REstory 10: Seriously? (Rethinking Biblical Interpretation with Others)
Family History: Inheriting Interpretations and Questioning Authority
Last week we began a discussion of how we interpret scripture — we used the metaphor of getting a complicated medical diagnosis, because shifting our expectations for the Bible can be such a large disruptive task, like unexpected health news. We talked about how those who hold power in pulpits sometimes assume that anyone who is changing their minds about scripture is not taking the Bible “seriously.” But the deeper assumption of the speaker in the pulpit is that their group had already arrived at the rightest reading of scripture. We also mentioned how compassion is needed for those who are healing from the Bible being used to enforce and reinforce stories of a harmful God.
We talked about how presuppositions about “plain reading” will lead to proof-texting; these are not respectful or responsible uses of ancient scripture. We also said that neutral, objective interpretation doesn’t exist. All of this matters very much, because whatever someone does with scripture tells us everything we need to know about what they think God is like. We ended that post by opening the door to the idea that we should let Jesus have center stage as we relearn biblical interpretation!
Continuing in our initial metaphor, this week we’ll talk about how family history can sometimes set us up to be unhealthy. Like auto-immune disease running in families, or a genetic predisposition for cancer, or every man in a family having heart bypass surgery before age 60, many times our family history sets us up for complicated situations that we didn’t entirely author on our own. The same can be true for biblical interpretation strategies that we inherit.
I feel so careful about writing about family inheritance this week — this can be the hardest part to talk about. Throughout this post, I will be describing both family of origin and faith community of origin because we inherit so much from both groups. We have all inherited both blessings and baggage, strengths and shame, gifts and grime from those who have shaped us — as we are also shaping others in our care.
This matters so much for faith reconstruction — I have lost track of how many times I have been in conversation with someone and their questions about theology or ethics or scripture, when they all of a sudden start talking about a relationship, usually a parent or grandparent or community elder type. Some folks struggle knowing that if they change their minds about God, then “grandma” might have been wrong about God.
For the record, I think God already knows that we don’t fully understand everything about God and loves us tremendously and is happy to keep helping us learn right and unlearn wrong. Kinda like the way your seven year old rocked their second grade math homework, but you know they can’t conceive of Geometry yet. But when rethinking inherited faith, the stakes feel much higher if you were raised in a tradition that believed that hell was the consequence for not getting the ideas right (more on hell in a few weeks). This is deeply emotional work. It may not be pleasant, and it takes so much courage and compassion to face our family history so we can know which steps to take towards health!
Family history: “Patternism.” The inherited strategy to “do what the Bible says” looks different in every denomination, each one having their own lingo and labels. Within Churches of Christ, the tradition that raised me, “plain reading” that leads to “proof texting” was part of the larger strategy of Patternism.1 Here is a quick summary of this inherited interpretive strategy that many of us have been influenced by:
With a primary goal and desire to Restore the Pattern of the First Century Church (during Sunday worship), this fellowship has looked for “Commands, Examples, and (Necessary) Inferences.”2
This strategy for “doing what the Bible says” is known as CENI: commands require obedience, examples should be followed, and sometimes we have to infer a requirement that’s not explicitly commanded.3
This quite naturally leads to viewing the whole Bible as a pattern or blueprint for imitating the early church. Many people have been raised with these expectations that the Bible functions kind of like a rule book or constitution.4
CENI was the inherited strategy whether it was being named or not, and there was some variation between congregations in how it was enforced.5
In the mid to late 20th century, overlapping with a growing awareness that passages from scripture should be interpreted in their historical and cultural contexts, some people shifted away from a rule book framework, and now their patternism was aimed at expectations about personal salvation or personal devotion.
Different groups or denominations will have different strategies for “doing what the Bible says” — the point here is to shine a light on whichever version you’ve inherited so you can examine it and think about how it has formed you.
Of course — many of us “mean well” and have had good intentions, even if we have inherited unhelpful ideas and practices.
