Third Millennium Church

Value Interpretation of the Bible

In the previous article I described the problems inherent in the traditional Evangelical methods of biblical interpretation. Foremost among them is a basic error concerning the primacy of authorial intent. The authorial intent of a text can be obscured by many factors: a plurality of authors and redactors, a lack of knowledge of the provenance or background, and subtle cultural and language differences especially when dealing with connotation and figures of speech. These factors cause even the most honest and hard-working interpreter to invariably find holes in her understanding of the text, holes which she naturally fills with her own meaning, not the author's. How many of us truly grasp the horror of helping a Samaritan? Of calling the Pharisees "unwashed tombs"? Of John saying to a Gnostic audience that "the Logos became Flesh"? What of the thousand other subtleties that the textual corpus or archeology have yet to unearth?

I believe the bible is an incarnational book the way Jesus is an incarnational person. In other words, as Jesus was God in human flesh, so the bible is God's word in human literature. Jesus was not the perfect human; he had pimples and burned his mouth on grilled fish and was open to every frailty that we face, even anger in the face of the death of his friend Lazarus. So, too, is the bible not perfect. Not only does it have spelling errors and other artifacts of being a text, but the message of the bible is not perfectly transmitted. There is no "face value" reading of the bible possible, and it is not due only to our inability to properly find every piece of linguistic and cultural trivia of the people who wrote it. It is, by nature, imperfect, just as Jesus in his humanness was, by nature, imperfect.

Why would God give us an imperfect book? Why would God make an imperfect world? Why are there volcanoes and tornadoes, when God could have made a world without them? Why does our DNA have thousands of useless gene sequences? Why does our free will also allow us to do evil? Because perfection is not that interesting after all. A perfect universe might be a field of evenly spaced hydrogen atoms. Boring! A world without weather is a world without sunsets and snow and the sparkling of ice on tree branches after freezing rain. Imperfection and diversity are God's tools. Perfection is for heaven, when we are united with God. This universe is built on entropy.

But even though the bible is imperfect it is still capable of containing God's word, just as Jesus in his imperfect human body was capable of teaching and ultimately dying for the sins of the world. Did Jesus use the perfect words for every sermon? No. Did every person who heard him understand unflinchingly the truth that he represented? No. They killed him, remember? But those who did hear him and understand him grasped a bit of the truth about God. Likewise, the bible, for those who have ears to hear, can give us a bit of the truth about God. But to think that every word was scribed by God is to try to divine meaning from the way Jesus styled his hair, or wore his sandals.

Value Interpretation finds meaning in the bible through the values of our community. It is just what every community has done with the bible through the ages. First Century Jews interpreted the bible differently than Medieval Catholics, who interpreted differently than Eighteenth Century Deists, who are again different from modern Evangelicals. Each community interpreted the bible for itself, because each community valued different things. It has always been so. We are merely being explicit and honest. The bible was not meant to be read in a vacuum of scholarship and theology, but as part of a living community of believers. The community of believers has at its disposal the Holy Spirit, who leads and guides the values of the community. So Value Interpretation is a two-way street: we read the bible through our shared values and the bible and the Holy Spirit help shape our values.

Think about church history. How much of what the early church practiced would we consider heresy? How much that we practice would they consider heresy? Quite a bit on both sides. Take one example: gladiatorial combat in Rome continued for over a century after Constantine converted to Christianity. Why? Did they not realize that watching men kill each other for sport was wrong? That throwing people to the lions was wrong? The bible is pretty clear about how we are to treat each other and "throw them to the lions in a spectacle for your amusement" seems right out. Their values informed their bible reading and the bible and the Holy Spirit informed their values. Over time, they discovered God's word in the bible for their community. But it didn't happen right away. It was a process. Or consider slavery in this country. Again, it took a while for the Christian community to see it as wrong, even though the bible when read "plainly" has no problem with slavery. What happened? The bible is not the last word, it is only one witness for God among many. We have the Holy Spirit, and we have our own minds. It doesn't take much to put together love for your brothers with the Golden Rule to see that slavery is wrong. But it did take time, and it did take throwing out the plain meaning of the text.

