This article, written by faculty member Mike Bird, was first published on the Patheos Blog, and printed in Eternity Newspaper Number 71, July 2016.

Winner of the 2017 Australasian Religious Press Bronze Award for Best Theological Article.

1. The Bible did not fall out of the sky, bound in leather, written in English.

The Bible is not a single book, but more of a complex library, written over some 1500 years, in the languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. There were real human processes behind its composition and canonisation which God used to give the Bible to us. First, the composition of many of these texts was a process rather than a single event. For instance, while Moses is recognized as the originator of the Pentateuch, it is very unlikely that he recorded his own death (Deuteronomy 34) and there are several references to what cities were called in the days of the patriarchs  and how they are still called similarly “to this very day,” indicating a perspective from a later time (e.g., Gen 26.33; Deut 3.14-15). Similarly, the ending of the Gospel of John includes an affirmation of the Beloved Disciples’ testimony with the words “we know his testimony is true” (Jn 21.24) indicative of an epilogue added by those who edited the Beloved Disciples’ testimony. That some Old Testament texts were edited or updated by a prophet’s followers is something debated in relation to Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel, but there here is no prima facie case against this. To this end I rather like John Webster’s description of inspiration as including the “sanctification” of all human processes involved in the formation of Scripture. Second, on canonisation, if you didn’t notice, the Bible does not tell us which books should be in the Bible! So who decided that the Gospel of Matthew and Paul’s Letter to the Romans were to be included, while we the Shepherd of Hermas and the Apocalypse of Peter were left out?  No, it wasn’t Constantine, but neither did a sherry of bishops in the secondary century go an Indiana Jones type of adventure with their inspiration-o-meter looking for Christian books to add to their growing collection authoritative texts. The basic criteria was books that contained the words of Jesus and the apostolic message about Jesus, and a consensus began to emerge by the late second century based upon the four Gospels, Acts, Paul’s thirteen letters plus Hebrews, 1 John, and 1 Peter,  with the other books in our NT eventually finding consensus, but over a much longer period. To be sure, the Church did not invent the Bible, the Church itself is a creation of the Word of God, but the Church was tasked with putting the divine word into its canonical location.

2. The Bible is for our time but not about our time.

The Bible is for us, but not about us. This can create problems when we assume that the Bible professes the perspectives of our age or intends to speak directly to our context. If we assume that the Bible supports Marxist economics or laissez faire capitalism, the right to carry arms or non-nuclear proliferation, gender fluidity or home schooling, then we are either reading stuff into the Bible (which is bad) or maybe trying to reason from the Bible (which is okay), but either way we are not taking stuff directly from the Bible. The Bible was written for its own world and not directly to ours. That does not mean that it cannot address our own context and concerns, of course it does, but we have to remember that our reading of the Bible is mediated by 2000 years of history, and shaped by our own language, culture, history, and identity. Being a 30 year old, white, middle-class, female, Pentecostal, living in New Zealand will inevitably shape the way you read the Bible and you should not assume the normativity of your own reading experience. We must acknowledge the socio-cultural distance between the biblical world and our world and that our reading of the Bible is partly a product of our own environment. That will teach us that we cannot just jump from ancient text to modern time without first engaging the chasm that exists between the two. Therefore, a good interpreter will need a basic grasp of the biblical world, pay attention to the history of interpretation, cultivate global conversation partners, and be self-critical of what we assume about the Bible.

3. We should focus on taking the Bible seriously, not necessarily literally.

Debates about taking the Bible literally or metaphorically are often missing the point. For instance, Genesis 1 is not a moment by moment commentary on how God made the world, nor narrating the story in such a way that the main purpose is to refute Darwinism. Genesis 1 is primarily about worldview, adopting a God-centred view of reality, affirming that however the world was made that it owes its existence to God, and admiring the artistry of God as seen in splendor of creation. This does not mean that Genesis 1 is merely “myth” in the sense of fairy tales, but it sets forth in a literary masterpiece the truth that God is the Creator and there is no Other. This is a competing narrative to other ancient near eastern accounts about creation and in practice it means that you don’t worship the stars, you worship the God who made the stars. In many places in the Bible the main point is not literal but literary, and reading the Bible in light of its genres and context is the best way to take it seriously.

4. If interpreting the Bible was easy, we wouldn’t need teachers.

Protestants believe in the clarity of Scripture. However, even Protestant confessions like the Westminster Confession and London Baptist Confession state that the clarity of Scripture only applies to the things “necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation.” Everything else is not necessarily “plain in themselves” nor “clear unto all” (WCF 1.7/LBC 1.7). In other words, the Bible is clear about the gospel, how to get right with God, but after that it can get a bit sticky. So we need teachers, we need metaphorical Phillip’s to run beside us in our chariot and to explain the Scripture to us. First, we should always be prepared to consult tradition. Now tradition often gets a bad name, but tradition is simply what the church has learned from reading Scripture. I like to say that tradition is a tool for reading Scripture, a tool we be wise to use. We engage are recklessness if we venerate tradition as infallible and yet we are foolish if we ignore what tradition has to teach us. Second, we need to look to those who inhabit the offices of pastors and teachers, and listen to them in their learning of Scripture, languages, doctrine, and history. While you may think that your soul has the competence and liberty to interpret the Bible as the Spirit leads you, as a professional scholar let me tell you something, some souls are more competent than others, and listening to some teachers will give the Holy Spirit more to work with in guiding you into the truth!