Reading the Bible is not that easy
Jesus told stories called parables to help mostly uneducated people grasp easily misunderstood spiritual topics. For this reason, Jesus’ stories were simple. They involved common, directly accessible, well-understood imagery like shepherds, tax-collectors, and yeast so his listeners could better understand topics like God, life, prayer, and the spiritual journey by simple comparison.
Some Christians act as if the Bible as a whole operates with a similar simplicity.
It does not.
The fancy word is perspicuity. It means clear or lucid. Lots of Christians believe the Bible is perspicuous in the sense that anyone can open it and easily discern what it means.
But as Christian Smith argues in his book The Bible Made Impossible, if that were true, we wouldn’t have millions of well-intentioned Christians who disagree with one another regarding what the Bible means.[1] In other words, the very fact that Christians disagree with one another regarding what the Bible means (what Smith calls pervasive interpretive pluralism) is observational proof that the Bible’s meaning is not perspicuous. If anyone could just open the Bible, read it, and clearly discern what it means, all Christians would arrive at the same meaning. That they don’t is irrefutable evidence that the Bible is not as simple as some Christians would like to believe.
As with most of their beliefs, Christians on main street who accept perspicuity do so not because it makes any internal sense but because at some impressionable time in their life a leader taught them to believe it, taught them that this is how it works. They accepted it and never looked back.
Something like this happens in Nehemiah 8. The Babylonians conquer the nation of Israel and exile most of its citizens. After decades of political imprisonment and several regime changes, some of Israel’s citizens are permitted to return to Jerusalem and begin rebuilding their homes, the Temple, and the city wall.
Animating their rebuilding effort is a spirit of humility and repentance—the people are returning to God, complete with public recitations of the law as it was written down by the prophet Moses.
During one of these public recitations, the story says, “They (the priests) read from the Book of the Law of God and clearly explained the meaning of what was being read, helping the people understand each passage.”[2]
They “clearly explained the meaning of what was being read, helping the people understand each passage.”
Does that not imply that any given passage in the Bible only has one meaning? They explained the meaning. And that the meaning can be understood, as in learned once and for all? You can learn the meaning of a passage and forever understand the meaning. Just as the people in Nehemiah were, lots of Christians are taught to approach the Bible this way.
They act like the meaning of a passage is similar to searching for buried treasure. You may have to dig a little (learn the historical context, learn something about the original language, etc.) but eventually you’ll discover the passage’s meaning which you’ll then forever possess.
But that approach to the Bible leads to Smith’s pervasive interpretive pluralism. Each of us goes digging for a passage’s one true meaning only to end up with different treasures.
Even in the Nehemiah 8 narrative, just after “clearly explaining the meaning of what was being read,” those same leaders got together behind closed doors and studied the law “in greater detail,” only to discover that they’d missed something, a festival prescribed by Moses.[3]
So much for easily understanding everything the first go round.
A healthier, more coherent perspective on the Bible (the one espoused by the great thinkers who set the course for both western and eastern Christianity[4]) is not that any single passage in the Bible has one meaning that must be found through theological effort like digging for buried treasure but that all passages in the Bible have the same meaning: Jesus.
“39You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me! 40 Yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life.”[5]
Rather than thinking of the Bible like buried treasure you must dig into to find its “one, true meaning,” think of the Bible as a tool to be used to help you live a certain way, the way of Jesus. Jesus, not the Bible, is God’s Word, God’s self-disclosure, what God wants you to know about him. The Bible is a tool produced and used by the people of God to; 1) reinforce our identity as the people of this God revealed in Jesus and; 2) equip us to live the kind of life revealed in and by Jesus.
In other words, you don’t have to agonize over getting the meaning of every individual passage “correct.” The Bible is not a master, and you are not a slave. Instead, you approach every story, every passage, every book and ask yourself, “How can these texts help me be faithful to Jesus?”
Proper interpretation of the Bible is proper use of the Bible. If you use the Bible to be faithful to Jesus, you’re getting the meaning right.
[1] Christan Smith. The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2011).
