Prayer of Jabez stuff is the most obvious misapplication, but a narrative book can also get shoe-horned into the equally dangerous and less obviously aberrant teaching approach of “and this [insert pastor's personal interpretation of a narrative book] is just what is happening at our church.” The biblical narrative becomes a pretext for the pastor selling his or her own agenda to the congregation, whether it’s selling the church on a direction the pastors have decided on in terms of organization or, more common, some kind of building fund the congregation will literally be paying for.

Jesus taught in parables, not principles. Anyone who thinks he or she can deconstruct the teachings of Jesus into elementary principles has a very low view of the sacredness of scripture – on the lines of the literary critics of yester year. But it fits the spirit of the age, which believes that some profound knowledge can be drawn from smashing subatomic particles into yet smaller particles, while the secret of the origin of all things and what (Who?) holds the universe together remains beyond our scientific grasp.

I would submit that this points to a bigger problem concerning the use of the sermon as a communication tool. A sermon which explains all the mysteries of life leaves very little reason for the cogregation to be personally challenged. I suggest that pastors, rather than chewing the bible for their congregates in the form of principles, should faithfully present the depth of mystery in the scriptures and leave some room for them to contemplate it in their devotions or discuss it dialectically in small groups. Just a thought.

Upon further thought, I will not comment further at Eclectic Christian. I have been thinking about Michael’s post all day, wishing that I had been more supportive of it initially. He certainly gives us something to think about.

I think we have come to somewhat of a “meeting of the minds” on the issue. I was somewhat baiting “Michael Spencer” when I wrote “I think that we have a danger of warping the meaning of the text if we try to make it speak about something (i.e. Christ) that the author never intended.” I know that he has blogged before about sermons needing to point to Christ.

I think I will summarize Michael Spencer’s points and our interchange of ideas in my own posting at Eclectic Christian. If we want to continue to sideline the discussion we can do it there.

As a former AG guy I think they have a more biblically informed and balanced view than guys like Macarthur might ever give them credit for.

If this gets any further along, Mike, we might just have to trade emails and correspond off Michael’s forum.

Thanks for the nice response.

I agree with most of what you have written. A couple of thoughts though. You wrote Clearly the NT authors had no problem making huge leaps in seeing signs of Jesus in places we wouldn’t guess. Indeed, but the the NT writers did have the added advantage of being inspired. If we do the same, we risk doing great damage to the intent of the text. My Old Testament Prof used to drill into us over and over. “What does the text say? That is what you should preach.” If a NT writer has interpreted a text Messianically, then that should give us permission to do so as well.

Taking the text down to a set of principles is OK if those principles are the purpose of the text. If the principles you end up with do not reflect the text then you haven’t done your homework properly. Conversely trying to find Christ in a text where the primary meaning is not about Christ also can tend to shift the text from what it originally intended to say.

As for being slain in the spirit, I found the following link quite helpful. http://www.ag.org/top/Beliefs/sptlissues_manifestations.cfm

Mike Bell

IMonk has written on “Magic Book-ism”, where the Bible becomes nothing more than a grimoire of one-verse verbal-component spells.

Distilling this complicated book into easy to do steps and “technology” designed to improve our quality of life appeals to directly to our self-centeredness.

Coincidentally (or maybe not), “The Tech” in Scientology refers to the Word of L Ron Hubbard.

I would also argue that thematically the mercy of God is an easier principle to extract than, say, marriage instructions. Overall it seems that one of the biggest dangers of principle preaching is that it imposes a meaning on narrative books that may not be there. Pentecostals and charismatics justify being slain in the spirit by doing this, the prayer of jabez got published, and so on. I could set aside entirely how Calvinists read their own theological principles into every biblical text. point 3 is how I think we can see Ruth pointing to Christ but that’s not what the bulk of the sermons I heard on Ruth were about, they were more about how the man needs to have a good job and be of good character or how the woman needs to get in the man’s way to get noticed.

1. Principleizing (sp?) if done correctly will not do damage to intent of author or the text. Instead it asks: A) What is the message or principle that the original author is trying to communicate to his audience. B) How can apply that same principle to my audience today. Part A covers off a lot of the concerns expressed above. Part B make sure that it is communicated correctly.

2. I had to chuckle when I read that Jeremiah Lawson wrote “Ruth got transformed into a how-to manual for getting married rather than about Christ.” Now last I looked, Ruth doesn’t have a lot to say about Christ. I think that we have a danger of warping the meaning of the text if we try to make it speak about something (i.e. Christ) that the author never intended.

3. There is a lot we can learn from Ruth about commitment, doubt, anger, and generosity. Yes it can point to Christ if we consider the fact that Ruth is someone outside the walls of Judaism, who finds redemption. Whether or not that is what the original author intended us to learn from the book is highly questionable.

Mike Bell