Thursday, May 4, 2017

I don't know what the Bible says, but I believe....

Psalm 119, verse 24 - Your testimonies are my delight; they are my counselors

AELW 11:431-433

"24. For Thy testimonies are my meditation, and Thy statutes my counsel. This is again directed against those who hold their own opinion, for neither their counsel nor their meditation is the law of Christ, but their counsel is the invention and thought of their own head, after they have disregarded the study of Scripture...

Yes, it is as if Scripture ought to say to them: “Your meditation is My testimonies,” when it ought to be the other way around; our reason should be taken captive, and the testimonies of God should be our meditation...

Those people, on the contrary, want the commandments of God to be meditated and considered in their own commandments, yes, they want the meditations of men and their own teachings to be the commandments of God...

They do not consider the ways of God, but the ways of God should leave themselves behind and consider the ways of those people, that is, the ways of God should become what those people are thinking. Thus they do not meditate on the statutes of God, but they want the statutes of God to meditate on theirs, that is, become their meditations. All of this is that they impose their meaning on Scripture and do not permit its sense to be imposed on them...(See Note below)

But with them, on the contrary, it is “Your statutes,” “their counsel,” that is, “whatever they themselves have decided, this these exceedingly vain men want Your statutes to be...

So likewise do all the proud when they impose their own meaning on the Scriptures and want them to bear witness to what pleases them, not what they themselves in truth testify."

Note - The reference may be to De Trinitate, II, 3, where Hilary says: “Many have given to the plain words of Holy Writ some arbitrary interpretation of their own … Heresy lies in the sense assigned, not in the word written; the guilt is that of the expositor, not of the text.”

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