Exegesis Quotes

Indeed, I believe that in our own day, after all the efforts of critical exegesis, we can share anew this sense of astonishment at the fact that a saying from the year 733 B.C., incomprehensible for so long, came true at the moment of the conception of Jesus Christ - that God did indeed give us a great sign intended for the whole world. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

The Alexandrian School In opposition to the previously named Church Fathers, the Alexandrians openly embraced Greek philosophy, thought of it as being of divine origin, and brought its allegorizing technique into their exegesis. ~ Anonymous

The discipline that aims to be objective and scientific can be used to rationalize religious-ethnic prejudiced and justify imperial ambitions. Israelis, Palestinians and the evangelical imperialists of nineteenth century have all been guilty of commandeering the same events and assigning them contradictory meanings and facts. ~ Simon Sebag Montefiore

In retrospect, I now believe this expected donation of ten percent of income to the Fellowship was based on bad exegesis of an old Jewish taxation law that Jesus Himself seemed to completely ignore. ~ Dylan Morrison

I know now what was happening to me, what was overwhelming me, what was about to consume and almost destroy me. Didier had even given me a name for it - assassin grief, he'd once called it: the kind of grief that lies in wait and attacks you from ambush, with no warning and no mercy. I know now that assassin grief can hide for years and then strike suddenly on the happiest day, without discernible reason or exegesis. But on that day, ... almost a year after Khader's death, I couldn't understand the dark and trembling mood that was moving in me, swelling to the sorrow I'd too long denied. I couldn't understand it, so i tried to fight it as a man fights pain or despair. But you can't bite down on assassin grief and will it away. The enemy stalks you, step for step, and knows your every move before you make it. The enemy is your own grieving heart and, when it strikes, it can't miss. ~ Gregory David Roberts

The Church and her exegesis of revelation progress through the ever-changing periods of world history. New aspects emerge, while others wane; efforts are made to compensate for one-sided emphases, but not rarely they are simply replaced with the opposite extremes. Today too, then, it is a duty to restate the principles in a new and timely way - while being as measured as possible - and in so doing to retrieve what is of permanent value. ~ Hans Urs Von Balthasar

I am sorry, as well, to present such a sketchy and disappointing exegesis of what is in fact the central part of my story. ~ Donna Tartt

Concerning the content of the message itself, one must determine first whether the preacher has understood the text and grasped his subject. A biblical preacher must not only comprehend the broad purpose of his text, as well as other insights available about the text, but he must also have a sufficient theological comprehension and an above-average grasp of the Bible as a whole to set his text properly in the theological milieu. Great preachers are cognizant of the necessity to be able to do exegesis and exposition within a historical setting of which they are constantly aware. How little actual grasp of scriptural knowledge is present in most North American preachers is reflected in the relative biblical illiteracy and theological misapprehensions of most congregations. ~ David L. Allen

What is the difference between my view and the classical Christian perspective? I am convinced that there are not multiple comings and multiple returns of Christ, but only one decisive coming at the end of the world, which includes the resurrection, the rapture, and his appearance in the sky! ~ Eli Of Kittim

Let me be straight with you: I'm not really qualified to write this book. I don't have a Bible or seminary degree. I'm not a pastor or a counselor. I don't know biblical languages and don't know how to do exegesis - whatever that even is. Again, I'm just a messed-up twenty-three-year-old guy. But I know that God has quite the sense of humor. It only takes a quick peek into Christian history to realize I'm almost the exact type of person he is looking for. A wise man two thousand years ago put it this way: "But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong."1 Paul tells us that God loves using people who are useless by worldly standards - because then he gets all the credit. A crooked stick can still draw a straight line, and a messed-up dude like me can still write about an awesome God. I've tasted grace and can't help but tell others about it. ~ Jefferson Bethke

We and our environments form such interconnected cluster systems that mutually process information and alter it while exchanging it; we are all (humans) like a vast compound eye which shows a repetition of the motion of a single object but each cell reflecting slightly differently. (p.155) ~ Philip K. Dick

Unfortunately, we live in an era where once a person learns a bit of the Arabic language and memorizes the translation of the Qur'an, he thinks he has the right to make his own opinions regarding the Qur'an. The Blessed Prophet s said, "Whosoever explains the Qur'an from his own opinion is wrong even if he is right."

