A New Kind of Christian Part 3 - Biblical Interpretation

Today’s topic is of special interest to me. I have long struggled with expressing my view of how I approach the Bible and then how interpretations might stem from that view. Systematic theology and wooden, literal views on the Bible have never quite settled well with me, especially as I gain a better understanding of the nature of the literature. Mclaren did what I could not. He worded this tension that I had between not having to believe every single word as literal without relativizing it. Interesting thoughts to be sure.

The conservatives are against reinterpreting ancient wisdom in light of contemporary fads or moods, and they’re against weakening the strong, unchanging backbone of the faith, fearing that we’ll be left with a kind of jellyfish spirituality that has nothing to cling to.

Meanwhile, the liberals are against pitting faith against honest scientific investigation and turning faith into an anti-intellectual enterprise. They’re against the resistance to free inquiry and against the privitization of faith. They think that conservatives have retreated to their own private sphere, worrying only about their own personal salvation, leaving the world at large to go to hell ecologically, culturally, and in terms of social justice.

Both sides are against something worth being against.

Often conservatives will say that the Bible is the foundation for everything, and tampering with the foundation causes the whole structure to come down. Thus often the view, from the conservative point of view, is that the liberals are throwing out the Bible and everything that does not appeal to them. Yet, conservatives do the same thing, often unaware:

Conservatives don’t impose the penalties of stoning to death for those who disobey their parents.
They don’t exclude from the worship service anyone whose genitals have been mutilated.
They don’t teach that it is a sin for women to wear jewelry or have a short haircut.
They don’t follow the example of many OT characters such as killing infidels, having many wives, or killing their enemy’s babies.

And why not? Because they approach the Bible with a particular framework that keeps them from applying the Bible literally in such situations. The difference between the liberals and the conservatives is the interpretive framework. But the conservatives often seem unaware of such a framework, and think they are rigorously applying the Bible literally. Thus, when conservatives argue about the Bible’s absolute authority they are arguing about the superiority of their traditional framework through which they read and interpret the Bible.

This does not mean that the Bible is not authoritative. But real authority lies in God, who is there behind, beyond, and above the text, not in our interpretations. The authority is not in what I say the text says, but in what God says the text says. Our interpretations reveal less about God or the Bible than they do about ourselves. They reveal what we want to defend, what we want to attack, what we want to ignore, what we’re unwilling to question. The issue to be considered does not revolve around a book that we can misinterpret with amazing creativity but rather with the will of God, the intent of God, the desire of God, the wisdom of God—the Kingdom of God.

The Bible says of itself, that Scripture inspired by God and authoritative. It is useful as well—to teach, rebuke, correct, instruct us to live justly, and equip us for our mission as the people of God. That is a very different approach than how many take the Bible. We want the Bible to be God’s encyclopedia, God’s rule book, God’s answer book, God’s scientific text, God’s easy-step instruction book, God’s little book of morals for all situations.

But think of a math book. It is not valuable because the answers are in the back. It is valuable because, by working through it, by doing the problems, but struggling with it, you become a wiser person, capable of applying those truths in a variety of ways.

When we let go of the Bible as God’s answer book we get back something much better. It is a book that calls together and helps create community, a community that is the catalyst for change in this world. It becomes the family story—the story of the people who have been called by the one true God to be his agents in the world, to be his servants to the rest of the world. It is an ancient book of incredible value for us, a kind of universal and cosmic history, a book that tells us who we are and what story we find ourselves in so that we know what to do and how to live. It is the story of faith, produced by faithful followers, for faithful followers. It expresses the experience of a few people with the Almighty God, that informs, encourages, and instructs contemporary believers who are creating their own experiences.