So this will be our new hermeneutics: we read the bible through the lens of the values of our community. We allow the bible and the Holy Spirit to shape the values of our community. This openness requires that we go further than the bible in some instances, or to outright deny the bible in others. What is important is the wholeness of God's word to us, not just the letters on a page. I'll give you an example of how Paul did this in 1 Cor 10, and how we need to reinterpret Paul's interpretation for our community. There, Paul is concerned with people eating food that has been sacrificed to idols, not because there is anything evil with the practice (he makes clear that there isn't) but because of what others might think. Since one of Paul's values is "getting along with the pagans" given the dangerous situation in the church at the time, he advises to go ahead and eat such meat, unless someone mentions it was sacrificed to idols. This instruction values accommodation at the cost of authenticity. But our community values authenticity. Thus, we do not agree with Paul that the proper thing to do is to eat the meat unless someone says something. If meat sacrificed to idols is a freedom or us, then it doesn't matter what other people think, we can eat it. Thus, using our value of authenticity, we might say that the proper action is to eat the meat sacrificed to idols and explain to anyone who thinks we're worshiping demons that we're really not. Paul didn't have that option, because if the Christians ruffled too many feathers in his community, they ended up in the coliseum. We don't have that fear, and so our response can be different. Thus, the same text in the bible provides two different responses for two different situations.

Now you might say, but you've just read what you wanted into that passage. Exactly! That's what everyone does anyway. Jesus said, "Turn the other cheek". How many American Christians obey that? None. Why not? It's a metaphor. But the "plain reading" of the text is that it is a simple command. Why does everyone interpret it to be a metaphor? Because they want it to be a metaphor. Because their community does not value non-retaliation. Americans value independence and toughness. So the Evangelicals have interpreted the bible in the light of such values. There have been Christian communities through the ages who have interpreted Jesus' words literally.  Neither group has the "proper" interpretation, because the interpretation depends upon the community.

Another objection you might have is that this method of interpretation could make anything valid; a sort of loose-leaf bible where we keep what we want and toss the rest. Well, first, every church does keep what they want and toss the rest. I don't hear many people arguing for stoning violators of the sabbath, even though that's right in the ten commandments. We don't eat kosher, as the apostles ordered us to in Acts 15. We all have a loose-leaf bible. Second, I do believe that there are essentials and non-essentials. Essentials are what make Christianity unique, the essential theology (belief in Jesus as God's Son, God is good, etc.) and the core ethics (do not murder, do not steal, the golden rule, etc.). Other essays will illustrate these essentials. Everything else is a freedom. Any community that tries to interpret the bible to violate the essentials is not a Christian community. They can say they are, but people say a lot of things.

Value Interpretation allows us to discern God's word in the dynamic interplay of God's people, the Holy Spirit, and the bible. It means that there are different churches for different communities. It means that the values of churches may vary widely. This is why Jesus said we were to love one another. You do not need to love someone who agrees with you! You do however need love in order to accept someone who disagrees with you. The bible is designed to mean different things to different groups of people. There never was "one true faith" and there never will be. Even in the most fervent Evangelical church, you can find twisted interpretations of scripture, evil practices, and bad faith. We all do it. Thankfully, God's grace is broad enough that all of us twisted sinners are forgiven. This is why Jesus was so upset with the Pharisees. No one has a hold of the whole truth, so the worst sin is to say that you have it. "If you had been blind, your sin would be forgiven. But because you say 'I see' your sin remains." As we interpret the bible to find God's word for us, let us remember that we only see dimly now, but soon we shall see him face to face.

Why We Need a New Hermeneutics

The new church needs a new hermeneutics. Current Evangelical biblical interpretation stands upon the idea that the author's intent is both knowable and supreme. Such churches claim to know "what Paul really meant in this passage and thus what God means to communicate" for example. In its extreme form this leads to Biblical literalism and churches that (for example) force women to wear veils in church (1 Cor 11). In the less extreme forms, it leads to attempts to incorporate cultural information and the idea of progressive revelation into the interpretation. To follow the example, women needn't wear veils in church, but they must submit to their husbands as the primary authority in the marriage. Their claim is that they are not taking the bible literally, but taking the principles from the bible and applying them today. Sounds nice. Doesn't work.

Here's why. Every Evangelical church takes only those principles that they are either culturally comfortable with or that they promote anyway. Principles that the bible teaches that they either cannot or will not accept are explained away. I give just two examples though there are many more. At the end of the Jew/Gentile controversy covered in Galatians, Corinthians, and Acts the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 announces its final answer to the problem. Gentiles can be Christians. They need not be circumcised or follow the law except in two ways: they are to abstain from sexual immorality and meat with the blood in it. No one denies that Gentile Christians must abstain from sexual immorality, but what of the second part of the announcement? Why do Gentile Christians today feel free to eat non-Kosher meat? The Jerusalem Council, the main group of the Apostles who knew Jesus personally, Peter and James and John and such, has required it. Why do we abandon the second part of their demand but not the first? Did it get overturned later? No. Acts was written after the Pauline epistles so this is the final word on the matter. Is it binding just on those Gentile Christians? No. It reads like a universal pronouncement. But modern Evangelical scholars will attempt to wiggle out of this requirement. Why? We don't want to be bothered with eating Kosher meat, that's why. We've just decided we're not going to follow that bibilical principle, there's nothing deeper than that. And Evangelical scholars will come up with complicated and fanciful explanations about why avoiding eating Kosher meat is just for the 1st century Gentile Christians, but avoiding sexual immorality is for all Gentile Christians forever, even though in the text the two are uttered in the same breath.

