else the text is god, or the readers are gods, each as a kind of substitute for the true God.
But let us consider in more detail how an author-centered, discourse-centered, or reader-centered approach could really be valid.
First, consider an author-centered approach. God is the primary author of the Bible. He not only knows what he intends, but is the very standard for our interpretation. Human authors may imperfectly manage the media of communication, but God perfectly controls the media. He is able to express and accomplish what he wishes (cf. Isa. 46:10). An author-centered approach means simply a God-centered approach, and such an approach is surely valid.
But we still encounter dangers of misunderstanding. In our sin we may presume to know God so well that we are overly confident of our own guesses. We may cease to pay attention to the details of the texts, the readers, or the human authors. Some of the wilder instances of allegorical interpretation, such as Mary Baker Eddy’s “Key to the Scriptures,” involve such presumption.5
Second, what about a discourse-centered approach? The text of the Bible, what is written, is divinely authoritative (2 Tim. 3:16, “all Scripture,” graphe). Inspiration extends to the text, not merely to thoughts behind the text in the author’s mind. Hence, focusing on the text in principle leads to receiving what God says. But again there are dangers of abuse. We may treat the text in isolation, as if the author or the circumstances did not matter. Then, in the absence of a definite context, almost any set of words is capable of sponsoring an indefinite number of meanings.
Third, consider a reader-centered approach. Can we say the effects on readers are a sufficient focus for interpretation? Such an approach may seem problematic. After all, readers may misinterpret, as many examples in the Bible show (for example Matt. 22:29; 15:1-9; 2 Peter 3:16; 1 Tim. 1:3-7; 2 Tim. 2:23-26; 4:3-5). If readers are our final reference point, everyone does what is right in his own eyes. How then can a reader-centered approach ever harmonize with the Bible’s claim to authority?
We may see the harmony in more than one way. First, the Spirit is involved in the productive aspect of communication, that is, in the production of effects. The Spirit interprets God’s word infallibly. Hence the Spirit as divine reader provides the standard of authority. Because the Spirit interprets infallibly, whatever effects the Spirit produces in readers are in accord with the divine purpose. Not all readers interpret accurately. But the Spirit as a reader interprets accurately. His interpretation is the norm according to which all other readerly interpretations are judged.
We may also approach the issue from the standpoint of Christ the divine warrior, the one who wars against sin and evil.
When evil enters the world, God is zealous to fight against evil. The Lord is a warrior on behalf of righteousness, that is, on behalf of himself (Ex. 15:3). The climactic picture of divine war occurs in Revelation. Christ appears as the divine warrior in Revelation 19:11: “with justice he judges and makes war.” Motifs of war pervade the rest of the Book as well. Christ executes warrior judgments by his word, which is symbolized by the “sharp sword” out of his mouth (Rev. 19:15; 1:16; cf. Isa. 11:4; Eph. 6:17).
Hence, the word of God may have judgmental as well as saving effects (2 Cor. 2:15-17). God pronounces judgment and punishment as well as blessing through the words of the prophets. The judgment may take the form of blindness and lack of understanding:
Go and tell this people:
“Be ever hearing, but never understanding;
be ever seeing, but never perceiving.”
Make the heart of this people calloused;
make their ears dull and close their eyes. (Isa. 6:9-10)
Jesus’ teaching in parables has a similar effect. Outsiders do not understand (Mark 4:1-20). By God’s design some are hardened and do not understand; others profit.
In all these situations God accomplishes his purposes: “so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (Isa. 55:11). God’s plan is comprehensive (Lam. 3:37-38; Ps. 103:19; Eph. 1:11). His accomplishment of his plan is also comprehensive (Dan. 4:34-35; Isa. 46:9-10). The effects of God’s word are in exact accord with his plan.
Hence, the supposed problems with readers are in fact a display of the character of God’s communication. The diversity and even contradiction between different readers fulfills and illustrates the character of the communication. This very diversity, in all its dimensions, shows who God is, what he is saying, and what power there is in his speech—he has power to save and to destroy, the power to enlighten and to blind (Ex. 4:11; Isa. 6:10; Rom. 11:8-9; John 9:39-41).
The divine war again sin is ultimately Trinitarian. We have already illustrated this fact. The effects on readers are Spirit-worked effects. The divine warrior is Christ. The warrior executes the comprehensive plan of God the Father.
1 There are subtle differences between the communication using an oral medium and communication with a written medium. But for the moment we shall focus on some common features.
2 For a critical survey of the implications for biblical interpretation, see Anthony C. Thiselton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics: The Theory and Practice of Transforming Biblical Reading (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992).
3 Much of the language in 1 Corinthians 2:9-16 may apply preeminently to Paul and to other inspired bearers of revelation. But the continuation in 1 Corinthians 3:1-3 shows that Paul expects the Corinthians to draw some inferences about their own ability or lack of ability to understand. Their understanding depends on whether they are “spiritual,” that is, whether they enjoy in themselves a teaching operation of the Spirit similar to that described in 2:9-16.
4 We understand a speech only if we infer a speaker (otherwise, if there is no personal origin, we have just a random series of sounds or marks). And a speech is nothing but sound waves or marks without someone to hear and understand it. Even if there is no human hearer, God hears it. Finally, the hearer is a hearer only in the act of hearing something. The something may be a mere noise, the rustling of leaves. But the hearer is a hearer of human communication only if the noise is intelligible noise, noise with a personal source.
5 Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (Boston: Trustees under the Will of Mary Baker G. Eddy, c1934) 501-599.