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If you go to 1689 Federalism and scroll down to where it says "1689 Federalifm vs Difpenfationalifm" I think the differences are very well explained.

 

The historical grammatical (or grammatical-historical) method is the traditional evangelical method of hermeneutics. The historical part means we must look at the passage in its historical milieu, and the grammatical part means that we must interpret in the light of the grammar and semantics of the original language. A recent helpful development by some excellent authors is applying modern linguistics to the grammatical part, in particular the abandonment of etymology and the embracing of contemporary usage to determine meaning.

 

Yep, you gotta turn the TV off and go to YouTube for theology.

 

No, every preacher should be a theologian, but I have heard many, many who didn't know their theology.

 

I'm a little confused. Wouldn't applying modern linguistics to the grammar take away from how the original audience would have understood it?

 

Ask yourself, does language use words in a way removed from their original, etymological origins?

 

Not at all. Don't be fooled by the term "modern linguistics." This is simply referring to the science of linguistics as it developed in the second half of the 20th century. In this discussion, the point is that up until the middle of the 20th century, linguists tended to do semantics ("the study of meaning") based on historical linguistics, or etymology--how a word developed in history, rather than the usage at the time of the document. Illustration: read the word "gay" in 1950, and the meaning is quite different from the same word in 2019.

The goal in semantics of a modern linguist studying an ancient text is to find out how a specific word or term was used at the time of the author. Therefore, my son's Ph.D. dissertation looked at many 1st century usages of the Greek words prognosis/proginosko (to know before), including some never before translated, and concluded that predetermination was not part of the meaning in the 1st century.

 

Well, we are obviously using the term "theologian" in very different ways. My definition would be someone who actually teaches or specializes in the subject. If everyone is a theologian, then everyone is a linguist (because we all know at least one language), and everyone is a cook (I've cooked, but you don't want to eat it), and everyone is a counselor (because we've all given advice).

 

Thanks. I'm just a poor boy from Arkansas who is still learning .

 

Thank you, Brother. That explanation and illustration have cleared it up for me. This method does describe the way I attempt to understand the Bible.

 

It depends on the degree and what they are doing with it. If it's just a B.A. but they are teaching a high school theology class, sure. But I know a man with a Th.D. who spends all his time on the KJV-only issue--but he does pastor. I don't consider him to be a theologian. He's not using his training.

 

I can live with that if you can.

Just yesterday I was talking with my Ph.D. (NT) son about an OT scholar named Mike Heiser who's written some crazy stuff, and my son said, "He's not a theologian. He needs to run that stuff by a theologian." In my world (Bible faculty academia) we look at a theologian as a specialist in theology. My son knows more theology than I do (especially on the New Perspective), but doesn't call himself a theologian, though the Pres calls him one. But I'm the one who teaches theology, though I don't have a Ph.D. Strange world.

 

Really! Fun, eh?

Well that's a coincidence. He's gathered some disciples, apparently. Chris Putnam and Thomas Horn who follow him wrote a supposed non-fiction (kind of) book, Exo-Vaticana, which is weird enough that when someone gave some books to our college and that was one, my son and I (tasked with going through them) immediately rejected it. And my brother-in-law gave me the novel Noah Primeval by Brian Godawa, a screen writer. there are some essays at the end I'm trying to work through. Overactive imaginations!

 

Yeah, I saw that. My son writes for Logos on the Petrine epistles. (Proud papa.)