What was your pathway to DTS?

I grew up in Illinois. I went to college at Northwestern and then went to Moody. From there I found my way to Dallas, where I thought I could find answers to questions I was asking. My wife and I were then called to help start a seminary to train leaders in the Philippines. Our vision was to help missionaries and local leaders interact with one another on an equal basis. Upon returning home for our first furlough after a term in the field, Dr. Pentecost asked me to come to Dallas and spend the year teaching. That one year became forty-seven years! That’s a good haul, for sure.

Your recent book is called Expository Hermeneutics: Advancing the Discussion. Now, with a title like that, can we assume the target audience is not the average layperson in a church?

It’s a book for the serious student or for a classroom textbook. But I hope it will also be used by anyone in the church who wants to learn how to understand the Bible. This is what hermeneutics is all about. In fact, two of my students who worked with me are now teaching the method I explain in the book. At the start of DTS, Lewis Sperry Chafer recognized the weight of what our Lord said in John 8:31–32. “If you abide in my word . . .” That’s not merely the words he spoke to his listeners, but his identity as the Word. Jesus says that when we abide in his word, then we’ll really be his disciples. “You will know the truth”—that’s a really interesting statement. He’s saying that you won’t guess about it; you’ll know the truth, and the truth will make you free. He uses those same ideas again in chapter 15, with the image of the vine and the branches. After introducing “abide in me,” Jesus says, “my words will abide in you.” Our lives are to be so influenced by the Word of God that we’ve spent time in that it becomes our vocabulary—the way we think, the way we write, and so forth.

In my book, then, I’m showing the reader how to abide in the Word. I present interpretive chapters, and two chapters on application. I’m trying to match what I think our Lord was saying and what I think Dr. Chafer understood about holiness, a century ago.

How has the study of the Bible at DTS changed in the years you’ve been associated with the seminary?

Well, Dr. Pentecost was one of the first of the resident, full-time faculty (as opposed to the visiting instructors earlier in the seminary’s history). He brought in the idea of argument: what argument, or main point, is each book of the Bible communicating? That’s what I engaged with when I studied with him. The problem was that DTS students could become so immersed in the Hebrew and Greek that they lost the big picture of each book of the Bible. Focusing on reading the whole book and the argument helped bring that into better focus. Later, Prof Hendricks brought in Bible study methods, which was a way of using the scientific method to analyze and study the Bible. I loved it. Hendricks was so good at teaching us to figure it out for ourselves—and many of us did. I then tried to incorporate that into my own teaching and now into the book with a literary method of reading and understanding texts. 

Like many DTS professors before you, you’ve retired but are hardly inactive! Tell me about the weekly Bible study group you lead on Zoom, which I know is dear to your heart.

The Zoom study started on campus at DTS. It brought together donors and other local leaders interested in the school and in looking into God’s Word. I was on faculty at the time, so I started teaching. And then it just continued, so now we’ve been together for about twenty-five years. In those years, some of the original members have moved away—which is why we’re now online—and other people have joined in. I actually find that teaching on Zoom has advantages. For example, when someone has a question, I have to stop talking and really listen—and it’s usually a very good question! All the people in the group bring questions from their experiences of evangelizing, and that keeps the Bible study practical. How do we respond to the first questions that Jews ask? Or Muslims? These situations keep the hermeneutics very practical.

What is the balance between properly reading to recognize the Bible’s message and hearing the truth to apply the message of the Bible?

The method of hermeneutics is both read in a circular pattern and practiced as an objective task. The circular reading guesses at the meaning of the whole, but it remains objective in the sense that the “guess” can be validated. It’s objective because God authors a transhistorical message capable of being understood, and readers become aware of the presuppositions they bring to the text. Further, they seek to adopt the presuppositions of Scripture. As such, the message can be validated in its truth content. However, this this does not prove it true, even as it provides evidential conviction that the reader has understood the inspired truth value. Application follows those truths, and our abiding in the convicting, empowering work of the Holy Spirit contextualizes the truth from the historical setting to their lives.

About the Contributors

Neil R. Coulter

Neil R. Coulter

Neil R. Coulter completed degrees in music performance and ethnomusicology from Wheaton College and Kent State University. He and his family lived in Papua New Guinea for twelve years, where Neil served as an ethnomusicology and arts consultant for Wycliffe Bible Translators. In 2015, he helped design and launch the PhD in World Arts at Dallas International University. He teaches doctoral courses in theory and ethnography at DIU’s Center for Excellence in World Arts. At DTS, he teaches about art, literature, film, and theology, and he is senior writer and editor of DTS Magazine. Neil is married to Joyce, and they have three sons.