Other "Thinking Drafts" and writing by Keith Drury --
http://www.indwes.edu/tuesday .So What Does the Bible Really Mean?
Search the Internet on any topic: abortion, homosexuality, election, security, capital punishment or whatever, and what will you find? Your search engine will likely produce a hundred different web pages with half as many positions -- all claiming they are "Bible based" or growing from "Biblical Christian Assumptions." Are they? How can the same Scriptures produce so many different positions? Isn't the Bible plain and clear on these matters? Or doesn't the Bible have any fixed meaning at all?
So what does the Bible really mean? How will you decide? Here are some options. Which do you reject or prefer:
1. The Bible means what the writer meant when he wrote it.
To these the Bible means what the writer meant it to mean. Thus to understand what it means one needs to figure out what the writer meant. People holding this position yearn to become experts in Bible languages and culture, for the meaning of the writer's words are locked up in ancient language and culture. And, they must be prepared to adjust their views from time to time because the view of "recent scholarship" changes every 30-40 years. Also, be prepared to answer the complaint that you've lifted the Bible's above many ordinary people, reversing the gains of the reformation, merely giving the authority this time to the scholars instead of the Pope. But by far the most common view of middle aged folk, this view holds that the Bible means what the writer meant it to mean.
2. The Bible means what the first readers understood it to mean.
Some think it's easier to figure out what the original readers would have understood the Bible to mean than what the writer intended. That is, to these folk, God was communicating to real people in Corinth, and thus he "carried along" the writer to say things in a way the Corinthians would have understood what God meant. This view isn't that different than above and most "modernists" combine the two so fluidly that you can't tell which they are using. Opt for this view and you'll also need a thorough understanding of the culture and thinking modes of ancient times. You may not need to become such an expert in Paul's thinking as in the thinking of the Greco-Roman world. The goal here is t