Some Important Berean Principles
1. In gaining the answer to the second question on Rom.1:17 I drew partly on verse 18. This raises the question of the extent of the immediate context. A working definition is that it includes two or three of the preceding propositions and sometimes the following one.
2. While Bereans always stay within an immediate context for interpreting a proposition, they do go to remote contexts for helpful ways to make an exposition of their interpretation. They want to do all they can to help a target audience grasp a text's meaning. So in the above interpretation I used Titus 1:2 and Isaiah 48:11 to help explain the idea of 1:17, but its understanding, came only from its immediate context.
3. From previous workings through Romans I know that a passage up ahead explains what God did to maintain his righteousness in saving people, who deserve only his wrath. But it would be unberean to jump ahead in Romans and call attention to it now.
It would also be a great error to skim through Romans 1 through 8, as many recommend, to "grasp the whole so essential for interpreting the parts." Bereans heed the warning about how quickly and gladly their lazy minds will lock into one of the first barely plausible "wholes" that occurs to them. To be sure, understanding the principle (the "whole") that generates what Paul said in Romans 1 through 8 is essential for getting a valid interpretation of this literary unit and for thinking God's thoughts after him. The Berean way of getting the "whole" is to keep working through Romans 1-8 proposition by proposition. Most of the propositions will give little if any indication of it. But there will be some--e.g., 1:16b-17--that will prove vital for dispelling the fog from our vague pre-apprehension of what Paul is up to in these chapters.
Bereans are optimistic that they will succeed in getting through to the intended meaning of these chapters. This is because they consist of verbal symbols whose language conventions do constitute a bridge to our minds from the meaning Paul sought to transmit through them almost two millennia ago. The hermeneutical theorist E. D. Hirsch (1928 - ) observed that
. . .our chances of making a correct preliminary guess about the nature of someone's verbal meaning are enormously increased by the limitations imposed on that meaning through cultural norms and conventions. A single linguistic sign can represent an identical meaning for two persons because its meanings have been limited by convention. . . . That is what makes correct pre-apprehension [of the writer's generating principle] reasonably likely to occur" (E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), p. 262.
There is, to be sure, a hermeneutical circle in interpretation because the parts cannot be understood without the whole, nor the whole without the parts. But Bereans do not regard this circle as a vicious one. Several times each day they see it broken as they use language to accomplish their tasks. They listen to what is being said to them and are particularly sensitive to the propositions that signal the point of what is being said. From how their response is received they quickly sense how accurately they and the other parties are interpreting what is said.
4. At a later point in Romans Paul makes assertions that will remove ambiguity from his meaning of "through faith for faith" (1:17). For now Bereans do well to observe the repetition of the word faith (believe) here as well as in 1:16b, and then note that believing is as essential for benefiting from the revelation of God's righteousness as it is for enjoying the blessings of salvation. Repetitions come both in the reappearance of the same word or phrase and also in the recurrence of the same idea stated in other words. How 1:24, 26, 28 repeat 1:18 will be an illustration of this.
No "theological" exegesis! The policies stated thus far make interpreting the Bible no different from grasping other communications. This may raise questions about the Holy Spirit's role in interpretation. A question may also rise about Protestantism's frequent insistence that the Bible be interpreted in a special way, often stated as follows: "The infallible rule of the interpretation of Scripture is Scripture itself. . . . [The sense of a passage] may be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly" (The Westminster Confession of Faith, 1647) I, ix.).
Regarding the Bible as its own interpreter is often Protestantism's way of maintaining sola scriptura (the Bible is our sole authority) in such a way that a tradition's creedal statements also have authority. It is tradition -- man-made of course -- that indicates the clear parts of scripture in distinction to the obscure ones. The obscure parts are then interpreted by the parts that are said to be clear.
But the Alsatian Lutheran Professor Oscar Cullmann (1902- ) insisted that church creeds should play no role in biblical interpretation. "I may not consider it certain that my Church's faith in Christ is in its essence really that of the New Testament. . ." Oscar Cullmann, Salvation in History, trans. Sidney G. Sowers (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 68. For an article discussing this issue see Biblical Theology and the Analogy of Faith.
As I conversed one day with Dr. Cullmann in his office in Basel in 1960 he made another remark that has greatly influenced my thinking ever since. He spoke of how back in the 20's he had been a liberal in following the theology of Albert Schweitzer (l875-1965), and then for a while followed dialectical theology. But one day he decided simply to read the texts of the New Testament seeking to hear only what their authors were trying to say. "A whole new world opened up for me," and reaching over and putting his hand on my knee he said, "And I became born again."
The heart of this remark appears in print as follows: "As I prepared my lectures I sought to hold every modern or personally cherished idea regarding the nature of Christianity at a distance. Through this purely scientific approach, I came gradually to a deeper theological understanding of those concepts in the New Testament, which at the outset had been foreign to my ways of thinking." Lehre und Forsche an der Universitaet Basel (Basel: Birkhaeuser Verlag, 1960), p. 26.
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