The Bible is the Church’s primary and ultimate Authority for determining what Christians should believe and how they should live. But what does that mean? How can this collection of writings from 2,000 years ago or more tell us how we should think and live today? How can this one book have things to say about the various and complex situations we find ourselves in during our lives?
The Meaning of the Bible
The Bible was written for us, but it was not written to us. That may seem a provocative statement to some, but it is a fundamentally important point to recognize if we are going to correctly interpret the Bible and to understand how it really applies to us today. The Bible is not a book that has fallen out of heaven from God addressed to each individual Christian. Rather, each book of the Bible was written by a particular human author to a particular human audience in a particular historical and cultural context. If we want to correctly interpret the Bible, we must begin with understanding what each human author intended to communicate to their original audience. Only then can we move on to ask the question, “What does this mean for us today?”
If we assume that the Bible was written to us, we inevitably run into all sorts of interpretive problems and errors. We start assuming that the Bible is directly addressing some aspect of our current situation, and then misinterpret some statement of Scripture as referring to this situation, even though that could not possibly be what the author actually meant. We start assuming that the Bible must have direct answers to questions we want it to answer, and then become convinced that some statement of Scripture that is really talking about something else is the “biblical” answer to that question. We start looking in the Bible for “proof texts” that will support a theological or ethical belief we already hold, and then take biblical statements out of context, thus twisting their meaning in order to “prove” our preconceived ideas.
The Bible is a Divine book, “breathed out” by God (2 Tim 3:16). But that does not mean that it is a magic book each Christian can look into for direct answers to all of their personal questions and problems. When we approach the Bible in this way, we actually misuse and abuse the Bible, and fail to truly take it seriously as the Authoritative word of God for His Church. If we want to take the Authority of the Bible seriously, we must first interpret each book of the Bible as it is: a historical document the meaning of which is determined by the intention of the original human author. If we begin with, “This is what this text means to me,” our interpretation will end up being subjective, arbitrary, and often erroneous. Only if we begin with, “This is what this text meant,” can we actually correctly understand the true meaning of the text, and submit to its Authoritative message.
To some, it may seem like tying the meaning of the Scriptures to the historical meaning of the original human author makes them a dead letter, and calls into question their relevance to us today. For example, if the meaning of the book of Romans is, “This is what the apostle Paul said to the church in Rome in the mid first century,” then how can the book of Romans be God’s Authoritative word to me today? The answer is, that although the Scriptures were not written to us, they were written for us. The Scriptures are God’s Authoritative Divine Revelation for His Church throughout the ages. They are a Divine message to all Christians, but indirectly, not directly. We correctly submit to their Authority not by erroneously assuming they are direct messages to us, but by carefully discerning the theological and ethical implications of what the Scriptures say are for us today.
The Meaning of the Bible for Us
So, how do we go about doing this? I have previously written about how Christians should understand the Authority of the Bible in terms of participating in the story of Scripture. The Bible presents us with a story in six acts: 1) Creation, 2) Fall, 3) Israel, 4) Jesus, 5) Church, and 6) New Creation. The Bible gives us Acts I-IV and the beginning of Act V, and then tells us basically what is going to happen in Act VI. God then calls Christians to faithfully improvise the rest of Act V. This means that not all of what the Bible says directly applies to Christians in the age of the Church, but all of what the Bible says has something to tell Christians about how they should think and live, even if indirectly.
Most Christians understand that much of what the Old Testament teaches does not directly apply to them, but they assume that the New Testament is a direct message from God to all Christians. Arguably, this is generally true of the Gospels, since they seem to have been written for the Church as a whole, telling Christians who Jesus is, what He did, and what it means to be His disciple in general terms. However, when we carefully examine the New Testament epistles, we see that this is not the case. In Romans 16:3, Paul commands the Roman Church, “Give my greetings to Prisca and Aquila.” Obviously, this does not mean that Christians today are supposed to attempt to greet Prisca and Aquila, who have been dead for almost 2,000 years. This may seem like a trivial example, but the same can be said about broader Pauline directives, such as His commands to beware of the heretical “circumcision party” and to collect funds for a donation to the Jerusalem Church. These are commands dealing with specific issues the first century Church was facing, and they do not directly apply to us today.
So if we read the New Testament epistles as historical documents of the first century, written by a first century apostle to a particular first century Church, how can they be God’s Authoritative word to the Church today? The answer is that the New Testament epistles, as God’s Authoritative word to these first century Churches, provide us with a set of representative examples of what it meant to think and to act Christianly for these Churches in the first century. The Church must then use a theologically formed wisdom to discern what the implications of this are for Christians today, in our historical and cultural context.
In some cases, what the New Testament epistles say does, practically speaking, directly apply to us; for example, we must believe their theological affirmations about who Jesus is. In other cases, what the New Testament epistles say only applies to us indirectly. However, everything they say has some relevance to us. Paul’s commands to greet particular Christians may have something to tell us about Christian fellowship. Paul’s commands to beware of the heretical “circumcision party” may have something to tell us about how to deal with false teaching in the Church today. And Paul’s commands about collecting funds for a donation to the Jerusalem Church may have something to tell us about Christian generosity and the Church’s sharing of its wealth.
It is not always immediately obvious just how a biblical directive indirectly applies to Christians today. For example, in four epistles written to three different churches, Paul commands, “Greet one another with a holy kiss” (Rom 16:16, 1 Cor 16:20, 2 Cor 13:12, 1 Thess 5:26). In most American churches today, Christians greet one another with a “holy handshake,” since a handshake, not a kiss, is the common form of greeting in contemporary American culture. However, a Christian in a different culture, where a kiss is the common form of greeting, might critique this American church practice, arguing that something has been lost when an actual kiss is not used.
This is a relatively minor example, but the same issue exists with more prominent, significant issues, such as what the New Testament epistles say about gender roles in the Church. How do we determine if some aspect of what the apostle says applies to us today or is relative to the cultural context in which he was writing? The first step is to do our best to discern the answer to the question, “What was the apostle’s point?” We can then attempt to discern if the aspect of the apostle’s teaching under consideration was theologically pertinent to that point, or if it was only the cultural form in which the apostle was making his point. With the example of the “holy kiss,” it seems clear that Paul’s point was that Christians should greet each other warmly. It is difficult to see why a kiss per se would be theologically significant. Thus, it seems reasonable to conclude that Christians today are, in fact, being faithful to this biblical command if they greet one another with the different cultural form of a handshake.[1]I will set aside for now a discussion of the more significant and controversial issue of gender roles in the Church until a later time.
Conclusion
The Church is God’s Authoritative word to His Church. Correctly understanding how that Authoritative word applies to us requires three steps. First, we must correctly understand the original, historical meaning of the text in its original historical and cultural context. Second, we must place the text within the context of the whole of Scripture in order to discern how that meaning applies to Christians within the age of the Church. Thirdly, we must use a biblically grounded and theologically formed wisdom to discern how that meaning applies to Christians dealing with new historical and cultural situations in the world today.
Notes
| ↑1 | I will set aside for now a discussion of the more significant and controversial issue of gender roles in the Church until a later time. |
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