Inductive Bible Study - Richard Alan Fuhr, Jr. and Andreas J. Kostenberger
Looking for a book
that will give you good guidelines for studying the Bible well? Inductive Bible
Study by Richard Alan Fuhr Jr. and Andreas J. Kostenberger is a good resource
on the topic. As the authors of this book explain, God chose to reveal His will
to us through His written Word, rather than through personal revelation/new
revelation. He chose that it would be
learned progressively with effort rather than instantly without any work on our
part. We should revere God's choice method of conveying the knowledge of Him
that He wants us to have and His will that is revealed through this collection
of holy documents. Fuhr and Kostenberger
take you through a series of steps that will assist you in reverently
discovering and handling what God's Word says with accuracy and reverence.
The steps you are
taken through range from: comparing English Bible translations, Asking the
right questions of the text, using commentaries, word studies, practicing
discernment and of course, one of the most important steps of all, recognizing
the importance of context and authorial intent.
It is pointed out that, "Those who
read the Bible with little awareness of surrounding context often do so because
they have been trained (by example) to think through Scripture in terms of
devotional nuggets, memorizing verses and reading for inspirational insight
rather than interpretive understanding."
Context is emphasized strongly, and related to that, I very much
appreciate the cautions about word studies (though they are still
encouraged), where it is made clear that
when studying individual words or phrases in a passage, it should be remembered
that the meaning of those words will ultimately be discerned through the
surrounding context of the phrase, not just their bare lexical meaning, "contextual meaning will always take precedence over
lexical meaning."
The authors write
very well, are easy to understand and the steps in each section are outlined in
charts, which helps with remembering and simplifying what one has learned. They give illustrations to demonstrate hermeneutical
errors, some of which I found sadly amusing. For example, Fuhr talks about a
missionary conference that he once attended where the theme verse was Joel
3:14, the verse was used as a reference to people ready to make a decision for
Christ, but when one looks at the surrounding context of the verse, the
'decision' referenced in the verse is referring to God's decision to bring
judgment on the nations, not salvation!
They recommend many
study resources (look for these in the footnotes as well), and also provide
demonstrations of the inductive method by using it on various texts of the
Scripture. Being 'doers of the Word' and
not merely 'hearers' of it is also stressed.
They make the interesting argument that, "While
the Holy Spirit is certainly capable of providing interpretive insight, we'd
suggest that illumination has more to do with appropriation than
interpretation." In other
words, the work of the Holy Spirit is more seen in the Christian's personal
application of the truths of Scripture to their life than by their coming to
the correct conclusion as to the meaning of any given section of Scripture
(though this is very important of course).
They do clarify that not all texts of the Scripture are necessarily
directed at 'doing', some texts give us more knowledge about the God whom we
serve by obedience to His will (by the enablement of the Spirit). But both are a part of what we glean from our
Bible study: knowledge of God and His will, and then living in light of the
revealed truth.
I want to mention
two more things, first, ironically I must admit that I disagreed with some of
their conclusions on the interpretation of some example texts (I will probably
take another look at them), but the authors themselves encourage the reader to not
be afraid to disagree with a Bible commentator if one thinks (by means of
correct hermeneutics of course) that a they are not interpreting a text
correctly. Also, the authors kept using
female pronouns when speaking of any given Bible studier, which terminology was
rather tough to get used to (despite being a female myself) and was rather
distracting. I think that using male
pronouns would be more in keeping with the Bible's teaching of male headship
and of woman being taken from man in the creation rather than vice-versa. it
simply seems more biblical to have any given person referred to with masculine
pronouns rather than having a male read feminine pronouns and apply them to
himself. I understand that our culture
is very concerned about gender inclusiveness, but this book is primarily
directed at Christians, most of whom would (or at least should) have already
come to grips with the primarily masculine pronouns of the Bible, especially
those that, though masculine, refer to both male and females. To me it's like
someone using the term "womankind" to refer to both males and
females, instead of 'mankind'. I am just
not comfortable with it.
But overall, I
really liked this resource, and would recommend it to pretty much Christian
looking for an aid to accurately studying the Word of God.
Many thanks to the folks at B&H publishers for
sending me a free review copy of this book (My review did not have to be
favorable).
My Rating: *****
Five out of Five Stars
Here are a couple of the websites where this book may be purchased: Amazon.com and christianbook.com
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