As a second example look at Jesus' ethical exhortations in his Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5-7). There are some really powerful principles here: non-retaliation, love for enemies, sins based not on behavior but on intent. Some really good stuff. Oh, and for most Evangelical interpreters it's all metaphorical. These aren't the kind of biblical principles they want to follow. It was all well and good for a people under the control of the Roman Empire to extol the virtue of non-retaliation, but I'm an American. If someone slaps me, I'm suing him. If someone offends me, I'm going to make sure the FCC fines him heavily. If someone says something I don't agree with, I'm going to try to get them silenced. We must crush our enemies wherever we find them without mercy. Torture is too good for them. Evangelical biblical scholars make these biblical principles "metaphorical" because they don't want to live by them. Or, put another way, they selectively choose when and where to apply them. For example, if the pastor says something offensive in church we must turn the other cheek, but if the town council zones the spot next to the church as commercial the knives come out.

What I'm saying is that the claim by Evangelical interpreters that they take the author's intent as normative and thus give weight to biblical principles is false. They give weight only to those biblical principles that they like, or that match their culture, or that they want to enforce on others. If the author's intent were primary and the Evangelical interpreters truly desired to follow whatever the bible affirmed, come what may, they would do so. But it's apparent by casual inspection that they don't. There are many more examples I could give, but I'm long-winded enough. To give an example from history, many Evangelical churches in the 19th century in the south supported slavery as a biblical principle. Thy had lots of texts to support their position. Then we burnt their cities to the ground. After that, they decided the bible didn't promote slavery after all. In the 1960s, many Evangelical churches found support in the bible for segregation. Then we sent in the National Guard to escort children to school and to stop these good Christian men from hanging their black brothers from trees. After that, they decided the bible didn't promote segregation either. So when were all these good, honest, well-intentioned interpreters wrong? Was it when they revised their stance to decry slavery or when they further revised their stance to decry segregation? And how could this in any way be a model for rock-solid, from-on-high, biblical principles? Why did the U.S. Army need to explain to these people they were wrong instead of the Holy Spirit? You'd think He'd have been a little more attentive...

The truth is Evangelical biblical interpretation has failed. A slavish devotion to the text and the canon does not guarantee that we indeed are capable of extracting the author's intent, let alone God's Word (caps intentional). In fact, since men like Wittgenstein and Quine have demolished our view of language as some form of ideal communications medium, biblical interpretation based on that assumption must be revised. Evangelical Christianity no longer worships a living God, but a dead book. A book the earliest Christians didn't even know would exist. To follow the Evangelical story, as the bible was written and became the perfect expression of God's truth, the Holy Spirit withdrew. But their story is a fable.

In reality, the bible has a less exalted position. It is not the perfect communicator of God's Mind to man. Some of the things it teaches are evil (the cherem in Joshua, for example), sometimes it contradicts itself (1 Cor 11 vs. Gal 3 on women's authority), and sometimes it's just plain confusing (baptizing for the dead in Peter). The Old Testament was at least written as some sort of national epic recounting the history of the nation of Israel, but the New Testament consists in large part of some guy's letters. The Gospels come closest to being an intentional theological history like the Old Testament, but even they are written for the following reason: "Oh, shit! Jesus isn't returning! We'd better write this stuff down so we don't forget it."

The canon is another fallacy. Theologians have often dropped entire books (Luther, I'm looking in your direction) when they didn't agree with them. There is no reliable reconstruction of the canon, nor any reason why it ended when it did. Clement's Letter to the Corinthians is a much better book than 3rd John! The canon was up in the air for at least 200 years. Books like Corinthians are clearly at least 3 separate letters that have been mushed together. Ephesians and Colossians are nearly the same book, probably a letter duplicated and sent to two churches with slightly different needs.

So we need a new hermeneutics. One that does not give the bible more than its due. One that does not pretend that we can discern the author's intent. One that can be consistently applied. That is, if we are going to pick and choose what is "truth" as the Evangelicals do, we at least want to be honest about it up front. We want a hermeneutics that recognizes that God is living, active, and present, not some dead letter. How we do this is the topic of the next article in this Category.