Reading the Pauline Epistles may seem to be nothing difficult, yet when one investigates the nature of the epistles and the world in which they were written, interpretation can become something quite hard. Oftentimes we let our own set of norms, assumptions, and expectations (in short, our own “cultural codes”) influence our reading of these ancient texts. Our 21st-Century, modern or postmodern, Western civilization affects how we read these texts, and we often read material into the text that seems obvious to us but to Paul and to the original audience, what seems so obvious to us isn’t really there at all! Thus when reading and interpreting these ancient texts, we must stick to five hermeneutical principles in interpretation.
First, we must be conscious of the rhetorical situation. The rhetorical definition can be defined, “The complex of events in which one attempting to persuade receives a perceived reality [often a problem] and the one attempting to persuade believes he or she can resolve the perceived reality by inserting a written text into the complex.” Thus a discourse (in our case, the Pauline Epistles) is given to persuade a certain action in regards to a specific situation. When reading these ancient letters, we must ask ourselves, “What is the rhetorical situation? How does Paul attempt to resolve the situation?” The letters we have from Paul are intimately connected to the rhetorical situation, and many letters that we have are only snapshots of a conversation taking place between letter exchanges. So, in a sense, we are “eavesdropping” on Paul’s conversations with churches in the ancient Mediterranean world. The challenge is figuring out the rhetorical situation—the “story behind the letter,” so to speak—so we can interpret the text correctly. A common error in the church is the belief that the New Testament letters are sterile and dormant to us, a collection of doctrinal statements; Paul is often viewed as a theologian, not a missionary meeting social realities of his time within his evolving theology.
The second principle is the acknowledgement that letters are one-sided. Ancient letters are part of an ongoing conversation or story, and the letter-writer assumes that the reader is inside the conversation or story. In order to accurately read and interpret the letters of Paul, one must reconstruct the conversation to the best of his or her ability. As Paul writes his letters to people involved in rhetorical situations, so he does not think—we can assume—that his letters, as a whole, will be read by people outside the rhetorical situation. Thus we, in our modern, Western world, must try to figure out the story in which Paul writes, a story from which we are far disconnected. It looks like this: Paul’s epistles are rooted in the rhetorical situation and are addressed to people in this rhetorical situation; we, however, are greatly disconnected from the situation completely. All we have is an ancient text which we must use to try and piece together the story. This involves trying to figure out the conversation in which Paul is writing his letters.
The third principle is the ancient context. In order to accurately read and interpret the epistles, they must be read in their historical, cultural, and religious context. These are ancient documents and it is not easy to interpret them. Much of Paul’s writings in the New Testament use language, metaphors, similes, and allegories familiar to the people to whom Paul is writing but foreign to us. What the original readers would understand easily comes difficultly for us. An example of this is Rom 5.7, where Paul states: “For a righteous man, no one will die. But for a good person, one might die.” We perceive the righteous man to be better than the good man, so this verse becomes confusing. However, in the ancient Roman world, this made perfect sense: the righteous are those straining to be good, and those who are good are those who have met the goal of righteousness. Another example comes from earlier in the text (and throughout the Pauline epistles): the use of the word “ungodly.” We perceive the “ungodly” to be those who perform heinous actions. The “ungodly,” in the ancient context, are marked not by their actions but by their religious affiliation: the Jews perceived the “ungodly” as those who did not worship YHWH, the Christians perceived the “ungodly” as those who did not worship Christ, and the Romans perceived the “ungodly” as those who worshipped no god. In keeping with this principle, we must keep in mind the “cultural code” in which the letters were written: the norms of the culture, the assumptions of the culture, the expectations of the culture, and the values of the culture must all be taken into account.
The third principle involved the function of the letters. In the ancient Roman world, letters served a certain function. The question that needs to be asked when reading the Pauline epistles is, “What does this letter do?” rather than “What does this letter mean?” Function is an often-ignored aspect of ancient letter-writing. Letter-writers would try to make their letters sublime, transcendent, try to use them to deliver an emotional experience, and so in turn change how one thinks or acts. This is a letter’s primary function: “What influence or result does it have upon those to whom it is addressed?” The power of the words of these ancient letters is found in how it affects the readers. Paul writes his letters to affect his readers in certain ways. In the ancient world, the power of words is in their performance, not their eloquence (though eloquence is appreciated). A letter of great eloquence that persuades no one to action is held in lower regard to a letter of enormous over-simplicity that moves a person to action; function is key. The greatness of words, then, is seen in how they affect those whom they come into contact with. As we interpret Paul, we need to try and figure out what affect Paul is assuming he is making on his readers, and we need to interpret his literature in that light. Two questions need to be asked: “What affect does the author want his or her text to have on people?” and “How does this affect change one’s behavior?” Galatians is an example of function in the Pauline epistles. Galatians, written in a certain rhetorical context, serves the function of achieving certain goals Paul has decided upon; these certain goals fit into the bigger goal of getting the Christians in
The fifth principle is text & theology. The ultimate goal in reading the Pauline texts is the discovery of theology. We use text (written conversation, laden with content and context) to discover theology (one’s understanding of divinity). Theology happens when communities dialogue with the Bible, thus unveiling God. As people dialogue together about the Bible, a theology (whether it is right or even consensual) evolves. Theology evolves as we wrestle with the Bible in our human circumstances; an Ethiopian peasant, a New York C.E.O., and a Midwestern preacher will come to different theologies because of the vast differences between them. Theology is a varied product that oftentimes comes to us processed and manufactured. There are two theological castes (“contextualized theology,” or “What the Bible Says in its Original Culture”; and “dynamic theology”, or “What the Bible Says to us in our Present Culture”). One must first begin with contextualized theology, and then move on to dynamic theology. Classic theologies include biblical theology (dealing with the text in its original setting), systematic theology (taking the results of biblical theology and creating categories of thoughts), and dogmatic theology (taking the results of systematic theology to arrive at a set of doctrines; “This is what the Bible says about _____. Period.”).
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