Category: Bible Study

There are quite a substantial number of theories about how God inspires people to write his message. Several people have suggested recently that I collect some of my own essays in order to provide a coherent discussion, not just about the results of inspiration, but also the process. I don’t think I’ve written enough about that. (For those who are interested in my prior material, Inspiration, Biblical Authority, and Inerrancy, and my shorted, more edited items, The Authority of the Bible, and What is the Word of God?)

Before I go on, though, I must note that this essay is about looking at inspiration after you believe that a particular work, in this case the Bible, is inspired. There is nothing obvious about this conclusion, and I intend to write some more about why one might regard a particular work as inspired.

Typically, Christians have found proof texts in scriptures that make comments about inspiration. “All scripture is inspired (or God-breathed) . . .” (2 Timothy 3:16). “No prophecy of the scripture came by human will . . .” (2 Peter 1:21). These texts are not only used to prove the inspiration of scriptures, ignoring the circularity of using a Bible verse to prove that the Bible is inspired, but they also provide the foundation for an understanding of how inspiration worked. (Again, I’ll go into that issue in another post. Right now I’m working at a point after one has jumped into the circle and concluded that the Bible is inpired in some way.) I most commonly hear 2 Timothy 3:16 quoted in this connection. I ask someone what inspiration means. “All scripture is God-breathed,” comes back the answer. “God-breathed” is supposed to be obvious, but somehow the passage doesn’t enlighten us as to what God breathes and how. Another answer, that prophets speak as they are carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21), doesn’t really answer the question either.

The process of inspiration is important not only in terms of how we understand God to behave in connection with people, but also in telling us what we would expect to result. For example, those who believes that God dictates the precise words that a prophet or other inspired writer puts on paper must in turn believe that those words, and not just the message they express, are important, and that they must always be the best words for the purpose. On the other hand, someone who believes that people receive impressions from God and then express them in human words will place a greater emphasis on the human side of the equation. The message is important, and it may be illuminated by knowing the person who speaks along with his or her cultural background and spiritual experience.

As the author of Hebrews expressed it:

¹In old times God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets in many portions and in different ways. ²In these last days, however, he has spoken to us through a Son, one whom he has made heir of everything, and through whom also he created the universe. ³This Son is the brightness of his glory and the exact representation of his real essence. He sustains everything by his powerful word. He performed a cleansing from sins and sat down at the right hand of majesty in the {spiritual/heavenly} heights.

— Hebrews 1:1-3

God’s message came at different times and in different ways, a process that the author of Hebrews states culminated in God’s message coming through a person, Jesus. In Hebrews 4:12 he continues by calling the Word “alive and active” again referring to the Word of God as portrayed in Jesus. Those who place a heavy emphasis on the words, rather than the message, should give serious consideration to the view of revelation expressed in the book of Hebrews. According to this one scriptural author, whom most scholars leave unidentified, inspiration doesn’t always work the same way.

I would suggest that instead of looking for statements about how inspiration works in the scriptures, we should look at the scriptures themselves. There is no good reason to assume that those who experienced inspiration would also feel it necessary to define it. In fact, when we look at the scriptures we see no real effort to provide us with a theory of inspiration. There were simply people who claimed that they had a message from God, and they expressed it with some force under their various circumstances.

It doesn’t seem that in many cases we have words dictated by God. Other than Moses bringing the tablets of the law from Mt. Sinai, we don’t seem to have material actually written by God. Moses himself has various scribes chronicle the activities of the Israelites as they travel through the wilderness (Genesis 17:14, for example). This would appear contradictory to the notion that Moses himself wrote the Pentateuch, or that it was delivered as a whole by God to Moses. What need of scribes to record the details if God had provided the words already?

Elsewhere in scripture we have communication given through dreams, visions, direct prophetic oracles, and research. The books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles make reference to previously existing sources. Luke, in his gospel, makes a point of the research that he provided. John the revelator seems to have concocted a special form of Greek, unless one assumes he simply made an exceptional number of grammar errors, in writing the book of Revelation. I would suggest it is because he is so excited in the emotional state that results from receiving the vision, and that he struggles with words as he tries to describe what he has experienced. This seems far from verbal dictation.

We have prayers and stories that seem to express ungodly views (Psalm 137:8-9 and Judges 4-5, for example). We have variations in similar stories that can be observed by comparing Samuel-Kings and Chronicles, or the four gospels in many cases. Clearly there is something more than verbal dictation going on here. In fact, there seem to be quite a number of “somethings” going on.

If you accept the Bible as your sacred book, you will likely also have to come to the conclusion that God has spoken in times past in very many different portions and in very many different ways.

