I have observed a dual pair of critical impulses in my thinking when I am bothered by someone else’s interpretation of a passage of Scripture. On the one hand, I may question whether their interpretation can be derived from the immediate Scriptural context in the way that they have suggested. But then on the other hand, I may then question whether their interpretation is consistent with the testimony of Scripture as a whole.

Now obviously, both of these are valid and legitimate questions, which always ought to be asked about any interpretation. But it is significant to note that while anyone can easily make either of these two hermeneutical errors, logically they mutually exclusive. In other words, if you are paying very careful attention to the immediate context of a passage and making the mistake of not heeding its significance within its larger canonical context, it is impossible to simultaneously make the mistake of reading that same interpretation into the passage by not paying careful enough attention to the immediate context. It is of course possible that you could come to one mistaken conclusion that is based upon the first error, and then immediately come to a second mistaken conclusion based upon the second error, but this does not seem very likely. Most of the time we tend toward a pattern of one extreme or the other, either reading too much into a text, or blinkering ourselves to the interpretive significance of the larger context.

But what I find disturbing is the fact that when I encounter a bothersome interpretation of a text, I am often suspicious of both errors. I may first say, “I don’t see how he’s getting that out of this text!” And when he shows me how it is a legitimate interpretation within the context, I may then think, “Well, he’s probably just not paying enough attention to the larger context of this passage (or chapter, or book, or Scripture as a whole, etc…)”.

While it makes sense to be alert for either of two of the most common hermeneutical errors, the fact that I suspect these two mutually exclusive errors, one on the heels of the other, suggests that another motive is at work in me. It suggests that I have the tendency to challenge and discount any interpretation that makes me uncomfortable, for whatever reason that might be. I might be able to come up with a seemingly valid critique of the person’s hermeneutical method, but the fact is, I was looking for a reason to discount their interpretation because its implications were bothersome to me.  This is not a healthy tendency, and it is good to be wary of it whenever I evaluate another’s interpretation of Scripture. The goal of exegeting Scripture should always be to better understand and come to grips with what it is really saying, not being comfortable with what we think says.