Triperspectival Hermeneutics

Our Triune God is omniperspectival and sees all perspectives simultaneously. This should humble us and cause us to seek other perspectives to gain a richer understanding of His truth since it shows us that we have a very limited view of things. God gave us the Gospels in four perspectives. This was for our benefit just as much as it was for the Jews, Romans, Greeks, and all other Gentiles. He could have given us only one perspective and yet we are richly blessed to view the life and work of Christ through different lenses. Why? Because we learn more about Him through these perspectives, but this is tangential.

Prophet Perspective:

If we tend towards a prophet perspective, meaning that we are normatively and theologically inclined, we will often look at the text with a grid of systematic theology. This means that we read a passage of Scripture and almost instinctively think of the passage under its neatly categorized theological heading. We see the text as support for the bigger theological topics in an almost apologetic way.

We may use words like “I think x,” or “I know x.” This perspective is primarily cognitive. Its strengths are often the ability to untie complex theological knots. A prophet is more concerned with ensuring the soundness of what they are saying as the primary concern. Someone who reads the text almost exclusively in a normative way will be more concerned with whether or not something is true rather than how it makes others feel or whether or if it is practical and applicable. If you know anything about multiperspectivalism you realize that this can lead to a good and necessary perspective taken too far without proper concern for the other perspectives.

The besetting sin of the prophet is usually arrogance, intellectualism, poor listening skills, and an overbearing demeanor. Prophets often slip into “fix” mode before listening and usually assume their position is correct and often offend the people to whom they’re speaking. A normatively driven person may hear from his wife “what you said was right, it was biblical, but the way you said it was rude.” For the normatively driven prophet, they may find themselves feeling misunderstood intellectually as well as socially.

Prophets are usually bulldogs who drop bombs on a forest to clear it but aren’t very good and setting up the buildings or caring for people unless they grow in their kingly and priestly roles.

Priest Perspective:

If we tend towards a priestly perspective, meaning that we are more often emotionally in touch and engaged, we may come to the text to see how this affects my heart, my emotions. We look at the text to “sense” what is happening within it. We may say things like “this is how it makes me feel,” or “I know it’s right intuitively, I just can’t explain it.”

The strengths of the existentially oriented priest is found in his or her ability to empathize with others and feel the significance of some Scriptural truth. A priest is often more openly worshipful and desires to express his or her love for God passionately. A priest is someone who can minister the presence of Christ to others when they are broken and hurting. They are usually great listeners and enjoy hearing others stories.

Priests will usually come to the Scriptures looking for the “feeling” of the text. They are more concerned with how the text makes them and others feel.

The besetting sin of the priest is usually cowardice, emotionalism, and an unhealthy concern with how others feel about them. Priest may not want to preach the depth of the text because they assume someone may be hurt or bothered by it. A hyper existential perspective can lead to a dismissal of the study of God’s word with little or no care for how it is worked out in the life of the church or world. They can be driven by their emotions so much so that they feel tossed about by their current feelings rather than what is true or applicable. Priests may find themselves not speaking to a friend about something that is important for fear of their response. Priests may also feel trampled on emotionally by prophets or manipulated by kings.

Priests are usually very compassionate but can’t plan their way out of a paper bag unless they develop their kingly skills. Preist also will allow poor doctrine to go unchecked unless they grow in their prophet perspective.

King Perspective:

If we tend more towards kingly perspective, meaning that we are situationally oriented, we may come to the text with a concern for how this text applies to real life. How it is worked out practically. We look at the text to “see” what it looks like. The strength of the king is found in the ability to apply a truth to real life situations. A king will often come to the text and instinctively understand how it should look. A king may prefer discussion oriented learning rather that book learning. A king needs to get his hands on the idea and grapple with it in conversation. Kings are great at organizing structures and systems to work out the vision of the text. Kings are very creative when thinking through how to build bridges missionally to others as a church/corporation.

