Hermeneutically, I'm a 75

Scot McKnight, noted theologian and author (and my former professor at North Park), developed a little quiz to help us get at our hermeneutics. The way we read and interpret scripture has great bearing on how we live out and interact with our faith and communities on a daily basis. So, for a Sunday evening activity, I thought I'd take a little stab.

My score of 75 puts me well into the "progressive" category. McKnight's explanation of that category is this:

...the progressive tends to see the Bible as historically shaped and culturally conditioned, and yet most still consider it the Word of God for today. Following a progressive hermeneutic, for the Word to speak in our day, one must interpret what the Bible said in its day and discern its pattern for revelation in order to apply it to our world. The strength ... is the challenge to examine what the Bible said in its day, and this means the progressives tend to be historians. But the problems for the progressives are predictable: Will the Bible's so-called "plain meaning" be given its due and authoritative force to challenge our world? Or will the Bible be swallowed by a quest to find modern analogies that sometimes minimize what the text clearly says?

A 75 (out of 100) puts me into the middle range of this category, which McKnight admits is a broad-reaching span of nearly-moderate to pretty radical. I can't say I'm terribly surprised; I am of the Willow Creek/Emerging Church/Social Justice Gospel generation. But I hope I remain somewhere in the middle of the progressives; I pray I don't get so caught up in contextualizing for accessibility that I miss the point of the Gospel.

Take the quiz here, and then read about your results here.