Modernists generally ignore the opinions and exegesis of the pious predecessors [al-salaf al-salihun] issuing fatwas that are based on their own whims. In our time, the modernist desires to embody all the greatest attributes in every field. If he can write simple Arabic, articulate himself in his native language, or deliver impromptu speeches, he sees himself the teacher of Junaid and Shiblõ in Taüawwuf and also a mujtahid in fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence). He introduces new ideas in the exegesis of the Qur'an without concern for the opinions of the pious predecessors or that his opinions contradict the aúódõth of the Blessed Prophet (PBUH).He is whimsical in matters of Dõn. He states his heart's desire no matter how much it contradicts the Qur'an and the Sunna. Despite this, no one discredits him, protests his incompetence, or shows him his deviation.

If one gathers the courage to say, "This is against the teachings of the pious predecessors," he is immediately branded a sycophant of the pious predecessors. He is condemned as ultra-orthodox, anti-intellectual, and someone not attuned to the modern world. Conversely, if a person rejects the e ~ Shaykh Muhammad Zakariyya Kandhlawi

A great Iranian mystic of the fourteenth century, fAlll'uddawla Semnlini, was to speak in similar terms of the "invisible master," the "Gabriel of your being." His esoteric exegesis, his ta'wll, carries the figures of Koranic revelation to a sevenfold depth; to attain to the "Gabriel of your being"

is to pass successively through the seven esoteric levels and to be reunited with the Spirit which guides and initiates the "seven prophets of your being." This striving is also designated as jacob's contest with the Angel, which was so interpreted in the symbolic exegesis of the jewish mystic joseph ben Judah: the intellective soul struggling to be united with the Angel, with the active Intelligence, until the rising of the light ( ishraq), at which time the soul emerges, delivered, from the darkness that imprisoned it.10 Thus no doubt we should speak not of a combat with, that is against, the Angel, but of a combat for the Angel, for the Angel in tum needs the response of a soul if his being is to become what it has to be. A whole series of jewish speculative mystics found the same symbolism in the Song of Songs, where the Beloved plays the role of the active Intelligence, while the heroine is the thinking human soul. ~ Abul Barkat

Each of us assumes everyone else knows what HE is doing. They all assume we know what WE are doing. We don't ... Nothing is going on and nobody knows what it is. Nobody is concealing anything except the fact that he does not understand anything anymore and wishes he could go home. ~ Philip K. Dick

The thoughtless habit of using the words "existence" and "exist" as designations for being is one more indication of our estrangement both from being and from a radical, forceful, and definite exegesis of being. ~ Martin Heidegger

The sermon has been reduced to parenthetical church remarks about newspaper events, ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The exegesis Fat labored on month after month struck me as a Pyrrhic victory if there ever was one
in this case an attempt by a beleaguered mind to make sense out of the inscrutable. Perhaps this is the bottom line to mental illness: incomprehensible events occur; your life becomes a bin for hoax-like fluctuations of what used to be reality. And not only that
as if that weren't enough
but you, like Fat, ponder forever over these fluctuations in an effort to order them into a coherency, when in fact the only sense they make is the sense you impose on them, out of necessity to restore everything into shapes and processes you can recognize. The first thing to depart in mental illness is the familiar. And what takes its place is bad news because not only can you not understand it, you also cannot communicate it to other people. The madman experiences something, but what it is or where it comes from he does not know. ~ Philip K. Dick

[The sensate body possesses] an art of interrogating the sensible according to its own wishes, an inspired exegesis ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty

