Category Archives: Biblical interpretation

Where to start reading the Bible

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Last week I began sharing some thoughts about what to teach a newcomer about how to read the Bible. I made some suggestions about some broad themes; let me mention a few specific ideas.

  • I don’t like to hand someone a Bible and leave them. There’s really no support for that in the Bible itself. The closest we come is Phillip and the Ethiopian; after a few hours conversation, Phillip leaves the man. However, the Ethiopian was not a complete newcomer to Scripture; he was apparently a convert to Judaism. He probably had the support of a synagogue back home.
    People need some guidance as they begin to read. The ideal is for someone to commit to walk with them in their journey through the Bible for a few months, at minimum.
  • I teach people that the Bible is an anthology, not a book. The average person supposes that the Bible was written in a fairly short period of time by a handful of people working together. It helps to show people that the Bible is made up of dozens of books written over a span of more than 1000 years.
  • I suggest that people NOT begin in Genesis. I tell people to begin in the gospels. If I were drawing up an initial reading plan, it would look a bit like this:

    Gospel of Mark
    Gospel of John
    Acts 1-21
    Galatians
    Ephesians
    Genesis
    Exodus 1-20
    Skim Exodus 21ff.
    Hebrews
    Romans

Some comments on that reading start. I want them to see Jesus first. I choose a synoptic; Mark is my preference, but anyone of the three is good. I then have them read John to get a broader view of who Jesus is.

Then we move to Acts, partly to see the beginning of the church, partly to get the context for the epistles. Galatians both illustrates the occasional nature of the letters and gives some basic teaching about the gospel. Ephesians gives a vision of what maturity in Christ is to look like.

We then read Genesis to learn about the promises made to Abraham. The first part of Exodus presents several of the mighty acts of God which form the foundation for much of the identity of God’s people. It’s worth skimming the rest of Exodus to then understand what Hebrews is talking about. At this point, the person should be ready for bigger books like Hebrews and Romans.

Those are some of the basics. Suggestions?

Teaching someone to interpret the Bible.

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I was reading a discussion about how we teach people to interpret the Bible. That came at an interesting time, for I’m dealing with some of the same in a video course I’m preparing.

Here are some interpretive concepts that I think are needed:

  • Context: We need to recognize where a text fits within the framework of the Bible and the framework of the book it’s in. We need to understand the cultural and historical milieu of the writer and the intended audience.
  • Genres: We need to understand how to read different types of books in the Bible and different literary types within those books. You don’t read Proverbs the same way you read Leviticus. You don’t read a parable the same way you read a sermon.
  • Major themes of the Bible: We need to learn to identify the overriding themes within Scripture.
  • Limited application vs. universal application (cultural vs supracultural): We need to be able to see the difference between instructions for a specific situation and general instructions for all believers everywhere.

At the same time, some personal concepts are also needed:

  • Reverence: I believe that it’s impossible to read the Bible correctly without believing that it is more than a human book. We have to believe in inspiration, even as we may differ on exactly what that looks like. We need to respect the authority of the text. We need to avoid placing ourselves above the Bible.
  • Grace: We need to remember that we are saved by grace, not by works. We seek to be as pleasing to God as possible, not out of a fear that any misstep will send us to hell, but out of a desire to do what our God wants. And because we receive grace from God, we can extend grace to others.
  • Humility: When reading Scripture, we need this in large doses. Most of us have changed our views over the years; in fact, if we haven’t, I’m afraid we’re not growing. This should lead us to state our understandings gently, recognizing that we could be mistaken.
  • Spirituality: Without God’s Spirit, we cannot truly comprehend God’s Word. Alexander Campbell talked about needing to draw near enough to God to be able to hear and understand his voice. All of this makes prayer an essential part of Bible study.

That’s a start. I’ll try and build on some of those going forward. What sorts of things would you add?

Photo by cbcs at Morguefile.com

Remember that “The Message” isn’t Scripture

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There are a number of things that I find disturbing about The Message, though much of that concern goes away if people will acknowledge it’s not a presentation of Scripture but a commentated retelling of Scripture.

