I once had a discussion with a traditionalist over the meaning of a few key scripture passages. One thing that kept coming up was how my interpretations didn\u2019t take the key phrase in the main verse at \u201cface value.\u201d I argued that the context of the verse made it clear what was meant, but this was not satisfactory for the one I was discussing the passage with. They explained to me how in each case I wasn\u2019t allowing the plain meaning of a phrase to interpret the whole verse (and, by extension, other verses that are interpreted in light of it).<\/p>\n
So what of the \u201cface value\u201d meaning of scripture? How important is it that our interpretations are consistent with what the scripture seems to plainly and literally say? Like most things there is a measure of tension here and a balance needs to be maintained. Cultists have been known to run with the idea that not all passages are meant to be taken at face value and have therefore ignored what scripture does clearly teach on core doctrines. But is the right response to insist that we must always take everything plainly and at \u201cface value?\u201d<\/p>\n
\nNumerous good reasons can be given for why things aren\u2019t always to be taken at face value. For one, we don\u2019t take everything at face value in our everyday lives. We have idioms and hyperbole. We make veiled allusions to things in literature and politics and so on. In the case of scriptures there is all of the above plus the fact that it was written primarily to an audience in a totally different time and place with their own idioms and language and customs and history, as well as quotations from and allusions to Old Testament passages in the New Testament scriptures. Even if God did always reveal things in plain, simple language (and he didn\u2019t), what we interpret as the \u201cface value\u201d meaning of a passage may not be the meaning the original audience could have taken at face value. Other authors and bloggers have developed this point quite well.1<\/sup><\/a>D.A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies<\/em> (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1996) 103-105<\/span><\/span>