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Bible interpretation methods you should avoid

One must be very careful with word-studies, and should entirely avoid the usual sort of word-study sermons: These are equivalent to preaching from a dictionary rather than from the Bible!  Thus some ministers preach on the different “kinds” of love in different passages, agapao love versus phileo love.  But the distinction between these two “kinds” of love had virtually disappeared by the New Testament period, so they are often (probably even usually) used interchangeably!  Tracing all the uses of a particular word in the Bible is helpful for finding out the different ways that word can be used.  It should never form a sermon outline, however (the exception might be some passages in Proverbs), because that is preaching from a concordance rather than from a text studied in its context.

One should also avoid determining the meaning of words by their etymologies.  That is, you cannot break a word down into its component parts and always come up with its meaning, and you usually cannot determine the meaning a word has by looking at how it was used centuries earlier or how the word originated.  For a contemporary example, if one of my students called me a “nice professor,” they might intend it as a compliment.  But if I were committed to understanding words according to their origins, I could grow very angry.  In English, “nice” is a friendly term; but its Latin source means “ignorant” or “foolish.”  So I could misunderstand someone calling me “nice” as that person calling me “ignorant”!  We know that English does not work that way, and we should not expect ancient languages to work that way, either.

For example, some take the Greek word for “repent,” metanoieo, and divide it into two parts, of which the second, noieo, is related to thinking.  Therefore, they say, “repent” simply means a change of mind.  The problem with this interpretation is that the meaning of words is determined by their usage, not by their origins!  The New Testament generally uses “repent” not in the Greek sense of “changing one’s mind” but in the sense of “turn” in the Old Testament prophets: a radical turning of our lives from sin to God’s righteousness.

Another example of this problem occurs when interpreters speak of the Church as the “called-out ones” based on the Greek word for church, ekklesia.  We are, to be sure, “called-out,” but we know that for other reasons, not because we can determine that from ekklesia.  Some divide ekklesia into ek, meaning “out of,” and kaleo, which means “call.”  But ekklesia had already been used by Greeks for centuries to mean an “assembly” or “gathering”; Jewish people who knew Greek spoke of the congregation of Israel in the wilderness as God’s ekklesia.  So the New Testament does not make up a new word to call Christians the “called-out-ones”; rather, it uses a standard term for an assembly, and probably the first Christians thought especially of God’s own assembly in the Old Testament, his people.

People can twist Greek the way they can twist English, Hausa, or anything else.  When Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that John 1:1 calls Jesus “a God” because there is no definite article (“the”) in front of “God” there, they neglect several factors, of which I will briefly summarize two.  First, “God” does not always have a definite article in John’s Gospel; the God who sent John the Baptist does not have a definite article (Jn 1:6), but Jehovah’s Witnesses never say he was simply “a god.”  Second, grammatically “God” is a predicate nominative in “the Word was God,” and predicate nominatives usually omit definite articles.  Even without moving any further, we can see that the Jehovah’s Witness interpretation here is based on a lack of knowledge of Greek.

Some people speak of zoe as the “God-kind-of-life,” but zoe refers to human life just as easily.  Some misinterpret Greek grammar, claiming that “faith of God” must mean “the God-kind-of-faith”; it could mean that, but in context probably means “faith in God.”  Some claim that “now” in Hebrews 11:1 means present-tense “now”; but the Greek term there means “but” or “and.”  Someone once claimed to me that Christians would all become Christ, because he would come with “ten-thousands of himself” in Jude 14.  The person’s error was simple–”ten-thousands of him” is the appropriate way to say in Greek, “ten-thousands belonging to him”–but it led them into a serious doctrinal error.  More often than not (there may be some exceptions), when someone comes up with an interpretation based on Greek or Hebrew that contradicts what one would have thought from reading the rest of the Bible, they may be reading into the Greek or the Hebrew something that is not there.  It is helpful to learn Greek and Hebrew for yourself, but if you cannot, sticking with a couple good translations is usually safe.

