Authorial Intent Matters

Communication depends on intention. When I tell Mika to sit, I am not asking her to choose whichever command sounds best to her. If she lies down, runs in circles, or launches into the zoomies, she may be doing something impressive, but she is not doing what I said.

That seems obvious when we are talking about a dog. It becomes less obvious when we open the Bible. We can read God’s words, recognize familiar language, and still replace the author’s meaning with the meaning we would prefer.

Peter warns that this can happen. In 2 Peter 3:15–16, he describes Paul’s letters as containing some things that are difficult to understand. He does not say they are meaningless or that every interpretation is equally valid. He says the ignorant and unstable twist them, as they do the other Scriptures.

Something can only be twisted if it has a shape before we touch it. The meaning of a passage does not begin with the reader. It belongs to the author, and our responsibility is to understand what the author intended to communicate.

That means we cannot make a verse carry our assumptions, traditions, experiences, or desires simply because the words can be made to sound supportive. A sincere interpretation can still be wrong. Sincerity tells us something about the reader; it does not determine what the author meant.

Authorial intent also keeps interpretation from becoming a contest in creativity. The goal is not to discover how many meanings we can attach to a passage. The goal is to follow the argument, notice the setting, identify the audience, and understand why those particular words were written.

God chose to communicate through human authors who wrote real letters, histories, poems, prophecies, and narratives. Respecting those authors is not putting them above God. It is honoring the way God chose to speak through them.

Before asking what a passage means to us, we should first ask what the author meant. Application comes after interpretation. Otherwise, like Mika, we may hear the command clearly and still obey the version we would rather have received.