Brett Tilford

I had a conversation with a friend a few years ago that left me quite baffled. I asked him which books, outside of the Bible, he read. “I don’t read anything but the Bible.” he replied dryly. “Really, why is that?” I responded somewhat surprised, “Because I don’t want anyone else’s opinion but God’s.” he asserted confidently.
I stood there dumbfounded. I’d never met anyone who articulated so clearly what I’d always suspected some people believe. The thinking goes something like this: if the Bible contains the very words of God then it only makes sense that we wouldn’t waste our time reading people’s “opinions” about what God said, correct? Why waste our time? Why should we filter the pure milk of the word through a human mind? In other words, why would we take the time to read Christian theologians, much less secular philosophers, if we can go straight to the source of all truth? In fact let’s go a step further, why would we even require our pastors/leaders to go to a Bible College or seminary at all? They can read the Bible the same as anyone else, correct? Now I know to some readers this all sounds quite silly, but for many Bible believing Christians it really is quite a conundrum.

Here’s how I’m not going to respond. I’m not going to go the route of criticizing the Bible. I do have a high view of Scripture, however as you’ve probably been able to tell from previous posts, I don’t believe the Bible is some sort of perfect document without any human “fingerprints” so to speak. I make no attempts to defend biblical genocide, slavery, and homophobia. However, as you’ll see, even someone who believes the Bible is a perfect revelation from God, still needs to read broadly in, not only Christian theology, but in secular literature as well. Here’s why: although one may believe the Bible is a perfect revelation from God that doesn’t mean one is a perfect interpreter of that revelation.

Exhibit A is the fact that the Protestant Reformation has caused an almost unceasing splintering of the church. Why? Because even though we claim the Scriptures, as opposed to church tradition, as our foundation it didn’t change the fact that we’re not just readers of the Bible – we’re interpreters of the Bible. Given enough time we’ll come to disagree and when we disagree, history has shown that we’ve been unable to stay in fellowship with one other. A sad state indeed.

So what does this have to do with reading books other than the Bible? Here’s my pitch: if you read little else than the Bible you’ll continue to read the same old passages in the same old ways – it’s not until you begin to interact with great thinkers & writers of the past that you’re opened up to new readings of the text. Take the story of Abraham and the attempted sacrifice of his son Isaac. My guess is you’ve read it and you have a certain interpretation of the story. However, it’s not until you have a profound life change, for example having a child yourself, or that you read someone else’s interpretation that you’re able to, in a sense, read the passage again for the first time. For example, take Rob Bell’s interpretation that the story is primarily about God and the fact that he’s trying to show Abraham that He’s different than other god’s. Child sacrifice was the norm in that day and so God is asking him to do something that might have been somewhat commonplace, however by “staying his hand” God is transcending and abolishing the violent view of deity that Abraham held. Or take Soren Kierkegaard’s interpretation from Fear and Trembling that understands the story as primarily about Abraham and his mighty act of “faith.” However, this isn’t a faith taken in the usual moral sense of believing good and safe “religious” things – this is a faith that transcends the ethical altogether. It is an ethical law unto itself. He posits that either Abraham is a monster or an absolute hero – but he can’t be both. Pastors how would you respond if your parishioner showed up saying that God had told them to sacrifice their child? Those are two brilliant and thought provoking interpretations, however my point in mentioning them is that they’re perspectives I would never have come to on my own.

I think this naive reading of the Bible has hurt us in two ways. For many of us it’s turned us into arrogant lug heads. We think that by reading the Bible we’re somehow smarter than everyone else. We think that the Bible gives us unfettered access to the very mind of God and unfortunately we do real damage in people’s lives by stating our interpretations of God’s word – as the “final” Word. In saying this my purpose isn’t to downgrade or underestimate the Scriptures themselves, but rather to highlight our own human frailty as interpreters of the sacred words.

Second, for many this anti-intellectual stance has turned the Bible into a complete bore. We read the same scriptures in the same way and wonder why it’s not challenging us anymore. My suggestion isn’t that we give up on the Bible, but rather that we read as broadly as possible and let those brilliant thinkers shock and challenge us into reading the Bible with completely new lenses.

An important point in my faith was the day I learned that I don’t merely read the Bible – I interpret the Bible. Initially, this came as quite a jolt because it introduced the possibility that I might, dare I say it, actually be wrong about some things.