(In my next few posts I will be connecting this idea with the incarnation as I discussed it in my pre-Christmas posts, the basic issue of what literature is inspired, and the idea of a Biblical canon. Who decides what is authoritative and in what way?)

A few days ago my wife and I were showing books at a church craft show, when I was approached by a gentleman about my book What’s in a Version? “What was the right version to use?” he asked. Now when someone starts talking about the “right” version, rather than the best, I’m fairly certain where we’re going in the discussion. Usually the person is an advocate of the KJV Only position.

This gentleman rolled out most of the major arguments for KJV Only. It’s translators were the most dedicated. More people have been brought to Christ through the KJV than through any other Bible version. (I’m not sure this number is even correct any more, but it wouldn’t be a valid argument even if the number was right.) Various modern versions water down the gospel. (I discuss many of these issues in my Bible Translations FAQ.

But the key question for him, one to which he returned repeatedly was just this: “What is your final authority?” I needed to have a physical object, a text that was my final authority, or I was wide open to any wind of doctrine or any sort of moral failure.

My answer to this question is this: “God.” He pointed out that anyone can claim that they heard from God, or that God said something was true, and anyone else can challenge it on the same basis. “What’s the standard?” he repeated.

Now the problem I have is not with any particular answer, so much as with the question. Is there such a thing as an external standard that will hold us to the truth, to what is right? When I think about that question just a bit I consider the standard that this gentleman proposed: The King James Version of the Bible. If we froze the text of the Bible at the printed English of the current KJV, would we have a single standard by which everyone could check their doctrine and behavior and return with objective, verifiable data?

We need only observe the doctrinal differences amongst churches who have used, and still use the KJV as their standard to realize that this is not the case. Limiting oneself to a single text does not guarantee agreement or certainty, because of the very nature of the Bible itself. Without an interpretive framework, it’s impossible to say precisely what is Biblical and what is not. Modern schemes include the notion that God is the author of every word, and that portions can be strung together at will (a method that generates a variety of interpretations itself), the dispensationalist view that divides texts that might otherwise conflict between different dispensations or periods of time in which God used different ways of dealing with people, and covenant theology, which tends to create a more coherent theological framework and progression in God’s revelation. It is quite clear that these widely different approaches to Biblical interpretation might well produce equally different results, and we see this in practice. Debates between people using the different schemes become quite heated.

I believe the problem is simply that there is no meaningful, external standard that everyone of good faith can be guarateed to agree on. We are each called upon to choose right or wrong. We make these choices individually, and with the input of our community. We use different sources. I can say the standard is God, but you might also say that the standard is reality. I wouldn’t differentiate, because in my view God is the creator and maintainer of reality, the ultimate reality.

Now we may choose wisely or poorly. We may get our input from good sources or bad. But no matter what we do, the choice is ultimately ours, and we have to take responsibility for it. “In my opinion” shouldn’t be a dodge by which we avoid taking responsibility to support that opinion. It should be the standard claim. What I say is my opinion. The question is whether I can support that opinion and communicate it to someone else. I even have to make the choice of how to communicate what I believe. I may accept, for example, that one should not commit murder because I believe it is God’s law. That doesn’t mean I have to claim that basis when communicating with someone who doesn’t believe in God. I can then discuss why a society in which murder was legal would have severe problems.

Because I have this choice, I also have the responsibility to make it in the best way possible. No, I can’t force anyone to believe that. But I believe that reality will ultimately catch someone who violates its standards too much. Before that time, some of the rest of us may catch such persons before they get that far, so we can protect others from their stupidity.

Each of us makes the choice. Each of us would do well to take responsibility for it.

For some more information on my view of the Bible see What is the Word of God? and on choice, see Seven Kingdom Principles of Choice.

I have just added a new essay to my collection on Biblical interpretation, entitled Hanging Your Interpretation. I have needed to write this essay for some time, as I often suggest using the procedure described, but have never presented any sort of detail about how it should be done.

I am often asked for quick tips on interpretation and even quick methods for interpretation. The desire for a method that will allow one to be a Biblical scholar in five minutes a day is a pretty natural one. We are, after all, pretty busy.

I don’t know any short cuts to Biblical interpretation. But what I’ve found is that most people want some way to avoid making errors in the way in which they use their Bible. This fear can lead them to surrender their own judgment and their own hearing from God to others. But that is simply a way to replace your own errors with someone else’s.

In answer to this need, I present the “hanging rule.”

Read more on the Energion.com web site . . .

There’s a quote that often ends discussion of Biblical interpretation. One party to the discussion will announce: “That’s just your interpretation.” Debate is supposed to stop. Everyone is supposed to realize that their view really has no advantage over anyone else’s, and just let the discussion die. One person with whom I correspond occasionally online will express his pleasure that I’m “getting it” whenever I talk about the subjective elements of Bible study, but then he becomes annoyed when I claim that particular interpretations can be excluded, or that one explanation is more probable than another.