The most common anticontext Bible interpretation method is practiced by cults like Jehovah’s Witnesses by also widespread in churches of most denominations.  We read into the text what we already expect to find there, because of our doctrine or because of how we have heard a story told!  How often have we read a Bible story only to realize that part of the story we always heard is not in that passage?  How often have we read our doctrine (maybe even a correct doctrine, supported by other texts) into a text or texts that did not really address the issue?  When this happens, Christians from different groups can no longer use the Bible as a common basis for seeking truth, because we are all “sure” of our own interpretations, which we sometimes cannot defend from context!  It is important enough to respect the Bible enough to let it speak for itself.  If our doctrine is not in a passage, we do not need to read it in; our doctrine is probably in some other passage–or else respect for the Bible’s authority may require us to fix our doctrine.  In this way we are open to fresh discoveries in the Bible each time we study it.  At the same time, this does not mean that we throw away everything we have already learned and start with nothing each day.  We build on what we have already learned, and go back and change particular interpretations only as we study the text as honestly as possible and find a need to change.  This way we can also dialogue with other honest Christians around the Scriptures.

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A common objection to studying in context

I will deal here with one objection to studying the Bible in its context that arises in some circles.

Some people quote Scripture out of context and then claim they are right because they have special authority or a special revelation from God.  But they should be honest in claiming that this is a special revelation rather than the Scripture.  All revelations must be judged (1 Corinthians 14:29; 1 Thessalonians 5:20-21), and God gave us a Bible in part so we could test other revelations.

No one has the right to short-circuit hearers’ rights to evaluate their claims from Scripture by claiming a revelation about Scripture’s meaning which the hearers cannot evaluate by studying it for themselves.  Otherwise anyone could claim that Scripture means anything! Any view can be supported based on proof-texts out of context; any theology can make its reasoning sound consistent; Jehovah’s Witnesses do this all the time.  We dare not base our faith on other people’s study of the Bible rather than on the Bible itself.

We should be very careful what we claim the Bible teaches.  Claiming that “The Bible says” is equivalent to claiming, “This is what the Lord says.”  In Jeremiah’s day, some false prophets falsely claimed to be speaking what God was saying, but they were in fact speaking from their own imaginations (Jeremiah 23:16) and stealing their messages from each other (Jeremiah 23:30) rather than listening to God’s voice for themselves (Jeremiah 23:22).

God can sovereignly speak to people through Scripture out of context if he wishes, just as he can speak through a bird or a poem or a donkey; if God is all-powerful (Revelation 1:8), He can speak however He pleases.  But we do not routinely appeal to donkeys to teach us truth, and how he speaks to one person through a verse out of context does not determine its meaning for all hearers for all time.  The universal meaning of the text is the meaning to which all readers have access, namely, what it means in context.

When I was a young Christian recently converted, I was taking a class in Latin and supposed to be translating Caesar for my homework.  Wanting to read only my Bible and not do my homework, I flipped open the Bible and stuck my finger down, hoping to find a text that said, “Forsake all and follow me.”  Instead, I found, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Luke 20:25).  God chose to answer my foolish approach to Scripture on the level it deserved, but this hardly means that this text now summons all Christians to translate Caesar’s Gallic War!

All claims to hear God’s voice must be evaluated (1 Corinthians 14:29; 1 Thessalonians 5:20-21), and listening to someone else’s claim can get us in trouble if we do not test it carefully (1 Kings 13:18-22).  Paul warns us: “If anyone thinks himself a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that what I write is the Lord’s command.  If one ignores this, he himself will be ignored” (1 Corinthians 14:37-38).  The one revelation to which all Christians can look with assurance is the Bible; what we can be sure it means is what God meant when he inspired the original authors to communicate their original message.  This is the one revelation all Christians agree on as the “canon,” or measuring-stick, for all other claims to revelation.  Thus we need to do our best to properly understand it, preach it and teach it the way God gave it to us, in context.

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The importance of context in Bible study

Context is the way God gave us the Bible, one book at a time.  The first readers of Mark could not flip over to Revelation to help them understand Mark; Revelation had not been written yet.  The first readers of Galatians did not have a copy of the letter Paul wrote to Rome to help them understand it.  These first readers did share some common information with the author outside the book they received.

