Credo
18 November 2024

At the lowest ebb of writer and theologian Christopher Yuan’s life, when he had just received the shocking news of being tested positive for HIV while serving his jail sentence, Christopher came across a note that someone had scribbled on the ceiling of his bunk bed. The note read: “If you’re feeling bored, read Jeremiah 29:11.” That one bible verse—“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jer 29:11, ESV)—came to play a tremendous role in Christopher’s life: he stopped pursuing same-sex relationships, completed his jail sentence, and embarked on theological studies all the way to a doctorate of ministry. Christopher, looking back, recalls the impact of that verse: “God was using the words penned by a prophet thousands of years ago to a rebellious nation to tell me that, regardless of who I was and what I had done in my past, He still had a plan for me.”^[1]

No doubt one would (and should) praise and thank God for the work that he performed in Christopher’s life, but those acquainted with the bare rudiments of biblical interpretation would have questioned at some point if Christopher might have misread and hence misapplied the verse in his own life. Afterall, as our bible teachers reiterate time and again, if the search for meaning begins with “context, context, context” (just like how real estate agents remind us that the search for our ideal homes begins with “location, location, location”), the context of Jeremiah 29:11 would have been that of the LORD speaking to the nation Israel, who was in exile at that point in time, promising them hope, peace, and goodness. Since the original context is clear, would it be right to conclude that the meaning of this text is about the LORD’s personal comfort and restoration that he will bring to one’s life, however true as that might be? Is this, at best, a case of drawing the right meaning from the wrong text? Unpacking this notion requires us to explore and coordinate our answers to two key prior questions.

The first question is: what is the biblical text, or the Bible, in the first place? To this question, the following statement of truth can be affirmed wholeheartedly: “The Bible is God’s word to us in and through the human words written in Scripture” (cf. 2 Tim 3:16). This aphorism immediately hits at an idea of dual-authorial discourse; simply spoken: there is a divine author and a human author for every biblical text, with both authors carrying out a discourse via the words written in Scripture. Discourse, in turn, can be defined according to the modified definition provided by philosopher Paul Ricoeur as “what somebody wants to say to someone about something in some way.” In other words, discourse is communication; every discourse is a communicative event. Going with our definition of what the Bible is, we can safely say that every biblical text contains an element of double-authorial discourse or communication happening there.

The second key question would be what is meant by the “meaning” of a text, and how does one determine what that meaning might be? Here, the history of textual hermeneutics (theories governing the interpretation and understanding of texts) reveals a trajectory that moves from locating meaning in the author “behind” the text, to the way words and sentences are laid out “within” the text, to the reader “in front” of the text. In all three instances, the author, the text itself, and the reader exclusively determines the meaning of any particular text. It is obvious at this point that those who read Scripture and draw a personal meaning for themselves—“I don’t care what others say, but this is what Scripture means for me!”—are actually operating from the third instance, where texts are vacuous of meaning and it is actually the reader who supplies the meaning. Little wonder that we cry out: “Is there a meaning in the text?”^[2]

Here is where the philosophy of language in the form of speech-act theory comes in to rescue “meaning” from sinking further in the hermeneutical mire. Basically, speech-acts sees language and words as not just saying something (technically called the “locution”), but more important doing something in being said (technically called the “illocution”). So, using the example of Jer 29:11, the locution would be the words spoken (and subsequently written), but the illocution would be the act of explaining what was happening to the Israelites back then, and assuring them of the LORD’s goodness despite their present circumstances. Speech-act theory might seem uneventful to our daily usage of words and language or our reading of texts, but hermeneutically, it “rescues” the author by reinstating his or her crucial place in determining the meaning of a text. For, on account of speech-act theory, the meaning of the text is what the author intended to do with what was said. What the author intended to do with his or her words—spoken or written—forms the communicative intent of the utterance, and the communicative intent is the meaning of the text.

Coordinating the two points covered above, first, that in Scripture we have the divine author and the human author engaging in discourse with us the reader via the written text, and second, that the meaning of the text is what the author was doing with the words written, we note further the following two considerations in seeing whether there could be a case for reading the right meaning from the wrong texts.

