Does the Bible Shape Us, or Do We Shape the Bible?

Evangelical statements of faith consistently assert the authoritative status of the Bible for the Christian life. The Vineyard Churches’ version is not atypical: “We receive the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments as our final, absolute authority, the only infallible rule of faith and practice.” Some, though not many (perhaps most are minded to “keep it simple” for their followers), thoughtfully add a rider similar to that of the London School of Theology (LST): “We acknowledge the need for the Scriptures to be rightly interpreted under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and using the gifts of understanding and scholarship that God has given to his people.”

The essence of these professed evangelical values may be summed up as follows: (1) What we find in the Bible dictates what we believe about God, and people, and hence, how we live our lives, but (2) there’s no such thing as “uninterpreted” Bible reading and believing, so it’s therefore entirely possible to be interpreting it wrongly rather than rightly.     

How, then, are we to know the difference? Not everyone has easy access to scholarship to guide us, and even then, we all know that scholars disagree (it’s part of what they do). One may hear simplistic appeals to focus simply on the “main and the plain” in our Bible reading and believing, and that’s a super idea on paper, but neither scholars nor ordinary church leaders can agree on what exactly comprises the “main and plain’ (save, perhaps, for the minimalist belief statements in something like the Nicene Creed—and even that needs some interpreting). Once the “main and the plain” needs defining, we’re back where we started from.

Lest you think I’ve lost the plot, or I’m denigrating Scripture, I’m not; I’m pointing out the difficulties involved in applying these very worthy values in practice. Biblical scholars and theologians are more than well aware of that, of course, but many evangelical leaders appear not to have received the email, or find it too awkward to admit. After all, once a congregation is aware of the unavoidability of biblical interpretation, a preacher saying, “The Bible clearly teaches . . .”—or even “The Bible says …” (plus a decontextualised verse tagged on)—rather loses its authoritative-sounding cutting edge. Especially if that presumed interpretation of what the Bible “says” and “clearly teaches” doesn’t resonate with the hearers.  

Evangelical statements of faith rightly honour the inspired (lit. “God-breathed”) status of Scripture (per 2 Tim 3:16—the only verse in the Bible that speaks about the nature of the Bible). However, they then take that to be equivalent to concepts like “infallible” and “inerrant.” That may be so in relation to Scripture itself, but they plainly aren’t so in relation to people’s interpretations and applications of Scripture (apart from mine, of course . . .). I’m joking on that last point, but you get my drift. Once there is more than one interpretation and application of anything in Scripture, they plainly can’t all be “infallible” and “inerrant.” To quote LST again, which interpretation is the one that’s been “rightly interpreted” under the “guidance of the Holy Spirit”?

In the same way that I’m not denigrating Scripture, I’m not denigrating the role of the Holy Spirit. But many of us from a charismatic evangelical tradition will be world-weary from hearing rather too many claims to “God told me . . .” or “The Holy Spirit showed me . . .” and such like. Of course, that can be the case, but all credit to those who will sometimes be brave enough to respond, “Well, he hasn’t told me that.” The problem, actually, is not the Holy Spirit, but the “individualisation” of interpretations claimed to be from the Holy Spirit. Hearing from God, to which we might reasonably compare interpretation, in the way that I think LST probably intends that rider to operate, should always be communal rather than individual. This would conform to the principle in Acts 15:28, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (rather than, “to me”).   

If, then, we are to align our beliefs and how we live our lives with Scripture—not just the New Testament but, as all of the statements of faith say, the Old Testament as well—which verses and which interpretations of verses do we choose? It’s one thing to say, as evangelicals often do, that we should not be “picking and choosing” the verses that we believe and obey, but that is, in practice, what everyone does (we all have a “canon within the canon”). Or at least, we prioritise certain verses as most foundational, and we read other verses through them (in the light of them). This means that what some verses say, or appear to say, becomes subordinated to other verses and what they appear to say. Wrong on paper, perhaps (insofar as all Scripture is equally “inspired”), but inevitable in practice.  

I am not highlighting a weakness in Scripture; rather, a weakness in our understanding of the nature of Scripture and in Christians’ application of Scripture. Statements of faith are well-meaning, but they over-simplistically claim rather too much for the Bible, at least by implication, and especially for presumed-to-be-uninterpreted “plain” readings of the Bible. Humbly acknowledging the complexities involved, not least in applying an ancient world text in the modern era, is a start. Divine inspiration of the text doesn’t in itself eliminate those complexities. Nor does prioritising a “literal” interpretation—wherever that is deemed “not impossible”—advance things very far. The most faithful interpretation is not a literal interpretation; it’s whatever best corresponds to standard interpretive principles, such as the context, the genre, and the most likely understanding of the writer and his audience at the time.              

So, all that said, does what we find in the Bible shape what we believe, or does what we already believe shape what we find in the Bible, to affirm what we already believe? The esteemed biblical scholar, John Goldingay, says this:

“Scripture is quite normally used in North Atlantic countries simply to affirm and undergird positions. A test whether this is so is to ask when was the last time one changed one’s mind (or better, one’s behaviour) because of something one read in Scripture. In general, we all use Scripture to confirm rather than to confront, merely to ‘replicate ourselves’.”

Models for Interpretation of Scripture (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1995), 110.

A simple example of what I’m saying would be the Christian who is a passionate Conservative voter, alongside a Christian who is a passionate Labour voter (we could extend this, or amend this, to reflect a passionate Lib Dem, or Green, or Reform voter). US readers can apply the analogy to Red versus Blue in their context. Each such passionate Christian will likely be able to offer authoritative Scriptures to support their opinions and beliefs.

It would be lovely to be able to offer a simple formula to harmonise the problem (such as they’re all looking at the same Bible, but from more than one direction), but that might be clutching at straws. I’m not generally a fan of the phrase, "Your truth isn’t necessarily my truth,” but it does seem to have some relevance here.      

I first read those words of Goldingay many years ago, and was struck between the eyes (metaphorically) by the test he suggests: “to ask when was the last time one changed one’s mind (or better, one’s behaviour) because of something one read in Scripture.” I’m sure we would all like to think that we do that all the time, but coming up with recent personal examples isn’t so easy, especially on matters of substance.   

There’s an old joke that runs along the lines, “God made people in his image, and Christians have been returning the favour ever since.” Does what we read in the Bible really shape who we understand God to be? What he is like, how he thinks, what he believes, what he loves and hates (and so on)? Or is it the other way around? Are we sure that we know what God feels most strongly about, and what he is conversely indifferent about (or perhaps we should say, flexible about) and why?  

We could ask the following questions from either a “Right-wing” or “Left-wing” perspective—the underlying point is the same—but I will frame them here as the former.

If we are “conservative” by nature—as many Christians are—can we be honest enough to ask ourselves: “Am I theologically conservative because I am already socially and culturally conservative? Do my socially- and culturally-conservative beliefs shape my theological beliefs? (Can I even spot the difference?) When I read certain verses and hear interpretations of those verses, do they change what I think, or do they rather reinforce for me the rightness of whatever it was that I thought in the first place?”   

Am I a conservative evangelical because God is a conservative evangelical? Or is that the other way around, too?