Clearly, it is not simply exegesis that determines how we read the Bible; rather, it is our vested interests, our hopes, and our fears that largely determine our reading. And because the reach of the gracious God of the Bible is toward the other, we ought rightly to be skeptical and suspicious of any reading of the Bible that excludes the other, because it is likely to be informed by vested interest, fears, and hopes that serve self-protection and end in self-destruction. Palestinians' and Israelis' fear of the other, said to be grounded in the Bible, has been transposed into a military apparatus that is aimed at the elimination of the other. It is wholly illusionary to imagine that such an agenda is congruent with the God of the Bible who is commonly confessed by Jews and Christians. ~ Walter Brueggemann

You'd think God would come right out and tell us what to do in the Bible, but He doesn't. He mostly tells stories, and He rarely stops the story to say what the point is. He just lets the characters and conflict hang in the air like smoke. ~ Donald Miller

They do not discover anything new after that, they only learn how to understand better and better the secret entrusted to them at the outset; their creative effort goes into an unending exegesis, a commentary on that one couplet of poetry assigned to them. ~ Bruno Schulz

Sound exegesis is the only way of making sure we are allowing God to speak rather than our speaking for God. ~ James R. White

Many in our world today want us to believe that we can except Christ simply as a Savior from sin, but not the Lord of our lives. They teach essentially that a person can perform an act of believing on Christ once, and after this, they can fall away even into total unbelief and yet still supposedly be "saved". Christ does not call men in this way. Christ does not save men in this way. The true Christian is the one continually coming, always believing in Christ. Real Christian faith is an ongoing faith, not a one-time act. If one wishes to be eternally satiated, one meal is not enough. If we wish to feast on the bread of heaven, we must do so all our lives. We will never hunger or thirst if we are always coming and always believing in Christ. He's our sufficiency. Christ the bread from heaven. We must feed on all of Christ, not just the parts we happen to like. Christ is not the Savior of anyone unless He is their Lord as well. ~ James R. White

Longing for something fresh, for something no one else has said often leads to bad exegesis. ~ Matt Chandler

There is a simplicity that exists on the far side of complexity, and there is a communication of sentiment and attitude not to be discovered by careful exegesis of a text. ~ Pat Buchanan

I admire the way the Bible defies anybody who wants to nail it on a preferred meaning. There are so many ways to interpret the Bible as there are different opinions about what a certain passage or verse really means. So anybody can go there and read a meaning into (eigesis) whatever passage or verse he wants to suit his inclinations. Proof that the Bible is inspired? It caters for all sorts of people and views. ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Realism hasn't fallen out of favor with most people, who are interested in people's lives rather than gymnastics of style or literary trends. It's a certain kind of academic who undervalues realism, largely because it is not amenable to endless exegesis. ~ Vikram Seth

I'd be happy to give special treatment to a dedicated school teacher, or even someone like William Faulkner if he was still alive, because despite the fact that an exegesis of his prose completely eluded me, I had to admit, especially when Jacob held me down and made me say it, that the guy was a kick-ass architect of the ever-elusive sentence. ~ Tiffanie DeBartolo

A theologian's epistemology controls his interpretation of the Bible. If his epistemology is not Christian, his exegesis will be systematically distorted. If he has no epistemology at all, his exegesis will be unsystematically distorted. ~ Gordon H. Clark

Great power constitutes its own argument, and it never has much trouble drumming up friends, applause, sympathetic exegesis, and a band. ~ Bill Vaughan

Ignorance of Scripture is the root of every error in religion, and the source of ever heresy. To be allowed to remove a few grains of ignorance, and to throw a few rays of light on God's precious word, is, in my opinion, the greatest honor that can be put on a Christian. ~ J.C. Ryle

Historical exegesis is only the preliminary part of interpretation; application is its essence. Exegesis without application should not be called interpretation at all. ~ J.I. Packer

All we know is that things happen. More accurately, God is the urging-forward force within all things, and all things (if "things" can be spoken of at all) are alive. The ontological matrix is a way in which His urging or thinking is manifested; so in that respect I think it's not time which moves forward, carrying us with it like a great tide, but that we are driven forward all of us together, animate and inanimate. ~ Philip K. Dick

Exactly halfway between exegesis and practical theology stands dogmatics, ~ Karl Barth

