"What It Means To Me"

There is a pervading sense (particularly in Evangelicalism) that all one needs to do to understand God’s word is study it in the morning hours (usually in solitude) and pray God reveals its meaning.

Further our individualistic culture has become skeptical of any kind of authority (ie: tradition, clergy, critical scholarship) that Biblical training seems to many as unnecessary. As a result many are shaped not by what the Scriptures have been saying throughout the centuries (through the community of faith) but rather by their own particular vantage point and perspective.

In the 18th Century Baptist Preacher turned Universalist Evangelist Elhanan Winchester writes about how he came to his position of Universalism: “I shut myself up chiefly in my chamber, read the Scriptures, and prayed to God to lead me into all truth, and not suffer me to embrace any error; and I think with an upright mind, I laid myself open to believe whatsoever the Lord had revealed. It would be too long to tell all the Teaching I had on this head; let it suffice, in short, to say, that I became so well persuaded of the truth of Universal Restoration, that I determined never to deny it.”

The critique here is not on a theological position but rather the method of Biblical interpretation used to arrive at such a position.

Here I find John Calvin worth quoting: “I acknowledge that Scripture is a most rich and inexhaustible fountain of all wisdom; but I deny that its fertility consists in the various meanings which any man, at his pleasure, may assign.”

Where is the balance between individual study, teach ability, trained clergy, and Biblical scholarship/criticism in the life of Biblical interpretation?

How have you seen individual interpretation practiced in harmful ways?