Toward a Fuller Reading of the Scriptures

Calvin told us that Scripture is the Word of God when it points to Christ. Such an idea is a proper hermeneutic in that it rightly places Jesus at the center of the narrative, using Jesus as the interpretive matrix through which to read the Scriptures. This helps us to determine God’s self-revelation from human distortions of God, attempts to make God ours, rather than recognizing that we belong to God. But this is not all that is necessary to understand the Bible. Reading the Bible, we can plainly see that there exist multiple genres of the written word. Paul writes in prose; Acts, the Gospels, and much of the OT are written in narrative form; the Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, and Ecclesiastes are wisdom sayings and poems. We also have apocalyptic writings which are shrouded in symbolism and mystery, which is appropriate and necessary given their subversive nature. And even these are not clear cut, as the Gospels contain poems and parables, and so on. Additionally, we have the difference of context to consider. Ancient biographies were not structured as contemporary biographies are. They were not the empty recital of fact, but contained what we would call myths or legends as ways of communicating truth. Such a means was necessary given that, like the apocalyptic, the Gospels contained much that was subversive to the dominant religious and political climate. In a certain sense, the Gospels needed to be hard to understand in order to help secure the safety of the original communities from enemies.¹

In that some parts of the Bible were written in “coded” language, the community’s knowledge was imperative for rightly reading the Scriptures. Such knowledge is now lost to us. There are many points where we might have strayed. Perhaps it was when Constantine incorporated Christianity into the Empire, perhaps it was when the Church became more gentile than Jew, perhaps it was even when Jesus died, leaving the disciples to muddle his message. However, contemporary means of reconstructing the past have helped us immensely to gather a clearer picture of the early church community and its life. With all that is known it seems still that much knowledge has been lost when it comes to rightly reading the Bible.

Regardless, how we read the Scriptures contemporarily does not represent the only way or even the best way to do so. To say that each person is his own interpreter and the text is clear is simply untrue. If the text was that clear we wouldn’t have so many different interpretations. There is probably not a single interpretation that can exhaust the meaning of the text. If we confess the Bible to be inspired, despite its failings, we believe it to express who God is and contain God’s self-revelation. This means that the text is as full as God is, virtually inexhaustible. This is seen in the early readings of the Church. Historically, the Church understood the text as having multiple senses. It had an allegorical or symbolic sense, a literal or historical sense, and a tropological or moral sense, for example. In such readings, dating back to Origen in the 2^nd century, the literal sense was always the least important. This is important because it demonstrates that symbolic readings find a deep affinity with the historical Church, even though our readings will be different. For example, I would argue that significant parts of the OT are to be understood as symbolic stories meant to communicate certain truths. The issue is not whether something is symbolic or true, but whether the truth communicated takes the form of history or allegory.

Such readings do not endanger the Scriptures, for even in a historical reading, the meaning is found in and derived from the symbols. An allegorical readings simply asserts that the symbols were meant to be understood as symbols, rather than history, and that it is in the Church’s best interests—for the sake of its credibility, and its intellectual and spiritual life—to affirm rather than deny such readings. The discipline comes in determining which parts of the overall narrative are to be understood as parabolic rather than having actually occurred. This is where the sciences of history, textual criticism, and archeology, among others, come into play. Such tools can help us determine how to read the Scriptures. However, the traditions of the Church and its readings are the primary means of determining how the Bible is to be read. This does not mean that we can never disagree with those from the past, simply that we heed their input as wise voices from the Church’s life. We ought to give their voices a say in the life of the Church, which is, as G.K. Chesterton described it, a “democracy of the dead.”

1 Early churches had “gatekeepers” at the entrances of house church meetings who functioned as bouncers in order to guarantee the safety of believers who risked their lives to gather.