Interpreting the Bible: Common Mistakes
Can we look to Scripture for a biblical view on everything? Does it speak to modern issues of science? How can we interpret faithfully? John Walton weighs in.
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Whether we realize it or not, everyone has a hermeneutic, that is, a way that we go about interpreting the Bible to discover its message for our lives. But many of us likely can’t describe our method, have not scrutinized or evaluated it, and/or have applied it with little consistency or control. As a result, our hermeneutic is ad hoc. It is adopted subconsciously from those we respect or from what seems to give desirable results. This is a serious issue because interpretation matters.
When someone gets taken in by the Prayer of Jabez or the Daniel Diet, the practical consequences may be minimal. But we grow more concerned when others adopt a health and wealth gospel or a radical nationalism offering support from the Bible. If we cannot call Biblical misinterpretation out in harmless cases, we have no grounds to stand on when more serious situations arise. Further, we cannot denounce someone’s use of Scripture as misguided if our own methodological criteria have not been established or are being followed haphazardly. We must have our own house in order so to speak.
For those of us who desire to deeply understand God’s plans and purposes—to think with the mind of God—the Bible is the only way to get that. That is what we should be looking to the Bible to find. In this piece, I address common pitfalls when it comes to reading and interpreting the Bible, and offer some helpful frameworks and alternatives.
If we cannot call Biblical misinterpretation out in harmless cases, we have no grounds to stand on when more serious situations arise.
1. Looking to the Bible for a viewpoint on everything.
One of the most widespread misconceptions is that there is a “biblical” view of just about everything, from dating and wealth management to social media and diet; from economics and politics to evangelism and counseling. Nevertheless, beyond those trappings of our society, we also encounter this premise when discussing topics with more gravitas, particularly ones that concern the science and faith conversation: pandemics and vaccines, creation care, evolution/creation, gender, and human identity, bioethics—the list goes on. We might well ask whether it is possible to speak of a “biblical” view of AI, extraterrestrial life, or CRISPR.
Such hermeneutical issues have also been at the core of my own work in Genesis and the Cultural Context of the ANE. The point I continually make is that to formulate a “biblical” view of anything, we must first determine whether what we are claiming was something that the authors of Scripture were actually addressing.
In my view, the authority of the text is connected to what the authors, as instruments of God, were moved to communicate. Therefore, if we are trying to derive a biblical view that does not reflect what the author was talking about, we have departed from the realm of biblical authority. What we are saying cannot be considered a biblical view at all. Only what the authors intend can be considered authoritative and thereby lend its authority to a view claimed to be biblical. It may not always be possible to achieve confidence in what the authors’ literary intentions were, but this procedure can often remind us what their intentions could not have been.
At the 2024 BioLogos Faith and Science Conference, John Walton considers the question:”Is there a Biblical view of everything?”
Note, however, that this rigorous methodology must also be applied to issues we hold dear, like creation care. Creation care as we think about it today involves the effects of industry on the environment. Would the biblical authors have had that in mind? Creation care today also works on the premise that “nature” can be objectified. Would biblical authors have thought that?
Perhaps such cases are at some level debatable, but my point here is that such questions have to be asked, and they often are not. We cannot just mine the Bible for purported value statements that support what we are proposing. We might legitimately raise the question as to whether pursuit of an alleged “biblical” view is the best way to approach these modern issues.
2. Using the Bible as a Springboard.
People reading the Bible and even people teaching or preaching the Bible have become comfortable with using the Bible as a springboard that launches them into opportunities to make a point about an issue or to motivate spiritual growth. Unfortunately, as they launch from the biblical springboard, they have only their imagination to guide them, not Scripture. They may believe that the Spirit is guiding them, and maybe that is so. But that process should not be mistaken for interpretation of the Bible. The Spirit cannot be the basis of our appeal to authority for interpretation, which ends the discussion. Such an approach has no controls outside of the speaker’s own sensibility.
In this springboard metaphor, too often the objective is not to discover and proclaim the authority of the text, but to achieve inspirational thoughts and spiritual insights. When used as a springboard, Scripture can just become fodder for our causes as we mine it for supportive verses. In such cases, the authority that we exercise is our own, not Scripture’s.
