How Do We Interpret The Bible
by Rev. J. Rogers
Paul told Timothy to "be diligent to present yourself approved
to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing
the word of truth (2 Tim.2:15)." Of course, Paul was speaking
to Timothy, the young pastor of Ephesus, so therefore that verse
does not apply to all of us. Not so. It certainly primarily applies
to pastors and teachers in the Church but in a Reformed Church
all believers are prophets, priests and kings - this is what the
Reformation was all about. All believers are to be students of
Scripture for we are to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly
so that, in all wisdom, we may teach and admonish one another
(Col.3:16). But how are we to handle the Word of Truth correctly,
or rightly divide it so we come to a correct understanding of
it? The basic principle to remember is that the Bible has essentially
one author and that is the Holy Spirit. Thus we may say, the Holy
Spirit interprets the Holy Spirit. Says the Westminster in its
last paragraph of Ch.I;
The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are
to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient
writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined,
and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the
Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture.
A poet once said, when asked the meaning of a couple of lines of a poem he had penned some time previously, "When I wrote that, both God and I knew what I meant; now only God does!" I've experienced the same when I've looked at my sermon notes in the pulpit some Sundays. But when it comes to the Bible, its author is God, so there is no question of a faulty memory entering the equation. This principle is clearly enunciated by Paul in 1 Cor.2;
The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come
from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him and he
cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned,
but we have received the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand
what God has freely given us.
Under this basic given then, what subsidiary principles can we
outline to help us interpret God's Word rightly?
1. THE BIBLE INTERPRETS ITSELF
That is, in a way, only repeating what I have already said, but there are implications that must be drawn from it for this principle is violated time and again by many so-called Bible scholars today. We normally think of this principle as violated mainly by the Roman Catholic Church and the sects. That is quite true. For instance, the Second Vatican Council says,
... hence, both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and
honoured with equal feelings of devotion and reverence (for both
together) make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God....
the task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of
God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition,
has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church
alone (p.755).
Our argument with Rome here is two-fold;
i) Concerning what is inspired by God, what is the Word of God; if we accept that only the Bible is inspired and not these oral traditions, then we cannot accept this teaching. For Paul says in 1 Cor.2, "the things that come from the Spirit of God are spiritually discerned." In that these oral traditions of Rome do not come from the Spirit of God, then the things that come from the Spirit of God, the Bible, are being discerned, interpreted, not spiritually, but by human teachings (these oral traditions).
ii) The second problem here is our old argument about whether
all Christians have direct access to God or whether we must still
go through the priest. Hebrews tells us quite clearly that we
may speak directly to God. On the other hand, God also speaks
to the individual believer through the Word. Besides all the many
commands of Scripture that come to all the various groups of people
in the Church, even children, for example, Jesus says, "He
calls his own sheep by name and leads them out ... and His sheep
follow Him because they know His voice (John 10)."
The so-called Jehovah's Witnesses do the same as Rome. They say;
Not only do we find that people cannot see the divine plan in
studying the Bible by itself, but we see, also, that if anyone
lays the (JW) Scripture Studies aside, even after he has used
them, after he has become familiar with them, after he has read
them for ten years - if he lays them aside and ignores them and
goes to the Bible alone, though he has understood his Bible for
ten years, our experience shows that within two years he goes
into darkness. On the other hand, if he merely read the Scripture
Studies with their references, and not read a page of the Bible,
as such, he would be in the light at the end of the two years,
because he would have the light of the Scriptures (Watchtower,
July 1, 1957, quoted in GI Williamson's The Westminster Confession
of Faith for Study Classes.)
All round, that is a particularly arrogant statement. In the Lord
Jesus Christ, the veil in the Holy of Holies has been torn in
two and the way into the presence of God is open for every believer.
We must never let a tyrannical Church take that privilege and
blessing away from us.
Unfortunately, we are not free of it for a new tyranny has arisen
within Protestantism. At the moment it looks like a new freedom
- to some. But the end result will be as closed a Bible as is
offered in Rome and the sects. I refer to the place historical
research, or what is passed off as historical research, is beginning
to play in the interpretation of the Bible. One could think of
the way the Gereformeerde Kerken in Holland in their report, God
With Us, at least as reported by those who can and have read
it, disposed of some of the disparaging remarks of Ps.60 and 108
that God made about Moab and Edom. One could think about how the
same Church and many others argue to justify homosexuality. They
say that those prohibitions in the OT refer only to homosexual
prostitution in pagan temples or to casual liaisons. And we know
this, not from the Bible itself, but from what we have learned
from other historical records about pagan culture and religion
of the time. That is what is being prohibited, not long-term,
stable, loving relationships - so the scholars using historical
research tell us. But is that what the Bible seems to say?