Of course — there are times when people were practicing better theology than what they said they were doing with the Bible (a sign of grace from God’s Spirit).
Of course — diagnosing “unhealthy” interpretation doesn’t mean every piece is invalid.
Also, keep in mind that patternism is not a complete polar opposite to the constructive suggestions I will share next week. Practically, there is a gracious overlap between unhelpful interpretation and healthier interpretation. I am not saying “everything we’ve been doing with the Bible is completely wrong.” Not at all.
Instead, I want to say that patternism in biblical interpretation is like using a beautiful violin to play tennis; you’re still going to get the ball over the net multiple times! But you will also be misusing or abusing the violin and be missing out on the sweetest music!6
Patternism is not like a tumor that can easily be removed with just one surgery — it’s connected and intertwined to two other assumptions: dictation and immediacy. A dictation model of inspiration is the assumption that the way God’s Spirit inspired scripture was like whispering a word-for-word dictation to the biblical writer — like a secretary who then wrote it down. This then leads to the assumption of immediacy, where people assume the words on the page give readers immediate, easy, direct access to what God wants.7
Again, the acknowledged strategy is described differently in different denominations, but proof-texting scripture to look for a pattern is inappropriate, even when done with good intentions. This trains people in a “because I said so” definition of obedience. That view of obedience is based on an anemic view of God that waters down discipleship and keeps formation shallow.8
I want to say again here that whatever we’re doing with the Bible says a lot about what we think God is like. When a church reads the Bible for proof-texting to support their patternism, that means they think they are following a “because I said so” God who wants proof texting and patternism.
I’ve observed that this also warps people’s expectations of authority. When people talk about “Biblical Authority,” they often use this language as a trump card, appealing to the “plain reading” of scripture we talked about in the last post. However, “Biblical Authority” seems to then become about naming a universal standard we should all agree to, and in those situations, “unity” then becomes a euphemism for control.9 This sort of singular interpretive lens leads people to place “Authority” where it doesn’t belong, and since authority and adoration are often connected, this leads people (accidentally or not) too close to bibliolatry (worship or adoration towards the Bible).10
Sadly, I have mostly heard 2 Timothy 3.16-17 misquoted in this arena of “Authority.” The verses read, “All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” This verse doesn’t directly make a claim about “authority.”
When I hear this quoted by patternist interpreters, their logic usually begins first with assumptions that this verse is making a claim about what scripture IS (making a claim about its ontology or essence: “scripture = God’s Word breathed from God’s mouth…”).
Then the second step of their “Authority” logic is usually some form of “...therefore everyone should agree with scripture and do what it says”). But that’s a far stretch beyond what’s actually happening in 2 Timothy 3.16-17. The word “scriptures” in this verse (graphe in Greek) is referring to the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament) and not the documents we today call the New Testament. An exhausted and weary Paul is giving instructions to Timothy for the complicated young church plant in Ephesus that was divided by false teachings, and he is urging him to keep using the Hebrew Scriptures in people’s formation. No New Testament text ever refers to the whole New Testament, nor makes any authority claims about it.11
One theology professor in graduate school suggested that the doctrine of the Trinity was actually where we need to be having “Authority” conversations, which really threw open some doors in my imagination. If our “god” is wherever we are placing our “authority,” then I think the functional trinity of my childhood was God, Paul, and the Bible (though of course nobody would have said that at church)!
In Matthew 28, Jesus did not say “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to… the books you guys are about to go write.” He said “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”12 Are there any churches that really believe that? For me, it is heartbreaking that the website of the National Association of Evangelicals lists the Bible first — above and before God — in their belief statements and their identity page, and at least one church in my town has copied most of the NAE belief statement, putting the Bible before God as well.13
Authority and adoration belong first to God. The Bible should not be part of anyone’s Trinity :) Believe it or not, to head down this road of putting the Bible in its proper place is to trade up and to head into deepening joy!
