Is it the Truth?
That is the question my pastor would always ask me whenever I spoke publicly to our congregation. It was his concern that those who would presume to be teachers of God's people, be so acquainted with God's word that what they said was the truth, and nothing but the truth!
This concern for truth was engrained into me when I enrolled along with some other young men for a preaching course taught by our pastor at our church in 1992. We were to craft a sermon and deliver it to the rest of the group. My message was entitled, "How Then Should We Give?" My main point was that giving was a sacred duty for Christians and a measure of their spiritual maturity, so we had a spiritual obligation to give.
In my application, I concluded that since God's gift of salvation is offered us without the condition of our doing anything to deserve it, we should offer salvation likewise, we should give to the undeserving. I found support in a proof text from Matthew 5.42: "Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you." A prooftext is a verse taken out of its context to support an assertion.
In case my audience did not understand my point, I concluded with the application that if a drunk on the street corner asks you for money for more booze you have a sacred obligation to give it to him! I backed that up with a proof text from Matthew 7:1: "Judge not, lest ye be judged."
After coming to that conclusion, you may well imagine what my pastor's response was! Also, the group was somewhat aghast at my application, since our church was located downtown and one often passed by panhandlers on the way into the building.
My pastor had some questions for me. Is that the truth, Mike? Is it really true that we ought not to judge when it comes to giving? Does the Scripture really teach that? Is it really true that Christians must give to anyone who asks them? Is that what Jesus was really saying?
These are very important questions to say the least. My simple reading of the text had led me to a rather strange conclusion. While it is true that giving is a spiritual discipline for Christians, if I had taken the time to research the rest of Scripture, I would have discovered that God loves a cheerful giver who gives voluntarily and not under obligation. (2 Corinthians 9:7)
So here I was standing before the group, preaching from the Bible and laying down an authoritative application that was simply wrong! Perhaps it was fine for me to do it, to empty my pockets to every passer-by who holds out his hand, but for me to preach that to our congregation and lay that burden on them as a matter of gospel truth was inappropriate.
In my naïve desire to read out of the text its proper application, I had read into the text something that was not there. I could not be faulted for bringing to the text a compassionate heart for the poor, an understanding about our duty to love our neighbors unconditionally, a spirit of extravagant generosity and a zealous desire to hear God's voice and obey it implicitly. However, I was wrong to discern that my Biblical interpretation was a universal principle and sacred obligation put on all Christians by their Lord. I believe there are universal truths in the Bible that require our acceptance and obedient application, but giving money every time someone asks was not one of them!
How did I get mixed up like this? What happened in my reading and thinking that led me to such a conclusion? Since I was so sincere, zealous and prayerful and thought I was following the leading of the Holy Spirit, how could I have gone so wrong? These are questions every believer must face at one point in their spiritual journey when they are confronted with the fact that they have not only erred in their interpretation of Scripture, but have also erred in its application.
Sincere believers will inevitably get it wrong when it comes to biblical interpretation as I did. Instead of giving up on it altogether, we ought to pick ourselves up from the dust of confusion and learn how to interpret the Bible better because it is an important responsibility of every Christian to "rightly handle the word of truth" (2 Timothy 2:15).
So, let me share with you what I have learned over the years concerning the interpretation of Scripture. I call this my ten lessons in Biblical Interpretation for Dummies.
I. Evangelicals believe that The Bible is the final authority for faith and practice. (See National Association of Evangelicals Statement of Faith).
Everything needs to be judged by the standard of Scripture as found in the Christian Bible. In no way can we sit over top of Scripture and pass judgment on it, selecting passages that we approve of and ignoring others that we do not approve of. We must always sit under it and allow it to "read us" as we read it, otherwise we become the authority and not the Bible. So we interpret our experience in the light of Scripture and not the other way around.
The reason it is our authority is that it is God's truth. That is, what Scripture says, God says. It is God's revelation of his mind and heart to humankind. It comes to us through a written text which is 'God breathed' as Pauls says in 2 Timothy 3:16-17.
