What Kind of a Book is the Bible? . . .

PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION

One of the most impressive things I ever read from Alexander Campbell was in reference to making sense of the scriptures, and it is probably in this area that he made his greatest contribution. He urged his readers to forget about any and all commentaries and to turn to the Bible itself, which is its own best interpreter. He called for a continual re-reading of the various books, believing that an intimate acquaintance with the inspired writings would do more than anything else toward understanding. He suggested that one should not be especially concerned with passages he does not readily understand, but to place a check mark by them in passing, and go on with his study. In subsequent readings he can erase the marks as his comprehension grows. Campbell was convinced that even though one may have many passages checked in the early years of his study, the study of the text itself will eventually bring substantial understanding, apart from commentaries.

1. The principle of saturation

So we take our first principle from Campbell, though he does not call it by this name. But we like it: saturation. Drink deeply of the word itself. It may not please the Lord for us to turn from the scriptures over the slightest difficulty and turn to some commentary. Let such helps be appealed to more discriminately. Read the text over and over and over. Think about it, talk about it, meditate upon it. Then go over it still again and again. Saturation! As the parched ground takes in the rain, deeper and deeper, so let us absorb the scriptures more and more.

One of the stories I learned at Harvard was that of Prof. Agassiz and the fish, a humbling lesson for a graduate student. The old prof in biology was one of Harvard’s great, being one of the few notable scientists in this country to challenge the Darwinian hypothesis when it was published in 1859. The story about the fish is still told on the old campus, and it illustrates our point about saturation.

The prof assigned one of his students a certain specie of fish to study. The young man was diligent in preparing his dissections, with drawings, illustrations, slides, and explanations. At last, his work painstakingly completed (he thought), he turned it over to Prof. Agassiz. The prof smiled approvingly, assuring the student that he had made a good start, and that he was now in a position to learn something about the fish. Disheartened that all his labor was but the beginning, the student delved deeper and deeper. But each time he thought he had learned all there was to learn, the prof urged him on in further research. The story goes on and on. The student at last became an authority on that particular specie of fish, thanks to a cranky instructor. That’s saturation! And that, by the way, is one of the first lessons one learns in writing a thesis at Harvard. When I turned my first chapters into my major prof, after endless hours of work, he returned them to me with a note that read: “This is no thesis. You have gathered much material. But what do you say?” Crestfallen, I thought of that smelly fish story!

Let’s face it, we are lazy and superficial in our Bible study. We want everything shelled for us. No sooner do we come upon some troublesome passage than we turn to Peoples Notes to see what Uncle B.W. says about it. If we read the passage in context again and again every day, applying our minds to it, we might know as much or more than B.W. Johnson or William Barclay knows about it. That was Newton’s response when they asked him how he had learned so much about science: by applying my mind to it.

2. The principle of discrimination

It is obvious that the scriptures are not all equally significant. Some is much more important than the rest. We are to look for the Bible’s central concern, distinguishing it from that which has only local or temporal significance. All truth is equally true, but not all truth is equally important. The primary message is God’s gracious and redemptive activity in saving sinful man through Jesus Christ. Man is called upon to respond to God’s grace in faith and obedience throughout the whole of his life and work. To this end the scriptures are replete with specific laws and detailed organization, some applying to God’s people in one situation and others to other situations. Through reverent and serious study we are to ascertain what is for us in our situation, distinguishing what is permanently binding from what is applicable only to another time and circumstance. But the point of all scripture is Jesus Christ, and it is all to be interpreted in the light of his centrality. He is thus the fulfillment and end of the law as revealed in the Old Covenant scriptures, and it is in him that the Old and New Covenants find their unity.

The Bible is thus a love story, a testimonial to God’s philanthropy, and this story makes its way all through the whole of scripture. It is not a law book to be interpreted by legalists, but a story of redemption to be read and responded to by hungry souls. Anyone part of the story is, therefore, to be interpreted in the light of the story as a whole rather than in static, arbitrary fashion.

We are to discriminate between truths in reference to what they tell us about Jesus. Isaiah thus becomes more important than Judges, and John more important than Jude. And some things within both Isaiah and John are more vital than the rest, all because they point more dramatically to what Jesus means to us. In the apostolic letters there emerges a pattern of the ideal church, though no one congregation or all of them together constitutes that pattern. But we have to be selective through careful study, recognizing what is crucial for us over against the local and temporal. We may decide that the Lord’s Supper is more important than the love feast, though they had both; that prayer is more important than fasting, though both were practiced; that the substance of religion, centered in a broken and contrite heart, is more important than the forms that give expression to that substance, though both fall within God’s plan for us.

3. The principle of consistency

By its very nature truth is consistent. It cannot contradict itself. Any new interpretation must therefore be consistent with all the known truths of scripture. This is why we can say the Bible is its own best interpreter. Once we have in hand the obvious truths of God’s word, only those conclusions that harmonize with them can be allowed. Thus the known tends to explain the unknown, the simple opens up the more complex.

If, for instance, the universal or catholic nature of the church is established in scripture, then no passage can be interpreted so as to make the church parochial or sectarian. If the Bible makes it clear that justification from sin comes through faith in Christ, apart from works of law, then all other conclusions must conform to that known. If the scriptures distinctly teach that one receives the Holy Spirit when he believes and obeys Jesus, then all other interpretations about the Spirit must honor that truth. If the New Covenant scriptures make it clear that God is a loving and compassionate Father, then this known truth must remain pivotal in any composite picture we form of His nature.

