Digging into Scripture

Bible Studies


Derived from:
Rightly Interpreting the Bible
Ron Rhodes

Methodology
The word "method" comes from the Greek word methodos, which literally means "a way or path of transit." Methodology in Bible study is therefore concerned with "the proper path to be taken in order to arrive at Scriptural truth."

This clearly implies that improper paths can be taken. Of course, proper methodology is essential to many fields of endeavor. A heart surgeon does not perform open heart surgery without following proper, objective methodology. Improper methodology in interpreting Scripture is nothing new. Even in New Testament times, the apostle Peter warned that there are teachings in the inspired writings of Paul "which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest (distort), as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction" (2 Peter 3:16, insert added).

This verse tells us that mishandling the Word of God can be very dangerous. Indeed, mishandling the Word of God is a "path" to destruction.

Contrary to the practices of some false teachers in Corinth, the apostle Paul assured his readers that he faithfully handled the Word of God (2 Corinthians 4:2). Paul admonished young Timothy to follow his example: "Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth" (2 Timothy 2:15, italics added).

A Foundational Truth: God Created Language for a Purpose

A plain reading of Genesis indicates that when God created Adam in His own image, He gave Adam the gift of intelligible speech, thus enabling him to communicate objectively with his creator (and with other human beings) via sharable linguistic symbols called words (Genesis 1:26). God sovereignly chose to use human language as a medium of revelational communication.

If the purpose of God's originating of language was for Him to communication with human beings, as well as to enable human beings to communicate with each another. This view of language is a prerequisite to understanding not only God's spoken word but His written Word (Scripture) as well. The Bible as a body of literature exists because human beings need to know certain truth to which they cannot attain by themselves.
Thus these truths must come to them from without - that is, via special revelation from God (Deuteronomy 29:29).

And this revelation can only be understood if one interprets the words of Scripture according to God's design.

Seeking the Author's Intended Meaning

Instead of superimposing a meaning on the biblical text, the objective interpreter seeks to discover the author's intended meaning (the only true meaning). One must recognize that what a passage means is fixed by the author and is not subject to alteration by readers.

Meaning is determined by the author; it is discovered by readers. Our goal must be exegesis (drawing the meaning out of the text) and not eisogesis (superimposing a meaning onto the text).

Cultists have this with Holy Scripture. They so skew the meaning of the biblical text that it comes out saying something entirely different than what was intended by the author.

Indeed, our method of interpreting Scripture is valid or invalid to the extent that it really unfolds the meaning a statement had for the author and the first hearers or readers.

There can also be related implications for a text or “related sub meanings”, but it is important to look first at the author’s original intended meaning first and to test these sub meanings against other places in scripture.

The Importance of Context

A woman entered the Democratic primary for governor of the state of Texas. She was convinced that the Bible had told her she would win the nomination. When she received the official list of names from the primary she saw her name printed last. Then she read in her Bible, "Many that are first will be last, and the last first" (Matthew 19:30). On the basis of that verse she thought God was telling her she would win. But she lost. This amusing story illustrates the need for interpreting Scripture in its proper context. Taken out of context, the Scriptures can be twisted to say just about anything.

Seeking the biblical author's intended meaning necessitates interpreting Bible verses in context. Every word in the Bible is part of a verse, and every verse is part of a paragraph, and every paragraph is part of a book, and every book is part of the whole of Scripture.

No verse of Scripture can be divorced from the verses around it. Interpreting a verse apart from its context is like trying to analyze a Rembrandt painting by looking at only a single square inch of the painting, or like trying to analyze Handel's "Messiah" by listening to a few short notes.

The context is absolutely critical to properly interpreting Bible verses. In interpreting Scripture, there is both an immediate context and a broader context. The immediate context of a verse is the paragraph (or paragraphs) of the biblical book in question. The immediate context should always be consulted in interpreting Bible verses.

