Biblical Interpretation

More from 'A New Kind of Christian'...

If Biblical text is infallible, but all human interpretation is fallible, we have to be open to having our interpretations challenged. The authoritative text is not what I say about the text or even what I understand the text to say, but rather what God means it to say. Our interpretations reveal more about ourselves than they do about God or the Bible. The real issue is not the divide between evangelicals (who believe in the infallible, innerant, absolutely authoritative word) and liberals (Bible is inspired but not authoritative), but is rather the authority of God, moving mysteriously at a higher level.

The Bible calls the church the foundation of truth, Jesus the foundation of the church, and Jesus calls Peter called a foundation [I'm not so sure on that, see an earlier post], but it never calls itself a foundation.

Jesus transcended the normal level of discourse - for example the woman at the well in John 4. The big debate is over where people should worship, on this mountain or on that mountain. Jesus didn't choose one point or the other, he says that the answer is on this higher level, that what God wants is for us to worship him in spirit and truth, wherever we are. Both mountains are good places to worship, so in that way they are both right. But where you worship isn't the point at all, so in that way both sides are wrong.

The whole notion of authority is thoroughly modern. That oft-quoted verse in 2 Timothy doesn't say, 'All scripture is inspired by God and is authoratitve'. It says that Scripture is inspired and useful - useful to teach, rebuke, correct, instruct us to live justly, and equip us for our mission as the people of God. We want to use it as God's encyclopaedia, rule book, answer book, scientific text, easy-steps instructions book, God's little book of morals for all occassions. The only people in Jesus' time who had anything close to these expectations of the Bible were the scribes and Pharisees. We need to let go of the Bible as a modern book and rediscover it for what itreally is: an ancient cook of incredible spiritual value for us, a kind of universal and cosmic history, a book that tells us who we are and what story we find ourselves in so that we know what to do and how to live. That letting go is going to be hard for evangelicals.

My thoughts - this all makes much sense and I think it would be more helpful to have this view of the Bible, but I'm not entirely sure how it differs from the libralist view and how it's a higher truth rather than an evangelical/liberal divide.

Further reading (it's amazing how other bloggers suddenly make sense!)
Interpretation Part 1 and Part 2 by Heather
What is Biblical? by Paul