In order to interpret the Bible well, we need to know both what we should do as well as what we should not do.
I suggest that biblical interpretation may be the single most important yet neglected skill in the church, certainly in missions. There are a number of reasons for this. One is that we have either very limited or even mistaken views of interpretation.
I will highlight five ways that we should not teach biblical interpretation. In this post, I’ll note three. Later, I’ll discuss the final two.
Interpretation is not . . .
1. Simplistic
A phrase that captures the idea is this: “The Bible is plain enough that a child can understand it.” The reason for the popularity of this notion is that it is a half-truth. There are plenty of things that anyone can understand. The very biggest ideas in the Bible are easily to see. In addition, the Bible is God’s revelation to all humanity, not just scholars. However, people infer too much from these two points.
The Bible reflects the God whom it reveals. Although God has made himself plainly known to humanity, we would be more reticent to say God is “simple” to understand. Rather, God is infinitely beyond our ability to completely comprehend him. We need the Holy Spirit.
For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. (1 Cor 2:11–13)
Why then do we therefore think everyone should be able to interpret everything in the Bible?
2. Exclusivistic
The opposite problem is also common. People get very intimidated when they read the Bible. They say, “The Bible is very complex.” They think biblical interpretation is an exclusive privilege of pastors and scholars.
As a result, they assume from the beginning that they won’t understand it. Guess what then happens? Our brain locks up and we fulfill our own prophecy. Just because we can’t understand everything does not imply that we can’t understand a lot.
I have two brief responses. First, God uses normal human speech to reveal the words in Scripture. Most of its original readers were not extremely educated. There were no ivory towers in the Sinai desert where Israel received the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible).
Second, I again refer to the 1 Corinthians 2 passage above. God’s Spirit gives us insight into God’s revelation. The Lord gives his Spirit to all his people, regardless of education, culture, or background. If there is anything “exclusive” about understanding the Bible’s meaning, it would be at this point–– to grasp in one’s heart the significance of God’s revelation, we need the Holy Spirit to open our eyes.
3. Arbitrary
A number of methods overly reduce biblical interpretation to a series of arbitrary questions. “Just ask this . . . ,” so they encourage us. At one level, I understand the need to simplify the process. After all, this is why I created a bookmark (in color or black-white) to help anyone interpret the Bible, even if they only have the Bible and nothing else.
My point concerns why we choose the questions we do. Our questions should fit the task we’re doing. For example, understanding context is a critical aspect of interpretation. However, many people don’t know what it means to study the context of a passage. They just ask, “What do you mean by ‘context?’”
As a result, the methods people use are driven by other well-meaning agendas. Consider the SPECKA-method (which I talked about in a previous post). The questions don’t lead us to look at how the context flows together towards any particular point. It doesn’t make us reflect on our own biases when reading the text. Instead, the questions are more driven towards application questions. In Chinese, SPECKA focuses more on the 意义 (yìyì) and not the original 意思 (yìsi).
Photo Credit: Flickr/gdsteam
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