# LCMS Convention Workbook_St. Louis Missouri_1973_S459
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES TO BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION

It is the Spirit's author-
ship of the Scriptures that
makes a meaningful applica-
tion of this principle pos-
sible. If the Bible were
merely a human book written
from a variety of human per-
spectives and reflecting only
human attempts to talk about
God and history, then

the unity necessary in
order to use one part

of Scripture to inter-

pret another would be
totally missing.

Since the Spirit of
Truth is the Author
of Scripture, the
witness of Scripture
to the history in
which God acted sav-
ingly is true. This
is not to say that the
Scriptures are mere
chronicles, or that
they were written in
the first instance to
be a history of Israel
and a biography of
Jesus. The Bible re-
ports history to show
what God was doing
through Israel and
Jesus to accomplish
His saving purposes.
The history reported
in the Bible is se-
lective. In the
Bible God has given
us a theology of
history.

But the history which
the Bible does report
is wholly reliable. If
the history is negated,
then what God was doing
in the history is negated
too, and the Bible is
turned into a book of
mythology about the do-
ings of the deity which
have nothing to do with
human affairs.

It is a principle for
Lutheran biblical inter-
pretation that the Bible
is not mythology, but a
revelation from God Him-
self about what He ac-
tually did in the arena
of human history in or-
der to carry out His
eternal counsels of sal-
vation.

to narrate history. Such

an assumption creates prob-
lems for the interpreter
when he discovers that par-
allel accounts contain "dif-
ferences'' which he is unable
to harmonize. While prob-
lems of this nature pose
difficulties for the inter-
preter on the historical
level, on the theological
level he remembers that it
is always the real intent

of Scripture in some places
to present Law and in other
places to present Gospel.

. According to the mediating

position, even if it were
the text's intention to
relate history, the inter-
preter must not expect the
biblical authors to operate
with the same criteria of
what is history or accuracy
as we do, for the reliabil-
ity or inerrancy of the
Scriptures cannot be deter-
mined by twentieth century
standards of factuality.

Because the purpose of the
Scriptures is to lead us
into the whole truth about
what God was doing in Jesus
Christ, proponents of the
mediating position claim
that any approach to the
Scriptures which focuses

on the need for historical
factuality rather than on
the primary need for Christ
leads us away from Christ
rather than to Him, They
assert that concern for his-
torical accuracy is an at-
tempt to lead people to ac-
cept the promise on the
basis of historical verifi-
cation rather than by faith
alone, and is therefore a
subtle attempt to substitute
sight for faith.