The Bible Doesn’t Include Directions. However We Nonetheless Want Steering to Deal with It Nicely.
At my seminary, I usually train a course on biblical interpretation, and I at all times start in the identical means: by displaying college students an image of the “Bible Bar.” This was an actual product (now not out there, I imagine) that claimed to supply a really “biblical” snacking expertise.
Every Bible Bar contained solely seven elements, the seven meals talked about in Deuteronomy 8:8, which have been considered plentiful within the Promised Land: wheat, barley, vines (raisins), figs, pomegranates, olive oil, and honey. (Personally, I’m glad they didn’t add any milk from the land flowing with milk and honey, since I’m lactose illiberal, however having sampled the bar as soon as, I can solely conclude that it’s a disgrace Deuteronomy 8:8 doesn’t point out salt.)
Each semester, after introducing the Bible Bar, I ask my college students a collection of questions: Is that this what we are supposed to glean (pun supposed!) from Deuteronomy? Is the impressed textual content of Deuteronomy 8:8 a recipe e-book for the perfect on-the-go vitality enhance? Have been these meals the one issues rising in Canaan? Do these meals alone have “religious” significance?
As a result of our Bibles don’t include an instruction booklet, readers typically give you uncommon makes use of and purposes. After I was in highschool, the newest craze was a e-book referred to as The Bible Code. In it, Michael Drosnin argued that the Hebrew Bible contained crossword puzzle–like codes that supposedly embedded phrases like “Hitler” and “Pearl Harbor.”
For a short time, The Bible Code was a sensation, however it was shortly forgotten for apparent causes. God doesn’t need us to learn behind the textual content for hidden codes. He desires us to learn the Bible fastidiously and faithfully as an affidavit to what God has achieved on the planet and what position we play in his work of redemption. Few of us purchase into outlandish code theories, however we regularly stay inclined to smaller misunderstandings and interpretive misfires. Contemplate a number of the extra widespread errors, like considering “I can do all issues” (Phil. 4:13, ESV) is about profitable the massive soccer recreation or treating “decide not” (Matt. 7:1, ESV) as a restriction on questioning different folks’s conduct.
In my residence, we’ve got plenty of Ikea furnishings merchandise. I’ve tried constructing a few of them with out utilizing the directions, however it by no means goes nicely. The identical goes for studying the Bible—even when it doesn’t include a guide, we nonetheless want steering to keep away from mishandling it. We could be grateful, then, that New Testomony scholar Michael F. Hen has written Seven Issues I Want Christians Knew concerning the Bible, a trusty primer on understanding God’s Phrase.
Fruitful and trustworthy studying
Hen, who teaches at Ridley Faculty in his native Australia, covers a spectrum of key subjects corresponding to biblical authority, biblical inspiration, interpretation dos and don’ts, and reflections on the Bible’s important position in shaping the church and the Christian life. He makes seven statements that represent the e-book’s fundamental chapters: The Bible didn’t fall out of the sky. The Bible is divinely given and humanly composed. Scripture is normative, not negotiable. The Bible is for our time, however not about our time. We should always take the Bible significantly, however not at all times actually. The aim of Scripture is information, religion, love, and hope. And Christ is the middle of the Christian Bible.
All of Hen’s subjects and discussions are insightful and well-suited to guide Christians towards fruitful and trustworthy engagement with Scripture. Nevertheless, I discovered his early chapters, which orient readers to what Scripture is and the way it works, particularly useful.
Hen’s opening chapter discusses the library of biblical books—the place they got here from and the way they got here collectively into one Bible. It wasn’t till faculty that I noticed my Catholic mates had books of their Bibles that weren’t in mine, books like Sirach and Tobit. And their Bibles, in flip, have been a bit totally different than Bibles used within the Greek Orthodox custom. All these Bibles have slight variations not as a result of God obtained confused, however as a result of the biblical books weren’t hand-delivered by God to the church. A technique of canonization happened within the interval after the apostolic age; this concerned dialogue and discernment amongst early church leaders over what ought to rely as Holy Scripture.
It’s essential for Christians to suppose by way of the Bible’s inspiration and authority, which Hen considers in consecutive chapters. Inspiration doesn’t imply that God deposited divine phrases into the brains of Matthew or Paul. As Hen helpfully argues, it in all probability concerned “God’s guiding and main human minds on the conceptual degree.” In different phrases, whereas God influenced the biblical writers’ course of thought, they expressed these ideas in their very own methods, yielding God’s Phrase in human phrases. This helps clarify why the Bible contains so many genres: narrative, poetry, letters, apocalyptic literature. God didn’t invent these genres. As an alternative, he selected to disclose himself by way of written types that already existed, although a few of these undoubtedly took on new options.