This means that some possible interpretations can be held only provisionally or tentatively, and they may never become part of the known. There are those universal truths that we all come to see alike, for they are facts, indisputable facts that need no interpretation. From these pivots of certainty we can reach out into the less certain areas. We only need to realize what we are doing, that we are working from the known to the unknown, and that the “unknown” may never become absolutely known, not in this world at least. This is especially appropriate to the exciting area of prophecy. It also applies to our tendency to be allegorical in the handling of passages, such as the temptation to make every aspect of a parable stand for something.

Our task is not always so simple as to “take what the Bible says,” for in some instances the Bible doesn’t really say what it appears to say. 1 Cor. 15:29 clearly refers to “being baptized on behalf of the dead.” This cannot be made to mean that one now living can be baptized for a deceased person, for this contradicts the known about baptism. If you can be baptized for another, you can believe for another, repent for another. Baptism must be our act of obedience before God, not another’s. So 1 Cor. 15:29 cannot teach proxy baptism. We don’t have to know what Paul had in mind in order to know that he could not have meant that. True, some of the Corinthians may have had such an idea and practice, and Paul was taking advantage of that in his teaching about the resurrection. But in any case this cannot be given general application and be made to mean that living believers should be baptized in behalf of dead unbelievers.

Nor can the line in 1 Pet. 3:21, “baptism now saves you,” be made to mean that there is salvation in the act itself, for the scriptures make it clear that it is by God’s mercy that we are saved and not by any work of righteousness which we have done ourselves (Tit. 3:5). This illustrates how we deal with the more obscure passages by way of the clearer ones. So, we come up with some such conclusion as baptism saving us in the sense that it is the means that God has given us for responding to his saving grace.

4. The principle of induction

This principle keeps us from imposing upon scripture by making it mean what we want it to mean. Induction is the process of reasoning from particular facts to a general conclusion. It is the method of scientific and historical inquiry. Bruno Hauptmann was found guilty of kidnaping and murdering the Lindbergh baby through an inductive process. The prosecutors came up with certain facts: the ransom money was in his possession; his handwriting matched that of the ransom notes (Including misspelled words); the ladder used in the crime matched the lumber found in his garage; the phone number of the mediator was found in his home, which he explained as a passing interest on his part, saying he copied it from the newspapers, but the number was never made public and was given only to the kidnapper; Lindbergh identified his voice as the ‘voice he heard in the cemetery when he handed over the ransom money.

Facts, facts, facts. The quality of them more than the quantity determines the strength of the conclusion. The Hauptmann jury was so convinced by the facts that it was willing to pass the death sentence upon him.

Facts force their own conclusion. If the scriptures do not compel us to draw certain conclusions from the facts set forth, then we should draw none. In any event, the conclusion drawn should never be stronger than the evidence for it. We might say, “This is possibly the meaning,” when we have evidence that is less than certain.

The controversial passage, “When that which is perfect is come that which is in part shall be done away” (1 Cor. 13:10), is an illustration of how the principle of induction is violated. When one takes the context and lines up the facts, he can be certain that such gifts as tongues and prophecy are to cease while love will endure forever. They will cease “when the perfect comes.” Here he has to be less certain in that he cannot be sure what the perfect is, for it is not explicitly identified. I conclude, along with most scholars, that it refers to the consummation of all time and history, to heaven and end-time. The context strongly suggests this to me. But I have to say this is the likely meaning, for I cannot be certain. That “the perfect” refers to the complete revelation of God, and that therefore the gifts ceased when the full canon of scripture was given, I would consider less likely or highly improbable. But we must exercise caution with all such passages and not claim that a certain conclusion (that we prefer because of tradition) is compelling when it isn’t. Some brethren are so sure of themselves on this passage that they use it to withdraw fellowship from those who would dare to differ with them!

Induction therefore is a process that searches for facts, for the known, through which the unknown is invaded. This means we let the scriptures speak to us, not the other way around. We approach with hat in hand, with respect and awe, with our minds open and with no preconceived notions. None of us can do this absolutely, but that is the ideal. This calls for the usual historical-critical approach, as with any literature we are examining. Some of the specifics would be:

1. Determine the reliability of the text. Any serious textual problems? One coming upon Easter in Acts 12:4 might be puzzled until he sees he has a textual problem. What is in the King James really isn’t in the Bible at all.

2. Consider the literary form of the passage. Is it poetry or prose, allegorical or literal, historical or prophetic?

3. Determine the historical situation. Who said it? To whom? Where? Why? When? What is the cultural, religious, and social context?

4. Consider the crucial terms. What did the words mean to the one who used them and to the ones who then read them over against what they might mean to the modern reader?

5. Study the passage in the light of all the known facts. Look at the part in reference to the whole. How does it relate to the scheme of redemption, the story of salvation? How does it fit into that part of the Bible in which it is found? What is its real message? How crucial is it? How does it apply to our modern world and to your personal life?

Complete personal identification with the situations within scripture is impossible. One smitten with cancer may not be able to make specific applications, nor even those who are trying to settle a wage dispute. The Bible may not speak directly to the busing problem, crime in the streets, Watergate, inflation, or international problems. But, led by the Spirit as we believe we are, we do find a certain identification. The Bible may not always answer our questions or solve our problems, but it does give us the strength to face them. The adaptation of the scriptures to our private lives and to the modern world is thus a crucial problem that each must solve in his own way. Yet we are to believe that in every new situation, whether it be having a baby or starting a business, that the word of God does speak to us.

Finally, it is important to remember that the scriptures are primarily for the church. They are telling God’s people how to really be His people. Through the church the scriptures speak to the world. And the only Bible many poor lost souls will ever read will be what they see in our lives. We are His epistles, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God. How you are read by the world will depend in part on how you read the scriptures. —the Editor