We’ll call this shared information “background”: some knowledge of the culture, earlier biblical history, and so on.  But they had, most importantly, the individual book of the Bible that was in front of them.  Therefore we can be confident that the writers of the Bible included enough within each book of the Bible to help the readers understand that book of the Bible without referring to information they lacked.  For that reason, context is the most important academic key to Bible interpretation.

Often popular ministers today quote various isolated verses they have memorized, even though this means that they will usually leave 99% of the Bible’s verses unpreached.  One seemingly well-educated person told a Bible teacher that she thought the purpose of having a Bible was to look up the verses the minister quoted in church!  But the Bible is not a collection of people’s favorite verses with a lot of blank space in between.  Using verses out of context one could “prove” almost anything about God or justify almost any kind of behavior–as history testifies.  But in the Bible God revealed Himself in His acts in history, through the inspired records of those acts and the inspired wisdom of His servants addressing specific situations.

People in my culture value everything “instant”: “instant” mashed potatoes; fast food; and so forth.  Similarly, we too often take short-cuts to understanding the Bible by quoting random verses or assuming that others who taught us have understood them correctly.  When we do so, we fail to be diligent in seeking God’s Word (Proverbs 2:2-5; 4:7; 8:17; 2 Timothy 2:15).

One prominent minister in the U.S., Jim Bakker, was so busy with his ministry to millions of people that he did not have time to study Scripture carefully in context.  He trusted that his friends whose teachings he helped promote surely had done so.  Later, when his ministry collapsed, he spent many hours honestly searching the Scriptures and realized to his horror that on some points Jesus’ teachings, understood in context, meant the exact opposite of what he and his friends had been teaching!  It is never safe to simply depend on what someone else claims that God says (1 Kings 13:15-26).

I discovered this for myself when, as a young Christian, I began reading 40 chapters of the Bible a day (enough to finish the New Testament every week or the Bible every month).  I was shocked to discover how much Scripture I had essentially ignored between the verses I had memorized, and how carefully the intervening text connected those verses.  I had been missing so much, simply using the Bible to defend what I already believed!  After one begins reading the Bible a book at a time, one quickly recognizes that verses isolated from their context nearly always mean something different when read in context.

We cannot, in fact, even pretend to make sense of most verses without reading their context.  Isolating verses from their context disrespects the authority of Scripture because this method of interpretation cannot be consistently applied to the whole of Scripture.  It picks verses that seem to make sense on their own, but most of the rest of the Bible is left over when it is done, incapable of being used the same way.  Preaching and teaching the Bible the way it invites us to interpret it—in its original context–both explains the Bible accurately and provides our hearers a good example how they can learn the Bible better for themselves.

If we read any other book, we would not simply take an isolated statement in the middle of the book and ignore the surrounding statements that help us understand the reason for that statement.  If we hand a storybook to a child already learning how to read, the child would probably start reading at the beginning.  That people so often read the Bible out of context is not because it comes naturally to us, but because we have been taught the wrong way by frequent example.  Without disrespecting those who have done the best they could without understanding the principle of context, we must now avail ourselves of the chance to begin teaching the next generation the right way to interpret the Bible.

Many contradictions some readers claim to find in the Bible arise simply from ignoring the context of the passages they cite, jumping from one text to another without taking the time to first understand each text on its own terms.  To develop an example offered above, when Paul says that a person is justified by faith without works (Romans 3:28), his context makes it clear that he defines faith as something more than passive assent to a viewpoint; he defines it as a conviction that Christ is our salvation, a conviction on which one actively stakes one’s life (Romans 1:5).  James declares that one cannot be justified by faith without works (James 2:14)—because he uses the word “faith” to mean mere assent that something is true (2:19), he demands that such assent be actively demonstrated by obedience to show that it is genuine (2:18).  In other words, James and Paul use the word “faith” differently, but do not contradict one another on the level of meaning.  If we ignore context and merely connect different verses on the basis of similar wording, we will come up with contradictions in the Bible that the original writers would never have imagined.

 

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Are miracles real?

Craig recently wrote and article on miracles for the online publication The Huffington Post.

In the introduction of this piece, entitled “Are Miracles Real?”, Craig writes:

“Many people today are familiar with miracle stories in the Bible — the parting of a sea, water turned to wine, and, most frequently in the New Testament, healings, even of blindness, leprosy, and the reversal of recent death.