Here are some problems I see:

Peterson made the choice to use “Master” when the New Testament calls Jesus “Lord.” But then he also chose to replace “Lord” with the word “God” in Old Testament references. By doing so, he lost the amazing point that Paul and others make when they show that Old Testament passages which were applied to God are now applied to Jesus! Look at Romans 10, where Paul uses a passage about “calling on the name of the Lord” as proof that we are to call on Jesus to be saved. That point gets lost in The Message:
Romans 10:9–13 (ESV)

Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.””
Romans 10:9–13 (The Message)
Say the welcoming word to God—“Jesus is my Master”—embracing, body and soul, God’s work of doing in us what he did in raising Jesus from the dead. That’s it. You’re not “doing” anything; you’re simply calling out to God, trusting him to do it for you. That’s salvation. With your whole being you embrace God setting things right, and then you say it, right out loud: “God has set everything right between him and me!”
Scripture reassures us, “No one who trusts God like this—heart and soul—will ever regret it.” It’s exactly the same no matter what a person’s religious background may be: the same God for all of us, acting the same incredibly generous way to everyone who calls out for help. “Everyone who calls, ‘Help, God!’ gets help.”

(The quote about calling on the name of the Lord is to be connected to confessing Jesus as Lord. You can’t really connect “Help God” with “Jesus is my Master.”)

The Message frequently de-emphasizes the activities of demonic powers.
Ephesians 2:1–3 (ESV)
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Ephesians 2:1–3 (The Message)
It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us.

1 Timothy 4:1 (ESV)

Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons,
1 Timothy 4:1 (The Message)
The Spirit makes it clear that as time goes on, some are going to give up on the faith and chase after demonic illusions put forth by professional liars.

(The Romans 8:38 quote from the previous post about The Message is another good example)

In my studies on nationalism, patriotism, and citizenship, I’ve often pointed out that the Bible never says “Be a good citizen.” That’s very far from the New Testament concept of Christians as strangers and aliens.
Of course, I was going by what the Bible says, not what The Message says:

Romans 13:1 (The Message)
Be a good citizen.
Romans 13:1 (ESV)
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.

(The only time Paul talks about being a good citizen is in Philippians 1:27, and that’s about being a good citizen of the Kingdom)

Obviously I could go on and on. There are concerns about what Peterson has done with biblical passages that criticize homosexuality, about the introduction of mystical terms from other religions, about the insertion or deletion of this concept or that concept. There are strange anachronisms that can create confusion (note Andrew’s comment from the other day, for example). There are many times when we have to look at Peterson’s words and say, “Where in the world did that come from?”

My main point is this: when you read The Message, you are not reading God’s message. You are reading Eugene Peterson’s message about God’s message.

It’s the difference between listening to me read Scripture and listening to me talk about Scripture. As long as you can tell the difference, there’s no problem.

As long as we don’t pretend that The Message is Scripture, there’s no problem.

Replacing biblical authority with that of experience

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Let me get back to a topic from last week. I was talking about Christians and churches accepting an additional authority in spiritual matters, that being the authority of experience.

Jay Guin is doing a series of articles on church trends. The first trend he discusses comes from an article by Philip Jenkins and focuses on “gender revolutions.” Let me quote a few things from what Jay says; listen to see if you can hear the voice of experience dominating the discussion in churches:

But there was an even bigger revolution that I’d date to around World War II. Pre-WWII, most conservative churches considered the biblical passages thought to prohibit women from having authority over men (primarily 1 Tim 2) to apply universally — in the secular workplace as well as church and family.
However, by the early 1960s at least, the commentators were limiting their arguments to the church and the family, largely conceding that women may have authority over men in the secular workplace — but more by omission. They just dropped the secular workplace side of the question. Why?
Well, first, women were busily proving their competence as principals of schools and administrators in other fields. And they were bringing home much larger pay checks because of it. And so the old argument of female gullibility was disproved by experience, and few men were willing to give up a 50% raise in their wife’s pay just to make a theological point.

The near future trend is that the complementarian (hierarchical) position will continue to erode as experience shows the competence of women as supervisors and as a generation that has never known the discrimination that I grew up with become church leaders and elders.
Now, for non-Christians, anything short of full equality for women is considered grossly immoral. Millennials consider the notion that women shouldn’t be full partners in a marriage or church laughable and deeply wrong. This is going to become less of an internal debate within the church and more a question of our ability to evangelize the lost, because few unchurched people will be willing to accept imposing a subordinate role on women.

