A ‘word study’ (and everyone denies that they rely on these alone,
but I see plenty of relying on them in evangelical circles) is when you
construct a doctrine purely in terms of the way a word is used in
Scripture, usually by getting out your computer software and collecting
all the different references. It is not a useless activity, but
a) it is prone to ignoring the way in which words may be used in
radically different ways in different contexts – and that, as linguists
all know, context is best determiner of meaning, not the lexicon (which
is a record of usage)
b) it prioritises vocabulary over the myriad other ways that Scripture
speaks about concepts – parable, metaphor, image and above all
narrative.
c) it leads to arguments from silence – ie, ‘a word x isn’t used in this
way, therefore it is invalid to use it in this way in theological
thinking about the concept’. Word studies have a helpful critical
function in that they discipline us to think ‘why didn’t the Bible
writers use this vocabulary in this way’, but that is all they achieve.
d) a word study often relies on tendentious claims about the way in
which the word is used in such extant Greek literature as we still have
(which is of course extremely fragmentary). This sort of move can help
to rule IN certain types of usage, but it can’t rule OUT any usage.
e) evangelical word studies frequently depend on a spurious dichotomy
between ‘ordinary’ usage and ‘religious’ or ‘special’ usage. So, we
often hear claims that word x is actually simply a secular and ordinary
word and that the NT is not using it in the sense that the word later
came to have in the Christian tradition. I would say: this alleged
dichotomy is usually a false one, and neglects the fact that the NT is
written down only after the early church had been going for some two or
three decades (and a bit more), and had plenty of time to make its usage
of words quite specialised.
f) the word study appeals for its power on the claim that this is what the Bible is really saying, over the heads of the misguided tradition that came after it. I don't think that this is a theological way to read Scripture...
Simply put: a Christian understanding of (for example) ‘faith’ will
be assisted by a description of how the word is used in Scripture, but
this is only the beginning and not the whole of the theological task.
