The Bible says. . . Does it?
LAST week we discussed the issue of scripture and tradition as both constituting one sacred deposit of the word of God. Today, we shall focus on one issue that brings contention among Christians of various denominations – the interpretation of Scripture.
This article does not intend to provide a singular and ecclesiologi-cally authoritative answer to the case. What the article seeks is to bring to our attention the factors that should be considered when interpreting passages from the Bible.
The Bible is very central to our lives as Christians. We use it for various purposes such as prayer and to learn about our salvation history and about Jesus Christ.
However, one of the most common uses of the Bible is in matters of morality. The Bible has commandments and precepts that we believe offer instructions and guidance on how we should live and lead our lives as Christians.
We often appeal to the Bible when denouncing certain acts we deem wrong or immoral, and often cite one or two verses to fortress our arguments.
There are numerous people who also abuse the Bible and use it only to prove the validity of their arguments and actions.
So just how should Bible passages be interpreted?
In order for this endeavour to be more fruitful, it is important to start from the basic inquiry of what the Bible is.
What is the Bible? It’s a question with a seemingly obvious answer. Many of us would answer that the Bible is the word of God, and be content with that answer.
But what does it actually mean to say that the Bible is the word of God? Did God write it Himself? Did He dictate it to the writers? Is it a singular book or a collection of books? Was it written in one sitting or over long periods of time? Did the writers know each other and share notes? If it was written by human beings, could it have some errors in its presentation of certain facts?
The Bible is the word of God in that its books were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (2 Timothy 3:16). The writers of the books of the Bible were under divine inspi- ration when writing, with the Spirit illuminating their minds for them to have a sense of the divine truths that God willed to be put into sacred writing.
This is the sense in which Scripture is the word of God, in that what it contains was written under the impulse of God. However, inspiration is not dictation, so God is not the “direct” author of the Bible.
The immediate authors were human beings, used by God for this sacred purpose.
Thus, the Bible expresses divine truth but does so in human form and language. The writers of the Bible had to use their imperfect human intelligence, think within the confines of their cultural paradigms and convey their message within the linguistic expressions of their time.
Thus, while written under divine inspiration, the Bible is also shaped by human elements. The authors themselves wrote their respective books in a particular time of history, for a particular purpose and for a particular audience. The Bible is thus a collaboration between God and man.
Therefore, in interpreting a passage from the Bible, consideration should be made of the intentions of the author of the book, the factors that occasioned the writing of the book, the audience to which the book was written, the time in history in which it was written and the literary style and form that the author used.
This will help us determine the “original meaning” of the text before we can discern how it applies to us today in our particular context.
Most importantly, it will help us avoid giving a literal interpretation and application of the text to a context vastly different from the author’s own. Knowing what the author intended the meaning of a text to be to his audience and the purpose that the text served to its original audience is very important.
Ignorance of this is the reason why some people use the Bible in very shallow and irrelevant ways. You can’t just say “because the Bible says so”. How sure are you that what you think it says and means is what the author actually said and meant in his context?
Being sensitive to this is especially crucial when dealing with moral questions. What should be remembered is that the Bible does not provide ready-made and clearcut authoritative answers to every problem human beings face.
It is not a text-book of morality containing answers to all moral questions, nor is it a manual for troubleshooting problems that people encounter in life.
In reading some specific rules and commands in the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, care should be made of their context and of the relevancy and rationality of such commands today. Deuteronomy 21:18-21 and Leviticus 20:9 say that anyone who disobeys his parents should be stoned to death. Is this something you would do yourself today simply because the Bible says so?
Interpretation of the Bible therefore requires certain basic skills. Some of these include capacity for historical analysis in order to understand the historical context of a biblical text and capacity for literary analysis to understand the literary form used by the author and the style of writing (poetry — Psalms; prophecy — Amos; letter — Romans; apocalyptic/highly figurative — Revelations).
Divine truth is expressed differently in each of these forms of writing. One can therefore not simply transposition figurative language into direct moral prescription.
As a collaboration between God and man, the Bible is both a divine and to an extent a human product. As a divine product, it does not contain error, but as a human product it does contain some errors.
The Bible does not contain error as far as divine and salvific truth is concerned. It contains some errors as far as historical and scientific facts are concerned.
But historical and scientific facts were not the pre-occupation of the biblical writers. Their concern was divine truth, the truth about God’s self-communication to human beings and His plan of salvation for them.
What is important is to draw inspiration from the Bible and be able to discern from its spirit what it calls us to, that is, to the love of God that features throughout scripture.
We are called to respond generously to this and letting our lives be under the same spirit that guided the biblical writers. The Bible is concerned with divine truth. We best discern this eternal divine truth presented in the Bible when we read it in its “unity” and not in fragments.
The truth is in the whole and complete Bible.
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