Lesson 1: Authorial Intent & The Danger of Biblical Malpractice

Lesson one in our equipping series on how to read the Bible. This series was adapted from several resources (See works cited at the bottom), and Gemini AI was used to help organize and populate points from those resources, but we heavily edited and adapted them for our context.

Imagine for a moment that you have been battling a mysterious and debilitating illness for months. You finally secure an appointment with the world’s leading specialist. After days of testing, he hands you a sealed envelope containing his diagnosis and a life-saving prescription. You rush home, sit at your kitchen table, and tear open the letter.

But instead of reading the words to understand what the doctor thinks, you decide to try a new method. You glance at the word "Tumor," and you think, "You know, this word makes me feel like I need to cut toxic people out of my life. That’s what a tumor represents to me." 

You look at the prescription for a specific chemotherapy drug, and you say, "This drug name sounds harsh. I feel like the doctor is actually telling me to eat more sweet tarts. They make me feel better, just like a cure would."

You close the letter, satisfied with your "interpretation," and proceed to eat candy while your disease consumes you.

This scenario sounds like insanity.  In the medical world, we would call this malpractice on the part of the patient—a willful refusal to listen to the intent of the authority. When the stakes are life and death, we do not ask, "What do I feel like these words mean?" We ask with trembling precision, "What did the doctor intend to communicate?"

If we treat a human doctor’s words with that much respect, how much more should we tremble before God’s words? 

We live in an era where we sit in circles, open the Bible, read a verse, and immediately ask, "What does this mean to you?" It seems innocent enough, but it is often the first step toward a dangerous cliff. We treat the Scriptures like a Rorschach inkblot test, assuming that the meaning lies in our reaction rather than in the author's intention.

This approach is not just sloppy; it is dangerous. As Howard Hendricks warns in Living by the Book, it leads to "medical malpractice" of the soul. When we distort the Bible, we end up prescribing promises God never made (leading to crushed hope) and enforcing commands He never gave (leading to crushing legalism).¹

The goal of this lesson—and this entire course—is to train you to be a faithful surgeon of the text. We must learn to set aside our feelings, our culture, and our "baggage" to discover the only thing that matters: What has God actually said?

Part 1: Our Cultural Mindset 

Why is this so difficult for us? The authors of Let the Reader Understand identify a potent enemy: the "Spirit of the Age."² We live in a postmodern, hyper-individualistic culture that views "truth" as subjective. We have been trained by our world to believe that reality is something we create, not something we discover.

When we bring this mindset to the Bible, we engage in Eisegesis rather than Exegesis.

• Exegesis comes from the Greek word exegeomai, meaning "to lead out." It is the act of drawing the meaning out of the text. It assumes the meaning is already there, fixed by the author, waiting to be found.

• Eisegesis means start with the Greek word, eis, meaning "into" "to lead into." It is the act of reading our own meaning into the text. It treats the Bible as a mirror, where we see only our own reflection.

Part 2: The Gold Standard — Authorial Intent

To cure this malpractice, we must adopt the Gold Standard of hermeneutics: Authorial Intent.

Every act of communication requires a Sender and a Receiver.

• If I say, "I am hungry," and you interpret that to mean "I am angry," communication has failed.

• The meaning of the sentence is determined by Me (The Sender), not by You (The Receiver).

The Bible is a communicative act from God to humanity. Therefore, the meaning of the Bible is determined by God, not by us. 

But here is the complexity: God did not drop the Bible from the sky in English. He spoke through human authors—Paul, Moses, David, Luke—in specific languages, at specific times, to specific people.

The Dual Authorship Challenge

This brings us to the doctrine of Inspiration.

"For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." (2 Peter 1:21)

This is a "Dual Authorship."

1. The Divine Author: God ensures the message is exactly what He wants.

2. The Human Author: God uses the author's personality, vocabulary, and historical context to deliver that message.

Because of this, we cannot bypass the human author to get to God. We cannot say, "I don't care what Paul meant; I only care what the Spirit is saying." The Spirit chose to speak through Paul! 

The Myth of "Multiple Meanings"

But you might ask, "Doesn't the Bible have multiple meanings? Can't the Holy Spirit show me something different from what He shows you?"

This is a common belief, but it is disastrous. If a text means "A" to you and "B" to me, it has lost its authority and become a mirror for our own thoughts. To avoid this, we must distinguish between Meaning and Application.

• Meaning is Singular: What the author intended to communicate. This is fixed in history. It does not change.

• Application is Plural: How that fixed meaning impacts different situations. This can vary widely. 

Example: "Do not get drunk with wine." (Eph 5:18)

• The Meaning (Singular): Do not be under the influence of a substance but rather, be under the influence of the Spirit instead.

• The Significance (Plural):

• To the alcoholic, it can signify: "I must not take a single drink."

• To the college student, it can signify: "I must not binge drink at this party."

• To another believer, it might signify: "I should not let Netflix or social media numb my mind to the point where I am no longer Spirit-led."

Notice that the application changes, but the Meaning (don't lose control/be Spirit-influenced) remains exactly what Paul intended. We run into trouble when we try to claim our application is a new Meaning. If you say, "The Holy Spirit told me this verse means I can't watch TV," that is false. The Spirit may have applied the verse to your TV habits, but He did not change the meaning of Paul's words.

