Helping Your Hermeneutic: Context Determines Meaning (5 Min Read)

Introducing: Helping Your Hermeneutic

Hermeneutics is “the study of the activity of interpretation . . . or the analysis of what we do when we seek to understand the Bible, including its appropriation to the contemporary world.”[1] “Helping Your Hermeneutic” aims to edify your interpretive methodology and skillset by providing tips and tools from various pastors, authors, professors, reformers, and the experience of the present author. We begin this endeavor with a singular goal: to know God better so that we may worship him more fully.

Context Determines Meaning 

I’ve had the humbling experience of taking two Hermeneutics courses and the privilege of reading numerous works on the topic. One of the most foundational tenets of biblical interpretation is the phrase: “Context Determines Meaning.” In the book The Ice Diaries, a former Commanding Officer of the nuclear submarine USS Nautilus, William Anderson discusses a time when he and his crew lost their ability to navigate while transiting under frigid water near the North Pole. The ship’s navigation equipment could not handle the challenges of the magnetic fields while sailing so far North. The brave crew’s concern on this demanding day is like the concern of those of us who set out on the journey of biblical interpretation; for, our chief desire, like the crew of USS Nautilus, is to end our journey at the right destination.

Without the capabilities of gyro-navigation at their disposal due to a loss of power, the crew kept in mind their ability to use the illustrious skill of celestial circumnavigation to set a course for home. Unfortunately, the submarine could not surface to sky gaze because of the massive ice caps above them. Captain Anderson’s primary concern in this moment of peril is to ensure he starts the crew’s transit back home following the right heading, for a fraction of an error could cause the crew to end up hundreds of miles from their goal of mooring safely at their homeport.[2] Like functioning navigational instruments, the phrase “Context Determines Meaning” helps biblical interpreters (like you) keep their bearing so that they end their interpretive journey at the desired destination: interpreting the text according to God’s, and the original author’s, intended meaning.

Like the submarine in the ice caps, one small mistake at the beginning of the voyage can cause you to wind up in enemy territory, far from reaching your hermeneutical goal. Taking verses out of context can set you on a course heading straight for heresy. In closing, here is a short excerpt displaying the consequences of quoting verses out of context from an Exegetical Study on 2 Peter 3:8-9 (to access the entire Exegetical Study on 2 Peter 3:8-9, Go here).

How 2 Peter 3:9 is Often Misused

“But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:8-9, emphasis added).

The misuse of the word “all” in this verse comes from its detachment from the word “you.” If somebody partially quotes this verse saying, “[God] desires all should reach repentance,” one should immediately ask, “All of who?” Quoting 2 Peter 3:9 in this manner should not be done because it detaches the adjective “all” from the word it is meant to modify, namely the beloved, and this is not what Peter does, nor what he intends for his readers to do. When the beloved is removed from 2 Peter 3:9, the tendency is to insert the entire world in their place and this mistake develops the false teaching of universalism (a false claim that in the end all will be saved and made right with God). Pastor John MacArthur summarizes this point well, saying: 

The any must refer to those whom the Lord has chosen and will call to complete the redeemed . . . Since the whole passage is about God’s destroying the wicked, His patience is not so He can save all of them, but so He can receive all of His own. He can’t be waiting for everyone to be saved, since the emphasis is that He will destroy the world and the ungodly. Those who do perish and go to hell, go because they are depraved and worthy only of hell and have rejected the only remedy, Jesus Christ, not because they were created for hell or predetermined to go there. The path to damnation is the path of a non-repentant heart; it is the path of one who rejects the person and provision of Jesus Christ and holds on to sin (cf. Is. 55:1; Jer. 13:17; Ezek. 18:32; Matt. 11:28; 23:37; Luke 13:3; John 3:16; 8:21,24: 1 Tim. 2:3,4; Rev. 22:17).[3]

Next time, we will develop the idea of reading in context by discussing “The Concentric Circles of Context.”

Notes:

[1] Jeannine K. Brown, Scripture as Communication: Introducing Biblical Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academy, 2007), 20.

[2] William R. Anderson and Don Keith, The Ice Diaries: The Untold Story of the USS Nautilus and the Cold War’s Most Daring Mission (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2008), 129-131.

[3] John MacArthur, The MacArthur Bible Commentary (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2005), 1941.