If we are to become more hermeneutically literate and interpret consistently and with accountability to the authors, we cannot afford the risks of the springboard mentality. Such a model has been exploited by Christians over the centuries to give themselves permission to do despicable things. Personal and corporate agendas override what the text is actually saying in its authority. We need a different model. When we springboard, we are using the Bible for a purpose it really does not intend, and when we use inadequate models of biblical authority, we are forced to springboard.
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Creation care as we think about it today involves the effects of industry on the environment. Would the biblical authors have had that in mind? Creation care today also works on the premise that “nature” can be objectified. Would biblical authors have thought that? Perhaps such cases are at some level debatable, but my point here is that such questions have to be asked, and they often are not.
Rather than prioritizing inspirational thoughts, agenda prooftexts, or apologetic defenses to formulate the biblical view of whatever, we need to show respect for the authority of the text. We can do this by rigorously pursuing the objective of discerning the authoritative intentions of the authors.
Rather than using the Bible as a springboard, we need to use it as a tethering post. As interpreters, we need to seek being tethered to that post as we track with the literary intentions of the authors as best as we can discern them. If we are using their intentions as a control, we cannot go far wrong. In this tethering post metaphor, what holds us to the post is evidence. The strongest interpretation is the one with the strongest evidence regarding the intentions of the author.
Adopting such a rigorous control on our methodology will have a cost. We will find that in this approach we will no longer be able to propose a “biblical” model for some of the causes that we hold dear. Instead, we will sometimes have to admit that there is no biblical view. That does not leave us without any biblical input, rudderless in a sea of opinion. Even in cases where we cannot identify a “biblical view” with hermeneutical integrity, we can still seek to be informed by values inherent in biblical wisdom and/or spiritual wisdom—a biblically-informed view. To say it another way, not every position needs to be defended by a collection of biblical verses, nor can that always be the case.
3. Picking and Choosing bits.
By “bits” I am referring to all the little pieces of Scripture: individual narratives, prophecies, laws, psalms, proverbs, as well as the verses in our devotional guides or those that serve as the focus for our sermons. What we do with them basically reflects our hermeneutic. The default model that many use is driven by the question, “What does this mean to me?” Again that question may pertain to the search for some spiritual motivation, but may also find answers in connection to our causes, our theology, our science, our politics, or our search for the will of God for our lives.
The model that I most often find in the church for dealing with the bits, then, is that we want to take each bit, and drop it into the “me box.” We assume that since we believe that Scripture is God’s word, and since we believe every bit is inspired, then each bit must have relevance to me personally. That reflects the hermeneutic that most people have. Unfortunately, this approach is often based on the springboard idea or a haphazard model of biblical authority, rather than seeking to be tethered to interpreting the text-in-context.
We do not show respect for God’s word by dropping all the bits into the me-box if that is not how Scripture is intended to work. I could remind us that the Bible is written for us, but not to us, but as important as that is, that still does not help us to answer the question, “how is it for us?” All of the bits are important, but what are we supposed to do with them?
Instead of dropping them into the me-box, we should be taking each one and pushing it up into the God-box. The biblical text is telling God’s story, and each bit contributes to the composite story. It is through that story that we come to understand the plans and purposes of God and what it means to think in godly ways. That is the level at which the text becomes relevant to us. Our response to Scripture is that we find our place in God’s story—that we learn how we ought to participate in the plans and purposes of God and how to think as God’s people.
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People reading the Bible and even people teaching or preaching the Bible have become comfortable with using the Bible as a springboard that launches them into opportunities to make a point about an issue or to motivate spiritual growth. Unfortunately, as they launch from the biblical springboard, they have only their imagination to guide them, not Scripture.
Seeking the Wisdom of God
As a community of God’s people, we need to seek the wisdom of God, rather than proceed as if the Bible is encoded with answers to all our modern issues. We have elevated “biblical proofs” to a high level of significance when dealing with modern issues. But often those “proofs” are hermeneutically suspect.
Having biblical “proofs” is not the only way we know something is right-minded. Even when we purport biblical proofs, we have to realize that though we consider the Bible infallible, its interpretation is not foolproof. If we believe that the Holy Spirit gives wisdom to those who ask , wisdom and good sense are not lesser reasons than biblical citations, though they also have to be handled circumspectly. We need to be guided by a carefully constructed hermeneutic founded on a wisely considered model of biblical authority.
As a community of God’s people, we need to seek the wisdom of God, rather than proceed as if the Bible is encoded with answers to all our modern issues.
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John Walton
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