Because God designed human language and used it to reveal the Scriptures, it follows that the conventions of human language should be employed to receive the meaning of the communication in the Bible. Of course, because God is the Author, the Bible is without error, which sets it apart from other literature, but the means of communication is still human language, and so the LGH remains appropriate. This is a basic way of explaining what the LGH is and how it works.

A challenge against the LGH method occurs when readers assume a culturally-driven hermeneutical method. Such methods allow the reader in his culture to contribute meaning to that which God has said. Khiangte Lallawmzuala is an ordained minister in the Mizoram Synod of the Presbyterian Church of India, and he has written an article, “Reading Amos 6.1-7 in the Light of Mizo Values and Ethos,”[1] in which he seeks a distinctively Mizo interpretation of the Bible. He writes, “The meaning is never embedded in the text; rather it is the result of the interaction between the reader and the text.  In doing Mizo hermeneutics, we are not com- mitted to a value-free and impartial objective understanding of the text; rather we should take seriously the socio-economic, political, religious, and cultural background of the ‘flesh-and-blood readers’.”[2] Notice that he rejects the objective meaning of the Author and allows the reader to create a new meaning based on his culture. Of course, cultural interpreters do not necessarily allow every culture to contribute helpful meaning; for example, Lisa Isherwood and Hugo  Córdova Quero use the Bible to say that “white-ness is a curse as it signals leprosy and other  life-threatening diseases.”[3]  Granted, some White readings are truly horrific, as seen, for example, in Aleksandr Dugin, who has proposed that the Bible borrowed from Nordic Pagan myths, so that the Eastern Orthodoxy of the extreme north (i.e., Russia) has a superior culture,[4]  but this and other dangers from White readings are falling  into the same pit of culturally-driven hermeneutics.

Should Culture Drive Interpretation?

The question of whether we should adhere to an exclusively LGH reading of Scripture or if we should read through cultural lenses boils down to a matter of meta-hermeneutics. The field of hermeneutics is the study of interpretive methodology, and meta-hermeneutics is the reasoning behind hermeneutics. In other words, hermeneutics deals with the meaning of a text, and meta-hermeneutics deals with meaning itself. What then is the nature of meaning? This question has puzzled philosophers for ages, but the debate may be simplified into three basic schools of thought. Some adhere to author-centered hermeneutics, which holds that meaning derives from the author of a text; others adhere to read- er-centered hermeneutics, which holds that meaning derives from the reader; still others combine elements of both into a subject-centered approach.[5] Culturally-driven hermeneutics tends toward a combination approach, allowing the reader to introduce elements into the text that would not have been evident to the author, thereby opening new horizons of meaning. For LGH, the author-centered approach is preferred. Whenever speakers and authors communicate, they determine the meaning of the communication.  An interpreter can come to different meanings from what the communicator intended, but these are precisely the meanings that are to be avoided.

Perhaps an illustration would be helpful.[6] Aiden has an idea, so he jots it down on a sheet of paper. A few years later, Emma stumbles upon the paper and reads it. For the author-centrists, the text on that sheet of paper remains a record of Aiden’s idea. The correct interpretation remains the one that Aiden intended, so if Emma reads it and walks away with a different idea, then she has gotten a faulty interpretation. For the reader-centrist, that sheet of paper became autonomous from Aiden’s idea the moment he lifted his pen from the page. In that view, when Emma reads the text, she is free to allow the words to impact her in her own special way, so whatever interpretation she comes to is an equally valid meaning as the one that Aiden intended. Another view would be subject-centered hermeneutics, which would say that proper meaning fuses the horizons of Aiden’s intentions with Emma’s understanding so that Emma enriches Aiden’s idea.

Again, the correct answer is that meaning is driven by the author who creates the text. In the case of Aiden and Emma, it is possible that Aiden’s idea was faulty and that Emma had some improvements to Aiden’s ideas; however, since the text in question contains Aiden’s faulty idea, the proper interpretation of that text is the faulty idea that Aiden wrote, not the better idea that Emma conceived. One of the reasons that it is attractive to allow Emma’s contributions to influence interpretation is because Aiden is capable of error. Reader-influenced hermeneutical approaches to the Bible often presuppose a low view of the Scriptures, which assumes the Bible has shortcomings that the interpreter should correct. When dealing with the Bible, the Author is God Himself, so the text is without error, and the notion that the reader can improve the meaning does not align with a proper view of God.

A common justification for reader- and subject-centralities is the reader’s cultural context: Aiden wrote in his context, but Emma read the paper years later in a different context than Aiden. The Bible is often deemed to have its context in antiquity that falls short of modern man’s problems, so critics say that the Bible must be contextualized to be relevant for the modern reader. Those who make this accusation would be wise to consider the words that Solomon wrote thousands of years ago and that still ring true today: “That which has been is that which will be, And that which has been done is that which will be done. So, there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecc 1:9). In reality, the historical context that really matters when reading a text is the author’s historical context, hence the term, literal-grammatical-historical hermeneutics. The reader must remove any cultural biases that he is bringing to the text and instead seek the meaning expressed by the original author in his original context.

Does Culture Have a Place in Bible Study?