Although it’s a simple idea, the concept of hermeneutics (i.e. the study of the theory of interpretation), has profound implications for how we approach the text and our faith as a whole. During the enlightenment we adopted this idea that we could get beyond ourselves (emotions, histories, psychological makeup, cultural biases, etc.) and engage the text with pure reason: like a scientist approaching his experiment: cold, unattached, and uninvolved. In this way, we believed we could discern the clear meaning of a particular text. We could get rid of ourselves and crawl into the brain of say, Paul, John or whoever the writer may have been, and see what they “really” meant. However, at the heart of post-modernism is a deep critique of this idea of “pure reason” and, drawing on that insight post-modern studies in hermeneutics current thinkers have deeply questioned the ability we humans have to understand “the clear meaning” of texts – particularly complex scientific, legal, and religious texts. The reality is that we aren’t uninterested or passive observers – instead we’re readers who bring all of ourselves to the text.

There’s an important point that needs to be made at this juncture concerning religious text’s specifically, just because a text can read in many ways doesn’t mean that an infinite number of interpretations is legitimate. One example Peter Rollins gives in his book How (Not) to Speak of God is the difference between the set of numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… and 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4… If we take these numbers as various interpretations then in the former we see an infinite number of interpretations while in the latter we see a mathematical boundary that contains the infinite. In other words, the phrase “God is love” can be interpreted in many ways – and in fact has been interpreted differently down through the centuries of Christendom. Yet, we see the boundaries provided in the sense that the phrase “God is love” cannot be interpreted as “God is hate”, or “God is hurtful and embittered”.

In the same book, Rollins encourages us to approach the Bible like we would our favorite painting – the point isn’t to leave ourselves at the doorway and approach it purely from the mind of the artist – obsessively focused on what it meant to them. Instead, we bring ourselves to the painting, experience it, which in turn gives rise to our interpretations of it – sometimes multiple interpretations of it through the years. Yet, again we see a sense of boundary because a picture of two people clasped in a loving embrace wouldn’t give rise to interpretations of hatred or disgust. What’s strange is that the more we research a painting’s history and engage in conversation with those from the past (often via books) and those present to us now, we often find that it complicates the meaning instead of clarifying. I think this concept is largely lost on those within the church who refuse to admit that the Bible cannot be reduced to a single interpretation without doing massive violence to the text. The conservative Southern Baptist School I attend exhibits this belief by requiring all undergrads to take 2 semesters of Hebrew and Greek each. Why? Not simply because this will help us be better interpreters of the text (which is true), but rather because we’re operating under the mistaken belief that if we can learn the original languages of the Bible then we can get the correct interpretation. As someone who has taken 3 of 4 semesters required I can assure you that learning the original languages is no magic bullet to laying bare the plain meaning of any scripture. Actually, the opposite is true. It’s not until you immerse yourself in the original languages that you realize the challenging job translators have of taking words, sentences and concepts from one language and recreating them in another. Added to this complexity is the fact that words often have more than one meaning and, the fact that Hebrew and Greek don’t have a particular word order to their sentences as English words do. Instead we rely on endings attached to words to identify them as nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. and then do our best to recreate sentences in the way we think the original writer meant them. This is why I can’t help but smile at people who say they want a literal interpretation of the Bible, because they don’t realize that it would literally be un-readable.

I don’t believe the above insights should cause us to throw up our hands in despair and state “Oh great! Now we can’t know anything about the Bible!” Rather I think the point is to realize that jumping into the Biblical text is no easy task and shouldn’t be treated as such. Rather, we should be humbled and driven to seek out communities of faith – not where they claim to lay bare the meaning of the Scriptures (that’s when you should smell a rat), but where we can seek to enter into the holy task of participating in the ongoing conversation with the Church of the past and present.

In response to my previous post: are you gay affirming, the question has quickly arisen, “What about the Scriptures? Where is the gay affirming position found?”

In the context of a conversation about homosexuality when the question is asked, “What about the Scriptures?” Old Testament verses, like Leviticus 20:13, that have harsh words for homosexual sex, are usually what one has in mind. There are books written on the topic that have differing interpretations of those scriptures (e.g. one argument I’ve heard is that those verses aren’t referring to committed monogamous homosexual relationships) but I agree that the deeper question this topic poses for the conservative branches of the church is, “what is our view of Scripture and will we be willing to cut loose from our more stringent standards if we feel they’re perpetuating injustice and ignoring the highest law – love?”

With that question in mind, the rest of my response won’t really be about homosexuality per se but actually about how we view the Bible, because I believe the question behind the question is this: “Brett, what is your view of the Scriptures that would allow you to ignore certain verses in the Bible and write a post like, are you gay affirming?”