I want the God who Jesus shows us and whose Spirit inhabits our bodies to be where we get our Authority for making choices and discerning wisdom together!14 Because God is way bigger than the Bible — the God who Jesus shows us can’t be confined to 66 books of the Bible, and that is good!15 God is too big for that, and churches are invited to unlearn the controlling desire to limit God to the insides of their Bibles. To locate our “authority” in Scripture is to start with the wrong question and keep the conversation too small. Instead, to begin having healthier dialogue, we should be asking if scripture is a “trustworthy witness.”
We are looking for trust. This is where I want to put in my teaser for next week. Many people have heard in church that if they give up the expectations of scripture they were given (dictation, inerrancy, infallibility), the only other option is a downward “slippery slope” to “anything goes” relativism, giving up something good for something less, loose, lower, or bad. But it’s just not true! That was never true — patternism and proof texting has never been the wisest or highest or healthiest interpretive strategy. When we Go Out In Joy, the invitation is not down but up — to healthier, better interpretation.
I imagine the grief Jesus must have felt in the conversations that are written down for us in John chapter 5. It is an intense passage about authority and testimony that can help us have this extended conversation about what to do with the Bible. Some religious leaders are angry because Jesus was healing on the Sabbath, and he tells them that their use of scripture shows that they obviously don’t know God. He tells them that, “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”
So many didn’t understand him at the time, but many more folks would come to understand the life Jesus was talking about after his resurrection. Last week we gave a diagnosis (presuppositions about plain reading for proof-texting), and today we’re examining family history — what expectations we’ve inherited for the Bible. But next week we will glimpse relief as we talk about prognosis and treatment. We will walk through what Resurrection and New Creation really mean for biblical interpretation. I can’t wait!
© 2024 Ladye Rachel Howell. All rights reserved.
Churches of Christ are one of the branches of the Stone-Campbell Movement (SCM) founded in the late 18th century. Much of the motivation of the founders was fueled by their frustration of splintering of protestant denominations in Europe after the Reformation, each with their complicated creeds than excluded other groups. For further information, see Reviving the Ancient Faith by Hughes and Gorman.
This goes back before the SCM to the “Regulative Principle” of several major figures of the Protestant Reformation. There were plenty of “good intentions” at every stage where we might find something we now disagree with. In addition to the main goal being to “restore the first century church,” James Gorman has argued that an additional (deeper?) motivation of the “founders” of the SCM was the idea that as soon as enough churches got everything right (“unity”), then Jesus would return and usher in the next age; see James Gorman’s book Among the Early Evangelicals: the Transatlantic Origins of the Stone-Campbell Movement.
Even with good 18th century intentions, CENI has turned out to be a disappointing inheritance. If the main goal is looking for commands, examples, and inferences, it will not train people with habits of deep wisdom, it will set people up for prizing the letters of Paul over other sections, and then once a church has their answers, it will set people up for biblical illiteracy. Like strategies from other groups, CENI is not a coherent hermeneutic that works with the whole Bible, so divisions have to be made to decide which parts are “binding requirements” on us today — this problem leads different groups to approach different parts of the Bible on a divided timeline where the different sections are called “dispensations” or “covenants” or “ages” or “administrations” (different labels used by different groups). In this understanding, you aren’t responsible for obeying commands from an earlier covenant or dispensation than the one you are in now. Sadly, Alexander Campbell valued the post-Pentecost experience of the church and their early documents so much, that even Jesus in the gospels the he classified the gospels as belonging to an earlier dispensation. Alexander Campbell discerned “three different administrations of mercy to the human race. These are the Patriarchal, Jewish, and Christian ages of the world.” These three dispensations under three different priests (Melchizedek, Aaron, and Jesus) meant there was “of necessity a change of the law, pertaining to acceptable worship,” which made the question of dispensations prerequisite to “any confidence in our interpretations;” see Christianity Restored, 94-95.
For a fuller description, see John Mark Hicks' book Searching for the Pattern" My Journey in Interpreting the Bible. You can also find him hosting a video discussion at this link. The reality that patternism trains people for proof-texting isolated verses or short passages out of context goes back two centuries.
