But the Bible is so clear!
How many times do we hear our church friends exclaiming to our horrible conscience for not taking a strong stance on a particular issue due to our lack of understanding of passages which strangely seemed so clear to others.
The truth is, the bible may be clear (at least to its original readers), but are we?
Too often we come out from reading the bible thinking (arrogantly?) that we have successfully pinned it down. Or as if we have managed to leash god's word. And we emerge, proudly, able to throw out points after points which we claimed to be our christian doctrines. Yet could it be that these usually bodiless and contextualless assertions and statements are but our cherished traditions, instead of the word of god which we would like them to be?
Within the Protestant traditions, we have many times guilty of abusing the bible, treating it either too high or too low, but finally treating it like our handmaid making the bible say the things we imagine would be profitable for the soul of the church and the world.
I have heard sermons after sermons purportedly on a text in the bible, but ended up listening to the speaker talking endlessly about his own experience (or others' experience ), or about the so called christian doctrines which one could not relate back to the passage again except by a (an extremely?) creative process of bending and stretching and twisting.
Here, I want to discuss, three popular ways of approaching the bible, which I think on their own and in their current forms are utterly insufficient and we are only doing a grave injustice to god's powerful works and words recorded in the bible if we continue to read the bible in these manners.
Literal Reading
We, being heirs of the Reformation always insist on reading the bible literally. What do we mean by that? Or more precisely what did the Reformer meant by taking the bible literally?
Because within our own tradition, literal reading has come to mean, taking the bible word-for-word. Does it mean that we will not allow the bible to speak in metaphors or perhaps what is known among biblical scholars as apocalyptic language - using spectacular imageries to describe dramatic changes of the current world events in the last days? What if the author really intended to speak metaphorically? What do we make of passages like this:
And I said: Hear, you heads of Jacob
and rulers of the house of Israel!
Is it not for you to know justice?—
you who hate the good and love the evil,
who tear the skin from off my people
and their flesh from off their bones,
who eat the flesh of my people,
and flay their skin from off them,
and break their bones in pieces
and chop them up like meat in a pot,
like flesh in a cauldron. (Micah 3:1-3)
Were there cannibalistic acts among the leaders of Israel?
Many of us would probably say "no, that's a metaphorical language". But what about this:
When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. (Rev 6:12-14)
I know many people who spend their time speculating on the scientific explanations on how the moon will turn into red. And of course, we have books, not least popular christian end-times novels, B grade movies on how all these events will literally happen in the last days. And people are buying into it wholesale.
If this is the case, then god had a flu and the reed sea parted:
By the blast of your nostrils
the waters piled up.
The surging waters stood firm like a wall;
the deep waters congealed in the heart of the sea. (Ex 15:8)
Where do we draw the line? Or there is a fresh divine inspiration given to us each time we read the bible to decide which passage is literal and which is metaphorical?
Which brings us to the next approach:
Devotional Reading
God may speak to us 10 different messages for the 10 times we read the same passage - someone said in church last night (and she meant well, a senior church leader leading a bible camp she attended some years ago taught her that). I grant that god may speak to us through the holy spirit illuminating our reading and meditation of the bible, but if there is no single objective message in the scripture, if the meaning changes as perspective changes, then where is the warranty of knowing what IS the true message?
If one may claim that god inspired 100 x 100 different messages on us from reading the same passage, and what is stopping such "god" from inspiring a hundred thousand more? (Let us not forget that Joseph Smith was "inspired" and the Mormon church was started) Paul can therefore be done with, we have no more use of him than to borrow his pen for the empty meaningless words which are to be infused with divinely inspired meaning each time a pious person picked up the bible.
No, Reality cannot be affected by perspectives. Take for example Paul's letter, we must be careful not to read our so called christian doctrines (more often the traditions of our own church/denomination) into them. Paul was writing to a specific audience and was interacting on specific matters. There MUST be specific meanings to each article he wrote relating to the different issues discussed. But many times, we are too quick to force Paul to speak about what WE believe and most often, these involve making his sentences into abstract principles to be use across a wide many different spectrum of issues, instead of what he believe against the specific issue he was responding to.
Again, we risk reading our (sometimes arrogant) theology into Paul:
Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial?Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols?(2 Cor 6:14-16)
How many times we have heard this great exhortation of Paul summarized into the absract (without context) cliche one liner: Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. And we made it into an all encompasing doctrine forbidding partnership with non christians? Well, we seemed to imply that it's all encompassing, but how many often we use this one liner MERELY to forbid a love-relationship between a christian and non christian? Do not be unequally yoke, why not partnership in business? Or in the community? or with one's non christian parents? Because the other sort of relationships are inevitable or because man-woman love relationship is the most intimate relationship mirroring that of Christ and the Church? Or is it just reading scriptures to our own convenient? Or is it a mistaken reading in the first place?
I once heard over the pulpit, Do not be unequally yoked. Where god had put a full stop (period) don't we dare to remove. I am afraid, we have to read beyond the period and into the whole context.
A discontextual reading of scripture will make no sense. Because, for example; god gave the great commandment against murder, but few decades after the event, god commanded the terrible massacre of Canaan. What do we make out of that? Sweep it under the carpet of our (blind??) faith?
