I was tooling around in the comments section of my Bible Verse Twisting post, and I want to “narrate the debate” so to speak and give you a few insights. Most are actually points I’ve made before, but I need to emphasize them better, and they were displayed beautifully in the comments to that post.
Almost right away in the comments, folks started making the very statement that I addressed in the main part of the post.
One commenter harped on the notion that there are many interpretations of almost any biblical text, with learned scholars to back them up. This phenomenon, he claimed, is one of the many causes of the numerous denominations that fight back and forth in the Christian religion.
Each denomination, the argument goes, fervently believes the other denominations are dead wrong, each believes their own denomination is right, and each can marshal scholars to give “evidence” for their point (quotes in the original).
Notice, first off, that he misrepresents the real situation with the denominations. He exaggerates the amount of Bible disagreement. True, the disagreement between denominations can get quite heated, but I’m led to believe from his comments that almost every denomination contradict the others on almost every passage. This is not the case.
Some denominations arose not out of doctrinal disagreement, but out of cultural or geographical circumstance. Others were created because of a charismatic individual or two (John Wimber and the Vineyard movement come quickly to mind). Still others split off from mother churches due to unfortunate personality conflicts or moral failings. And with the ones that were created out of legitimate doctrinal schism, the amount of agreement between churches is quite large. Most protestant denominations, as well as Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox, agree that God is a trinity, that such a concept is taught in the Bible, that Jesus was and is God incarnate, that He was crucified on a Roman Cross, rose from the dead three days later, and that human beings are sinful from birth. I could go on and list more, but you get the point: there are loud disagreements on some parts of doctrine and some Bible passages between some denominations (Typically, the Presbyterian denomination disagrees with the Methodist denomination on whether or not one can lose her salvation, for instance. Also, in the past, numerous unsavory things happened to those who held contrary positions to the group in power.), but the amount of agreement is substantial…otherwise events like ServeDay wouldn’t be possible, nor would the Lausanne Covenant have been written. Exaggerating the disagreement mischaracterizes the actual nature of things.
Secondly, from the notions that there are many interpretations of a particular text, each person believes he’s right, and each person can marshal scholars to back up their view, I think I’m supposed to conclude that therefore there’s no fact of the matter, or at least we can’t know who’s right. But this certainly doesn’t follow. It is a non sequitur. For heaven’s sake, the same is true in science, yet I don’t see anyone throwing up their hands in despair in that field.
Take global warming, for instance: the debate on whether or not humans cause climate change is a, er, hot one. Each side has its scholars. Does that mean we can’t know who is right? No. From the mere fact of fervent disagreement, you cannot get justified skepticism. You can’t get there from here. Strictly speaking, it doesn’t matter how many denominations disagree with each other–that doesn’t preclude the possibility of knowing the truth and knowing what a specific debated passage means.
If making an analogy between a book and science spooks you, I can trot out many plain communication examples: the latest Sotomayor hearings being just one.
While there are certainly a good number of passages that require deep study and research to get to the truth, on the whole, finding out what a passage means isn’t the proverbial rocket science. You use the same tools of communication you use every day: what is the genre? What is the literal context? What is the cultural/historical context? Are there any key words that require defining?
Anytime you read something or communicate with someone, you employ these tools. You don’t read the sports page like a poem (genre). If you read an email from your date last night that starts out with “I had a great time with you last night. Your jokes are funny!” but the next sentence reads, “but you are ugly as a junk yard dog and your breath smells like train exhaust,” you probably aren’t going to get a second date (literal context). If I am talking to an Igbo person (Nigerian tribe) and she calls me her “obim,” I need to consult an Igbo dictionary or ask an Igbo person what that means (“my heart,” its a way of saying “my love.”). And so on and so forth.
The same principles apply with the Bible, and though sometimes things can get a bit fuzzy, they mostly have a pretty good track record. We use these communication tools quite naturally all the time, but for some reason when it comes to the Bible, against their better judgment, many people have a tendency to throw them out the window, preferring to let their preferences and lifestyle trump common sense. Any person, cult, or denomination that twists a verse runs afoul of one of these natural interpretation tools.
If so much disagreement with the Bible means I must be skeptical of finding out a passage’s meaning, then the same skepticism follows for communication in general.
Most importantly, the commenter thinks he’s got it right about the Bible. He thinks that his point of view (that no interpretation is correct) is the right one on the Bible, and he believes it fervently, otherwise he wouldn’t be frequenting my blog and commenting as such. Everyone else doesn’t know the truth, but apparently he does.
Now, I’ve said before that I have no problem with someone claiming he knows the truth. I do it…no big deal. But the inconsistency is glaring.
If it’s not already apparent, the “there’s so many interpretations!” quip is not a substantive response, and let me tell you why: it allows a person to conveniently sidestep actually wrestling with a passage. The person who tosses it out in a debate like this avoids the work of actually looking at a passage and analyzing it, in favor of a mere dismissal. If you look at the comments in the post, you’ll notice that the “there’s so many interpretations!” commenter failed to actually examine and give an argument about any passages.
Dear friends: no matter how much evidence each side musters, *you* still have to sift through it and make up your own mind. It is like that in real life; why would it be any different with the Bible?
So the next time you are making an argument about what a Bible passage means, and your conversation partner replies, “but there are people that disagree. You say they are wrong, but they’ll say the same thing about you, and they’ll be able to cite scholars and evidence for their side,” just say:
So what?
Let it sink in: nothing interesting follows from that observation. To conclude that no one can know the meaning of the passage just from that is tantamount to a logical grand canyon leap.
