and more hermeneutics

as i mentioned previously, i'm in the midst of the final days of this first term at mars hill.

this weekend, i have to come up with my personal hermeneutic, written out in a coherent enough form to turn in by monday afternoon. i know i've had all semester to think about it, and wrestle with the idea of how i view biblical interpretation. but at the moment it seems a monumental task.

i find myself asking these sorts of questions:

do the words on a page mean different things depending in which book they are included? and if so, how does one decide which meanings they have, and what gives them greater or lesser importance? what, for instance, makes the bible different from other texts? yes, i believe in the inspiration of scripture, but as that is a matter of faith for me, i don't know how to explain how or why it is the case.

do we, or should we, interpret texts differently from one another? when we engage a text, should we look to interpret it in different ways because of what the text is? should we try to interpret the bible differently than we would a text of fiction or an encyclopedia or a philosophy book or another book from the same time period? and if so, how and why?

how has my understanding of a text changed due to the knowledge of the author? do i hear or read a quote differently when i know it comes from the bible or a favored author or someone i've never heard of? i think i do. i think when i hear a quote attached to someone i like or respect, i suddenly like the quote more than i may have upon first glance. why is that? what gives that credibility and how does or should that look different when dealing with biblical texts versus other texts?

why is it that i view the words of the bible as having greater authority than those written in other texts? how do i hold my faith in the inspiration of the bible with the knowledge that the canon was put together - chosen - by men? if i hold to the truth of the bible, then i would believe that all men are liars, all have sinned and fall short of God's glory, that our hearts are deceitful - yet it is men who chose which books would be part of the canon of scripture and which wouldn't. yes, i do believe in God's power, in the Holy Spirit's work, but i can't deny the tension that lies there either.

and i wonder about the whole chicken and egg argument i've been having in my head, which came first, the church or the scriptures? i mean, obviously we had the Hebrew scriptures before the church existed, but what about the new testament? the church met before those texts became canon, so the church existed without the bible as christians know it. the canon came about due to the work of the church working (under the guidance of the Spirit) to select the texts. so, knowing that it was the church that brought the texts together, how tightly can i hold to sola scriptura? please don't immediately hear that as heresy. it's simply that what we consider the bible is such because of the tradition of the church to call it the bible. so can we truly say sola scriptura, and ignore tradition, when the text themselves are considered scripture because that, itself, is the tradition of the church. in that case, which traditions are okay to hold on to, and which aren't? can we hold to other traditions that aren't in the bible just as we hold onto the tradition of the bible itself?

so these are some of the questions that i feel i should answer in my paper, while also knowing that they are questions not so easily resolved, especially over a weekend.