God has a mission for the church to reach the world across many cultures, so teaching the Bible requires a particular cultural sensitivity. Even if a pastor stays in his hometown for his entire life, his own culture will likely change (for example, perhaps some Voice readers can remember a time when “text” was only a noun, or when 6 and 7 were only numbers). How, then, should we proceed with culturally-influenced ministry while avoiding culturally-influenced interpretation? Two points that may be helpful are, first, to remember the distinction between hermeneutics and homiletics, and second, to view cross-cultural inter- action as an opportunity to remove rather than add cultural biases.

First is the distinction between hermeneutics and homiletics. A relevant meta-hermeneutical concept within LGH is the principle of single meaning and multiple applications. The meaning is what the author expressed in the text, and the applications are the ways in which someone may behave in accordance with the meaning of the text. In terms of homiletics, a teacher may use cultural references in preaching as sermon illustrations without necessarily compromising the original meaning of the biblical text. In America, there is a niche sport called baseball that is largely unknown in most of the civilized world, but has localized popularity for some reason (apparently, it is akin to cricket, but the batsmen run in a diamond shape rather than to and fro). In America, it may be helpful to draw a baseball analogy for a sermon illustration, whereas in other countries, it may be helpful to use a cricket analogy. The Bible is relevant to both cricket and baseball fans, even though both sports were developed centuries after the Bible was written.

Second, cultural differences actually may be helpful in removing cultural influences on interpretation. A few years ago, a friend in Ukraine asked me for my thoughts on the potential for Ukrainian theology. He pointed out that there appeared to be a distinctly British Anglican theology, a distinctly Dutch Reformed theology, and several American teachers in Ukraine who dis- agree with both British and Dutch theologies. How, then, should Ukraine develop its own theology, especially in light of the influence of foreign missionaries? This query is somewhat misled because we should all seek the single original meaning intended by the biblical authors. Perhaps culture is among the reasons for the differences among British, Dutch, and American theology; if so, Ukrainian culture may be able to help Ukrainians identify which cultural bias is driving a faulty interpretation.  Language is probably the easiest cultural difference to identify biases. For example, whenever a Ukrainian speaker tells me that Ephesians 2:8 teaches that faith is a gift, I always ask which American told him that. Whether faith is a gift is a complex topic, and while there are compelling reasons to say that God gives faith as a gift, Ephesians 2:8 is not among them. In English, we have the vague relative pronoun “that” in “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.” In English, “that” could refer to “faith,” but this is not the case in Ukrainian, which, like Greek, has a feminine noun for “faith” and a neuter pronoun for “that.”[7] Simply by reading the Bible in a language that has a gendered case system, Ukrainians are able to spot problems that other cultures read into the Bible at points and are able to de-culturalize the Bible and get closer to the original meaning. This is how Ukrainian theology should look. Truly culturally-informed hermeneutics would seek the cultural influences that have been pushed onto the Bible in hopes of shedding those biases and seeking instead the  original meaning in the original culture.

Conclusion

Cultural hermeneuticists and literal grammatical historicists can agree on at least one point: culturally-driven interpretations are not to be found in the Bible itself. As Dispensationalists, we hold to the consistent application of literal-grammatical-historical hermeneutics to find the single original meaning that the author intended.  Let us continue in this pursuit, remembering that our own cultures are not to be imposed on the text but may serve to identify false assumptions that may already be in place.

ENDNOTES

[1] Khiangte Lallawmzuala, “Reading Amos 6:1–7 in the Light of Mizo Values and Ethos,” in Encountering Diversity in Indian Biblical Studies, ed. David J. Chalcraft and Zhodi Angami (London: Routledge, 2023), 244-262.

[2] Khiangte Lallawmzuala, “Reading Amos 6:1– 7,” 245.

[3] Lisa Isherwood and Hugo Córdova Quero, “Barefoot at the Margins,” afterword to The Indecent Theologies of Marcella Althaus-Reid: Voices from Asia and Latin America, ed. Lisa Isherwood and Hugo Córdova Quero (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2021), 184.

[4] He builds this case by borrowing from the pseudo-historian Herman Wirth, who helped Heinrich Himmler found the Ahnenerbe to propagate false racial theories that were convenient for the National Socialist cause. Александр Дугин, Знаки Великого Норда: гиперборейская теория [Signs of the Great Nord: The Hyperborean Theory] (Москва: Вече, 2008).

[5] Three of the big names from the 20th century on this topic are E.D. Hirsch for author-centered hermeneutics, Hans-Georg Gadamer for subject-centered hermeneutics, and Paul Ricoeur for reader-centered hermeneutics. E.D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967); Hans- Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode [Truth and Method] (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1960); Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

[6] This section summarizes material developed at greater length in Paul Miles and Michael J. Stallard, Prolegomena and Bibliology, vol. 1 of Systematic Theology (Hurst, TX: Tyndale Theological Seminary Press, 2026). (This systematic theology volume, written by this article’s author and Michael Stallard, was unpublished at the time this article was writ- ten; hence, some details may have changed with the volume’s publication.)

[7] In Greek, τῇ γὰρ χάριτί ἐστε σεσῳσμένοι διὰ πίστεως· καὶ τοῦτο οὐκ ἐξ ὑμῶν, Θεοῦ τὸ δῶρον· and in Ukrainian, Бо спасені ви благодаттю через віру, а це не від вас, то дар Божий.