All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. -- 2 Timothy 3:16-17 RSV
That is, it has been produced by God inspiring human authors in such a way that the product is fully trustworthy as God's word. For more on this subject read this article on Biblical inspiration.
Thus we believe it to be infallible: completely trustworthy; and inerrant: without error in its original documents. Just as God is infallible and inerrant in his communication, so we can trust the Scriptures to be infallible and inerrant in what they communicate. (See the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy)
II. Scripture provides us with all the truth we need for our salvation.
The Bible tells us a story about Jesus Christ and what God has done through Him for the salvation of the world. Scripture is clear in its challenge to faith and belief even for those who are unlearned and unable to study it in depth, Even dummies like me can get the overall sense of it and while there is much I do not understand yet, I know from what I do understand that I must trust Jesus for my salvation.
But, because we often refer to it as our ‘final’ authority we tend to use it as reference text like a dictionary. You may have had someone say to you, "Show me where it says that in the Bible!" However, Scripture does not aspire to pronounce authoritatively on every possible imaginable topic. It is not an "instruction manual" or a repository of isolated proof-texts. The actual versification of the Bible only happened in the 13th to 14th centuries. It was done so that scholars could better reference the texts they were debating, not so lazy students like me, could mine the concordance for citations for my strange assertions.
So we need to be careful we do not make Scripture into something it is not. See my Biblical Authority and Faith at Work in Professional Practice. In that article I state,
When we treat the Bible as a neat tidy set of propositional truths that are easily applied to daily life we are turning the Bible into something that it is not. The Bible is an ancient text that uses narrative story to communicate the truth about God and the world. So when we turn it into something else we are actually locating authority outside of the Bible and inside a way of reading the Bible or a way of looking at the world which is not infallible, inerrant or inspired.
III. Scripture does not contradict itself.
Although Scripture is a collection of 66 books written over a period of more than one thousand years, we believe it is the product of one mind, the mind of God. Therefore it is consistent in every aspect. That is, when we read a passage that seems to say something different than another passage, we must work to reconcile that difference by understanding how these passages fit together in the overall message of the Bible. This is something I missed doing in my message on giving because I did not research teaching on giving in other parts of the New Testament.
One of the most important applications of this lesson is in how we read and interpret the Old Testament. As Christians, we must read the Old Testament in light of the New Testament.
For example, in 2 Corinthians 1:20 Paul says, "For no matter how many promises God has made, they are "Yes" in Christ. And so through him the "Amen" is spoken by us to the glory of God." The promises Paul is referring to here are the promises made by God to the nation of
Another example, has to do with eating unclean meat. In Leviticus 5, God warns
Just as in one part of the story Jack is climbing up the beanstalk and at another part he is quickly climbing down, Jack’s initial direction does not contradict his final direction. It is just that these contrasting events are found at different moments in the story. Thus we need to read the Bible from the moment of the story that we find ourselves in. that moment is the church age that falls between Christ’s death and resurrection and His second coming. When we read the Old Testament we have to read it as a time when
For more on the question of how narrative (story) can be authoritative read this article on Biblical Authority by N T Wright.
IV. We must read Scripture as Scripture intends us to read it.
When Scripture is clearly using metaphors to describe events, peoples or truths, it is often clear we are not to read those metaphors literalistically, such as when it says, "Mount Lebanon leaps and skips before the Lord like a young calf" (Psalm 29:6), it does not mean for us to picture in our minds, a large rock formation, dancing before the Lord.
More than two thirds of the Bible is narrative. That means, Scripture verses have a meaning that is located in the story that is being told. In my reference to Matthew 7 on judgment, Jesus was delivering a message to the Jews in the Sermon on the Mount about what the true people of God were to be like. The problem was that the Pharisees had set up Torah as test of the true people of God. They were "judging" those who were not following the letter of the law as not the true people of God.
Beware, Jesus said, that you not make those judgments, for to do so, you are setting yourself up as God. You are not God, thus you are a hypocrite for thinking yourself perfect enough to judge like God judges. You will be measured by the very measure you use on others and shown to have fallen short.
