BINT 301 — Hermeneutics: Principles of Biblical Interpretation
Every reader of the Bible already practices hermeneutics. The question is whether the practice is conscious or not. Hermeneutics is the discipline of interpretation — the study of how texts mean, how context shapes reading, how method protects readers from importing their own assumptions into the text, and how the move from ancient world to contemporary life can be made responsibly. Exegesis asks "what did this passage mean for its original audience?" Eisegesis reads that audience backward from today's concerns. Hermeneutics asks why the difference matters and how to maintain it. The stakes are not academic: Christians have gone to war, split churches, and condemned one another over verses read without regard for genre, context, or the limits of any single interpreter's vantage point. Method is a form of intellectual honesty, and BINT 301 treats it that way. The course takes a specific stance: the grammatical-historical method is the convergence point where contemporary biblical scholarship across Christian traditions actually lives. Catholic, Orthodox, Reformed, evangelical, and post-evangelical scholars read one another's exegesis, cite one another's commentary work, and share a common methodological vocabulary. Where traditions diverge is not at the level of method but at the level of presuppositions: what role the church's tradition plays in adjudicating readings, how the Holy Spirit functions in interpretation, and what theological commitments a reader legitimately brings before the text. BINT 301 holds both the convergence and the divergence clearly. Seven modules carry that work: Module 1 places hermeneutics historically, tracing six interpreters from Origen to Barth. Module 2 describes the grammatical-historical method and locates the contemporary convergence. Module 3 unpacks the five context types (literary, historical, cultural, canonical, theological) and shows how each shapes a reading. Module 4 teaches word studies, identifies the major interpretive fallacies, and applies genre-specific principles across the major biblical genres. Module 5 engages typology, allegory, and sensus plenior on their own pre-modern terms before locating them in contemporary scholarship. Module 6 examines presuppositions and the bridging task: how "what it meant" becomes "what it means" without collapsing the distance between ancient world and present reader. Module 7 is the cumulative case study. The case study passage is Philippians 2:5–11, the Christ-hymn. Every method stage the course has taught runs through this passage end to end: text-critical questions, authorial intent and date, the literary context of Paul's letter to Philippi, the historical and cultural world of the first century, the contested word studies (morphe, harpagmos, ekenosen), the Old Testament background in Isaiah's servant and Adam Christology, the canonical weight, the genre question (hymn or creed?), and the theological claims four traditions press from it. The case study is not an exercise in arriving at one correct reading; it is a demonstration that responsible interpretation requires the whole method and that the method's results are both real and open to further theological conversation.
Learning outcomes
- Trace the major moments in the history of biblical interpretation (patristic, medieval, Reformation, modern, contemporary) and describe how the grammatical-historical method emerged as the contemporary scholarly toolkit shared across Christian traditions
- Read a biblical passage and identify its literary, historical, cultural, canonical, and theological context, distinguishing each from the others
- Conduct a basic word study using the lexicon and scripture-reference tools, and identify the major interpretive fallacies — illegitimate totality transfer, root fallacy, etymological fallacy, anachronism, proof-texting, concordance theology, overreading
- Distinguish typology, allegory, and sensus plenior; describe how pre-modern Christian interpreters used allegorical reading on its own terms (Origen, Aquinas) and how contemporary interpretation handles these categories
- Apply genre-specific interpretive principles to a passage in any of the major biblical genres (narrative, law, poetry, wisdom, prophecy, epistle, parable, apocalyptic)
- Articulate the theological presuppositions different Christian traditions bring to interpretation — the role of tradition, the Spirit, the church, and theological commitments — and explain how presuppositions legitimately shape interpretation without invalidating method
- Bridge "what it meant" to "what it means" by walking the full grammatical-historical method through Philippians 2:5–11, demonstrating each method stage end-to-end
What Hermeneutics Is, Where It Comes From
Every reader of the Bible already practices interpretation; hermeneutics is the discipline of doing it deliberately and accountably. This module defines the field, distinguishes hermeneutics from exegesis and eisegesis, and traces six figures who shaped biblical interpretation from Origen to Barth — meeting each one in a brief excerpt from their own writing. The historical survey shows that method is not a recent invention but the inheritance of centuries of serious readers asking the same question: how do we read this text well?
The Grammatical-Historical Method
Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant biblical scholars differ on theological priors but share a common methodological vocabulary — the grammatical-historical method, which focuses on the text, its author, its original audience, authorial intent, and genre. This module describes where the convergence came from historically and what the method actually claims. It also marks the method's limits: what it can establish, and where further theological reading necessarily begins.
Reading Context Well
Context is not one thing but several: the literary conversation a passage is embedded in, the historical and cultural world that produced it, and the canonical and theological frame the biblical story supplies. Most misreadings can be traced to collapsing these into one another or ignoring them entirely. Three lessons work through each domain with concrete biblical examples — including Psalm 137:9, a verse that looks very different when the surrounding lament is taken seriously.
Word Studies, Fallacies, and Genre
A word study can illuminate a passage or distort it, depending on whether the interpreter understands what lexical data can and cannot show. Two lessons cover the proper method for basic word studies using the course tools, then name the fallacies that make word studies go wrong (root fallacy, etymological fallacy, illegitimate totality transfer, anachronism) and the genre-level fallacies that arise when readers ignore what kind of text they are reading (proof-texting, concordance theology, overreading). The same method that reads words carefully also reads genre carefully.
Pre-Modern Reading on Its Own Terms
Pre-modern Christian readers — Origen, Augustine, Aquinas — did not read allegorically because they lacked the tools for literal reading. They read allegorically because their theological and spiritual situation called for it. This module meets that practice on its own terms before turning to the contemporary distinctions that organize the same territory: typology, allegory, and sensus plenior. Students learn to identify which kind of move an interpretation is making and what evidentiary cost each carries.
Presuppositions and the Bridging Task
No reader comes to a text without presuppositions. Reformed, Catholic, and Orthodox traditions weight the role of Scripture, tradition, Spirit, and church differently — and those differences shape what readers do with the method's results, not whether they use the method. The second lesson takes up the bridging task: how to move from 'what the passage meant in its original setting' to 'what it means for readers today' without collapsing the historical distance or refusing to make the crossing at all.
Cumulative Case Study: Philippians 2:5–11
Three lessons run every method stage from the course through a single passage: the Christ-hymn of Philippians 2:5–11. Literary context, historical and cultural setting, canonical echoes, contested word studies on μορφή, ἁρπαγμός, and ἐκένωσεν, genre questions, theological priors across four traditions, and the bridging task — all applied in sequence to one text. The goal is not a single correct reading but a demonstration of what responsible interpretation looks like when the whole method is in use.