Category Archives: Biblical interpretation

Misrepresenting the Bible

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I think we should be very careful when we say, “The Bible teaches…” or “the Bible says…” I guess the second of those especially requires special handling. When we say such things, we need to be able to point to direct textual affirmations of what we’re saying.

Here are some times I’ve heard people misuse these phrases:

  • Years ago, in a meeting with other church leaders, one very good student of the Bible said, “The Bible says the man is to make the decisions in the family.” When pressed on the point, he referred to the passages that speak of male headship. What he should have said is, “The Bible says the man is the head of the woman, which I understand to mean that the man makes the decisions.” I don’t agree with his interpretation, but at least the statement would be accurate.
  • In another meeting, during a heated discussion, one young member referenced the Psalms to support his point. As soon as the young man mentioned the Psalms, the preacher interrupted and said, “My Bible says that’s been nailed to the cross.” Were it possible to be sued for textual malpractice, this man would have lost his preaching license.
  • Taking their cues from Romans 13, I’ve heard Christians say, “The Bible teaches that we are to be good citizens,” and “The Bible says that Christians are to obey all laws (unless they contradict God’s law).” Both of those affirmations are based on an interpretation of “Submit to the authorities” and “Honor the King.” They need to be acknowledged as such.
  • One person who participated a few years ago in our discussion about alcohol contacted me on Facebook to discuss the subject a bit further. He made the statement, “My own personal rule or standard is that if I drank anything strong enough to make me drunk it would violate the prohibition against strong drink.” Unless he’s found some new passage that I’ve never heard of, the “prohibition” he’s referring to comes from Proverbs 20:1. Rather than open the whole discussion again, I merely told him: “As we’ve seen before, we have differing views on whether or not God prohibited strong drink.” But it was a bit discouraging to see him continue to tout advice from wisdom literature as a biblical prohibition.

All of that to say, I’m trying to do better at owning my own interpretations. There is a difference between what God’s Word says and the conclusions I draw based on what is said. If I don’t learn to discern between the two, it will be hard for me to learn much of anything.

 

Photo courtesy of Creation Swap

Narrative theology

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Besides learning how to read stories, we need to consider viewing the Bible as a story, with us as participants. I’m sure that others of you have spent more time with “narrative theology”; it’s somewhat new to me. Much of it reminds me of what Tom Olbricht taught so many of us about theology being the story of the mighty acts of God. I think narrative theology builds on that idea, looking at how we fit into that story.

Apparently, Christian Smith’s book The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture moved a lot of people to think about narrative theology. At least it sparked a lot of discussion on the subject.

One blogger who sought to summarize narrative theology is Roger Olson. He boiled his thoughts down to these points:

  1. Narrative theology focuses on the Bible as a dramatic account of God’s activity.
  2. Narrative theology acknowledges that the Bible contains propositions, but it says biblical propositions are not independent of or superior to the metanarrative of God’s saving activity.
  3. A biblical proposition is “God is love” (1 John 4:8), but it needs interpretation. The only way to interpret “God is love” is to look at the biblical story that reveals God’s character through his actions.
  4. According to narrative theology, the Bible contains many kinds of statements—commands, propositions, expressions of praise, prayers, poetry, prophecies, parables, etc. All must be interpreted in light of the great story of God and its purpose—to reveal the character of God through his mighty acts leading up to and centering around Jesus Christ.
  5. Theology is our best human attempt to understand the biblical drama-story. But a theologian cannot do that properly unless he or she is “living the story” together with a community of faith shaped by the story.
  6. Doctrines are secondary to the story. They are judged by their ability to draw out and express faithfully the character of God as revealed by the story.
  7. The task of the church is to “faithfully improvise” the “rest of the story.” Christians first must be grounded in the story. Second, they must together (communally) improvise the “rest of the story” faithfully to the story given in the Bible.
  8. The alternatives are to either a) regard the Bible as a grab bag of propositions to be pulled out to answer questions, or b) regard the Bible as a not-yet-systematized system of theology (like a philosophy). Both alternatives fail to do justice to what the Bible really is—a grand drama of God’s mighty saving acts that progressively reveals his character culminating in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

I want to explore that some more next week, but for now, let’s hear your thoughts and critiques.

Reading stories

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I’ll be the first to admit it: having a Master’s in Communication doesn’t always make you a good communicator. Somehow what I wrote yesterday came across as a rant against preachers and preaching.