The besetting sins of a king is usually pragmatism, manipulation, and control. Needless to say, each of the besetting sins of the various perspectives may be similar but they are more common with these perspectives. A king may find him or herself worrying when systems are not working efficiently. Kings may come to the text and quickly figure out a 3 step sermon on a “how to” message before connecting the lines to the gospel. A king may also make priests feel like they are being overlooked and overwhelmed with great ideas and tips without their heart being changed first.

Kings may too quickly move to our current situation and context without first discovering the context in which the Scriptures were written. This is why you’ll find kings applying to schools that have little or no biblical theology, but dozens of classes on how to do this or that in ministry. Kings may tend towards reading the latest fads in church leadership or structures without first consulting scripture to see if it is in fact true. Instead of asking “is it true?” or “how does this make me feel?” a king will ask “does this work?”

Kings often put the cart before the horse. They may frustrate prophets by not asking deeper theological questions. They may frustrate priests because they may use people to work the system unless they grow in their other perspectives.

From this discussion I pray that we see the necessity of each perspective when coming to the text as well as our tendency to lift one perspective over or against the others. C.S. Lewis said “Any truth taken too far is error.” I believe when we diminish the need of these other perspectives we are not only missing out on the riches of the text, we are keeping from God’s people what they need. Does our desire for contextualization motivate us enough to contextualize to the perspectives of those in our church?

Each of these perspectives must be seen as interdependent. To know Gods word truly is to know ourselves truly and the world in which He’s created. For someone to attempt theology in abstraction without taking into consideration our individual bias to interpret theology will lead to danger and often heresy because we’re not able to distinguish our own presuppositions which each of us bring when studying. To learn of ourselves existentially without learning of God through His word will lead us to a distortion of ourselves because we’ll never know the One who made us. To attempt sociological or anthropological study without considering the individual or God who made each society will only lead to bare observations without meaning and ultimate interpretation of the situation each culture and world is in. To know one truly means we will know the others truly, though not exhaustively. When I learn more of the Holy Spirit I learn more of Jesus and of the Father. When I learn more of the Son I learn more of the Father and the Spirit, etc. To learn the fullness of the word, the world, and ourselves even though we’re finite means we can not absolutize our single perspective. We are dependent upon these other perspectives in order to grow in our very own.

As we look at our failure as prophets, priests, and kings there is a tendency to throw our hands up and say “this is just the way I think/see/feel, ” and move on. We must realize that we are prophets, priests, and kings by virtue of our design and calling. Time and space restricts me from giving a lengthy explanation on this issue, but Christ’s success as the perfect Prophet, Priest, and King is what the Old Testament prophets, preists, and kings were foreshadowing. The Gospel (Christ’s success) is my only hope to pull me out of my failure. His success is what we lean on as we courageously and humbly move towards comformity to the image of the Son. When I fail as a preist and do not minister the gospel to the broken in a sacrificial way, I can look to Christ and say “but He was the perfect priest who didn’t fail and is currently interceding on my behalf as my great High Priest right now!” This helps me to try, and even fail, with gratitude as I know I can never ultimately fail since my success is guaranteed in Christ’s success.

Lastly, I want to mention that as we look at the Gospel large (what God is doing with the whole world and history) it’s important that we see that kingdom, mission, and personal renewal must be on the forefront of our minds as we are asking the text questions. If we don’t see how it connects, we need to back up and think through the lens that may be biasing us at the moment. This will hopefully help each of us see more clearly what God has done, is doing, and promises to do and how this affects us, our congregation, and the world He created.

A good exercise for TP hermeneutics would be to read Acts 6:1-15 and highlight what you most naturally pick out of the text. Since I’m a prophet I picked up on the importance of the word going out and continuing as well as its early ecclesiology. When you reread the text through a TP lens try to pick out each of the three perspectives and think through what this would look like in your church if all three were working simultaneously.

Sorry for jumping around on this post but putting down chicken scratch helps me to get this out and see it myself.

Hope it is profitable in some way.