Discovery Class · Clayton Valley Church
Session 3 homework
Schools of interpretation and observation, part 1
Answer all three questions below in your own words. There is no grade and nothing is sent anywhere: everything stays on this page in your browser. After each answer, reveal the response guide and compare it honestly to what you wrote.
1Identifying the approach. Read each short statement below. Name which school of interpretation it reflects, and in one or two sentences, say what a grammatical-historical reading would do differently.
a. “Modern, educated readers know better than to take the Bible’s miracle stories as literal fact. What matters is the moral lesson underneath, not events that ancient, prescientific people mistakenly believed happened.”
b. A well-known early church teacher read the Parable of the Good Samaritan as a coded history of humanity’s fall and redemption, not a straightforward lesson in neighborly mercy. In his reading, the man going down to Jericho is Adam leaving the heavenly Jerusalem for the fallen world. The robbers are the devil and his demonic powers, stripping humanity of the garment of virtue. The priest and the Levite are the Law and the Prophets, who pass by because the old covenant lacked the power to fully heal the wound. The Samaritan is Christ, who binds the wound with oil and wine. The inn is the Church, the innkeeper is the Church’s leadership, and the two denarii left behind represent the knowledge of the Father and the Son. The promise to return is Christ’s promise of his Second Coming.
c. “The virgin birth doesn’t need to be historically, biologically literal for the Christmas story to be true. What matters is the meaning it carries, God with us, not whether Mary was a virgin in the clinical sense.”
Response guide
a. Liberal. The statement makes modern reason and scientific plausibility the standard by which Scripture’s claims are judged. A grammatical-historical reading takes the text’s own claim to describe real events on its own terms.
b. Allegorical. This is Origen’s reading of the Good Samaritan from his Homilies on Luke. Every character and object is assigned a hidden, symbolic referent, none of it drawn from anything the parable’s own words signal. A grammatical-historical reading asks what Jesus’ original hearers would have understood: a lesson about who counts as a neighbor and what mercy costs, prompted by a lawyer’s question in Luke 10:29.
c. Neo-orthodox. The statement separates the truth or meaning of the virgin birth from whether it actually, biologically happened. A grammatical-historical reading takes Matthew’s and Luke’s own claims (Matthew 1:18-25, Luke 1:34-35) to be a real, historical claim about how Christ was conceived.
2Diagramming 3 John 1-4. Block diagram the passage below using the procedure from class. Identify each main phrase and indent modifying phrases beneath the phrase they modify.
“The elder to the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth. Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul. For I rejoiced greatly when the brothers came and testified to your truth, as indeed you are walking in the truth. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.” (3 John 1-4, ESV)
Response guide, model diagram
The elder
to the beloved Gaius,
whom I love in truth.
Beloved,
I pray
that all may go well with you
and
that you may be in good health,
as it goes well with your soul.
For
I rejoiced greatly
when the brothers came
and
testified to your truth,
as indeed you are walking in the truth.
I have no greater joy
than to hear
that my children are walking in the truth.
A strong attempt doesn’t need to match this exactly. What matters is that each modifying phrase nests under the phrase it actually modifies, and that connecting words like “as,” “for,” and “than” are placed carefully rather than skipped.
3The three people in the letter. Last week’s homework had you read 3 John in full, twice a day, for five days. Drawing on that reading, name the three people the letter centers on, Gaius, Diotrephes, and Demetrius, and write one or two sentences on what the letter actually says about each one.
Response guide
A strong answer notices specific details tied to each name: Gaius welcomes traveling missionaries and walks in the truth (vv. 1-6). Diotrephes loves to be first, refuses to welcome the brothers, spreads unjustified accusations, and puts people out of the church (vv. 9-10). Demetrius has a good testimony from everyone, including from the truth itself (v. 12).