Helping Your Hermeneutic: Authorial Intention (3 Min Read)

Authorial Intention

The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the author thereof; therefore it is to be received because it is the Word of God.
( 2 Peter 1:19-21; 2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; 1 John 5:9 )

-Second London Baptist Confession 1.4, Of The Holy Scriptures

Discerning authorial intention is not synonymous with a “get-inside-the-author’s-mind” concept, because biblically, we know that no one “knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person” (1 Corinthians 2:11).  Rather, authorial intention seeks to understand the intended meaning of the original writer when he wrote a given text. Simply put, authorial intent is "what an author actually does communicate by intention in a text."[1]

My mind comprehends the concept of authorial intention and its importance by thinking through how I would want a reader to interpret my writing. Suppose I wrote someone a personal letter. My desire is for the recipient of my letter to interpret my words the way I meant for them to be understood when I wrote them. I would not want the recipient of my letter to take my words and force them to "mean" something other than what I intend them to mean. I especially do not want my reader taking my words out of context and misapplying them in ways that I never even thought about when I first touched my ink to the paper.

Can you relate to this sentiment? When you text, email, or write someone, are you zealous that your reader understands your words according to the meaning you wish to communicate? Often, when the readers of our texts, emails, and letters do not interpret our communicative intention, their responses to our writings—whether word or deed, intentional or unintentional—are out of place and misguided. This occurrence stems from a poor interpretation of our "authorial intention." Let's apply this to the authorial intention of biblical authors.

Now, instead of the writer, you are the reader. The Apostle Paul wrote a letter to the Church at Ephesus. When you read Paul’s letter, do you think he desired the Ephesians to take his words and force them to mean something other than what he intended? Do you think his desire is for his audience to take his words out of context and misapply them in ways that he never thought about when he first touched his ink to his scroll? Of course not.

Now, let’s up the ante. John Calvin rightly called the Holy Spirit "The author of the Scriptures."[2] Passages like 2 Timothy 3:16-17 and 2 Peter 1:21 confirm this truth. We must read the Author of the Bible according to His communicative intention. The concept of authorial intent causes sayings like, "For me, this verse means . . .” to vanish. Instead, grasping authorial intent causes the reader to ask, “What does God, through his human author, desire for the intended audience to understand when they receive the original text?" Uncovering items such as historical setting, literary context, and grammatical usage through good commentaries, Study Bible notes, and even a Bible Atlas help the reader better understand the meaning, or authorial intention, of the Divine Author.

Next time together, we will examine the concept of "intended audience."

Notes:

[1] Jeannine K. Brown, Scripture as Communication: Introducing Biblical Hermeneutics, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academy, 2007), 22.

[2] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008), 44.