One of Sunday’s Lectionary readings bothers me. It’s written in 2 Peter 1:20 and 21… “First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” (The writer has already claimed his authority and right to be listened to, by saying that he witnessed the transfiguration.) The thing is, every prophecy is a matter of interpretation. The listener/reader too needs to be influenced by the Spirit of God. Even what seems to be an obvious meaning isn’t obvious when you poke around a bit. And some prophecy is obscure in the first place. The New Testament is full of reinterpretations of Old Testament prophecies. When the people* got together to decide what writings go in the Bible and what writings are thrown out, there was loads of discussion and prayer, based on how people interpreted what was written. How else would we have any idea what is the word of God and what isn’t? Anyway, what distinguishes a ‘prophecy’ of scripture from the other bits?
I have some sympathy with the writer. We fallible humans have very good ways of talking ourselves out of the challenge that scripture offers. What the writer said needs to be said. Scriptural prophecy has its gritty bits and we can’t ignore them. But we must make sense of them. Also, “one’s own interpretation” is obviously a bad idea: interpretation is something that in some way – by talk or praying or social media – in some way is a community activity**. And that community needs to be full of diverse people, people whose opinions we find it hard to stomach. So yes to 2 Peter – but maybe I’d want to interpret 2 Peter!
* All men AFAIK – that alone should make us want to think again.
** But having disabled comments on this blog I haven’t yet worked out how to make the comment box appear again.