I trust none of the readers of this magazine have any sympathy
for the practice of homosexuality, but is it possible that some
of us might be verging on the brink of such methods of reading
the Bible? Take the matter of women in ecclesiastical office.
Paul says, "Spiritual things are to be spiritually discerned."
That is, what the Spirit has said in Scripture is to be interpreted
by what the Spirit has said in Scripture, and not by what human
beings have written in the history books. History is fascinating,
but it is notoriously fallible! What is more, it is even more
notoriously subject to what its writer wanted to prove in the
first place, or, for that matter, its reader. And even I can pick
a lot of holes in a good deal of the historical research that
is brought to bear upon the question of women in ecclesiastical
office.
But why do I bring this matter up? I do so because it will not
stop at this question. We have seen too many times that Churches
that open ecclesiastical offices to women, either at the same
time or very soon after, also begin to sanction the practice of
homosexuality. Thus so in the GKN; it is now openly talked about
in the CRCNA. There is a reason for that and the reason is because
of the way the Bible is now being read. It is no longer being
interpreted in terms of itself but rather outside material, and
some of it very shoddy work, is being used to overrule what the
text, at least on the face of it, says, and has appeared to the
whole Church for 2000 years and more to say.
There is also a very strange assumption behind this and that is
that the NT writers, and maybe even Jesus Himself, were simply
reflecting the mores of their age in all these matters. Why ever
Jesus and any of the Apostles, who actually died for standing
right against the great philosophical and religious ideas of their
day, should buckle under on these two questions, is beyond me.
Perhaps some will not appreciate my making the connection I just
have. But on the other hand, many of us cannot believe what has
happened to their mother Church in Holland in less than 50years
- or the Church all round the world, for that matter. But since
it has, why should we be so sure we can go some of the way along
what is, in principle, the same path but not go as far in the
end? "Let him that thinks he stands, take heed, lest he fall,"
Paul would remind us. So, if not for ourselves, then for love
of our children and grandchildren, let us think very, very hard
about whether we are discerning spiritual things with spiritual
or whether we are subjecting the Word of God to the word of man.
As Noel Weeks said in a Call article some time ago, "It
is the Bible that is infallible, not the writings of the fallible
historian."
2. THE BIBLE, IN ANY GIVEN TEXT, HAS ONLY ONE MEANING
Right from the time of Origen, around 200AD, many in the Church
have believed there were three levels of meaning in any given
text - the literal, the moral and the allegorical. The literal
sense was for the ordinary believers, the mere hoi polloi, and
meant just what you read in the words on the page. The moral sense
would give a meaning for how Christians are to act over against
one another and with unbelievers. But it is the allegorical sense
that gives the really spiritual meaning and is, therefore, the
most important. So, for example, Rebecca drawing water from the
well for Abraham's servants and camels is telling us we must come
to the wells of Scripture in order to meet Christ - true, no doubt,
but that Gen.24 is saying that I have my doubts. And there is
still a bit of that going on today.
By the time of the Middle Ages, there was even a fourth level of understanding that could be got out of any passage but the Reformers said;
The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture
itself: and therefore, when there is a question about the true
and full sense of any Scripture (which is not manifold, but one),
it must be searched and known by other places that speak more
clearly (Westminster I.9).
Notice that the Confession speaks of "the true and full sense"
(singular). Rowland Ward, in his modernised text of the Confession,
has here that that one meaning is to "be found in the proper
grammatical sense in its context." I don't know if he gets
that from another text of the Confession than that which we have
adopted, but he is quite right in what he says. In other words,
just take the words in their ordinary meaning, taking into account
whatever else is said in the passage and what kind of literature
it is. As John Stott says, "Because the Bible is the Word
of God, we should read it like no other book; but, because it
is the word of man, we should read it like every other book (The
Essentials, Edwards & Stott, p.93)." So, if it is
plainly a teaching passage, like the NT Letters or the commandments,
we are to read them quite straightforwardly. If it is figurative
language, read it just as we do figurative language everyday even
when we drop just a phrase into ordinary everyday speech. We all
know that a heavy drinker is not someone who weighs 23 stone and
drinks a lot of water. So leave off the dead literalism. Especially
the easterns loved to speak in pictures. Even we utilitarian westerners
are not so mundane.
