"RIGHTLY DIVIDING THE WORD OF TRUTH"

"Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth."

II Timothy 2: 15

Hail Restoration
ome time ago, while working for a hail restoration company on north side of Indianapolis, I received a lead from a young family who had just moved from out of state. Around this same time, a severe hailstorm ripped through Noblesville, where they had just purchased their new home. Much to their dismay, they discovered that their new home now had some interior water leaks.

I had only just started working in the hail restoration business, and I wanted to do everything right. I arrived early for my appointment, met the home owner, and climbed up onto the roof. Immediately, I saw the damage. A layer of shingle granulation had settled in the gutters. Obvious discoloration ran in streaks down the roof, marring the beauty of the home. And the impact marks that peppered the aluminum ridge vent left no doubt that the homeowners had a right to compensation from their insurance company.

The day of the adjuster meeting came at last. Once again, I arrived early. By the time the claims adjuster arrived, I had my ladder set up and ready for him to join me on the roof.

Somehow the meeting did not go quite as I had expected. The adjuster began shooting down the damage left and right. He ascribed the granulation loss to foot traffic during an earlier repair job and the discoloration to mold. Except for the undeniably hail-impacted aluminum ridge vent, he didn't seem willing to admit any storm damage at all.

The story has a happy ending. In the end, the adjuster did approve the claim. The homeowners got a new roof. And I got a paycheck.

I learned something from that experience. I had witnessed a vivid illustration of how dramatically people can vary in their interpretations of fact. Even though both the claims adjuster and I had the exact same evidence to look at, we had interpreted it very differently. What I defined as hail damage, he ascribed to less dramatic causes. With the same facts in front of our faces, we had come to two totally different conclusions. As Patrick Henry said in his address to the Virginia Convention, "different men often see the same subject in different lights."

Perhaps no realm of human experience has suffered more from this than that of interpreting the Word of God. The theological world presents us with the sometimes perplexing problem of proper biblical interpretation. Men have interpreted God's Word in so many various ways over the centuries that perhaps the greater portion of mankind stands confused and uncertain as to who they should believe about it. That's why the Holy Spirit inspired the Apostle Paul to write in II Timothy 2: 15 the solemn commandment to

"Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth no to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth."

I. Historic Retrospective
In any examination of hermeneutics, a basic knowledge of history sheds light upon the true value of this important subject. Although a variety of schools of interpretation have emerged in more recent centuries, including the devotional school, neo-orthodoxy, bultmannianism and the new hermeneutic, theologians still divide the subject primarily between literalism and allegorism. While other perspectives developed later, these two philosophies have divided Christianity since its infancy. Even within the first century, the Apostle Peter believed it necessary to warn about this subject, writing, under inspiration of the Holy Ghost in II Peter 1: 20-21 this sobering admonition:

"Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."

With the rise of Catholicism came a warped approach to interpretation. Augustine, Catholicism's most foundational theologian, taught that Christians should interpret Scripture allegorically rather than simply accepting the basic literal statements of Scripture at face value. Although he did not deny the validity of the literal interpretation of Scripture, he degraded it as inferior. Augustine's theology exalted allegorism

as the theologian's highest priority, the real meat of Scripture, reducing literalism to the level of a mere husk. Other major Catholic scholars, such as Jerome and Clement also advanced this view, leading Catholicism to embrace allegorism as the primary method of interpretation all throughout the Dark Ages. With this method of interpretation given the primacy, the Catholic papal system could manipulate the text of Scripture to make it say anything that they wanted. The authority of Scripture became subject to the authority of the papacy and its' interpretation, which Rome could then use as a tool to further his own particular agendas. The allegorical school of interpretation, originally headquartered in Alexandria, Egypt, received the distinctive designation as the "Alexandrian School," and became the dominant hermeneutical method of the Dark Ages, through which the "Holy Roman Church" would shackle and enslave all of Western Europe.