A good place to start to understand some rules for being consistent in one's interpretation of the text is the Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics.
V. The primary meaning of passages is the meaning those passages were intended to convey by the original author to the original hearers.
This is also called the literal meaning, but it is not to be confused with a literalistic meaning that ignores the intentions of the authors to use metaphor or allegory to communicate spiritual truths.
The primary meaning governs whatever secondary interpretations we may attach to that Scripture. That is, if we have a prophetic interpretation of a specific scripture that pertains to us as an individual or the church as a community, that secondary interpretation, must "sit under" the primary meaning of the text and of the Scripture as a whole. This is why it is important for us to consult commentators when we interpret Scripture, especially when we come to strange interpretations such as I did in my rookie sermon.
For example, a common passage that preachers use to motivate congregations to give is found in Malachi 3:6-11 about
I once debated with a fellow named Clive Pick who preached very authoritatively from this passage. When I pointed out that tithing was an Old Testament practice, that had reached its fulfillment in Jesus, he stated he had been given a prophetic interpretation by the Lord to preach this text as authoritative for the church today.
While I believe that God does speak today and He does use Scripture to challenge his church prophetically, I believe prophetic interpretation of Old Testament passages must "sit under" the interpretation informed by the New Testament.
I personally tithe as a discipline of giving. However, I do not believe it is a Scriptural obligation in the same way as it was for the Israelites, just as circumcision and other religious practices are also not obligatory for Christians.
A much fuller discussion of what the literal meaning of the text is all about, read The Interpretation of Scripture, by J.I. Packer.
VI. Whenever we come to read Scripture we come with what is called "pre-understanding".
It is simply impossible to read Scripture from a neutral or objective viewpoint. There is no unbiased point of view. We are physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually located somewhere in a culture, in a context, in a community and in a language. We must always be aware that our point of view influences how we read the text and may cause us to read things into the text that may not be there. Jack Crabtree has an excellent discussion about the challenge of overcoming pre-understanding in his article - Understanding the Bible.
See also, John Piper's article Brothers, Let Us Query the Text from his website Desiring God.
It helps to see ourselves in the story and identify with the weaknesses and failings of the people there. For just as they experienced God's mercy, so we too rely upon his mercy as we earnestly seek understanding of His ways, His works and His words as presented to us in the Bible.
We need to prayerfully submit to the Holy Spirit's leading to direct our footsteps as we read and interpret what the text is telling us. Even with this approach, Charismatics can go wrong, for often we rely on first impressions, seeking that inner witness of the Spirit to guide us and going with our 'gut' sense. The problem is that unless we are hearing the audible voice of God, our inner witness can be significantly influenced or distorted by physical, emotional or spiritual context. The danger is that we read out of the text, what we want to hear the text saying, and perhaps not what it is really saying.
So for example, as mentioned above in Acts 10 to 11, it was Peter’s experience of the audible voice of God and his visit to Cornelius’ house that overwhelmed his feelings of revulsion to that which was unclean. He followed the Holy Spirit into something new as the Spirit fell on the Gentiles before they were circumcised. It said to him that what was now normative was the Holy Spirit receiving the Gentiles into the family of God without them having to take on the ethnic marks of the Jews as required by the Law.
In similar fashion, we need to be open to what the Holy Spirit is doing today to lead his church into it’s destiny to become the bride of Christ. While we look to the New Testament church for our foundations, we ought not to see it as the normative measure for church organization. In the first century the church met in homes. This is descriptive of what happened then, but not prescriptive of what we do now. Today there is a huge variety in how we organize church and that diversity is of God because the Holy Spirit is at work.
So while we need to “sit under” the Bible as we read it, we need to be aware of how the Holy Spirit is leading us into new and wonderful things as a church today and not let our wooden interpretations hold us back from the new things God is doing.
VIII. It is important to note that when we read the text, we read it not only as individuals, but also in community.
In my sermon on giving, I had a loving group of friends and a caring pastor who helped me see the folly of my interpretation before I made a fool of myself in front of the congregation. As Proverbs 24:6 states: Don't go to war without wise guidance; there is safety in many counselors.