Once again, this question comes down to the honesty of God. Has
He spoken to us as the sheep of His pasture who should be able
to follow Him simply and plainly and put full trust in Him? Or
has He spoken to us in riddles and conundrums that only the very
clever can solve and the rest of us should follow them blindly
as all good Roman Catholics and sectarians? Was Jesus being up
front when he said we are to come to Him with the simplicity of
children? Or was that just another of His encoded obfuscations?
3. DIFFICULT PASSAGES ARE TO BE INTERPRETED IN THE LIGHT OF THE PLAIN
It should be perfectly obvious to all that the plain teaching
passages of Scripture should rule us, not what we think a story
from Israel's history or some character in the Bible or some description
of early Church life might possibly mean. So, to take an example
that Mormons abuse, we won't take that verse that speaks, just
as a passing comment, about people being baptised for the dead
and construct a whole doctrine out of it, much less alter our
understanding of plain teaching elsewhere in Scripture. Unfortunately,
this one also is greatly violated among so-called reformed and
evangelical writers these days.
4. SCRIPTURE ITSELF IS THE FINAL JUDGE
Again, in a way, we have seen this in an earlier article, but
there is another side to it. There is something else very beautiful
that the Reformation gave to the Church and that is the idea of
the progress of the history of salvation. The Bible is a record
of God saving His people. Everything comes out of that mother
promise in which God said to Satan, "I will put enmity between
you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will
crush your head and you will strike his heel."
So, as we read the Bible, we remember its flow of history and
how God never changes, but is constantly working out what He has
already said and is bringing the old promises to fulfilment. Thus
Jesus never actually brought a new way of salvation. Abraham and
David were saved in exactly the same way we are - by grace through
faith (Romans 4). We can even say that all the laws of sacrifice
have never been superseded by something new. They have just been
fulfilled in Jesus' sacrifice. Indeed, none of the ceremonial
laws, the food laws, and so forth, have really been done away
- not the meaning of them. What all those laws - about clean and
unclean food, and not using two types of cloth in one garment,
or planting two types of grain in one paddock, and so on - what
all those laws mean is still with us. God still says, "Come
out from the world and be separate." It is just that the
Church with the Holy Spirit come in power in the heart of every
believer, has now come of age and no longer has all these childish
restraints anymore. We're out of the playpen now.
Mind you, there is another side to this. Some ask: is not God
continuing the history of salvation? And as He does so, does not
the Church today see that the principles of freedom or emancipation
should go further than the early Church was able to take them.
Even as, for example, it took centuries to abolish slavery? So
therefore, should we not go on progressing beyond what the Bible
has explicitly said? Again, this is often said in the women-in-office
debate and that about sexual morality and marriage. (Indeed, why
should marriage not be abolished among Christians? It is going
to be in heaven.)
In 1 Cor.4:6, Paul concludes his teaching about how the Corinthians
should view different teachers in the Church by quoting an old
saying; "Do not go beyond what is written." If Scripture
is the full and final revelation of God to man and if it is sufficient
for our faith and life, we should accept that, on whatever subject,
God has said all He has to say and, although the world might change
somewhat, this is the last age of the earth's history before Christ
comes again. Therefore the NT gives us a full revelation of God
for this final age. If we say the Bible doesn't go far enough
here or there, then we should also be looking forward to some
other great work of God, some new age and some new unfolding of
God's dealings with man. But all the NT ever teaches us to look
forward to is the glorious appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ
to bring this age to an end. For this age until He comes again,
we have enough in Christ Himself and His Word, the Scriptures.
CONCLUSION
Scripture itself is the final judge; we may not go beyond what is written and with the Spirit's decision in Scripture, we are to be content. Luther summed up the difference between the Reformation and the Renaissance nicely when he said once to the great scholar Erasmus;
The difference between you and me, Erasmus, is that you sit above the Scripture and judge it, while I sit under Scripture and let it judge me.
As usual, Luther hit the nail squarely on the head. May the Lord
ever find us standing right there with him.
Rev. J. Rogers (North Shore)