I’m going to deal with this idea very briefly. There are elements here that can be discussed at length, and that can be very complex. But let me suggest that if you’re reading this essay, you probably think that in some way my words have meaning. There is something I intend to communicate, and you can extract at least some of that information from what I write. You may disagree with me completely, but doubtless you think I said something however inane, stupid, or even reprehensible you might think it is.

In Bible study, when someone suggests that a certain proposition is “just my interpretation” I will often ask them whether the verse is talking about pink elephants. My point? Simply that there is some interpretation that can be excluded. We can be quite certain that our text is not referencing pink elephants. Of course some might suggest that some passages in Revelation may just refer to pink elephants. But that is a completely different story. (For my own comments on understanding Revelation see my study guide, Revelation: A Participatory Study Guide.)

The difficulty in dealing with the “just your interpretation” charge is that there is considerable truth in it. Often conservative Christians react very strongly to this comment (and often they should do so), but it is easy when reacting strongly to miss the truth. Any interpretation that I propose is my interpretation. Nobody else is to blame for it. Many people have given input, from my earliest teachers in religious education to people I conversed with yesterday, but they are not to blame for what I have accepted and what I have rejected. It is my interpretation. It is a mistake not to acknowledge that. The person who objects to my interpretation also has a right, in my view, to object to that interpretation, but not because it is my interpreation. He should object because there is some problem with it, that he has found some reason to hold a different opinion. That would acknowledge that there is some meaning (or meanings) intended by the author of the passage, and other meanings are unlikely or excluded. (Note that I don’t want to get into a detailed discussion of certain post-modern approaches here in any detail. Suffice it to say that I do believe that authors intend their text to mean something, and that I believe that the communication of that message to those who receive it has a significant value.)

For many, the problem with understanding texts is that they think of understanding and communication as essentially binary: Either you understand or you don’t; you communicate or you don’t. The one who says “That’s just your interpretation” is focusing on the failures; the one who affirms an absolute and correct interpretation is focusing on the successes.

But in real life, we don’t deal with this kind of absolute rightness or wrongness. I attempt to communicate regularly with my wife, and we are substantially successful. Sometimes, however, we are less than successful. When we encounter failure in communication, we don’t give up and decide not to bother to communicate any more. Instead, we live with partial success. The result is neither perfect, nor is it a failure.

Readers of this essay will understand it, some better than others. If someone misunderstands a portion of it, I won’t give up and decide that publishing essays of this nature is useless; I expect that some people will misunderstand. Based on e-mails I get, especially in response to material I post on Bible translation, I suspect that some people’s misunderstanding is even intentional. Sometimes when I read my own material a few weeks later, I wonder how it was that I successfully communicated anything at all! The results are considerably less than perfect, but nonetheless they serve a purpose.

In Bible study, the problem is made worse by the complexity of some interpretation problems. Despite the impression one gets from public debate, there is much about the Bible that a broad range of scholars can agree on. In general, the historical meaning, the meaning intended by the original author for his original audience, produces the best consensus. This does not by any means suggests that everyone agrees on everything at this level; I’m simply saying that the agreement is much broader than is often thought. When interpretation gets closer to application, what a piece of scripture means in our daily lives, the differences are much greater. Application is impacted by one’s theology which involves one’s tradition or the tradition of one’s church. Some students of scripture do not believe that there is any real applicability beyond that of any ordinary piece of literature, while others believe that scriptural commands can be almost directly applied to one’s daily life.

The elements that go into this sort of application are much more subjective than those that go into the historical understanding. Nonetheless they are not totally obscure, and they can be examined. In fact, many heated arguments about scripture occur simply because one person doesn’t bother to check the basic assumptions of the other. When I get into a discussion, or heaven forbid, an argument, I frequently ask just how one goes about applying scripture. What do they think the process involves? Sometimes folks claim that they really aren’t interpreting; they’re just doing what the Bible says. But that is the opposite of “just your interpretation;” it suggests that someone has perfect understanding of scripture. Usually you will find in discussion that there is, in fact, a considerable amount of unacknowledged interpretation going on.

In discussions of scriptural interpreation, there is great value in examining the process. It’s not nitpicking, wasting time, or trying to put the other person down. In fact, it can often bring understanding from otherwise heated debates.

Remember:

• It is your interpretation
• Each writer and speaker means something
• Communication doesn’t have to be perfect to be adequate
• Examining your process of interpretation and application can result in improved understanding, even if not in agreement

For more on my own view of interpretation see: Understanding the Participatory Study Method.