One patternist analogy for the Bible I’ve heard is adult children interpreting their late father’s will regarding his wishes and instructions for the property they’ve inherited. If they build the house and construct the fence the way he indicated, but then decide they don’t want to put the water well where he wanted it and instead dig the well in a different location, have they really followed the father’s will? This analogy was told to me in a sad and pressuring way, as in “See, won’t the father would be so disappointed in his children?”
I am pretty sure I heard the violin/tennis analogy from N. T. Wright, but I sadly can’t find the reference.
For a fuller discussion on dictation and immediacy, see pg. 47-58 of my first masters thesis.
Remember the stages of growth and learning that we discussed in Whalesharks, Poisonous Platypus Barbs, and Repentance: Finding the Courage to Learn What We Don’t Already Know — some might make the case that “because I said so” obedience could possibly be appropriate when someone is moving from Chaos to Order. However, I would argue that in a relationship of loving attachment to God and community, dignity finds creative ways to avoid using “because I said so.”
Sometimes “biblical authority” seems to be code for “the authority of our interpretation over theirs.” This is adjacent to conversations about “unity;” I’ve grown increasingly suspicious that when some folks talk about “unity” they really mean “uniformity.” If you can’t substitute “love” whenever your church leaders say the word “unity,” they probably mean uniformity.
Inerrancy is a category mistake if the Bible is a library of holy testimony (more on testimony next week!). Inerrancy is a claim that scripture never makes about itself and is, gratefully, not a burden I was given in my childhood church, so I’ve never felt the need to defend it. There are much more fruitful ways to talk about how we trust scripture. The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy is a pretty recent evangelical phenomenon - it’s only as old as me (1978).
Several other verses/passages are used to make ontological/essential claims about scripture: Hebrew 4.12 and Revelation 22.18-19 are often in that mix. Heb. 4.12 should be held together with the beginning of Hebrews that opens emphasizing Jesus as God’s new way of speaking. It is more likely that "the word of God” in Hebrews 4.12 is either referring to the larger category of communication received from God or to Jesus as the logos, but it is not about the Bible. Additionally, Revelation 22.18-19 is referring to the testimony of what was revealed to John on Patmos and should not be projected onto the whole Bible.
This is the topic of chapter 1 of N. T. Wright’s book Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today.
See the beliefs page of the College Church of Christ. Going two centuries back, it is sobering and sad to read Alexander Campbell saying about scripture what should only be said about God: “The Bible is to the intellectual and moral world of man what the sun is to the planets in our system - the fountain and source of light and life, spiritual and eternal. There is not a spiritual idea in the whole human race that is not drawn from the Bible.” See Alexander Campbell, The Christian System: In Reference to the Union of Christians, and a Restoration of Primitive Christianity, as Plead in the Current Reformation (Cincinnati: Standard Publishing, 1839), 2-6, for the full passage. I also quote the longer passage on p.25 in my first masters thesis.
When I have these conversations, the next comment is usually “but the Bible is where we get our information about God’s authority!” This is an understandable objection, but it is also a confirmation of how the assumptions of Patternism and Immediacy have confused people into conflating God and the Bible in their authority and adoration.
Even at the end of John 20, the writer mentions that Jesus did way more than the things that are written there. Again, contrast this with another quote from Alexander Campbell: “There are no new discoveries in Christianity. It is as old as the sacred writings of the apostles and evangelists of Jesus Christ. Our whole religion, objectively and doctrinally considered, is found in a book. Nothing discovered by any man, that has lived since John wrote the Apocalypse, is of any virtue in religion; nay, indeed, is no part or parcel of Christianity. All that can now be pretended or aimed at, by any sane mind, is the proper interpretation of what is written in Hebrew and Greek and translated into all the modern languages in the civilized world.” From Alexander Campbell, “Anecdotes, Incidents, and Facts,” The Millennial Harbinger 5, no. 5 (May 1848), 280-81.