What I’m trying to say is that we often don’t know how to read narratives. [Jeff Hobbs made some interesting points (here and on Facebook) about everything being narrative, but let’s leave that for another discussion] We take a story and make the incidentals into the main points. It’s like reading Don Quijote to learn about how to use windmills or reading Moby Dick to study boat building.

Too often, we try to make narratives a part of a system of laws. In the Wright quote yesterday, he talked about turning the gospels into epistles. To do that, we have to create teaching points, “timeless truths” that we can pull out of every story.

In my experience, we’ve done that more with the book of Acts, since the gospels don’t really count. (Yes, that is sarcasm) We read Acts 20:1-12 and come away with lessons about the frequency of the Lord’s Supper, debates about whether the passage describes one meal or two, etc. Is that even close to what Luke was talking about? Acts 20 tells us the story of a man raised from the dead, and we’re focused on the meals surrounding that act?

In fact, most churches thoroughly enjoy studying Acts, up until about chapter 14. Then it starts to drag, because it becomes harder and harder to pick apart the stories. Part of the problem is that we really need to read the stories of Paul’s journeys all in one sitting to get the feel for them. More than stories, it’s one story, with different episodes. Those episodes find their meaning as part of the whole.

So how do we let narratives tell their own story? How do we keep the Bible stories within the framework of the bigger picture… and the really big picture? I’m at that point where I can see what not to do and haven’t yet come to what should be done. Guidance would be appreciated.

Are Bible stories good enough?

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I regularly teach Bible class. Almost every Sunday. And it’s the rare Sunday that I don’t preach, even though I’m not officially a preacher. I’m expected to take the Word of God and make the message plain for others.

Too many times, however, I get in the way. Especially when dealing with narratives in the Bible. I don’t see them as sufficient (if you’ll allow me to be honest about it). The story isn’t enough; I’ve got to add some lessons to it. In a wonderful essay on biblical authority, N.T. Wright says:

In the church and in the world, then, we have to tell the story. It is not enough to translate scripture into timeless truths. How easy it has been for theologians and preachers to translate the gospels (for instance) into something more like epistles!

Guilty as charged. I don’t find enough power in the stories in the gospels; I’ve got to bring out my own lessons, based on those stories.

So many of the narratives in the Bible have no moralizing to them. The narrator doesn’t tell us if what the person did was good or bad, if it was right or wrong. That’s not easy for us to live with.

Maybe that’s why so many of the stories in the Bible get relegated to Bible hour, never making it onto the big stage in the main assembly. They’re kids’ stories, not material for adults. (Though a lot of those kids’ stories would get an R rating if they were made into movies!)

Wright also writes:

And as we tell the story—the story of Israel, the story of Jesus, the story of the early church—that itself is an act of worship. That is why, within my tradition, the reading of scripture is not merely ancillary to worship—something to prepare for the sermon—but it is actually, itself, part of the rhythm of worship itself. The church in reading publicly the story of God is praising God for his mighty acts, and is celebrating them, and is celebrating the fact that she is part of that continuous story. And, that story as we use it in worship reforms our God-view our world-view—reconstitutes us as the church. The story has to be told as the new covenant story.

How can we do better about letting God’s story be told? How can preachers and teachers get out of the way so that the story can be heard? Or is there enough value in the stories alone? Do they need our “three points, a poem and a prayer” to make them worthwhile?

Reading the Bible as narrative

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Photo by Ove Tøpfer; from Stock Xchange

I’ve been thinking a lot about how we read the Bible. One aspect that I need to learn more about is how to read the Bible as narrative. Interestingly enough, several people have been looking at the same question lately. Among others, Sean Palmer and Patrick Mead have recently written about this. Sean approaches the subject from the point of view of preaching. I haven’t had a chance to read Patrick’s yet, but knowing the kind of research and study Patrick does, I have confident his thoughts are worth reading.

I was also directed to an article called Why “The Bible is our Instruction Manual” is the Worst Metaphor in the History of the World over at a site called The Ruthless Monk. While there, I explored the site and read a bit about reading the Bible as narrative.

I see at least two related trains of thought on this subject:

  1. We need to learn to read the narrative parts of the Bible for what they are. We don’t handle narrative that well. Maybe that’s one reason why the writings of Paul are so popular in our brotherhood. Narrative doesn’t always seem as “practical” as we might like.
  2. We need to learn to read the Bible as a continuing narrative. Each part of the Bible contributes to the overarching story. Too often we isolate verses, chapters or even books, without trying to place them within the whole narrative of the Bible.

I want to spend some time exploring these related ideas. I’m very open to insights, suggested resources, related questions, et. What do you think?