Lecture 5: One Meaning, Rightly Checked: The Analogy of Faith, Five Smooth Stones, and the Languages

The lecture, section by section

1. The analogy of the faith

   Better named the harmony or consistency of the faith: two passages teaching different things still fit without contradiction inside Scripture's total pattern, because God does not contradict himself and his book is without error. This differs from cross-reference, where two passages address the same subject, as 1 Corinthians 15 and John 5 both address bodily resurrection with different degrees of detail.

2. Paul and James on works

   Romans 4 insists justification is by faith, not works; James insists works are necessary. No contradiction: Paul excludes works of merit, works of earning, for Christ has earned salvation; James demands works of manifestation, fruit that does not earn salvation but expresses it, does not deserve it but displays it. Like two differently shaped pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, each fits its own place, and the finished picture matches the box.

3. One meaning in every passage

   Against the allegorical schools, which stacked up multiple meanings with no organic unity between them, such as reading the four literal rivers of Eden as virtues, any given passage has one meaning. The interpreter who supplies extra spiritual senses is declaring the Bible insufficient and offering to do God one better.

4. Hosea's son: levels of one meaning, not two meanings

   Out of Egypt I called my son names corporate Israel in the exodus, and Matthew, by the Spirit, applies the same words to the boy Jesus brought out of Egypt. Rosscup draws it as a circle within a circle: the broad circle of Israel's sonship, and at its heart the smaller circle, the individual, ideal Son. The same pattern holds for the vine, Israel the failed vineyard of Isaiah 5 and Christ the true vine of John 15, and for the seed of Abraham gathered into the one seed, Christ, in Galatians 3. These are aspects of one meaning, not the allegorist's unrelated second sense.

5. Five smooth stones, taken literally

   Preachers assign David's five stones to Goliath's brothers or to virtues like truth and purity. The context answers: every other number in 1 Samuel 17 is plainly literal, six cubits and a span, five hundred shekels of armor, eight sons, forty days, ten cheeses; the place names and armies are literal; the remaining four stones are simply never used, spare ammunition like a gunfighter's cartridges; Goliath's challenge was for one man, with no brothers in view; and David could gather more stones any time. If the natural sense makes sense, seek no other sense.

6. The literal sense is spiritual enough

   The felt need to juice up the passage insults the sufficiency of Scripture. Taken literally, the account already carries its power: God trained a boy against the lion and the bear so that when the giant came he was ready, and a young man's confidence in the sufficiency of his God became a testimony to all Israel. Rightly perceived, the literal meaning is as devotional as they come.

7. Grace toward those who allegorize

   Asked how to answer friends who call their allegorical spins the deep things of God, Rosscup answers: those are usually the deep things of the interpreter's imagination, often held in complete sincerity, like Wrong Way Riegels running hard in the wrong direction. But seminary training is a privilege to guard with humility, never a club; protect fellowship, wait and pray for openness, and never paint a brother into a corner he can only fight his way out of.

8. Interpret each passage in its own day

   A student asks whether the Jewish reader of Hosea could have seen Christ there. No: interpret each passage as far as historical and grammatical principles allow within its own time, where the corporate reading was the honest one. God, who knows the end from the beginning, always intended the fuller sense he would later reveal, and when Matthew 2 or John 15 arrives, we exegete Christ there and say: now I understand what the Spirit knew all along. Even the Emmaus disciples did not have it figured out in advance.

9. Historical appropriateness

   Seek the view that fits its historical situation like a hand in a glove. Augustine read the sun of Psalm 19 as Christ rising from the virgin's womb, but the psalm's own sequence, heavens, firmament, sun, is a chain of natural things no reader of the psalmist's day could have taken otherwise; the reading drags later revelation centuries backward. Peter says the prophets themselves searched what the Spirit in them signified. If the historically appropriate meaning makes sense, seek no other sense.

10. Rahab's cord and the Sangre de Cristo

    Preachers announce that Rahab's scarlet cord is the blood of Christ, as if the spies saw the atonement hanging from a Jericho wall. More honestly: red is a loud color a distant army can see, and perhaps its shade suited the bloodshed about to fall on the city. Rosscup tells of the Spanish priest who named Colorado's mountains the Sangre de Cristo at the sight of red snow at sunset: a lovely association, but association is not exegesis, and integrity refuses to read things in promiscuously.

11. The checking principle

    Check every claim against the resources that can test it: a Greek lexicon for what filled can mean, Bible geography for the river outside Philippi and the roads Elijah walked, history for whether there was a Belshazzar, a question critics used against Daniel until the discoveries answered them. Like the Western novelist whose researched details made readers trust him, the preacher who checks his facts builds credibility over years, not for ego but for the people's confidence in the word.

12. The priority of the original languages

    Scripture came in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, and the seminarian who works at the languages will serve from firsthand knowledge for life. Rosscup pleads for scholarship and spirituality blended, neither all brains without Christ at the heart nor zeal without knowledge, and warns against the escape hatch of just getting through: God brought you hundreds of miles for this privilege.

13. What the languages unlock

    Three gifts. Idioms: three days and three nights follows the rabbinic reckoning in which part of a day counts as the whole, which is why the church's historic Friday crucifixion stands without forcing seventy two Western hours into the phrase. The time element: the tense of be filled tells whether the filling is a point or a continuing reality. And distinctions between words, comparing the terms for filling and fullness across their contexts. The languages are the gold fields of the Colorado rush, and they open the deep commentaries, Cranfield, Marshall, and the rest, that otherwise sit unread on the shelf.

1. Works of merit versus works of manifestation: how would you use that one distinction to help someone who fears Paul and James contradict each other, or who quietly trusts his own goodness?

2. The literal sense of David and Goliath is spiritual enough. Where have you heard, or preferred, a juiced-up reading of a passage whose plain meaning was already the sermon?

3. Rosscup urges graciousness toward sincere friends who allegorize: guard the privilege of training with humility and wait for openness. What does that patience look like in your own conversations about the Bible?