Hen defends biblical authority by speaking about how Scripture must form what we expect is essential and the way we set up the course of our lives. Addressing Christians who may deal with the Bible as “holy opinion,” he challenges them to see Scripture’s authority as grounded within the supremacy of God himself. We’re his creatures, not his spiritual clients. The Bible isn’t merely one other e-book, one thing to learn alongside different “essential” books. It’s uniquely impressed.
In fact, there are numerous Christians who take the Bible significantly however make the error of studying and making use of all the things actually. It’s harmful to equate seriousness solely with literal interpretation. When Jesus speaks of turning the opposite cheek (Matt. 5:39), he isn’t educating us, in some slender means, find out how to deal with slaps to the face. The bigger query issues how we must always love our enemies. An excessively literal interpretation can typically blind us to the purpose the Bible is definitely making.
Certainly one of my favourite illustrations alongside these strains comes from the Christian satire journal The Wittenburg Door. A 1978 challenge included a “literal” drawing of Solomon’s lover as depicted in Music of Solomon. The weird determine has doves for eyes (1:15), a mesh of goats for hair (4:1), pomegranates on her temples (6:7), and a neck resembling a stone tower (4:4), amongst different oddities. If the ensuing sketch is absurd, it is because Solomon’s imaginative description has different targets in thoughts. He desires us to see his lover as exceptional, simply as all these different objects and creatures have sure exceptional options. To interpret the metaphors actually robs Solomon’s portrait of its literary artistry.
How can we inform when and when to not stick to a literal studying of specific phrases and passages? Cautious discernment is crucial. Hen encourages all believers to higher perceive the traditional world during which the phrases of Jesus and the apostles got here into being. Slavery then was totally different than slavery now. Political programs have been totally different. And so have been cultural conventions and expectations, like find out how to behave at a cocktail party or be good friend. If we neglect these fundamental distinctions, we’re certain to misinterpret and typically misapply Scripture.
Fortunately, plenty of nice sources on the Bible’s historic background are available (together with The New Testomony in Its World, a textbook Hen cowrote with N. T. Wright). We should always construct them into our devotional habits, to not rob Scripture of its theological energy however as a result of understanding its authentic context helps it come alive. Then we are able to decide extra thoughtfully what it means for our lives immediately.
Deeper love of God and neighbor
In seminary, I discovered many of the classes Hen presents in his e-book. I studied interpretive strategies, the genres of the Bible, and numerous views on biblical inerrancy and trustworthiness. However Hen underscores one thing that wasn’t drilled into me again then: The aim of studying Scripture isn’t (merely) to achieve data, however to be conformed to the picture of Jesus and spurred to deeper love of God and neighbor.
Hen rightly warns us in opposition to viewing the Bible like a rolled-up newspaper that’s used to whack you over the top for being naughty. It’s not a e-book of non secular guidelines, both. As Hen places it, “The objective of our instruction within the Scriptures is to know God higher in order that we could develop in our love for God.” Nicely mentioned. Scripture types and shapes us into the folks God has destined us to be, a folks of trustworthy and beneficiant love.
Witty and winsome, Seven Issues I Want Christians Knew concerning the Bible covers loads of floor in a brief house. It comes superbly illustrated with charts and loaded with memorable anecdotes. If I’m being choosy, I might have most well-liked to see Hen embody a significant part or chapter sorting by way of the handfuls of obtainable English Bible translations. Lots of them are good, however reality be instructed, some are fairly unhealthy. How are Christians outdoors the seminary world supposed to select from them? For that matter, if there is just one Phrase of God, why are there so many translations anyway? These are widespread questions that swirl across the many subjects Hen covers, and I’m certain he has insights to supply. (He does speak briefly about translations in his opening chapter.)
After I was a younger Christian, I bear in mind studying John Stott’s e-book Understanding the Bible. It helped me acquire a fundamental grasp of the who, what, when, the place, why, and the way of God’s Phrase. Hen has provided an analogous present for a brand new era, and for that we could be grateful.
Nijay Ok. Gupta is professor of New Testomony at Northern Seminary in Lisle, Illinois. He’s the writer of Paul and the Language of Religion.
Have one thing so as to add about this? See one thing we missed? Share your suggestions here.