Which is why, we must now go to the next section:
Word Study
We are also fond of making a whole encyclopedia out of single word in the bible. Granted that words in hebrews and greek, especially hebrew, are very pictographic, and studying the imageries behind the words can prove to be a valuable lesson to greater understanding of the text. But what if the author simply wanted to use a different and synonymous word to connote the same idea? What if there were really no different between joy and happiness as we use to trouble ourselves to explain? What if love is simply love in the mind of Paul or John, whether it's agape or phileo?
The most famous passage is at the end of John's gospel:
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter,"Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?" (agape)He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you" (phileo)He said to him,"Feedmy lambs." He said to him a second time,"Simon, son of John, do youlove me?" (agape)He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." (phileo)He said to him, "Tend my sheep."He said to him the third time,"Simon, son of John, do you love me?" (phileo)Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time,"Do you love me?" and he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." (phileo, phileo)Jesus said to him,"Feed my sheep. (Jn 21:15-17)
Of course, we will have some who cannot be satisfied with the "plain sense of the scripture" (btw, that's what the Reformer refers to when they speak of "literal readings", i.e., the plain sense, the original intended meaning of the writer as understood plainly by the first readers) and therefore began to build a whole case of how Peter was struggling to go to the level of pure divine love and therefore Jesus has to condescend for his sake to the lower level of friendship love. Bad hermeutics and even worse grasp of the gospel of John.
Because, if they are right, then the love within the godhead is nothing spectular, nothing pure and nothing divine, but merely the lower level friendship love worthy of a careless and rude fisherman:
So Jesus said to them,"Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves (phileo) the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. (Jn 5:19-20)
Even my english school teacher warned us against using the same word over and over again, and encouraged us to use synonyms to express a better sounding sentence. Why not allow Paul and John or Moses to do so?
When we hinged too much on word study out of the context where the word is located, we run into the danger of reading more than the biblical author intended. And then, who is the authority now? The reader, the scholar or Paul?
We only need the Bible!
But if we do not have the textual experts doing the extremely labourious work of picking up of pieces of old manuscript here and there and trying to make sense of them, how do we get our bible in the first place? If we do not have the linguistic scholars doing the taxing task of working through greek and hebrew and aramaic, how do we get our bible in the first place? If we do not have the historians and archeologists putting years and years of effort uncovering for us the biblical world, how do we even begin to understand the strange practises norm to those times which then enriches our understanding of the whole text itself?
But given so much difficulties to even have a bible on our study desk, one cannot help but ask, how then can we be saved?
Oh, what is impossible with man is possible with god! Many times, it was god's great mercy and love which overrides and works through the mountains of our ego and the valleys of our ignorance to bless us even with our mistaken reading of the bible. But does it mean that we can go on sinning? By no means...
The bible does not come in vacumn, nor did god intended it to be so. Besides all those scholarships mentioned above, we need a hundred thousands other scholarships all fusing into a single unity to receive the message of god on this end of the divine-human communication. This involve hard work, a lot of hard work. There is no room for easy believism, there is no for a quick fix christianity. Life is more complex than we would like it to be, and truth is harder than we wished.
But, there is nothing to fear for putting in the sweat and tears for improving our understanding of the bible. Except of course the risk of losing ourselves and losing our cherished traditions. But this is what the bible was about in the first place, it is not a mirror which we look into to see our own image, but rather a story book of a great epic, where we read to find the glorious story of who god is and how he wants to relate to us. As we read the scripture, as we reflect and meditate on the story, we will soon come to realize that the stage has now be given to us for the one final act before the curtains fall.
Some Recommended Reading Materials
These are the books that I referred to and I recommend them for your further reference.
1) How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart
2) How to Read the Bible Book by Book by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart
Both books are concise and simple to read, popular level aimed at lay people. It's rather enjoyable easy reading.
3) The Hermeneutical Spiral by Dr. Grant Osborne
Introductory level textbook in the seminary on biblical interpretation
4) Exegetical Fallacies by D.A. Carson
Short and sweet introduction into different fallacies we commit in studying the bible, I had to skip one whole chapter because I cannot understand at all what that chapter was saying (on advance Greek grammar)
5) Scripture and the Authority of God by Nicholas Thomas (N.T.) Wright
Excellent short and concise introduction to how the scripture is authoritative to the church. Includes a brief summary of how the bible is read from early church to post modern time today. Highly recommended. Many of my thoughts are formed by Bishop Wright's writings.
6) The New Testament and the People of God by Nicholas Thomas Wright
Excellent advance level material on the historical background of the gospel. Also a large section discussing on the methodology when reading history and on critical realism. Highly recommended.
7) The Two Horizons: New Testament Hermeneutics and Philosophical Description by Anthony Thiselton
8) New Horizons in Hermeneutics: The Theories and Practices of Transforming Biblical Reading by Anthony Thiselton
Advance level textbooks in the field of hermeutics. The author explored various philosophical issues when reading the text and discussed the works of Heidedgger, Bultman, Gadamerand Wittgenstein. I am trying to read them on and off, rather difficult to read.
8) New Horizons in Hermeneutics: The Theories and Practices of Transforming Biblical Reading by Anthony Thiselton
Advance level textbooks in the field of hermeutics. The author explored various philosophical issues when reading the text and discussed the works of Heidedgger, Bultman, Gadamerand Wittgenstein. I am trying to read them on and off, rather difficult to read.
