Bible Interpretation, Student Workbook, SW05

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B I B L E I N T E R P R E T A T I O N

2. Use

a. Learn who the person/people are who sponsored and/or wrote the commentary you are referencing.

b. Postpone use of the commentary until after you have done your study, and drawn your own principles (the second stage ).

c. Use the commentaries to check and double-check your ideas as you shape your ideas and opinions.

d. Allow the ideas of the commentator to point you in new directions for further study.

V. Final Word about Tools

Remember that the Bible is Inspired of God: Use the Tools Appropriately

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According to 2 Tim. 3.16, what is inspired is precisely the biblical writings. Inspiration is a work of God terminating, not in the men who were to write Scripture (as if, having given them an idea of what to say, God left them to themselves to find a way of saying it), but in the actual written product. It is Scripture — graphe , the written text—that is God-breathed. The essential idea here is that all Scripture has the same character as the prophets’ sermons had, both when preached and when written (cf. 2 Pet. 1.19–21, on the divine origin of every ‘prophecy of the Scriptures’; see also Jer. 36; Isa. 8.16–20). That is to say, Scripture is not only man’s word, the fruit of human thought, premeditation and art, but also, and equally, God’s word, spoken through man’s lips or written with man’s pen. In other words, Scripture has a double authorship, and man is only the secondary author; the primary author, through whose initiative, prompting and enlightenment, and under whose superintendence, each human writer did his work, is God the Holy Spirit. ~ J. I. Packer. “Inspiration.” New Bible Dictionary . D. R. W. Wood, ed. (3rd ed). (electronic ed.). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996. p. 507.