In response to that question I’d say this: through the years the church – even the most theologically conservative churches – have had to reinterpret (sometimes quite creatively) our understanding of particular issues. Many of these items seem downright silly or crazy to us today. For example, one of the first questions of this kind is recorded in the early chapters of Acts, when the question of circumcision arose, “Will these Gentile converts have to become good (circumcised) Jews to truly follow Christ?” Recognize that there is a mountain of Old Testament Scripture that would answer, “Of course! This is a central mark to delineate the people of God. It’s absolutely essential that we follow all of Scripture – we can’t pick and choose which verses to follow and which to ignore.” Of course, we know that ultimately Paul won the day with his argument about a “circumcision of the heart” but if that interpretation seems ho-hum and theologically conservative to us today, it’s only because of familiarity.

A more recent example is the issue of slavery, with the question arising, “Do not the scriptures say, ’slaves obey your masters?’ And the answer, as awkward as it seems to us today, is “yes.” Of course, we know all of the cultural baggage that surrounds that verse and we could likely cite other scriptures that would argue for the equality of all men under God (which is why we could pretty easily debate it with any person at a coffee shop – assuming we could even find someone who would try to justify slavery on that basis – hopefully not). Today, it would seem not only utterly ridiculous but downright immoral for a church to hold racist views on the basis of a verse like that, but again, recognize that’s because we live in the 21st century – churches were split over questions like that.

Other examples include women wearing head coverings in church and the freedom of the faithful to get tattoos (the scriptures clearly command the former and abhor the latter). Again, I understand that we have all of our cultural reinterpretations of these verses, but I can’t emphasize enough that these were the types of issues that got pastors fired and incited flame wars on twitter and blogs around the world.

What’s interesting is that even on the topic of homosexuality I don’t know of one conservative Christian that would actually hold to a “pure” biblical interpretation of a verse like Leviticus 20:13, because of course that verse doesn’t let the people of Israel off with a simple, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” interpretation, but it commands the offending person’s instant death. My only point in bringing this up is to show that in the same way you asked me, “Brett, where in the scriptures is the gay “affirming” viewpoint found?” My answer to you would be this: the same place that the seeds of the “gay welcoming” viewpoint is found – in the law of love and the command to embrace and empower those on the margins of society – which in this case is the LGBTQ community.

As a “welcoming” Christian, you’ve already started down the path of reinterpreting what the scriptures have to say on the topic. My only encouragement would be to go a bit further.

Read part 1 of this post here.

If there was a place on Facebook to select what my relationship with the Bible is, it would be marked “complicated”. On the one hand, it informs so much of how I conduct my life. On the other hand it infuriates and baffles me. That’s why I’m through defending a view of the Bible that sees within it only the divine, because when I crack it open I see humanity bleeding through on every page. God so often looks like us – our petty jealousies, our hatred, our vengeance.

I think alot about the kind of a faith I’ll pass down to my kids and specifically what I’ll teach them about the Bible. Will I shield them from the items above for fear that they’ll reject the whole thing? Will I demand that they approach the Bible with unthinking obedience and devotion? I hope not. I hope that when the time is right, I’ll explain to them that the Bible isn’t a children’s book. It takes a grounded and secure individual to pick it up and begin to sort through it’s views of God and the Christian faith. Not necessarily someone who’s studied extensive theology – just someone ready to think for themselves.

When it comes to the Bible here’s what I believe. I believe what it claims to be according to 2 Timothy 3:16 . It’s “God breathed” and “useful”. The useful part is more straightforward. I think it is useful for teaching, correcting, rebuking, and training people in the ways of God. By God breathed I don’t mean inerrant or perfect in every way, but simply that in some mysterious way – God is behind this beautiful mess. Yes man is certainly to be found within it’s pages, but I think wherever you find love, selflessness, charity, and kindness within it’s pages – you’re bumping up against the divine. Of course the trick is to find where those beautiful things are and what they mean for us today. That’s where I think the church comes in. We struggle together to understand who God is, who Jesus was, and how we might live in light of those things. It’s not cut and dry. It’s not as easy as simply memorizing scripture or reading through the Bible each year and then “doing what is says.” That’s part of my point – no one is exactly sure what the “truth” of the Bible is because of it’s fractured nature. Of course, that’s what you’d expect from a book that’s trying to grasp the mystery that is God. That’s why I try not to get angry when I read the unsavory parts of the Bible – they’re reminders that we’re all struggling to grasp the infinite. Sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we get it horrifically wrong.

At the end of the day though I wish evangelical churches would be more honest about the Bible – not side stepping the unsavory parts but jumping right into them. Not from a place of defense or justification, but from a place of weakness, sorrow, contrition, and the realization that in the same way our forefathers in the faith got it wrong – so will we. An honesty that admits that a foundation “built on the Word of God” has more cracks in it than we’d like to admit.