Two Principles for Interpreting the Bible

Dear Friends and Members of IBC,

The IBC Central Bible Study is currently going through a short seminar series entitled “The Bible - Its Origins and Reliability”. It takes place this Thursday 14/11 at 19:30, both online and in-person at the IBC Hamburg office. I encourage you to join! As an accompaniment to this series, during these weekly ‘Word for the Week’s, we are considering the subject of Hermeneutics, the science of Biblical interpretation. Last week, we looked at why we should study the Bible. This week, we will consider two important principles that should guide us when interpreting the Bible.

In his wonderful little book, Knowing Scripture, R.C. Sproul writes, “The purpose of hermeneutics is to establish guidelines and rules for interpretation.” With any written document there must be some guidelines for how we understand it. A primary rule of hermeneutics is called the analogy of faith. Put simply, this means that Scripture interprets itself. This principle is essential if we want to place our confidence in the reliability and trustworthiness of the Bible. It will be hard for us to rely on the Bible if we have the underlying suspicion that God will contradict Himself at some point, that maybe after reading a command from Jesus in the gospels, we expect to find the opposite instruction in one of the epistles.

No part of the Bible can be in conflict with something that is taught elsewhere in the Bible. And so, if there are two possible interpretations, and one of them goes against other parts of the Bible, we choose the one that doesn’t. A practical application that stems from this principle is the practice of Lectio Divina. Lectio Divina is the practice of reading a Bible passage several times so that we don’t miss anything. The first time we might read a passage straight through, the second time we instinctively slow down and read it at a more reflective pace, and then the third time we read it with the mind of how we might respond.

A second important principle for interpreting the Bible is called the literal sense. We want to understand the Biblical authors as they want us to understand them, and so for this to happen, we will need to know something about different writing genres and types of figurative language. When we read a Bible passage, we will need to ask ourselves whether the genre is a poem, an historical narrative, a sermon, a parable, or a prophecy etc… We will likely interpret a passage wrongly if we can’t perceive that the vivid, impressionist terms being used are not to be taken literally, but are part of a song (see Judges 5:20!)

At least three types of figurative language that we will need to be familiar with are hyperbole, personification, and metaphor. If we don’t understand that Jesus is using hyperbole, an exaggerated statement used to emphasize a point, when He says in Matthew 5:30, “if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away”, then we may be tempted to turn up to church with a bleeding stump instead of a hand and five fingers. Thankfully, we tend to instinctively understand when someone is using hyperbole! Similarly with personification, where a human characteristic is attributed to something non-human. The Psalms are filled with examples of personification. And we usually don’t take the psalmists literally when they say that the rivers clap their hands and the mountains sing together for joy (Psalm 98:8).

The use of metaphor may sometimes cause confusion though. Metaphor is a type of speech where a word or phrase is applied to an object that it is not literally applicable. It is symbolic of something. Our recent sermon series on the seven ‘I Am’ statements of Jesus demonstrate some good examples of metaphor. Jesus is not literally a loaf of living bread, and we don’t understand Him as such. But what does Jesus mean when he breaks bread with His disciples and tells them that “this is my body” (Luke 22:19). Does the bread represent His body in a literal or metaphorical way? Heavyweight theologians such as Martin Luther and John Calvin disagreed on this point, as do whole church denominations. My personal view is in line with Ulrich Zwingli, a protestant reformer and contemporary of Luther, who believed that the bread and wine symbolically represent the body and blood of Jesus. But we can see that this has caused intense debates throughout church history.

I encourage us once again to devote ourselves to the word of God, to be like the Berean Jews, who the apostle Paul commended for diligently searching and examining the Scriptures for themselves (Acts 17:11). Keep God’s word close, remain in Jesus!

God Bless
James