I love studying theology. When someone very clever, who has thought about a bible passage or aspect of theology deeply, shows a deeper connection or has a clever theory to explain an oddity in the text, I get a thrill of pleasure. It is worth wading through sometimes heavy writing to see these truths.
And yet I also find a lot of supposed deeper connections and clever theories end up frustrating me, seeming to miss the point and distract from what is clear. So how do we decide which clever theories and deeper connections are truly helpful?
My basic attitude to the Bible is that God is a competent and loving communicator. He knows how to communicate his message for the good of his people.
And with that conviction come two other convictions:
1) God intends his word to be comprehensible and helpful for ordinary Christians
Psalm 19:7 “The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy, making wise the simple.” I expect ordinary Christians, reading through the Bible to find out more about God and more about how we live with God, to find reliable and helpful insight into salvation and sanctification. If supposed deeper connections and clever theories from the academy undermine ordinary believers digging into God’s word for themselves for answers, then they are unhelpful. Sometimes people don’t dig deeply enough, or ignore tensions within the Biblical text, and then a push to go deeper is good. But I resist any idea that encourages ordinary Christians to put down their Bible and rely on scholars to hear God’s word, to know God better or to know how to live following God.
There are two situations that would require theories or attempts at deeper connections and academic inputs, even if that challenges some surface level readings.
a) When the Bible itself presents truths that are in tension with each other and are not easily resolved. A classic example of this is that the Bible presents God as sovereign over all things, and the Bible calls humans to choose and to be accountable for their choices. When the Bible itself presents a tension, the harmonising of the texts (believing that the ultimate author won’t contradict himself) requires deeper connections or clever theories, and we should be open to new ones being better than older harmonisations.
b) When Bible translations are shown to be wrong or missing nuance, or our cultural lenses have stopped us seeing what the text originally meant. The Reformation happened in part because by returning to the Greek Luther was able to see that repentance is something different to the Latin translation of the word “do penance”. In principle, improved translations may challenge long held interpretations. So may insights into the culture into which the Bible was written. In practice, ordinary Christians are probably wise not to jump on a single person’s theory but wait till a significant number of scholars agree that the new translation is better.
2) God intends his word to be comprehensible and helpful for the church through the ages
Colossians 1:6 “In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world- just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace.” God’s word was not just for the first hearers (say Jews in Jerusalem in the AD30s) nor just for us. God intended his word to be comprehensible and helpful for the church through the ages and around the world. Now there have been lots of divisions and debates among Christians through the years. So not everything is clear. And yet when Christians through the ages have agreed on something, I assume that this is God’s message being reliably understood. Truths summarised in the creeds and the writings of theologians and pastors through the ages and across traditions have weight. Those truths may be about God- the creator, triune, the saviour, the judge. Those truths may be about humanity- made in the image of God, fallen sinners, facing final judgement, saved by faith in Jesus. Those truths may be about how to live in God’s world- love and holiness, grace and truth, compassion and purity. When the same message rings out through the ages, it takes considerable evidence to dare to say (without arrogance): “All Christians until now have misunderstood God.” And such a view also raises questions about God’s competence as a communicator.
There are three situations that would require theories or attempts at deeper connections and academic inputs, even if that challenges some widely accepted traditional readings.
a) If the traditional teaching contradicts the Bible understood in its context. The Bible is the inerrant Word of God. The church’s interpretation is not. So some traditional teachings which go back a long way and have widespread acceptance must be rejected because they are not faithfully teaching the Bible. The teaching that Mary is a perpetual virgin is an example of this.
b) On many issues, especially related to church governance, there are many competing traditional readings. In this situation, one must reject at least some of the traditional interpretations of the Bible. And while it is unlikely that a new interpretation will be better than those that are already on the table, it can hardly be described as going against tradition to try and find a new approach in that situation.
c) Where the modern situation is genuinely different to past situations, the application of the Bible into our culture may be different to the application of the Bible into past situations. In this account, a change in application does not mean saying past people got it wrong, nor that God was incompetent. Rather, if there is a genuine change in our situation, there may be a distinct new way of understanding and applying the unchanging Bible truth for us. Arguably, this is true of scientific knowledge about the age of the earth. Taking Genesis 1 as literal and the Bible giving the age of the earth was a reasonable approach when there were no alternative scientific theories with good evidence. But with scientific evidence about an old earth, one had to decide whether Genesis 1 really was a competitor scientific account or if it was teaching meaning rather than chronology.
Digging deeper is still worth it
Looking for the deeper connections and better explanations is still worth it. It is worth it because we want to know God better. It is worth it because it helps us read our Bibles better. It is worth it because it helps us live with God better. It is worth is because it helps us present the gospel more plausibly and answer objections to faith better.
But the danger of loving cleverness for its own sake, or for using supposed “deeper interpretations” to have a God who suits us better is real. So I keep reminding myself as I dig: God is a competent communicator, he inspired the Bible for ordinary Christians to know him and be equipped, and his word is relevant to the church through the ages. The goal is not for me to seem clever or get my way, but for God’s word to ring out more clearly today.
