Domesticating the Untamable Word of God

In his Interpreting Galatians: Explorations in Exegetical Method, in a section on original meaning versus contemporary application, Moisés Silva surveys some of the history of exegesis. He then says this (p. 24):

We see, then, that the attempt to recognize both the importance of historical meaning (authorial intention) and the need for relevance (contextualization) characterized biblical interpreters from ancient times to the beginnings of the modern period. In the post-Enlightenment Age, when the grammatico-historical method definitively "triumphed," what really happened was that the task of application was severed from that of exegesis. The new ideal for interpreters was to set aside and forget their own context so that only the mind of the biblical author would be present.

Further on, he continues (p. 25):

The decision to sever "what it meant" form "what it means" also had some grave implications for the study of Scripture. Ironically, the better a commentary was, the less useful it became for the church. . . . Here [in Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer, as an example] truly was scientific exegesis come into its own—and even today his notes can be consulted with great profit. In the process, however, the biblical text tended to become an antiquarian curiosity, a lifeless object needing dissection. 

This treating of the biblical text as "an antiquarian curiosity, a lifeless object needing dissection," I do not doubt, has infected Protestant evangelical scholarship. I've experienced it firsthand. And even if you have no formal education, if you've read commentaries at all, you know what I'm talking about. And what has followed this infection of scholarship? Well, I think it's fair to say, the church became infected with the same. If you don't believe me, ask yourself why it's so hard for those with seminary or graduate training to move from academics to actually preaching to real people with real lives and to using the Word to shepherd the flock. Ask yourself why the professing Christian church in America struggles to know how to live out the Word of God in all of life. Something has gone wrong when Christian pastors and leaders continue to be trained with post-Enlightenment methods. Blows me away.

And that the divine Word does not penetrate ever inch of the church's soul and life probably owes, at least in part, to this severing of which Silva speaks. But the untamable Word let loose in pastors' and scholars' hearts and lives and through them in the people of God—that Word above all earthly powers produces profound change and effect and influence everywhere. Inevitably! That is, unless we've domesticated the text in our laboratories of scientific inquiry.