Over the past few years an old form of Bible reading and interpretation has resurfaced and made quite an impact. It is known as Lectio Divina. I appreciate David Helms’ critique of this method in in his little book Expositional Preaching. Where others have, I think, come up with novel ways of critiquing it, Helm heads straight to the Bible. Essentially, he says that Lectio Divina often leads us away from the right meaning and right application of a text instead of toward it. Let me explain. Keep reading
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2 comments:
Shows how rusty my Latin is. I saw a Bible in Barnes and Nobles called like Lectio Divina Bible (it was a Catholic Bible) and I though it meant "Divine Prayer" so I opened it looking for the prayers, couldn't find any, and put it down puzzled. Now I know why. Lectio is reading; duh. Anybody else ever get lectio confused with oratio, is that just me?
Oh, I know now why I was confused. The name of it was "The Catholic Prayer Bible, Lectio Divina Edition" -- They sort of subliminally made me think Lectio meant Prayer by that title. How dare them.
David,
I posted the article because I was surprised to learn that some pastors are using the lection divina approach to reading the Bible to interpret the Bible. Lecto divina is a method for reading the Bible devotionally. You read a passage or chapter or even several chapters of the Bible until a phrase or word captures you attention. You then meditate upon this passage or word throughout the day, incorporating it into your prayer.
Lectio divina is not the kind of approach to use to study the Bible in preparing a sermon, especially if the purpose of the sermon is expository. You might use it to find a sermon text. But that would be the extent to which you would use it.
Among the dangers of using this approach to study the Bible is the strong temptation to allegorize the text, to read a meaning into the text that cannot be unambiguously read out of the text. This is not exegesis but eisegesis. See the article, "What is the difference between exegesis and eisegesis?" at http://www.gotquestions.org/exegesis-eisegesis.html
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