To be fair, let me note that Jay makes powerful arguments for egalitarianism based on Scripture and theology. He is not one who has accepted the authority of experience over the voice of Scripture. But many in our churches have done so. For most, a desire to change the church’s stance on women does not arise out of Bible study or new insights into the text. It comes from experience, both personal experience and observed experience.

Interestingly enough, Jay included point #2 in the same post. (I don’t think the grouping was intentional) That point deals with “Revolutions in sexual identity.” I find that interesting because I can’t help but feel that we’re going to see the exact same thing happen in the church as regards sexual identity. Experience will cause us to return to the Bible and massage the text until it finally says what we want it to say.

Note what Jay says:

While some congregations are choosing to accept gay couples or else to take an agnostic position (same difference), most churches consider homosexual sexual activity to be sinful. And, indeed, I think this is what the Bible teaches (as we’ve covered here many times). But there will be a price to be paid as homosexuals push for legislation that punishes those who refuse to adopt their agenda. I’m sure that at some point the tax exempt status of churches will be challenged if they don’t submit to the gay agenda. And some churches and related institutions (universities, publishing houses) will capitulate rather than close their doors with the loss of tax-deductible contributions.

In both cases (gender and sexual identity), Jay notes that the church will have to pay a price to hold to traditional views. I’m less optimistic than he. I think few Christians and few churches are willing to pay that price. We’ve seen it in gender discussions. We’ll see it with conversations about sexual identity.

Give experience a voice equal to or greater than that given to Scripture, if you choose. Just be honest about it. I think you’re damaging the church by changing your source of authority. And I think generations in the future will return to Scripture and marvel at the choices we made.

The Bible and inspiration

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Yesterday’s post reflects a concern I have, the observation that the church is increasingly de-emphasizing the role of the Bible and proportionately giving more weight to the voice of experience. There is a growing distrust in the human authors of the text; I’ve given plenty of time recently to that idea. The Bible is seen as a very human book; interpreters are free to embrace or reject each passage as they see fit.

As society clamors for religious experience outside of religious institutions, there is an increasing focus on God’s Word beyond Scripture itself; the Bible is seen as part and parcel of organized religion, so those dissatisfied with religion in general seek to find Jesus apart from the written word. This idea is often expressed as focusing on the red letters of the gospels above all else, thinking that they represent the purity of Jesus’ teachings.

Much of it comes down to our view of the Bible and our view of inspiration. If, for example, the apostle Peter was merely the N.T. Wright of his day, then we’re free to agree or disagree with what he says (though there seems to be greater hesitancy to disagree with Wright than to disagree with the biblical authors!). If the epistles are nothing more than a historical curiosity, preserved in a sort of textual museum, then we may read what they say and shake our heads in pity at the inadequacy of their understanding of Christianity.

I don’t believe in divine dictation; I recognize the humanity behind Scripture. But I also believe that God was at work in the production and preservation of the writings of early church authors; I believe that these men wrote God-breathed, Spirit-aided, Christ-honoring texts. Though not perfect men, I believe their writings reveal God’s words to us.

I believe in the unity of the teaching of Scripture. I don’t pit one author against another. I don’t see one book as a corrective to another book, nor one verse as fixing what another says. I do see differences, both differences in narrated details and differences in outlooks on doctrinal themes. But even when the biblical melody isn’t always sung in unison, I believe it’s sung in harmony.

I also believe that the church was guided by God in the selection of which books to keep. The purpose was not to preserve a historical record of the church’s beginnings; these writings were selected because of their ongoing value to the church. What Paul said to Ephesus was seen as being relevant to the church two hundred years later; I believe it’s still relevant two thousand years later.

This is a deep and complex subject, one that I can’t fully explore in 500 words. I’ll try and summarize with this: I firmly believe in the truth and inspiration of the Bible, even the uncomfortable parts. When experience, church teaching, or personal emotions conflict with Scripture, I’m sticking with Scripture.