First, we note that because God chose to “sanctify” and use the human words written in Scripture such that these words form the very content of divine discourse itself, what God was intending to do with these words must correlate with what the human author was intending to do with the very same words that have been written. Stated more technically, the divine illocutionary act arising from the written discourse should coincide or at the least cohere with the human illocutionary act arising from the same piece of written discourse (the locutionary act). This immediately rules out any appropriation of personal meaning from a biblical text (or verse) that clearly posits God doing something different from what the human author wanted to do with what he had written! For example, no one can read Phil 4:13 “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (ESV) and claim as the meaning of the verse that God is authorizing or empowering the performance of something impossible on one’s part, because that is certainly not what the Apostle Paul wanted to do with the verse when he wrote it! (It is more likely the case that the Apostle wanted to reassure and explain to his readers how it is that he has come to be content in every situation he found himself in, be it in need or in plenty (v.11-12)) The misappropriation of meaning here, often done under the slogan that “this is what God is saying to me!”, would be an opposite case of drawing the wrong meaning from the right text! In other words, the unique feature of the Bible as double-authorial discourse lends itself to a position where the human illocutionary act—what the human author is doing by saying something in the written text—plays a vitally important role in governing the meaning of that text.

Second, because the Bible is God’s Word to us, what God wants to say to us is not just limited to the written text of that one verse or passage, but it spans across the entire canon of Scripture. If so, then what God is doing with what he is saying is similarly not just limited to the written text of that one verse or passage, but there arises from the totality of Scripture (tota Scriptura) a divine illocutionary act at the level of the canon. In other words, there is that higher and overarching something that God is doing through him saying all that he has said across the whole Bible, by which the “God-doings” that arise from the smaller and individual “God-sayings” ultimately point toward. That ultimate thing that God is doing is testifying to Christ and the gospel of salvation found in him so as to bring within us the effect of faith and trust in him.

Returning to our opening example, the immediate point could serve to validate Christopher’s reading of Jer 29:11. Despite drawing a meaning that might arguably seem further afield from what the human author was doing in writing Jer 29:11, that meaning nevertheless coheres with the ultimate thing that God is doing in all that he has been saying in the whole of his Word. It is based on this same point—although worded differently—that granted Saint Augustine a generous and charitable spirit when it comes to different interpretations of Scripture:

So anyone who thinks that he has understood the divine scriptures or any part of them, but cannot by his understanding build up this double love of God and neighbour, has not yet succeeded in understanding them…. Anyone with an interpretation of the scriptures that differs from that of the writer is misled, but not because the scriptures are lying. If … he is misled by an idea of the kind that builds up love, which is the end of the commandment, he is misled in the same way as a walker who leaves his path by mistake but reaches the destination to which the path leads by going through a field. But he must be put right and shown how it is more useful not to leave the path, in case the habit of deviating should force him to go astray or even adrift (Saint Augustine, On Christian Teaching, Book One, Chapters 39-41).

So, to conclude, can there be a case of drawing the right meaning from the wrong text? While there can certainly be a case of drawing the wrong meaning from the right text, it might perhaps be more helpful to see the former as an instance of drawing the right meaning from the right text—tota Scriptura.

^[1] “Drugs, sex and prison: How a HIV diagnosis led a prodigal son home,” thir.st, accessed Aug 28, 2023, https://thirst.sg/drugs-sex-and-prison-how-a-hiv-diagnosis-led-a-prodigal-son-home/

^[2] This actually forms the title of an extremely helpful book that addresses these hermeneutical issues from a distinctly evangelical standpoint. See Kevin Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?: The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge, 10th Anniversary Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2009).

This article first appeared in the publication Impact, vol. 47, no. 6 (Dec–Jan 2024). The author would like to thank Impact for allowing him to reproduce the article here.

Rev Dr Edmund Fong is a lecturer in Theology, Hermeneutics and Presbyterianism at Trinity Theological College, and an ordained minister with the Presbyterian Church in Singapore.