Bible Interpretation, Student Workbook, SW05

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B I B L E I N T E R P R E T A T I O N

make our interpretation of the Bible dependent on our access to tools that are too expensive and impossible for millions to obtain and/or understand? What then might be the usefulness of scholarly tools in biblical interpretation, and how do we go about using them in the right way?

Individual Use of Tools vs. Official Teaching Gifts in the Church

While scholarship and scholarly tools can greatly enhance our ability to understand many difficult and hard sayings of the text, we must ask whether or not tools are as significant as the living gifts of the Spirit in the midst of the Church to discover the meaning of the Word of God. For many Protestant Christians today, the Bible is a private book, a book of their own individual study and devotional appropriation. Oftentimes Christians will conceive of the Bible as a Word severed from the gifts and the Church. They do not rely heavily on the gifted men and women in their own churches, but select tools, resources, and references that essentially teach what they already believe. It is also common to identify those teachers in the public sphere that focus on the kinds of subjects and interpretations that we believe in, and we become experts on what “X” or “Y” says about salvation, redemption, healing, or whatever subject is “hot” at the time. Some who are more oriented around interpretations provided by official church authority even suggest that the use of tools independent from the pastoral authority of the church can actually fuel division, schism, and even heresy. They argue that if every single Christian is his own authority for interpretation, how can we ever truly make sense of what Christian belief really is? What do you make of the use of tools versus the recognition of official gifted teachers of a church or community? What is most helpful—our own individual study or our place in a local congregation?

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Modern Translations Polluted

Even in our day of the accessibility of many reliable translations based on the best manuscripts we have available, a significant number of Christians still have a deep distrust in many of the latest translations. Seeing the kinds of social issues that influence the translators, these individuals and groups believe that the Word of God has actually been tampered with by these newer translations. It is their belief that an over concern on issues of gender equality, cultural sensitivity, and a host of modern ethical controversies have actually polluted the translations, forcing the translators to subtlety change the meaning of the text to fit the sensibility of the day. While