Scriptural Interpretation Quotes

Scriptural interpretation is properly an ecclesial activity whose goal is to participate in the reality of which the text speaks by bending the knee to worship the God revealed in Jesus Christ. Through Scripture the church receives the good news of the inbreaking kingdom of God and, in turn, proclaims the message of reconciliation. Scripture is like a musical score that must be played or sung in order to be understood; therefore, the church interprets Scripture by forming communities of prayer, service, and faithful witness. ~ Ellen F. Davis

If I say to some kids roughhousing in church, "Don't kill anyone," they know what concern I am addressing. They know I'm exaggerating for emphasis and not speaking in general terms - that I'm not, for example, commenting on the morality of military service. Stripped of the rich context we share, the mere words, "Don't kill anyone" could easily be understood to mean don't kill anyone, anytime, ever. ~ Ken Wilson

As used by Paul in the first century, arsenokoitai likely means pederasty. Pederastic relationships, inherently abusive and exploitative, are not equivalent to committed, loving, and monogamous same-sex relationships today. To say that they are would be like saying sex trafficking of young girls is equivalent to marriage. ~ Kathy Baldock

It can be unhelpful to wax eloquent about the inerrancy of Scripture without an accompanying acknowledgment that, while Scripture may be inerrant, there are no inerrant interpreters of Scripture. ~ Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter

Virtually every church tradition, by theology, interpretive strategies, or pastoral practice, makes accommodations for divorced people who seek to remarry. These accommodations permit divorced people to enter unions that are outside the rule laid down in the Bible. But we can't have it both ways. We can't apply a strict "biblical marriage" rule to gay people and not apply it to those who are divorced and remarried. ~ Ken Wilson

The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work - that is correctly to describe phenomena from a reasonably wide area. Furthermore, it must satisfy certain esthetic criteria - that is, in relation to how much it describes, it must be rather simple. ~ John Von Neumann

malachim, or messengers. Christianity has defined these messengers as what we know as angels. The more ancient interpretation in Judaism is that the malachim could be anything. They could be heavenly spirits. Or not. They could come in the form of ordinary people, donkeys, a flame, or even a breeze. ~ Stephen Tobolowsky

...an external reward can affect one's interpretation of one's own motivation, and interpretation that comes to be self-fulfilling. A similar effect may account for the familiar fact that when someone turns his hobby into a business, he often loses pleasure in it. Likewise, an intellectual who pursues an academic career gets professionalized, and this may lead him to stop thinking. This line of reasoning suggests that the kind of appreciative attention where one remains focused on what one is doing can arise only in leisure activities. Such a conclusion would put pleasurable absorption beyond the ken of any activity that is undertaken for the sake of making money, because although money is undoubtedly good, it is not intrinsically so. ~ Matthew Crawford

There's a difference between the way I see it and the character's interpretation of the events, so the rules within the film are the rules within the film. ~ David Robert Mitchell

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

A lot of writers want everything put on screen, but it doesn't work like that. The screenwriter brings her own imaginative interpretation, just as the director and actors do. ~ Susan Hill

Embrace your responsibility to dream big. ~ Kevin Michel

Sisyphus,' is an interpretation of the unavoidable limits to which everyone who is human is condemned. The constructive way of dealing with anxiety in this sense consists of learning to live with it, accepting it as a 'teacher,' to borrow Kirkegaard's phrase, to school us in confronting our human destiny. ~ Rollo May

Our behavioral patterns are exceedingly complex, and psychology is a young science. The scope of our behavioral wisdom exceeds the breadth of our explicit interpretation. We act, even instruct, and yet do not understand. How can we do what we cannot explain? ~ Jordan B. Peterson

My interpretation of scientific knowledge, for example, was a triviality for physicists like Mach, Boltzmann, Einstein and Bohr. But the ideas of these great thinkers were distorted beyond recognition by the rodents of neopositivism and the competing rodents of the church of 'critical' rationalism. ~ Paul Feyerbend

Once you can clearly describe what you are reacting to, free of your interpretation or evaluation of it, other people are less likely to be defensive when they hear it. ~ Marshall B. Rosenberg

Most of the time, there is no truth, only various levels of interpretation. Fact is a construct we provide to the public. ~ Lauren Willig

The aim of interpretation is not agreement but understanding ~ Donald Davidson

I loved the Godfather. I thought that was the best interpretation of our life that Ive ever seen. Godfather I and Godfather II - the other one stunk. ~ Sammy Gravano

The concept that all men are created equal was a key to European Enlightenment philosophy. But the interpretation of "all men" has hovered over the Declaration of Independence since its creation. ~ Oscar Auliq-Ice

Mother's intentions were always sound, never muddy; I don't imagine that she troubled herself to feel very guilty. But the Rev. Mr. Merrill was a man who took to wallowing in guilt; his remorse, after all, was all he had to cling to-especially after his scant courage left him, and he was forced to acknowledge that he would never be brave enough to abandon his miserable wife and children for my mother. He would continue to torture himself, of course, with the insistent and self-destructive notion that he loved my mother. I suppose that his "love" of my mother was as intellectually detached from feeling and action as his "belief" was also subject to his immense capacity for remote and unrealistic interpretation. My mother was a healthier animal; when he said he wouldn't leave his family for her, she simply put him out of her mind and went on singing.

