Divine Hermeneutics: A friend recently responded to something I had written on hermeneutics by raising a question I think is worth considering. He wondered whether discussions of hermeneutics can sometimes place so much emphasis on the human side of interpretation that too little room is left for the divine side of it. Where is God in the process? Where is revelation? Where is the opening of the understanding? Those are fair questions, although I am not entirely sure I would frame the original discussion that way. God was never absent from the process. If anything, I believe His hand is behind all of it. Scripture itself is His revelation, Christ must be made known through it, and whatever true understanding we possess is ultimately dependent upon Him. But none of that removes the very real question of how fallible men understand, interpret, arrange, and explain the Scriptures God has given.
That distinction matters. Scripture speaks plainly of God opening the understanding, shining light into the heart, and making Christ known through His Word. Luke 24 and II Corinthians 4 are powerful examples of that. So, I have no difficulty saying that true spiritual understanding is dependent upon God. But divine illumination does not make the interpreter infallible. Two believers may both pray, both depend upon the Lord, both sincerely believe they have been given light, and yet reach different conclusions from the same passage. At that point, the question of interpretation remains. We still have to ask what the text says, how it fits with the rest of Scripture, and whether our confidence in having received light has quietly become confidence that our particular interpretation cannot be wrong.
And perhaps this is where the danger becomes especially subtle. The moment I say, “God showed me this,” my interpretation can begin to carry more weight than it should. What may actually be my reading of a passage can quietly take on the authority of divine revelation itself. That does not mean we should stop speaking of illumination, or deny that the Lord opens the understanding. It simply means we should be careful not to confuse God’s giving of light with our own certainty about every conclusion we draw from that light.
So this is not a choice between divine illumination and human interpretation. Both realities are present. God gives the Word. God gives the light. God opens the understanding. But we are still the ones reading, comparing, explaining, and drawing conclusions, and we remain capable of error in doing so. The answer, then, is not to remove God from hermeneutics, nor to remove the human interpreter from it, but to remember both realities at once. We depend upon the Lord for light, while still recognizing that our own hand may be on the switch. MPJ