Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Bible Study Method

  • An Example of Checking Interpretation

    One of the things I suggest that people do to check their Biblical interpretations is to apply the same process they have just used to another passage on another issue. You ask the question, “Would my process of interpretation work on more than one passage or is it an ad hoc method used to get the result I want from this one?”

    This is a test that anyone can apply. You don’t have to be a Biblical scholar. You do have to take the time to think carefully about just why you believe a particular passage of scripture means what you say it means. It’s a good exercise. It’s great in debate, but it’s much more important to apply it to yourself.

    In preparing today’s Christian Carnival, I encountered this post by Jeremy Pierce in which he does precisely that to an argument based on Numbers 5.

    One should note that I’m one of those folks who is commonly called inconsistent because I believe that abortion is wrong in most cases, but also believe it should be legal. I might like to find a text that favored a pro-choice position, though this particular passage applied in that way would have some truly atrocious side-effects.

    In any case, Jeremy simply points out how the same approach could be used in other passages, with results that nobody desires, and that one could demonstrate are clearly contra-Biblical.

    My point here is to provide an example of the application of the method. It is one that more of us should pursue more often.

  • Added to Blogroll: Biblical Theology

    The new Biblical Theology blog looks like a good new source of things to talk about from posts written by highly qualified contributors. (HT: awilum.com.)

  • NLT Study Bible – Initial Reaction

    I intended to get started on my response to the NLT Study Bible (Bible Nlt) written a bit earlier, but several things have kept me from getting started.

    I’m going to write two posts today and tomorrow. This first one is simply a quick, preliminary reaction to this new study edition based on the NLT 2nd edition. The second will compare the introductory information to the gospel of Luke with that of several other study Bibles I use regularly.

    I need to note first that this is an evangelical study Bible and I am not an evangelical. That doesn’t mean that I’m not going to like it, of course. The basic combination of scholarship involved and the quality text of the NLT makes this a useful Bible whether you are evangelical or not. Thus far, I have found it to be the best I have seen to get a quick view of the evangelical understanding of a book or passage. Names like Tremper Longman III, Philip W. Comfort, and George H. Guthrie are just three names that caught my eye. Contributors such as those suggest that this will be a useful resource.

    I am, as almost always, disappointed with some of the marketing style claims. Lines like “revolutionary breakthrough in study Bibles” or the slogal “The Truth Made CLEAR” don’t resonate well with me. But these are elements of the cover, and they are common to the marketing material. The NLT is good and this study Bible is good, but I wouldn’t go as far as “revolutionary.”

    And indeed some of the major concerns I have with any study Bible, as well as the marketing language (indirectly) are addressed starting on page A17 (How the Study the Bible with the NLT Study Bible), where we find:

    No feature of the NLT STudy Bible is more important than Scripture, the text of the Bible itself.

    I wish all users of study Bibles would recognize that fact. Too often Sunday School class or study group members read the notes in their study Bibles as the one interpretation of the text, and don’t bother to think about how that note might have been derived. Now if I could just get them to read this “How To”!

    In addition, this same section suggests reading the Biblical text first, and “. . . leav[ing] the notes and other features for later.” This entire section is outstanding, and one hopes that all Bible students who use this Bible edition will read it and follow its advice, including this note:

    Please do not treat the NLT Study Bible study notes and other features as the full and final word on any topic of passage. (p. A19)

    I’m going to get into more specific features in my next post, in which I will compare and contrast the NLT Study Bible five other editions, but overall my impression is a very useful edition. My teaching work is mostly in United Methodist churches, though not exclusively, and focuses on the educated lay person. I have lacked a single edition that I can unreservedly recommend for evangelical Bible students, one that gives them an overview of scholarly information available, but doesn’t fall into either excessively technical language or oversimplify. At the same time such an edition should refrain from providing the one true interpretation of a text without adequate support. Tall order, no?

