Seminarian Day 5
I finished up my fifth day of classes, about half an hour ago. The class was Hermeneutics, Dr. Prutow spoke of the singularity of meaning in the scripture. What he said was that each verse means one specific thing, and that if it didn’t the bible would cause us to as Milton Terry puts it “drft upon a sea of uncertainty and conjecture.”
When Dr. Prutow first suggested this idea, I hesitated to agree. What I first thought was that what he was saying was that each verse or idea in scripture was to be examined alone. After asking Dr. Prutow about the notion of NT scriptures in the light of the OT, which he informed me was a totally acceptable option, I warmd up to the notion of a single meaning. I guess the problem I had was that I was worried that you could not bring your own background intoa verse, and I believe that there are certain passages which you can more easily understand if you have had certain life experiences, ie. Abraham and Issac on the mount, of course will create a stronger tie with fathers, than with a 19 year old. Dr. Prutow enlightened me that this idea just means that there is not some magically hidden meaning behind the word of God, which is a mystery to us.