Jun 10, 2011

Fee on the Hermeneutics of Acts

   
Gordon Fee in discussing the hermeneutics of Acts notes,

“The crucial hermeneutical question here is whether biblical narratives that describe what happened in the early church also function as norms intended to delineate what must happen in the ongoing church. Are there instances from Acts of which one may appropriately say, ‘We must do this,' or should one merely say, ‘We may do this'?

“Our assumption, shared by many others, is this: Unless scripture explicitly tells us we must do something, what is only narrated or described does not function in a normative (i.e. obligatory) way—unless it can be demonstrated on other grounds that the author intended it to function in this way. There are good reasons for making this assumption.”

Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 118–19.
  

1 comment:

C. Stirling Bartholomew said...

Great quote from Fee. This principle would certainly shed some light on Mark Driscoll's exposition of Song of Songs.