    Thus far, I think this one will do. My wife is using it as well and giving me her input. She is an educated person and has done a good deal of Bible study, but has not pursued this study academically or professionally. She finds it more useful than The Learning Bible, one that is quite helpful to beginning Bible students in my experience. Thus far, she thinks its language is clear and it addresses topics that are of interest to her. I’m going to urge her to blog some about it herself.

    I’m embedding the video provided by Tyndale House on the features, rather than reciting them myself. I will then go into specifics one post at a time.

  • Living Biblically

    I could have told him this wouldn’t work:

    On the other hand, it appears to me that he learned a number of lessons that Christians would do well to learn, such as the fact that we all pick and choose.  The question is really whether our criteria for choosing are appropriate.

  • Series on Reading the Text(s) of Scripture

    This series, done jointly on Everyday Liturgy and Through a Glass Darkly should be well worth your time to follow. I will certainly be following it.

  • Horrors! A Plague of Bible Reading!

    . . . or so I might be led to believe by reading Christians Spend Too Much Time Studying the Bible (HT: JakeBouma.com). I don’t know enough about the pastor who wrote this, so I can’t say whether it provides an appropriate balance for his congregation. Perhaps he is plagued with church members whose noses are always in their Bibles causing them to neglect families, jobs, and service to their community.

    But I must say that I haven’t encountered many of the type of Christians to whom he seems to be speaking. Some liberals have a stereotype that sees evangelicals totally involved in doctrinal and Biblical studies, leaving no time for social action or for actually living the gospel. It’s balanced, I think, by those evangelicals who imagine liberals joyfully shedding orthodox doctrines for no better reason than that they don’t like the feel of orthodoxy. Yet I have actually met very few examples of these stereotypes. The overwhelming majority of evangelicals I know are very active living the gospel as they understand it, and most liberals reject doctrines for what seems to them, at least, good reasons.

    This post seems to imagine most Christians as being sort of like the Pharisees, studying doctrines and traditions in great detail, and presumably also tithing their “mint and dill and cumin” so to speak, while “neglecting the weightier matters of the law.” (That’s from Matthew 23:23 for you Biblically illiterate folks!) Perhaps someone could show me a survey or some other type of evidence as to where this is largely the case today. I certainly do believe many Christians neglect their duty to love others, but I fail to see where it happens because they are too busy studying the Bible.

    Perhaps I just haven’t been around enough, but I’d love to find the church that requires an admonition to study their Bibles less. Perhaps I could preach there and I could allude to Bible stories I imagine are well known, and not have to provide a summary.

    Brian Jones, the post author, makes some good points:

    1. There truly were no leather bound New Testaments dropping from the sky immediately after the resurrection.
    2. Christianity truly has prospered in times of limited literacy.
    3. Very few early Christians could have afforded the cost of a complete Bible in times when they had to be transcribed.
    4. It is quite possible to be a good Christian with limited Bible knowledge.

    But I believe that he has failed to truly think through any one of these possibly valid points. Let’s look at them briefly, one at a time.

    1. There truly were no leather bound New Testaments dropping from the sky immediately after the resurrection.

    Does anybody but me see at least one culturally conditioned error here? No, I don’t mean “leather bound.” I’m talking about the idea that one would have to have the Bible collected into one place before one could get busy studying it line by line and verse by verse. We have a prejudice toward collections and large volumes, but smaller manuscripts were common in Biblical times. It didn’t mean people studied less. It meant they studied differently.

    Further, he seems concerned only with the New Testament. While the New Testament canon was not settled for some years, there was considerable stability in the major portions of the Hebrew scriptures at that point, certainly the Torah and the Prophets. That made a considerable amount of Bible available for studying along the way.

    2. Christianity truly has prospered in times of limited literacy.

    I’m reminded of the testimony I heard from a Cambodian pastor. He told how they lived in a refugee camp along the Thai border, and they had only one Bible for thousands of Christians. One leader kept the Bible and they would all have times to go and study with him. Otherwise they worked from memory.

    We have very little tolerance today for long Bible readings, but in a time of limited literacy, public reading was a much more common practice. (By “public” I do not mean to imply large audiences, merely that a literate person would read to a group.)

