Bible
Interpretation
At the most fundamental level, the Bible is the recording of
a conversation. What kind of
conversation? A conversation between a
Father and His children…. A conversation
between a Father and you…. A
conversation that sometimes becomes a conversation among the children. Any other approach to Scripture, no matter
how well intended, no matter how sincerely grasped, is distorted in one way or
another. Is the Bible art, evidence,
history, salvific, science, the root source for all of faith and life? Yes, of course, it is all of those things,
and more, but none of them describes its fundamental nature. At the most fundamental level, the Bible is
the recording of an intimate conversation between the Father and His children;
a conversation between the Father and you, as well as among His children
themselves.
We may wish to enter into this conversation, or turn away
from it: that is our business; that is our free choice. Having made our choice, we must necessarily
live with the consequences of our own actions.
If we have had terrible human fathers, we should not be tricked into
believing that this characterizes all human fathers; it especially fails to
characterize the Divine Father.
Nevertheless, to understand this, one has to risk getting involved in
the conversation. As with all else
pertaining to love, one has to risk getting involved, to risk being hurt.
What should this conversation look like? What is its shape? It’s baby talk. It begins with the most concrete, elemental
ideas and progresses to that which is abstract, weighty, and profound. In Genesis 2, God gives Adam his first lesson
in sex education: Adam watches the bunny hop, the duck walk, the elephant
tango, and realizes that something is missing in his life. By the time that we get to apocalyptic
literature, we approach explanations of that which nobody understands. Of course, we have long since realized, that
we never really understood sexuality either.
Is it literally interpreted?
The question is a bit absurd: it assumes that mere man has the ability
to understand what God has said, and interpret it. The question is also man centered, rather
than becoming God centered, as it necessarily must.
Baby talk is excessively literalistic in nature. Remember trying to explain the color blue to
a child. You point to the blue car and
say blue. For weeks every car is dubbed
blue. Apparent contradictions arise as
we run around saying car, red car, green car, yellow car. Eventually, we hope that the child will grasp
the difference between an object and the color of the object. Children are so literalistic that when Noah
encounters the flood, they may imagine that they are on the ark with Noah; when
Moses crosses the Red Sea, children will commonly look at their feet to be sure
they are dry. Children’s crayoning art
and speech is so excessively literalistic that we have to explain that we don’t
draw or say those things in public. “Little
pitchers have big ears,” so it is a good idea that adults guard what they say.
Also, learning is a process, not an instantaneous
discovery. The conversation took a long
time for humans to absorb. It didn’t
fall from the sky as a finished printed document. It was hand recorded over a span of roughly
1500 years. It was abused, damaged,
lost, destroyed, recovered, translated, and several other things.
As the Bible was recorded one sentence at a time, it
introduced increasingly more abstract ideas, it became increasingly more
figurative and increasingly less literalistic.
But the literalism never disappears completely; nor does the figurative
ever completely dominate. In any given
passage, or single word, we may find that which is both literal and figurative
at the same time. This is why a child
may understand a given passage; while the very same passage may stump the most
advanced scholar with its complexity and profundity. So we are not surprised when multiple
observations on the same passage range from very literal ideas to very
figurative ones. I would submit to you,
that very possibly, both can be true: both can also be false. So the task of a child discovering the mind
of God, through conversation with God and other children is always a bit
tricky. The most advanced scholars find
themselves becoming more and more childlike.
Moreover, those passages, long believed to be concrete and literalistic,
suddenly reveal an abstract figurative side to themselves. Saying, something like, “always literal,” or,
“literal where possible,” just won’t work.
Both of these approaches put interpretation into the hands of man;
rather than where it belongs, in the hands of God.
Interpretation is the prerogative of God alone: man has no
right to it whatsoever. For this reason
it is necessary that God send His Holy Ghost: for without the work of the Holy
Ghost in our lives, we understand nothing.
Mere human eyes may as well fall on blank pages; many readings and
sermons go in one ear and out of the other.
Yet, the Holy Ghost is offered to us freely; we, as the children we are,
are invited to ask for this Spirit, most Holy.
He, the Holy Ghost is promised to comfort, lead, and teach us, into all
the truth about the Christ and about His Father.
There will always be individuals, I suppose, who will run
around crying, “I’ve got the Holy Ghost, I’ve got the Holy Ghost,” and claim
that their personal interpretation of Scripture is the right one. This is just so much more man-centered,
self-centered nonsense. Groups do this
too: it’s still nonsense. The Holy Ghost
is given to all Christians at the baptism of Jesus: not necessarily at water
baptism, which may fail for several reasons.
The baptism of Jesus certifies and guarantees two things: namely, the
Holy Ghost and fire (trouble in this life).
This gift of the Holy Ghost to all Christians means that, at the very
least, we do not know the mind of God until we find that unanimous agreement
which can only be produced by the Holy Ghost.
The fact that controversy remains over the conversation, is a strong
indicator that we don’t yet understand what we are talking about.
This is just as true of what I’ve written above, or what I’ve
said or written anywhere else. It’s all
nonsense until we have some reason to believe that the Holy Ghost has completed
part of His lesson in us, via the evidence of universal agreement. This is the true meaning of Bible
Interpretation. Until then, it’s only my
opinion.
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