The broader context is the whole of Scripture. The entire Holy Scripture is the context and guide for understanding the particular passages of Scripture.
This is why the E100 can be so valuable. It gives us the bigger picture for the broader context of God’s story. When we understand this we can even understand where we fit into the broader context of God’s story so we can interpret events in our lives.

N.T. Wright uses the analogy of the five act play to not only interpret scripture but to interpret our lives. The vast majority of Scripture consists not in a list of rules or doctrines, but in narrative: it tells a remarkably consistent story about God’s plan to restore the world back to God.
Act One: (Creation). Whatever means God uses to create the world it’s a crucial feature of the play that creation is good and that humans are in God’s image.
Act Two: (Fall) God’s good creation is full of rebellion: evil and idolatry become real features of the world.
Act Three: (Israel) The story of Israel as the covenant people of God for the world. This act begins with the Abrahamic covenant and ends with the Jewish anticipation of an event in which God will liberate Israel from spiritual exile and reveal himself as the world’s true King.
Act Four (Jesus) The story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. As the climax of the narrative it represents the inauguration of a new kingdom in which death and sin are being reversed throughout all of creation. As for the teachings of Jesus, these can be helpful, but we must realize that there is an important sense in which many of them (like the laws of ancient Israel) have played out their intended purpose.
Act Five: (New Testament and the people of God). The New Testament forms the first scene of this act. The church is the people of God, in Christ, for the world; their job is to act in character: to live out Act Five by showing the world the true way of being human and to bring about God’s victory over evil on earth. This largely involves improvising and retelling of God’s story and gospel – namely that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead to put the world to rights.
Notice that for Wright the five-act play is not just the grand narrative of Scripture, but also the true story that we are living out – more accurately, we are living out Act Five, which has yet to be completed.

As J. I. Packer puts it, "if we would understand the parts, our wisest course is to get to know the whole." We must keep in mind that the interpretation of a specific passage must not contradict the total teaching of Scripture on a point. Individual verses do not exist as isolated fragments, but as parts of a whole.

The exposition of these verses, therefore, must involve exhibiting them in right relation both to the whole and to each other. Scripture interprets Scripture.
First we determine the meaning of the passage and then we can ask ourselves how this passage and the principles behind it apply to our lives.

Bible study could (and perhaps should) be broken into this method:

Observation – what do you see?
Interpretation – what does it mean?
Correlation – where does it fit?
Application – how does it work?

In keeping this approach, I think it allows someone to grasp the text in a full way before moving ahead too quickly to Application.

The Importance of Literary Meanings

We must be aware of different literary genre. It’s important to understand and identify figures of speech in the Bible.

The Importance of Historical Considerations

Historical considerations are important in properly interpreting the Word of God because the Christian faith is based on historical fact.
Making a Correct Genre Judgment
A "literal" approach to Scripture recognizes that the Bible contains a variety of literary genres, each of which has certain peculiar characteristics that must be recognized in order to interpret the text properly.

Biblical genres include the historical (e.g., Acts), the dramatic epic (e.g., Job), poetry (e.g., Psalms), wise sayings (e.g., Proverbs), and apocalyptic writings (e.g., Revelation).

Obviously, an incorrect genre judgment will lead one far astray in interpreting Scripture. A parable should not be treated as history, nor should poetry or apocalyptic literature (both of which contain many symbols) be treated as straightforward narrative.

The wise interpreter allows his knowledge of genres to control how he approaches each individual biblical text.

In this way, he can accurately determine what the biblical author was intending to communicate to the reader. Now, even though the Bible contains a variety of literary genres and many figures of speech, the biblical authors most often employed literal statements to convey their ideas. Where they use a literal means to express their ideas, the Bible expositor must employ a corresponding means to explain these ideas - namely, a literal approach.

A literal method of interpreting Scripture gives to each word in the text the same basic meaning it would have in normal, ordinary, customary usage - whether employed in writing, speaking, or thinking.

