Exegetical Hermeneutics 101: Interpreting the Ambiguous in Light of the Clear

 I don't know if you have ever taken one of those quizzes that presents a sentence with a single word missing with just a blank where it should be and you have to figure out what that word is by the context alone but the means you are using there to do so are exegetical hermeneutics. By "exegetical hermeneutics" I mean the method of interpretation applied to a text that allows the language used by an author or authors itself to determine the referents, and therefore, limitations or lack thereof, of meaning. 

We employ it constantly when we converse with one another. If I am talking about my pet dog one day and then eating a hot dog on another, and some really savvy academic chap wishes to use it all as his context to interpret my meaning, he'll end up thinking that I either have a pet hot dog or that I must be from an Asian culture.

If you've ever conversed with a JW, you'll know that they tend to use passages about Jesus saying that the Father is greater than He is, and that He has God as His God, and that He's a man, etc. to control those passages that refer to Jesus being divine so that He ends up very less divine than the Father. They do the same with passages that refer to our being saved by works and use them to limit what those passages that refer to our justification by faith can mean rather than vice versa. These are examples of an eisegetical hermeneutic being employed, one where the referents of ambiguous texts are brought into a clear text in order to make the clear texts ambiguous so that they can be reinterpreted and given an interpretation that is legitimized, not absolutely, but enough to leave the hearer without a solid refutation of the falsehood.

In exegetical hermeneutics, however, a particular passage would be interpreted in its own context, with its own referents, and not violated by another context or another context's referents in order to muddy the authorial intent of that particular passage of study. 

What this means is the meanings of individual passages must be determined to be clear or ambiguous all by themselves without any interference from outside contexts. The hasty use of outside contexts are an employment of eisegetical hermeneutics as the methodology disrupts the ability to judge whether a passage is clear or ambiguous in its meaning when isolated within the framework its individual author intended. 

So, for instance, if Paul talks about the resurrected body in 1 Corinthians 15, it violates the authorial intent to bring in a foreign context full of references assigned to the word "body" and read them into Paul's provided context in 1 Corinthians 15. In fact, it even violates Paul's authorial intent to bring in other Pauline contexts, even within the same letter, because it makes ambiguous what Paul has made clear within the closed context of that particular pericope. 

So even though Paul uses the word "body" in 1 Corinthians 12 to refer to the church and not a literal physical body, one cannot bring in that referent to 1 Corinthians 15 prematurely before assessing whether the referents Paul provides in 1 Corinthians 15 are also of the church or are rather of the physical body, etc. Once one determines that the referents are the same, that the meaning is clear or ambiguous, from the context provided alone, it is then, and only then, that other contexts should be compared.

A good example of this is the divorce and remarriage texts in the Gospels. If read alone, as Paul seems to only have Mark, the Gospels of Mark and Luke are clear and unambiguous. It is the Gospel of Matthew that now brings in an ambiguity with an exception of the word porneia that everyone can posit his or her best guess as to what it refers. What exegetical hermeneutics do not allow you to do, however, is to bring the ambiguity into Mark and Luke. Instead, because referents cannot cross over contexts prematurely, what must be done is for the student of the text to come to a conclusion solely about what Mark is saying and then as to what Luke is saying and then as to what Matthew is saying, then determine which text or texts are ambiguous and which are clear, and from there interpret the ambiguous text in light of the clear.

In other words, this means that the clear texts provide the boundaries and limitations for what the ambiguous text might mean rather than vice versa. The reverse is eisegetical, but with the assumption that God does not contradict Himself in the Scripture, and that it must be brought together as one work in this manner and not in some eisegetical methodology that functions as a blender with the outcome being an interpretive mess, the clear passage or passages must provide the framework in which the ambiguous must be interpreted.

This means that if the ambiguous text is the Matthean text, and all must admit that it is since one can interpret it either in harmony or disharmony with the texts in Mark and Luke, then one must not treat it as the controlling text that provides the limitations of the way the others can be interpreted. Instead, the clear texts that do not have the ambiguities within them unless made ambiguous by foreign contexts (either Matthew or other foreign texts not referenced by Mark or Luke in their Gospels) must provide the controlling framework and limit how Matthew is interpreted.

This means that Matthew's exception clause cannot be interpreted in a way so as to violate the clear meaning of Mark or Luke. This leaves one with only the possibility of interpreting Matthew in harmony with the absolute statements in Mark and Luke as well as dismisses any claim that Mark and Luke are not absolute statements (which is a claim only made when one is interpreting the clear in light of the ambiguous and thus ends up changing the meaning of Mark and Luke that exegesis would provide without the addition of that ambiguity). 

If one fails to employ this exegetical hermeneutic, and many have, we will end up with a justification by works, a Jesus who is a creature, a spiritual resurrection without a physical body, and a whole host of other heresies and bad ethics. 

As I've argued many times before, language has a logic to it. It does not violate this logic and neither should we lest we find ourselves confessing to eat our pet Doberman rather than a Ballpark hotdog.