T. Scott Womble - Bringing the Depths Into Focus: Engaging Difficulties in Biblical Interpretation

Engaging Difficulties in Biblical Interpretation

T. Scott Womble

Foreword by Leonard Sweet

C ulture is a language. Learning to read that language is what is called semiotics. We are perpetually signaling our intentions toward one another and expecting those signals to be picked up, translated, and processed. Growing up is learning to read that signaling. Since % of communication is nonverbal (facial expression, body language, energy flow, etc.) everyone needs semiotic training. Thats why, in a sense, to breathe is to be a semiotician.

Reading The Times is not the same thing as reading The New York Times. It takes more than cable news or The New York Times to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches (Rev :). In fact, in some ways these rolling news feeds and noisy notifications are hindrances more than helps. It takes prayer, study, discipline, silence, praise, and worship to connect the red-skiy to the blue-heaven. A biblical semiotics mandates a pneumatological hermeneutics. The Spirit teaches us how to read the signs. As Scott Womble seamlessly and subtly weaves throughout this book, a Jesus semiotics requires a Spirit hermeneutics.

Jesus answered hermeneutic questions with semiotic stories. For example, when quizzed about how his followers should handle Caesar, especially the payment of taxes, Jesus answered the question with a question. Whats in your pocket? They pulled out a coin. What image is on that coin? Caesars image, they replied. Bingo, Jesus said, or something like that. Give to Caesar whats Caesars and give to God whats Gods. In other words, Caesars image is on his coins, so give Caesar whats his: coinage. Gods image is in you, so give God whats Gods: YOU.

Or take the disciples query to Jesus in Luke : Increase our faith. Jesus, who had a nickname for each of the disciples Rocky, Bonarges (Sons of Thunder), Didymus (My Twin), etc. also has a nickname for them collectively: little faiths. When they ask how they might become big faith disciples, Jesus responds how? No three-point plan or draught of a blueprint. He gives them a semiotic story of a mustard seed: If you had the faith of a mustard seed, you could move a mulberry tree, or move mountains. Increase your trust in God, from little faiths to big faiths, and see the impossible happen.

Or for a showcase case-study of Jesus use of reframing and re-signing, read Luke :. Notice how Jesus story of the Good Samaritan is his response to a lawyer asking a lawyerly question but with Jesus inviting him to look at the same question from another frame to re-sign and recode his question. Our lives change, not when we read different things in the Bible but when we read the same things differently. Jesus didnt reject the past or reject the law, but re-framed re-coded, re-signed our reading of the past and refocused the lens by which we are to read the Scriptures. The same change happened to this lawyer in his exchange with Jesus.

Plants are masters of semiotics. When they are under attack, they immediately start sending signals of help and warning to neighboring foliage and fauna. They secrete hormones that trigger the release of compounds that gird up its immune system, and these hormones are invasion specific, depending on the insect. Not just on Avatar do plants communicate with each other.... They send biochemical messages via the root system, or they deploy symbiotic fungal connections in the soil. They also release chemicals in the air. These signs and signals of the Wood Wide Web are read by the whole forest family.

In the mountain culture where I grew up, they took seriously the signs of nature as described in Genesis :, : And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years... And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

When springtime came you would wait to plant your crops until, in Appalachian phraseology, the signs is right. A planting by the signs is based on the reading of the signs and seasons: plant crops that will produce their fruits above the ground during the waxing moon (the time between a new moon and a full moon, when the moon is getting bigger), while plants that produce their crop below the ground must be planted during a waning moon (the time between a full moon and a new moon, when the moon is shrinking).

You dont get a drivers license without passing a semiotics test: a drivers test is all about reading the signs of the highway. Semiotics requires intense workouts of cerebral muscle, both right and left brain. One of the hardest things for a computer to learn is reading signs, the one piece missing so long in the development of self-driving vehicles.

Scott Wombles book is an indispensable drivers manual for better sign-reading, both as semiotics and hermeneutics. Dont leave home without it.

Leonard Sweet

George Fox University

Drew University

Tabor College Evangelical Seminary