    The importance that these people placed on the Bible is reflected in how quickly they translated portions of it into new languages as the gospel progressed. Again, they didn’t study less, the studied differently.

    3. Very few early Christians could have afforded the cost of a complete Bible in times when they had to be transcribed.

    Quite true. We should be very thankful that the Bible was preserved through times of such hardship and that it is so accessible today. It is a great blessing. It’s quite possible that one of the reasons we actually study it less is that it is so much more easily available. We would value our Bibles more if someone was trying to burn them all.

    4. It is quite possible to be a good Christian with limited Bible knowledge.

    Just so. It’s also quite possible to become a “good” Christian in the last moments of your life as you are being executed–witness the thief on the cross–but I wouldn’t recommend it if you have any alternative. Just because you can do something doesn’t make it the best thing to do.

    All this doesn’t support the conclusion:

    Most Christians today assume that to be a Christian means to have a personal relationship with the Bible instead of the risen Jesus.

    In this case at least I have met examples of the breed. They quite worship their Bibles, and fail almost completely to find the God of whom the Bible speaks. But they are not as common as the quoted paragraph implies.

    What we need is balance. The Christian life consists of many spiritual disciplines. Studying the Bible is just one of these. Bible study can also be a purely intellectual discipline. It can be practiced for the wrong reasons. But in my experience it is rarely those people who are actually dedicating large amounts of time and effort to Bible study who are actually missing out on the rest of the gospel.

    Most commonly it is those people who talk most about the Bible and study it least who also seem to practice bibliolatry–they worship their Bibles. Not really, you know. What they actually worship is themselves, and the ego stroking they get from those who believe they are studying their Bibles. They don’t have to actually study.

    A plague of Bible reading? Bring it on!

  • Going Back to the Original

    Sinaiticus, a 4th century manuscript of the New Testament and parts of the LXX Old Testament, will go on display, starting this July with some portions, and available completely by next year (MSNBC.com story).

    The story got me thinking about what it means to go back to “the original.”  KJV-Only advocates will tell you how hard it is to go back to the originals, since we have not one single autograph of any Biblical book, and then suggest the ridiculous conclusion that we should therefore use the KJV as our standard.  This would be analogous to going to a bowl of fruit, and determining that because all the fruit has some spoilage, we might as well take one of the most spoiled pieces.

    Once in a discussion on the <a href=””>Compuserve Religion Forum</a>, someone asked me if I had ever read the Dead Sea Scrolls.  I wasn’t precisely sure what he meant, so I responded that I had read some portions, which is quite true, though I have mostly read them in transcription.  The closest that I’ve gotten to an actual scroll or scroll fragment is a photograph.  What he expected, however, was that I had actually handled the original scroll, done the transcription myself, and then worked from that transcription.  To that I had to say, “No, even with the photographs the only thing I’ve done is to check a letter or two against the photograph, and even there I would leave the final word to the folks who are really experts in that area.”  That was a great disappointment to him.

    In my experience, “going back to the original” can mean looking up a text in your preferred translation, going to the original language in an appropriate critical edition, examining manuscripts, or having in one’s possession the autograph of a work.  For those involved in source and form criticism, it can mean going back to the sources from which the document we have was compiled.

    It is important to remember that we cannot completely eliminate our dependence on someone else’s work.  Whether you use an English translation or examine the individual characters on an ancient manuscript, you do not achieve your result independently of others.

    Nonetheless, going as far back as possible, and checking as carefully as possible is a positive thing, even though we know we will not achieve it perfectly.

  • No Meaning without Interpretation

    You know, that title is so much worse than the one I’m going to link to — The Bible doesn’t say.  That makes the point.

    I frequently say that one can only call something “Biblical” when speaking from within a particular interpretive framework, which completely ruins the whole “Biblical” thing.  In my experience the use of “the Bible says” is generally manipulative.  It’s intended by the speaker to prevent you from objecting, because while you might argue with him or her, you won’t argue with the Bible, which inevitably means arguing with God.

