HERMENEUTICS #11 -- What NOT to do:
#1 = NEVER make your point at the price of the proper interpretation.
#2 = NEVER try to get by on superficial study.
Third --- Avoid the tendency to "spiritualize" or "allegorize" a passage. Never do this -- UNLESS the text itself calls for it.
This is the flip-side of the first principle of sound hermeneutics -- interpret LITERALLY. Many people use the Scripture as we would a book of fables -- not really focussing on the real facts and plain statements, but using it as a "morality tale" or an "allegory" to teach whatever points they have already determined to put across. Instead of seeking the meaning of the biblical material, they make it an allegory or a parable to support their pre-determined position -- whether it actually has anything tosay about that or not.
There is, of course, a place for allegories, parables, and illustrations -- but the careful student of the Bible does not FORCE the text into that pattern; rather, he lets the text determine how it is to be taken -- literally or figuratively. And he does not create allegories by twisting the literal meaning to make it fit. Finally -- he does not force an alternative meaning on a text to the detriment of the real meaning .
Let me give you an example of a passage that clearly dictates an illustrative approach. In GALATIANS, Paul argues forcefully and repeatedly that the Christian is not subject to the law of Moses, and that those who are trying to get these Galatian Christians to submit to that law are "spying on their freedom," "bewitching" them, causing them to "fall from grace," "hindering" their obedience to the truth, and causing them to be in "slavery" after having been given their liberty by Christ. In chapter four, Paul uses an "allegory" or "illustration" from a well-known OT situation -- the attempt by Abraham and Sarah to help God out by producing a son by means of Hagar, Sarah's servant.
Beginning in GAL. 4:21: "Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? For it is written that Abraham had two sons -- the one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman . His son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way ; but his son by the free woman was born as the result of promise. These things may be taken figuratively , for the women represent two covenants.
"The one covenant is from Mount Sinai and it bears children who are to be slaves : This is Hagar. Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and she corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem , because she is in slavery with her children .
"But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother . For it is written: Be glad, O barren woman, who bears no children; break forth and cry aloud, you who have no labor pains; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband.
"Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise . At that time the son born in the ordinary way persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit . It is the same now .
"But what does the Scripture say? 'Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman's son.' Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slavewoman, but of the free woman."
Now -- that was a long example -- but it is a good example of the correct use of allegory and symbolism. Paul used a literal OT event to explain a NT truth. But that NT truth is a literal truth, explained in literal language. The symbols represent something real that God has revealed in many other passages, as well -- not some fancied idea formed in the mind of a preacher.
#1 = NEVER make your point at the price of the proper interpretation.
#2 = NEVER rely on superficial or shallow study.
#3 = NEVER allegorize or spiritualize unless the text itself calls for it.