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Reading In and Out

 No meaning may be read into or imposed on Scripture that cannot with certainty be read out of Scripture—shown, that is, to be unambiguously expressed by one or more of the human authors.

I like this sentence because I think it has a nice ring to it, but I'm not sure I know exactly what he means. I'm sure he's giving a nod to the more theologically sophisticated terms of "exegesis" vs "eisegesis." But, to be honest, using Greek terms doesn't make me any more confident of the precise distinctions between the concepts.

In practical use, the terms usually seem like a club—"My thoughts are exegetical, which means they are consistent with what the author meant. Your thoughts are eisegetitcal, they are simply what you wish the author was saying." Perhaps, but that usually just comes across to me like, "hey I am using a big word so you out to accept my interpretation over your own."

I guess I find it even more confusing in this chapter because up to this point he's focused a lot on application. Application isn't really supposed to be exegetical. It should be the application of our exegesis to some setting, presumably our own lives, in a way that the original author could have had no idea of at the time.

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