- [Don Carson] When somebody says, "That's just your interpretation," the
first thing you've got to do is ask yourself, "Where is this coming from?
Where is this objection coming from?" It might, conceivably, be a serious desire
to engage about post-modern epistemology and talk about whether that's possible
to know anything and under what conditions can one know anything.
Even if one cannot know anything exhaustively with the perfect omniscience
of God, surely, one can know some things truly up to the level of human capacity
and so on. It could be an invitation to a serious conversation of that sort.
On the other hand, sometimes, it's merely a flip switch. It's merely saying,
"I don't want to talk about this," or "I think you're just too narrow," or
"I'm going to show that you don't have any ground to stand upon."
It's not a serious request for engagement on the subject at all, in which case
if you try to get too heavy in your response, you just turn people off.
So if somebody says that, and it's not much more than a desire to dismiss you
from the field, I might say, if they say, "Surely, that's just your interpretation."
I might say, "Oh, well, is it your interpretation that
interpretations are always subjective? Isn't your interpretation
of interpretations therefore subjective?" And that's a purely ad hominem argument.
It's not really all that serious, but I've yet to see somebody answer
it seriously. It shows the folly of the approach that tries to dismiss people
with a one-liner. Beyond that, I think that there are some useful things
to say, provided you're dealing with somebody who is serious.
You can show that in just about every domain of life, we can know some things
in measure. If you want to begin to study nuclear physics or you want to begin
to study classical Greek or microbiology or carpentry... Now, there are some things
that you you come to know with time. You might know very little at the
beginning of the course or at the beginning of the trade craft,
but after 6 months or a year or 2 years or 10 years or an apprenticeship,
you know a great deal more. You've also come to know all the kinds
of things you don't know yet. A great deal of learning consists
in finding whole vistas where you don't know much. But as part of getting there,
you learn many things about some things, and some things about many things,
and that is simply part of human experience. All you have to do is point
out that there was a time when you couldn't read, and now, you can read.
Maybe, there was a time when you could read English, but you couldn't read much
French. And then you learn the language, and so you could read a lot more French.
So it is possible to know more things, and likewise in the domain
of interpretation. There are tricky bits where experts will disagree about what's
being said, but if we read John 3:16, "God so loved the world,"
then surely, it's possible to know, if you take the text seriously,
that God loved the world. Now, you might want to define that more
by asking, "What does John mean by world, and are there different ways in which the
Bible speaks of God's love?" And you can ask all kinds
of refining questions, but surely, it's not a purely subjective
interpretation that says, "This text means that God loved
the world." It doesn't mean that God wears nightshirts, or it doesn't mean that God
is angry with people all the time. It doesn't mean that God created
everything in the beginning. It doesn't mean any of those.
It means that God loved the world. That's something that is a valid
interpretation of John 3:16. So when somebody says, "That's just your
interpretation," then if you have that kind of reasoning in the back
of your mind, you may be able to engage the party in serious discussion.
You might be able to say, "Oh? what's your interpretation?"
And if they commit themselves, say, "Well, what does the text say?
Let's look at some passages together," and then you're getting them into the text
and context of the Bible itself. "Well, I think the text means such and such.
"Well, what about this expression? Is that what is meant?
Is this what Samuel means?" Or whoever it is that you're quoting.
So if it's not just a flip question that is designed to shut you down,
it is sometimes possible to get the party to engage in serious discussion
regarding the text itself. And even if you get them to the place
where they say, "Well, okay. I see that that's what the interpretation
of the text is. It's just that I don't like it. I just don't agree with it."
And I would reply, "Well, that's a different argument.
If you disagree with it, you're still agreeing that this
interpretation is correct, even if you don't like the entailments or
the conclusion or you don't like what the text is actually saying.
But that is a faithful interpretation of the text, in which case you're not arguing
with me. You're arguing with the one who gave us the text, with God himself."