[2] Nehemiah 8:8
[3] Nehemiah 8:13
[4] See Saint Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana and Saint Origen’s On First Principles
[5] John 5:39
Some Christians act as if the Bible as a whole operates with a similar simplicity.
It does not.
The fancy word is perspicuity. It means clear or lucid. Lots of Christians believe the Bible is perspicuous in the sense that anyone can open it and easily discern what it means.
But as Christian Smith argues in his book The Bible Made Impossible, if that were true, we wouldn’t have millions of well-intentioned Christians who disagree with one another regarding what the Bible means.[1] In other words, the very fact that Christians disagree with one another regarding what the Bible means (what Smith calls pervasive interpretive pluralism) is observational proof that the Bible’s meaning is not perspicuous. If anyone could just open the Bible, read it, and clearly discern what it means, all Christians would arrive at the same meaning. That they don’t is irrefutable evidence that the Bible is not as simple as some Christians would like to believe.
As with most of their beliefs, Christians on main street who accept perspicuity do so not because it makes any internal sense but because at some impressionable time in their life a leader taught them to believe it, taught them that this is how it works. They accepted it and never looked back.
Something like this happens in Nehemiah 8. The Babylonians conquer the nation of Israel and exile most of its citizens. After decades of political imprisonment and several regime changes, some of Israel’s citizens are permitted to return to Jerusalem and begin rebuilding their homes, the Temple, and the city wall.
Animating their rebuilding effort is a spirit of humility and repentance—the people are returning to God, complete with public recitations of the law as it was written down by the prophet Moses.
During one of these public recitations, the story says, “They (the priests) read from the Book of the Law of God and clearly explained the meaning of what was being read, helping the people understand each passage.”[2]
They “clearly explained the meaning of what was being read, helping the people understand each passage.”
Does that not imply that any given passage in the Bible only has one meaning? They explained the meaning. And that the meaning can be understood, as in learned once and for all? You can learn the meaning of a passage and forever understand the meaning. Just as the people in Nehemiah were, lots of Christians are taught to approach the Bible this way.
They act like the meaning of a passage is similar to searching for buried treasure. You may have to dig a little (learn the historical context, learn something about the original language, etc.) but eventually you’ll discover the passage’s meaning which you’ll then forever possess.
But that approach to the Bible leads to Smith’s pervasive interpretive pluralism. Each of us goes digging for a passage’s one true meaning only to end up with different treasures.
Even in the Nehemiah 8 narrative, just after “clearly explaining the meaning of what was being read,” those same leaders got together behind closed doors and studied the law “in greater detail,” only to discover that they’d missed something, a festival prescribed by Moses.[3]
So much for easily understanding everything the first go round.
A healthier, more coherent perspective on the Bible (the one espoused by the great thinkers who set the course for both western and eastern Christianity[4]) is not that any single passage in the Bible has one meaning that must be found through theological effort like digging for buried treasure but that all passages in the Bible have the same meaning: Jesus.
“39You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me! 40 Yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life.”[5]
Rather than thinking of the Bible like buried treasure you must dig into to find its “one, true meaning,” think of the Bible as a tool to be used to help you live a certain way, the way of Jesus. Jesus, not the Bible, is God’s Word, God’s self-disclosure, what God wants you to know about him. The Bible is a tool produced and used by the people of God to; 1) reinforce our identity as the people of this God revealed in Jesus and; 2) equip us to live the kind of life revealed in and by Jesus.
In other words, you don’t have to agonize over getting the meaning of every individual passage “correct.” The Bible is not a master, and you are not a slave. Instead, you approach every story, every passage, every book and ask yourself, “How can these texts help me be faithful to Jesus?”
Proper interpretation of the Bible is proper use of the Bible. If you use the Bible to be faithful to Jesus, you’re getting the meaning right.
[1] Christan Smith. The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2011).
[2] Nehemiah 8:8
[3] Nehemiah 8:13
[4] See Saint Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana and Saint Origen’s On First Principles
[5] John 5:39
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