What about OT Prophecies? Those have two means, right?

If you read the Old Testament and feel like there is deeper meaning bubbling just beneath the surface, you aren’t wrong. Because God is the ultimate Author of the Bible, He often intended more than the human author fully understood at the time.

Scholars use two helpful terms to describe this:

1. Progressive Revelation: Think of this like a seed. God didn't show the whole picture at once; He revealed His plan in stages. The Old Testament is the "seed," and the New Testament is the full "flower" (Goldsworthy, 2002).

2. Typology: This isn't about secret codes; it's about patterns. God organized history so that people and events in the Old Testament (types) acted as "shadows" or previews of Jesus (Beale, 2011).

However, believing there is "more" to the text can be dangerous if we aren't careful. It’s tempting to use our imagination to find hidden meanings in every verse.

But the deeper meaning is revealed by later Scripture, not by our imagination. We don’t get to invent new meanings; we only get to recognize the patterns that the New Testament authors explicitly reveal to us (McCartney & Clayton, 1994).

This leads us to the most important rule of this entire course, famously articulated by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart:

*"A text cannot mean what it never could have meant to its original author or his/her readers."*⁶

Let that sink in.

If you are reading Philippians 4:13 ("I can do all things through him who strengthens me"), and you interpret it to mean, "I will win this football game," you must pause. You must ask: Did the Apostle Paul, sitting in a Roman prison, worrying about a death sentence, think he was writing about sports?

No. He was writing about contentment in starvation and immense suffering.

Therefore, "winning the game" is not the meaning of the verse. It is a meaning you forced onto the verse. It is biblical malpractice. You can say, though, that this verse applied to me that Jesus will strengthen me in order to be content whether we win or lose, or if I get an injury, or I don't get enough playing time. 

Part 3: The Difference Between OUR Town and THEIR Town

How do we find that fixed meaning when we are separated from the authors by thousands of years? 

Note: In future lessons, we will learn exactly how to cross the "Bridge" back to our time. But for now, the most important step is simply acknowledging that we are not the center of the story.

Duvall and Hays provide a visual framework: The Interpretive Journey.

Imagine two towns separated by a wide, deep river.

1. Our Town (The Reader's Context)This is where we are today (Minneapolis, 2026). We have questions, fears, technology, and a democratic culture. When we read the Bible, we naturally try to pull the text directly into "Our Town." We assume the author sees the world like we do.

2. Their Town (The Biblical Context)This is where the meaning lives. The authors lived in an agrarian, ancient, covenantal world.

• The River: Between us is a massive gap of culture, language, and time.

• The Golden Rule: "A text cannot mean what it never could have meant to its original author or readers." (Fee & Stuart)

If you skip the journey to "Their Town," you are committing malpractice. You are treating a patient in "Our Town" using a prescription written for "Their Town" without checking if the disease is the same.

Part 4: Case Study in Malpractice

Let’s look at what happens when we stay in "Our Town."

Case Study: The False Promise (Jeremiah 29:11)The Verse: "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope."

The Malpractice Reading (Our Town Only): A young man is fired from his job. He opens his Bible, points to this verse, and says, "God promises me plans to prosper. That means I will get a better job next week. I will be rich. I will not suffer."

• The Result: Six months pass. He is still unemployed. He loses his house. He concludes, "God lied to me." His faith is shattered.

The Interpretive Journey Reading:

• Step 1 (Their Town): Jeremiah sent this letter to exiles in Babylon (Jer 29:1). In verse 10, he tells them, "When seventy years are completed... I will visit you."

• Observation: Most of the people hearing this promise would die in Babylon before the 70 years were up. The promise was for the nation, not every individual, and it was for the distant future, not next Tuesday.

• We cannot cross the bridge of "Immediate Financial Success." That bridge collapses because it wasn't true for them! The true bridge is: "God remains faithful to His faithless people and retains a redemptive plan even during seasons of severe discipline and suffering. He will make all things new and deliver us from our spiritual exile being far from home.”

• This principle is actually better than the malpractice version. The malpractice version only works if life is good. The True Bridge works when you have cancer, when you are fired, or when you are dying. It tells you that your suffering is not the end of the story.

Part 5: Conclusion — For the Love of God

Why does all this work matter? Is it just to be smarter? No. It is because we love God.

If you love someone, you listen to them. You don't put words in their mouth. You don't twist their words to suit your agenda. You value what they actually say. The discipline of Authorial Intent is, at its heart, an act of relational integrity and Love.

 We study with precision because we love God.

References

1. Hendricks, Howard G., and William D. Hendricks. Living by the Book: The Art and Science of Reading the Bible. Chicago: Moody Publishers, 1991, p. 38.

2. McCartney, Dan, and Charles Clayton. Let the Reader Understand: A Guide to Interpreting and Applying the Bible. Wheaton: Victor Books, 1994, p. 78.

3. Goldsworthy, Graeme. Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics. InterVarsity Press, 2002.

4. Beale, G.K. Handbook on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament. Baker Academic, 2011.

5. Duvall, J. Scott, and J. Daniel Hays. Grasping God’s Word: A Hands-On Approach to Reading, Interpreting, and Applying the Bible. 4th ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2020.

6. Fee, Gordon D., and Douglas K. Stuart. How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth. 4th ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014, p. 30.