But as incapable as he was of a heartfelt response to a real situation, the Rev. Mr. Merrill was tirelessly capable of thinking; he pondered and brooded and surmised and second-guessed my mother to death. ~ John Irving

Look to the past to help create the future. Look to science and to poetry. Combine innovation and interpretation. We need the best of both. And it is universities that best provide them. ~ Drew Gilpin Faust

Our soldiers did not go to some foreign country and risk their lives in vain and defend our Constitution so that decades later you can tell me it's a living document ever changing and is open to interpretation. The guys who wrote it were light years ahead of anyone today, and they meant what they said - now leave the document alone, or there's going to be trouble. ~ Ted Nugent

Translation presents not merely a paradigm but the utmost case of engaged literary interpretation ~ John Felstiner

Belief Systems contradict both science and ordinary "common sense." B.S. contradicts science, because it claims certitude and science can never achieve certitude: it can only say, "This model"- or theory, or interpretation of the data- "fits more of the facts known at this date than any rival model." We can never know if the model will fit the facts that might come to light in the next millennium or even in the next week. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

At first I was glad for the help. My freshmen English class, "Mythology and Archetypal Experience," confounded me.
I didn't understand why we couldn't just read books without forcing contorted interpretations on then ~ Alison Bechdel

What Degas called 'a way of seeing' must consequently bear a wide enough interpretation to include way of being, power, knowledge, and will. ~ Paul Valery

Culture as art is the peak expression of man's creativity, his capacity to break out of nature's narrow bounds, and hence out of the degrading interpretation of man in modern natural and political science. ~ Allan Bloom

Everything is a matter of interpretation. And that is how you will rule," he said, before handing the sword's hilt to me. "Think on what you've seen today. But do not let me influence you. Your will is yours alone."
I stared at the sword in my hand, still gleaming despite the dark. "I can promise you I won't forget."
Amar paused, his voice soft. "Memory is a riddled thing. I would caution you from making promises you cannot keep."
I moved toward the door, but Amar stopped me with a shake of his head. "Gupta will arrive in a moment to escort you." He straightened the cuffs of his sherwani jacket. "I myself have a number of duties to attend to, so I must leave."
Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, "Why?"
He paused and took a step to me. Darkness, soft-edged and heavy, clung to the room. In the shadows, his smile held all the lazy grace of a cat.
"Would you miss me?"
"Curiosity inspired my question. Nothing more," I said, but even my voice was unconvinced.
"Even so, there's no greater temptation than to stay by your side."
The door swung open and a chorus of voices trickled into the room--silvery and indistinct, like whispers released through clenched teeth. Amar lingered for a moment, his lips tight as though he wanted to say something.
Then, he cupped his palms together and blew into them. When he opened his hands, a bloom of light shaped like an unopened flower bud lifted off his palm and floated into the room. Brightne ~ Roshani Chokshi

Perhaps we should be happier in our cities were we to respond to them as to nature or dreams: as objects of exploration, investigation and interpretation, settings for voyages of discovery. ~ Elizabeth Wilson

natural language will always remain the basic interpretation of, and reservoir for, the development of the artificial formalized languages of science. ~ Doris Bradbury

Fights between individuals, as well as governments and nations, invariably result from misunderstandings in the broadest interpretation of this term. Misunderstandings are always caused by the inability of appreciating one another's point of view. This again is due to the ignorance of those concerned, not so much in their own, as in their mutual fields. The peril of a clash is aggravated by a more or less predominant sense of combativeness, posed by every human being. To resist this inherent fighting tendency the best way is to dispel ignorance of the doings of others by a systematic spread of general knowledge. With this object in view, it is most important to aid exchange of thought and intercourse. ~ Nikola Tesla

The meaning of the living words that come out of the experiences of great hearts can never be exhausted by any one system of logical interpretation. They have to be endlessly explained by the commentaries of individual lives, and they gain an added mystery in each new revelation. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Words never change. What changes is how one interprets them. ~ Marty Rubin

Appearance gives rise to interpretation Interpretation gives rise to comparison Comparison gives rise to preference Preference gives rise to disappointment ~ Ramon Bachty

Realizing how often ingenious speculation in the complex biological world has led nowhere and how often the real advances in biology as well as in chemistry, physics and astronomy have kept within the bounds of mechanistic interpretation, we geneticists should rejoice, even with our noses on the grindstone (which means both eyes on the objectives), that we have at command an additional means of testing whatever original ideas pop into our heads. ~ Thomas Hunt Morgan

Moreover, the subjective interpretation which sees the myth as a transpersonal psychic event is, in view of the myth's origins in the collective unconscious, much fairer than an attempt to interpret it objectively, ~ Erich Neumann

The beauty of history is that it can be altered by changing ones perspective. If the interpretation varies so does the impact. Free will is the governor. ~ Truth Devour

I had been a religion major, with a focus on scriptural languages, and upon receiving my degree, felt qualified to do
nothing. ~ Peter Manseau

The Broader interpretation that often seems to underlie the new economy label is that we are witnessing a more fundamental change in the paradigm. The old rules no longer apply. Throw out the NAIRU. Heck, throw out supply and demand. No limits, no business cycles. ~ Laurence Meyer

It's not enough to identify the Superobjective intellectually; you have to justify it, to find the emotional drive behind it. You need your own specific interpretation of the superobjective so that every time you think of it, it makes you emotional and drives you into action. ~ Larry Moss