Without such a method, communication between God and man is impossible.

Interpret the Old Testament in Light of the New Testament

God gave revelation to humankind progressively throughout Old and New Testament times. He didn't just give His entire revelation for all time to our first parents, Adam and Eve, or to Moses, the Lawgiver.

Rather, as time went on - as the centuries slowly passed - God provided more and more revelation that became progressively full so that by the time the New Testament was complete, God had told us everything He wanted us to know. In view of this, a key interpretive principle is that one should always interpret the Old Testament in view of the greater light of the New Testament. The Old Testament may be likened to a chamber richly furnished but dimly lighted.

The introduction of light brings into it nothing which was not in it before; but it brings out into clearer view much of what is in it but was only dimly or even not at all perceived before.

The Old Testament revelation of God is not corrected by the fuller revelation which follows it, but only perfected, extended, and enlarged. Again, then, the Old Testament should be interpreted according to the greater light of the New Testament. The Old Testament is much clearer when approached through the lens of the New Testament.

Dependence on the Holy Spirit

Scripture tells us that we are to rely on the Holy Spirit's illumination to gain insights into the meaning and application of Scripture (John 16:12-15; 1 Corinthians 2:9-11). It is the Holy Spirit's work to throw light upon the Word of God so that the believer can assent to the meaning intended and act on it.

The Holy Spirit, as the "Spirit of truth" (John 16:13), guides us so that "we may understand what God has freely given us" (1 Corinthians 2:12). This is quite logical: full comprehension of the Word of God is impossible without prayerful dependence on the Spirit of God, for He who inspired the Word (2 Peter 1:21) is also its supreme interpreter. Illumination is necessary because man's mind has been darkened through sin (Romans 1:21), preventing him from properly understanding God's Word.

Human beings cannot understand God's Word apart from God's divine enablement (Ephesians 4:18).

This aspect of the Holy Spirit's ministry operates within the sphere of man's soulful capacity, which God Himself gave man. Illumination comes to the minds and hearts of God's people.
Since the Holy Spirit is "the Spirit of truth" (John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13), He does not teach concepts that oppose scripture. In other words, "the Holy Spirit does not guide into interpretations that contradict each other or fail to have internal consistency."

The Example of Jesus Christ

Jesus consistently interpreted the Old Testament characters as being real people and not just fictional characters, including
The Creation account of Adam and Eve (Matthew 13:35; 25:34; Mark 10:6),
Noah's Ark and the flood (Matthew 24:38-39; Luke 17:26-27),
Jonah and the great fish (Matthew 12:39-41),
Sodom and Gomorrah (Matthew 10:15), and
The account of Lot and his wife (Luke 17:28-29).

In his book The Savior and the Scriptures, theologian Robert P. Lightner notes - following an exhaustive study - that Jesus' interpretation of Scripture "was always in accord with the grammatical and historical meaning. He understood and appreciated the meaning intended by the writers according to the laws of grammar and rhetoric."

Jesus affirmed scripture’s divine inspiration (Matthew 22:43),
Its indestructibility (Matthew 5:17-18),
Its infallibility (John 10:35),
Its final authority (Matthew 4:4,7,10),
Its historicity (Matthew 12:40; 24:37),
Its factual inerrancy (Matthew 22:29-32), and
Its spiritual clarity (Luke 24:25).

Moreover, He emphasized the importance of each word of Scripture (Luke 16:17). Indeed, He sometimes based His argumentation on a single expression of the biblical text (Matthew 22:32,43-45; John 10:34).

Correctly Handling the Word of Truth

Jesus said His words lead to eternal life (John 6:63). But for us to receive eternal life through His words, they must be taken as He intended them to be taken.

A cultic reinterpretation of Scripture that yields another Jesus and another gospel (2 Corinthians 11:3-4; Galatians 1:6-9) will yield only eternal death (Revelation 20:11-15).