As One and Unique, and yet as one who is to be understood only in the context of mankind's entire history and in the context of the whole created cosmos, Jesus it the Word, the Image, the Expression and the Exegesis of God. ~ Hans Urs Von Balthasar

In my view, the gospels are true, not historically, but theologically, or, as I would argue, prophetically! What we have is, the Messiah's history written in advance in story form. ~ Eli Of Kittim

There is a notion that complete impartiality is the most fitting and indeed the normal disposition for true exegesis, because it guarantees a complete absence of prejudice. For a short time, around 1910, this idea threatened to achieve almost canonical status in Protestant theology. But now we can quite calmly describe it as merely comical. ~ Karl Barth

Canonical exegesis may be defined as the interpretation of individual components of the canon in the context of the canon as a whole. Even in the pre-canonical period evidence of intra-biblical interpretation is not lacking. In the Old Testament it can be seen how later law-codes took over the provisions of earlier codes and applied them to fresh situations, or how later prophets took up and reinterpreted the oracles of their predecessors. ~ F.F. Bruce

In one day I had altered my life; my life, therefore, was alterable. This simple axiom did not call out for exegesis; no, it entered my bloodstream directly, as powerful as heroin. I could feel it pump and surge, the way it brightened my veins to a kind of glass. I had wakened that morning to narrowness and predestination and now I was falling asleep in the storm of my own free will. ~ Carol Shields

This magnificent poem [Exodus 15:1-21] has been much analyzed, dissected, scanned, and compared with an array of supposed precedent and counterpart works. It has been variously attributed and dated, and forced into a wide variety of forms and Sitze im Leben. There have been attempts to determine some parts of it as early and some parts as late, and to describe therefrom an evolution of both its form and its content. None of these attempts has been entirely successful. The best of them have amounted to no more than helpful suggestions, while the worst of them have been fiction bordering fantasy. ~ John I. Durham

...when the exhaustive exegesis of God's Word doesn't create people transformed into the image of Jesus, we have missed the forest for the trees. ~ Jen Hatmaker

One of the things I really respect about Doug Moo is that he is constantly grappling with the text. Where he hears the text saying something which is not what his tradition would have said, he will go with the text. I won't always agree with his exegesis, but there is a relentless scholarly honesty about him which I really tip my hat off to. ~ N. T. Wright

To be in Christ is to be a living exegesis of the narrative of Christ, a new performance of the original drama of exaltation following humiliation, of humiliation as the voluntary renunciation of rights and selfish gain in order to serve and obey. ~ Michael J. Gorman

Biblical exegesis without controls is apt to run away into total subjectivity. ~ Gordon Wenham

Providence then - and this is what is most important to grasp - is not the same thing as a universal teleology. To believe in divine and unfailing providence is not to burden one's conscience with the need to see every event in this world not only as an occasion for God's grace, but as a positive determination of God's will whereby he brings to pass a comprehensive design that, in the absence of any single one of these events, would not have been possible. It may seem that this is to draw only the finest of logical distinction, one so fine indeed as to amount to little more than a sophistry. Some theologians - Calvin, for instance - have denied that the distinction between what God wills and what he permits has any meaning at all. And certainly there is no unanimity in the history of Christian exegesis on this matter. Certain classic Western interpretations of Paul's treatment of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart and of the hardened heart of Israel in Romans 9 have taken it as a clear statement of God's immediate determination of his creatures' wills. But in the Eastern Christian tradition, and in the thought of many of the greatest Western theologians, the same argument has often been understood to assert no more than that God in either case allowed a prior corruption of the will to run its course, or even - like a mire in the light of the sun - to harden the outpouring of God's fiery mercy, and always for the sake of a greater good that will perhaps redound even to the benef ~ David Bentley Hart

I read, read enormously on all different fields of Islamic thought, from philosophy to Islamic literature, poetry, exegeses, knowledge of the Hadith, the teachings of the prophet. That's how I trained myself. And then I was appointed imam by a Sufi master from Istanbul, Turkey. ~ Feisal Abdul Rauf