“Yet it is not just people in the first century who have believed in miracles. Various polls peg U.S. belief in miracles at roughly 80 percent. One survey suggested that 73 percent of U.S. physicians believe in miracles, and 55 percent claim to have personally witnessed treatment results they consider miraculous.”

Read the entire article by clicking here.

 

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It’s okay to expect a miracle – interview from Christianity Today

Craig Keener’s new book Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts is now available for sale. Writer Tim Stafford interviewed Craig for the December edition of Christianity Today.

Following are some excerpts. We encourage you to read the entire interview on the Christianity Today website.

Miracles are an unusual subject for a New Testament scholar. What led you to it?

I was going to write a footnote in my commentary on Acts, and was dealing with questions of historical reliability. Many scholars dismiss miracle stories as not historically plausible, arguing that they arose as legendary accretions.

I was familiar with [contemporary] reports of miracles taking place. There must be thousands of such reports. It was inconceivable to me that people would say eyewitnesses can’t claim to have seen such things.

What do you want to accomplish with this book?

Primarily, to challenge scholars who dismiss miracles in the Gospels as legends and not historically plausible. Eyewitnesses say these kinds of things all the time. I also want to challenge the bias that says these things can’t be supernatural. I believe God does miracles, and I don’t see why we scholars are not allowed to talk about it.

You’re trying to break open the naturalistic tradition of writing history that scholars have followed for centuries.

I understand the historical paradigms within which we work, and I’m able to work within those by bracketing out certain questions. But I wonder who made up the rule that we have to bracket out those questions, and why we are obligated to follow such rules. The way the discipline of historiography has been defined, such questions get punted to philosophy or theology.

What does New Testament scholarship gain from taking miracle stories seriously as historical phenomena?

We have been embarrassed by the miracle stories, and have tended to allegorize them more than other narratives. Accounts from the Temple of Asclepius, the Greek god of healing—nobody allegorizes those.

I agree that the Gospel writers are teaching us broader principles with broader applications. But in much of the majority world, when people read these narratives of healing, they see a God who cares about their suffering, who meets them at their point of need. I think we in the West can learn from the way they hear.

Does your personal background play a role in your views on miracles?

Certainly. I was an atheist before I was a Christian, and for that reason, I have some sympathy for skeptical perspectives.

When I was working on my historical Jesus book and trying to stay within these historical paradigms, I wouldn’t admit things for which I could not offer evidence. Then my wife would say things to me, and I would reply, “Can you give me evidence for that?” I got into a lot of trouble. That approach doesn’t work in the rest of life. If you find someone generally trustworthy, you will trust him or her whether or not he or she can provide evidence for every detail. I was well into this book when, having encountered so much evidence, I stopped trying to be neutral and said, “This is my view.”

How has your wife’s family influenced you?

Médine comes from Congo-Brazzaville. She was introducing me to people in the Eglise Evangelique du Congo, her denomination. As she introduced me to people, I asked them for their stories.

It was remarkable. I got seven eyewitness accounts of people being raised from the dead. One was my sister-in-law, Therese. I asked my mother-in-law to tell me about it, with my wife translating from one of the local languages.

My mother-in-law described how Therese was bitten by a snake. By the time my mother-in-law got to her, she wasn’t breathing. No medical help was available. She strapped the child to her back and ran to a nearby village, where a friend who was an evangelist prayed for Therese. She started breathing again.

I asked my mother-in-law how long Therese had stopped breathing. She thought about how long it takes to get up this hill and down this hill from one village to another. She said about three hours.

What did you experience in terms of trying to verify miracles?

Most people don’t collect documentation, and don’t know how to get medical documentation.

Documenting that you have a certain problem is one thing. Documenting that you no longer have it is another. Even if you do that, how can you prove that the change was due to prayer?

I have a pastoral concern as well: How far do you press people? I felt very awkward when I was interviewing people and would press them with hard questions. Sometimes they felt that I was questioning their integrity or even their experience.

Some people have said that since we know that everything must have a natural explanation, we know there will be a natural explanation someday; there, we have solved the problem, it’s not a miracle.