Many Christians, including theologians such as Lucian, Dorotheus, Diodorus, Chrysostem, and - their most capable and effective spokesman - Theodore of Mopsuestia, rejected allegorism as an accurate way of interpreting Scripture. They taught that Christians must interpret Scripture literally. These Christans had their headquarters in the great missionary church of the book of Acts, the church of Antioch, from whence Paul, Barnabas, Silas and John Mark received commission for their evangelistic endeavors. Centuries later, scholars continue to identify the literal school of theology with the church at Antioch, designating literalism as the "Antiochene" school of interpretation. In the end, however, Catholicism crushed the Antiochenes, branding them as heretics infected with the doctrine of Nestorious, and those who accepted the simple literal interpretation of Scripture scattered and fled into hiding, worshiping secretly throughout Europe for fear of persecution. We know these clandestine literalists as the Waldensians, the Albigensians, the Anabaptists, the Dutch Baptists and the Welsh Baptists.

II. Heretical Results

With literalism crushed and oppressed, Catholicism flourished, unopposed, except for these small pocket groups of Baptistic believers, who carried on the literal approach to Scripture. Consequently, allegorism dominated the European continent, allowing Rome to control entire kingdoms through her distorted and manipulative interpretations of God's Word. Bizarre and twisted doctrines emerged, teaching that the sacrament of the mass involved consumption of the physical body and blood of Christ, mystically transformed through transubstantiation, and establishing the "Holy Roman Church" as the only way of salvation and the final authority in Scriptural interpretation. Individual soul liberty gave way to the bondage and oppression of a thoroughly corrupt and depraved ecclesiastical system which crushed anyone who dared raise a voice of protest.

III. Horrible Ruin

Since Catholicism taught that salvation came through partaking of the sacraments, and that only "the Holy Roman Church" had authority to administer these sacraments, they reasoned that those who refused to baptize babies or who converted Catholics to Christ, teaching that only Jesus could save from

sin, actually served to damn the souls of those that they turned away from Catholicism. In zealous rage and bitter hatred, they initiated barbaric and monstrous campaigns and crusades to wipe out the Baptistic literalists. Entire towns and villages throughout France and Italy fell victim to bloodthirsty massacres as the "Holy Roman Church" unleashed its unbridled fury against the "heretics." Individuals suffered the most atrocious cruelties and tortures, as bigoted Crusaders and Inquisitors raped, murdered and pillaged, sparing neither man or woman, young or old.

IV. Hermeneutical Reformation

In 1516 AD, Disiderius Erasmus published the first Greek New Testament. By 1517 AD, a converted young Augustinian monk named Martin Luther - saved as a result of reading that New Testament would have nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg, setting in motion the Protestant Reformation. And while the Protestant Reformation fell far short of thoroughly purging the pagan influences within Christianity and adopting the purist approach of the Baptist peoples, honest historians must acknowledge that it did result in several important positive changes, including:

Widespread awareness of and acceptance of salvation by grace through faith in the shed blood, death, and bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, rather than through some mystical sacramental grace recieved at communion administered by the "Holy Roman Church" Translation of God's Word into the everyday languages of the common people of Germany, Spain and England, including our own beloved King James Bible, translated by the Church of England in 1611 Widespread rejection of allegorism in all areas of biblical interpretation except prophecy, and the widespread renewal of a literal approach to hermaneutics.

V. Heavenly Revivals
These widespread major victories for truth paved the way for the Great Awakenings and the revivals which would sweep both England and the North American continent in centuries to come. And while we often focus exclusively either on the renewed awareness of salvation by grace through faith in the shed blood, substitutionary sacrifice and death and bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, or upon the translation of the Scriptures into the common languages of the people, we must not forget that as long as allegorism held sway as the primary method of interpretation, God's truth remained clouded, confused and twisted to the minds of men and women. But when people could hear the gospel message of God's Word in their own languages in literal simplicity as God intended mankind to understand it, hindrances no longer impeded the work of the Spirit and great revivals broke out, resulting in the great missionary movement of the the nineteenth century, which carried God's Word to the ends of the world as never before since the first century of Christianity.

Praise the Lord for the faithful servants of Christ that refused to sacrifice literalist simplicity to the oppresive Catholic Church, even in the face of severe persecution! Praise the Lord for the widespread return to the literal interpretation of Scripture that exploded as a result of the Reformation! May God help us to faithfully carry on the torch of literalist simplicity for the generations to come, "rightly dividing the word of truth!"