Rob Bell in his book Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith, has a section on reading the Bible in community.
The Bible is a communal book. It came from people writing in communities, and it was often written to communities. Remember that the printing press wasn't invented until the 1400s. Prior to that, very few if any people had their own copies of the Bible. In Jesus' day. an entire village could probably afford only one copy of the Scriptures, if that. Reading the Bible alone was unheard of, if people could even read. For most of church history, people heard the Bible read aloud in a room full of people. You heard It, discussed it, studied it. argued about it. and made decisions about it as a group, a community. Most of the "you's" In the Bible are plural -- groups of people receiving these words. So if one person went off the deep end with an interpretation or opinion, the others were right there to keep that person in check. In a synagogue. most of the people knew the text by heart. When someone got up to teach or share insight, chances are everybody knew the text that person was talking on and already had their own opinions about it. You saw yourself and those around you as taking part in a huge discussion that has gone on for thousands of years. (p.51-52)
As well as reading it in our local church community, it is helpful to be aware of how the church over the centuries has read the Bible, especially the perspective of people like Martin Luther, John Calvin and other Reformers. We owe our evangelicalism to their courage and ability to discern truth from error and boldly take a stand for sola scriptura.
"[The Holy Spirit's] words cannot have more than one, and that the very simplest sense, which we call the literal, ordinary, natural sense. . . . We are not to say that the Scriptures or the Word of God have more than one meaning. . . We are not to introduce any . . . metaphorical, figurative sayings into any text of Scripture, unless the particulars of the words compel us to do so.. . . For if anyone at all were to have power to depart from the pure, simple words and to make inferences and figures of speech wherever he wished. . . [then] no one could reach any certain conclusions about . . . any article of faith. " - Martin Luther (see link here.)
IX. The Bible is the great equalizer.
Because it is the final authority and not church hierarchy, we can appeal to it and make our case before our church community as much as anyone else can.
Thus, while it always best to approach your pastors or elders privately when disagreeing with them about interpretations (and not surprise them with a blog posting! J ), every believer has the opportunity and responsibility to weigh and put to a Scriptural test what is being taught to them from the pulpit, what is being recommended to them in various books and teachings and what they have heard as a prophetic word for the church today. When they do this, they must always give the benefit of the doubt to those who teach and ask questions about their interpretations before jumping to conclusions about what you may think they believe. This is a lesson I learned the hard way - Mea Culpa - Give the gift of the question!
X. God is able to lead us even when we get our interpretations wrong.
We ought not to despair when we see the above list and wonder if we can possibly interpret Scripture aright. The man who is credited with providing the doctrinal foundation of the church was none other than Augustine of Hippo. He was converted upon hearing a child's voice say, ""take up and read", whereupon he opened the Scripture randomly and read Romans 13:13, "Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying" (KJV). He interpreted it in a simple manner as if God was speaking directly to him without considering its biblical context. That naïve interpretation converted Augustine and forever transformed Western culture. (I owe this thought to Living and Active Scripture in the Economy of Salvation by Telford Work. p. 254)
In the grace and mercy of God, even Biblical interpretations made by "dummies" may have a profound impact on the person themselves and their Christian community in a way that a more intellectually responsible interpretations may not.
Yet, if one seeks to apply one's interpretation to the church community such as I did in my message on giving, one has a responsibility to read and interpret the Scripture seriously for as the book of James warns, "Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly." (James 3:1 NIV)
In conclusion, is what I have said the truth about Biblical Interpretation? I will let you be the judge. I have set forth what I think are some simple steps for interpretation that even dummies can follow. I invite your feedback. Please feel free to question or correct me, for as I have quoted before, “All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work."
For further ideas on how "dummies" can interpret the Bible, check out How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth by Gordon D. Fee & Douglas Stuart. And Studying, Interpreting, and Applying the Bible by Walter A. Henrichsen & Gayle Jackson
Tags: Bible, Studying, Interpreting, Applying, Layman's, Guide, Scripture, Interpretation, life application.