    Doug says in the referenced post:

    There are two essential things that are meant by “the Bible says”. The first is, “I have read in my Bible the words X.” The second is, “My (or my tradition’s) theological interpretation of the overall tenor and thrust of the Bible is Y”. What happens quite often is that the two are combined, so that X is a shorthand statement for Y, and it seems to me that this then disguises the fact that Y is what is really happening.

    Now please go read the whole article.  I’m quoting this paragraph because I want to comment on one line.  It is this second line which is so often manipulative as I hear it used in church congregations.  The person speaking is generally reflecting a theological interpretation from within a tradition, but either doesn’t want to acknowledge it, doesn’t even recognize it in the first place, or adds the proviso “and my tradition is the only one that has it right!”

    That’s the problem on the flip side of the sola scriptura claim as often used in American protestantism.  It doesn’t just express a desire to go to the source, it expresses to others the notion that one has gone to the source.  Who dares to question?

  • Traveling through to Romans 8:1

    So there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. — Romans 8:1

    Oh how we long to get to this verse in studying the Bible. If we’re reading through, we may be tempted to rush it. It’s like working forward through a tragic book to the point at which we know there will be a happy ending.

    Besides the theology, however, there’s also just the complexity of the text. Romans 7 is harder to read and to follow, and it’s certainly more controversial in its intent.

    But the book of Romans is a journey. It starts by letting us know that humanity is all fallen, that there are no “good guys” who don’t need any salvation, but that we are all human together in need of God’s grace. It continues by telling us that God’s grace has truly been offered, but then it seems to take a side trip into the labyrinth of Romans 7. Surely that chapter is a place of torment for Christian readers, and it describes a place of torment for the Christian life.

    But then comes chapter 8. If I’m choosing my texts on which to preach, I’d prefer to preach a nice upbeat sermon, letting people know how everything comes out.

    But the fact is that there will be many people in any congregation who are living something that looks much like Romans 7. The solutions to problems may look very clear, but be nearly impossible to implement. It will often look very much like the person who is told that the solution to his or her problems is to train for a new job. But supposing the person is a single parent and has to arrange childcare and transportation, has to have money for tuition, and has to be able to live in the meantime. The solution is clear, but life remains in turmoil.

    For such a person, preaching about the victory is important, but so is preaching about the struggle and how to live through it. I’m an Arminian, sometimes I say I’m more Arminian than Arminius. The stereotype is that Arminians hold Romans 7 to be a pre-conversion experience, while Romans 8 is after conversion. I disagree. I think everyone will have struggles, to various degrees, and everyone can benefit from realizing that struggle is a part of the Christian life.

    My primary point in bringing this up today is not to expound on Romans 7 or 8, but rather to point out that it’s easy to skip the hard parts and jump right to the easy parts in studying, teaching, or preaching scripture. But the hard parts are there for a reason. The person who is struggling may not be encouraged by hearing a sermon about the wonders of victory; he or she may, instead, be discouraged, thinking that everyone else is living this gloriously victorious life.

    We like to claim that the Bible is all equally inspired, but we often don’t preach and teach that way.  Victory comes after struggle.  Knowledge after study.

    It works in life and in Bible study.

  • Studying the Bible for Yourself

    One of the key foundations of my participatory Bible study method is my firm belief that individual Christians can and should study the Bible for themselves. I believe this study will depend on the work of experts in many cases, and that it should be accountable within a church community, but the individual, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, is capable of studying and discerning.

    The fact that people differ in their opinions does not change my mind. Experts also disagree. There is no level of theological training that will make everyone come to the same conclusion. In your study, you should not fear errors. Do your best to correct errors with the best information you have. Be correctable when others point errors out, but don’t let the possibility, not the probably, in fact the certainty of errors hold you back.

    I really shouldn’t link to one post from two different blogs, but considering that my first one was for the Pacesetters Bible School Newsletter blog, a group blog, I’ll do it here. Peter Kirk wrote an excellent piece on this, and as a bonus he is relating this to the discussion of the Lakeland Revival. Check it out.