Training · Grasping God's Word
Who controls the meaning?
Author, text, or reader: where meaning comes from, and the difference between meaning and application.
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Who or what might control the meaning of a text?
In the author, in the text itself, or in the reader.
Communication has three parts: someone says something, in words, to someone. Each approach to interpretation puts the control of meaning in one of the three, and the choice decides what counts as a right reading.
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What is reader-response interpretation?
The view that meaning is created by the reader, so a text can legitimately mean different things to different readers.
It is a widely held view in literary studies, and it gets something right: readers do respond differently. But if the reader controls meaning, the text can never correct the reader, and nobody can ever be wrong about what it says.
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Where does Grasping God's Word say the meaning of a text is located?
With the author. The meaning of a text is what the author intended to communicate through it, and the reader's job is to discover that meaning, not create it.
This is how all ordinary communication works: when someone misreads your email, you do not accept that it now means what they took it to mean. If the Bible is God communicating, the same courtesy is owed to him.
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What is the difference between meaning and application?
Meaning is what the author intended and does not change. Application is how that meaning bears on a particular reader's life, and it can differ from reader to reader.
This distinction explains how a passage can "speak to" people in very different situations without meaning something different for each of them. The meaning is fixed; its reach is wide.
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Can a biblical text apply to things its author never thought of?
Yes, when they fall within the pattern of what he meant. These are implications of his meaning, not new meanings.
Paul's "do not get drunk with wine" was written before distilled spirits existed, but nobody seriously thinks whisky is permitted. The command is about drunkenness, and whisky fits the pattern. An implication that breaks the pattern is not an implication at all.
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How does the divine author relate to the human author?
God speaks through the human author, not around him. What God means by a passage does not contradict what the human writer meant.
This protects against claiming a hidden divine meaning that overrides the plain sense of what the writer said. Whether God can mean more than the human author saw is the subject of the next chapter.
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In author-centred interpretation, what is left for the reader to do?
A great deal: to understand what the author meant, and then to respond to it — believe, obey, change, and apply it to their own life.
Locating meaning in the author does not make the reader passive. It gives the reader a job with a standard: the text can correct you, and your response is to what God actually said rather than to your own reflection in it.