Tag Archives: Bible study

Out With the Concordance

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We’ve been looking at the idea that the Bible was written to be heard and that it wasn’t written originally in the book form that we have now.

As always, such comments deserve a resounding “So what?”. I see several implications, one of which is the need to trash our concordances. Well, OK, that may be a bit strong. But I’ve found that the misuse of the concordance can be a great hindrance to effective Bible study. We piece together verses and phrases from here and there, creating entirely new “biblical passages.”

Let me give you an example. When studying the subject of elders in the church, many take 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 and create a list of “requirements for elders.” The problem is, the resulting list isn’t what is in Timothy nor what is in Titus. It is a new hybrid, one which the Holy Spirit didn’t create. It’s probable that Timothy didn’t have a copy of Titus and Titus didn’t have a copy of 1 Timothy. So, if the only way to have the full list of requirements is to combine the two passages, neither of them had the list. Or at best, one of them had an incomplete list. The truth of the matter is, if God had meant those passages to be used together, He would have given them to us that way! We need to learn to respect the integrity of the biblical books, and read each of them as the early readers would have read them.

Now in this example the lists are very similar. The one in Timothy contains “should not be a recent convert,” because the church in Ephesus had been established decades before. The one in Titus doesn’t have that requirement because Titus was working in more of a mission setting. The list in Titus contains a warning about love of money because that was a common problem in Crete, according to historians. The lists are different because the needs are different. If there had been one list for all congregations, Timothy and Titus would have received the same list, and we would have it as well. As is, when we cut and paste the two together, we create something which God did not! When it comes to Bible study, that’s a dangerous practice.

When we study a passage, we must seek to study it as the early listeners would have, not as modern readers who have 66 books rolled into one.

Within Understanding Distance

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I’m going to leave the discussion on principal themes of the Bible, not because I feel that I’ve exhausted the subject but mainly because the subject has exhausted me! Well, actually, I think that at some point such a discussion can be counterproductive. If you lay out too many rules, passages that don’t fit under any of them suddenly become “unimportant.” As was pointed out by several along the way, we are to look to the weightier matters without neglecting the others.

I also think that we can become too scientific in our Bible study, too logic bound, too mathematical. We want to apply formulas and matrices to the text in order to systematize our beliefs. While we can find guidelines to help us, I think that, in the end, Bible study is a spiritual activity. That may be a bit “touchy-feely” for some, but I honestly think that a scientific approach to Scripture can sometimes get in our way.

I’m not often inclined to quote Alexander Campbell or other leaders from the past, but Mr. Campbell said something very interesting about Bible study (yeah, I know… he said a lot of interesting things). In his Christian System, Brother Campbell wrote:

RULE 7. For the salutary and sanctifying intelligence of the Oracles of God, the following rule is indispensable: We must come within the understanding distance.
There is a distance which is properly called the speaking distance, or the hearing distance; beyond which the voice reaches not, and the ears hear not. To hear another, we must come within that circle which the voice audibly fills.
Now we may with propriety say, that as it respects God, there is an understanding distance. All beyond that distance can not understand God; all within it can easily understand him in all matters of piety and morality. God himself is the center of that circle, and humility is its circumference.

Within understanding distance. Campbell goes on to describe the need for spirituality in Bible study. He says “the philological principles and rules of interpretation enable many men to be skilful in biblical criticism, and in the interpretation of words and sentences, who neither perceive nor admire the things represented by those words.” Put another way… rules alone won’t get you there. It takes humility, it takes prayer, it takes spiritual discernment.

Scientific Bible study can only take you so far. Without a pious spirit, all the rules in the world are inadequate. You’ve got to be close to God to be able to really hear His voice. We’ve got to draw near to Him if we want to understand His Word.