The Importance of “Context”
As Christians, we believe the Bible to be the “Word of God.” But what does that mean, exactly? No mainstream scholar believes that it means the literal words of God, in a “dictated” sense (namely, the biblical writers hearing voices in their heads and simply transcribing what they heard, word-for-word). And yet there is a tendency for Christians, evangelicals especially, to unwittingly default toward that in practice, in a well-intentioned desire to honor the integrity and authority of Scripture. They find it easier to relate to its divinity as the Word of God than to its concomitant humanity as the words of people.
What we think it means for the Bible to be the “Word of God” is very important, because it influences—or even, controls—not just how we think of the nature of the Bible but perhaps more importantly how we apply the Bible in practice. If and to the extent we feel that something we read is “God speaking” then a fear-factor can cut in. I’m sure we’ve all heard dire warnings intimated from the pulpit—citing, for example, Romans 2:8—“For those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger . . .”—where the “biblical truth” that the hearers are supposedly at risk of “rejecting” is being conflated with whatever point the preacher is making.
Interestingly, given the frequency with which the Bible is spoken of as the Word of God in everyday Christianity, it never speaks of itself using that term.
How then are we to go about interpreting the Bible, avoiding schoolboy errors in how we read it and what we think it’s saying? Obviously that question requires more than a short blog, but it starts with recognizing that the Bible does, indeed, need interpretation. There are numerous reasons why for the most part it isn’t self-interpreting, or “obvious.”
Let’s start with how to avoid some of the most flawed ideas and then move on to a quick checklist of “easy wins” to be reading better.
One of the values passed down from the Protestant Reformation was the idea of the perspicuity of Scripture. You may not be familiar with the word, but will likely have come across the concept, which is that the Bible is “clear” and “obvious” in what it says. This idea has typically led to a disdain for academic learning, on the grounds that (thanks to the inherent nature of Scripture and the presence with us of the Holy Spirit) we don’t need scholarly “experts” to interpret it for us (thank you very much). We can just read it, understand it, and even deign to “teach” it, all by ourselves. If God has designed this to be the case, of course, it’s very convenient, in avoiding the need to incur the cost and time commitment involved in theological learning. Leaders who are gifted, called, and anointed, can just get on with doing the stuff. Theology becomes an optional extra to a list of more important characteristics. That’s something for churches to take their own view on, but they need to be aware that it’s a very significant overstatement of what the Reformers had in mind. Perspicuity applied only to the basics of the gospel in the person of Jesus—not to anything and everything in Scripture. To make claims beyond that (especially when we give God the credit for designing things that way) reflects a combination of anti-intellectualism and wishful thinking!
One of my bugbears is when a preacher uses the phrase “The Bible says,” which always comes with a verse extracted from its context and quoted stand-alone, to supposedly “prove” a point (or an interpretation) that the preacher is asserting. The speaker wants their listeners to treat the authority of what they’re saying as pari passu with the authority of Scripture—as being “the same thing.” That what they’re teaching is what Scripture is teaching. They won’t say that, but it’s what they’re implying, invoking the threat that “God clearly agrees with me on this, so disagree with him at your peril.”
This way of “using” Scripture (and I’m afraid that “using” is the right word here) is called “proof-texting.” Despite being common practice, it’s a very poor practice; one that first-year theology students are warned off, in no uncertain terms. The famous phrase is, “A text without its context is nothing more than a pretext for whatever someone wants to say it means.”
Equally poor is the even-more-authoritative-sounding version: “The Bible clearly teaches . . .” Watch out for both these phrases and be sure to have your critical faculties switched on!
All speakers will cite Bible verses, of course, so that in itself is not the problem. The problem comes when no material account is being taken of its original meaning; who was saying it to whom and why; whether this way of reading it accords with Scripture more generally; whether that verse is open to different meanings, that the speaker is either ignoring or is ignorant of; and especially, whether what the speaker says a verse or passage means is something that the original writers and audiences would never have conceived of it meaning.
Much of what we’ve just said can be subsumed within the concept of “context.” A properly contextualized way of reading and interpreting everything in the Bible is vitally important because nothing in the Bible was written to us in the first instance—something that preachers often appear to forget. We are voyeurs and eavesdroppers on their faith, their experiences, and their encounters with God, all of which took place in the world in which they lived; one very different from our own. All this needs to be taken into account in terms of something’s “meaning” (or what is “biblical”) before we go from “then” to “now” in one giant leap that ignores the time and distance between the world of the text and the world we live in. Remember that something we read in the Bible was the Word of God to an original audience before it was ever the Word of God to us.
An established good practice in reading the Bible well (in other words, interpreting and applying it well) is that a verse or passage can never mean something to us (it can never be “saying” something to us) that it could not have meant or have been saying at the time. You might want to read that last sentence again because it’s really important. If we are unaware or uninterested in what it would have meant and been saying for its author and audience, we are at serious risk of misinterpretation and misapplication today. If we just read the English words on the page as they appear to us through our twenty-first-century cultural and linguistic lenses, we’re basically “guessing” about what it meant at the time (assuming we’re even asking that question) and inappropriately leaping straight to what we think it means now. If there is one thing that leads to “bad” readings and applications of the Bible today, that is it.
To take as good as no interest in what it meant then, in its original context, means that we are also detaching the text from its original audience. It was their text, that we’ve simply borrowed, so that is disrespectful in the extreme! Not only was it saying something that they considered to be significant in their time and place (otherwise, they would not have preserved it, and we wouldn’t have it), but they would also have been aware of why it was written—why the writer was writing, and why he wrote what he wrote. Consequently, we have to ask that question, as well—why did they say what they said? What was the “background” to those words being written?
Since none of what we read was addressed to us in the first instance, we have to allow for the possibility that some is not addressed to us now, either. Everything in the Bible is for us, but not all of it is to us. The Holy Spirit’s role in inspiring what the human authors wrote at the time (per 2 Timothy 3:16) does not override that. I think we all instinctively know that but we don’t always reflect that in practice. Preachers must think very carefully when quoting and applying a biblical text that talks about “you” as if that means the people in the room.
For example, let’s take a famous promise from God to his people Israel, given in a particular place and time, under particular circumstances, which is often “proof-texted” into now with little if any thought to its original context: “I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11. This is not only a famous promise, it’s famously misused by preachers. Is this really God saying to each individual believer that he has a detailed, meticulous plan for their life from before they were born, that they just need to find and conform to? Is it really a guarantee of personal happiness and prosperity? Look at the verse’s original context, look at whether (and if so when) it was fulfilled in that context, and look at whether there are other passages in Scripture that, read well, are explicitly teaching those things for Christian believers. It’s a classic example of misusing a text as a proof-text because we’re misreading it detached from its context. To the extent that any verse appears to be “a one-off” that lacks broader substantiation in Scripture generally, any meaning and application we think we perceive in that verse should be treated extremely tentatively.
We are not expected to interpret the meaning and significance of a commandment in Leviticus, a song in the Psalms, a prophetic utterance in Ezekiel, a piece of pastoral advice in one of Paul’s letters to a first-century church, and a parable of Jesus in the Gospels in the same way. As well as respecting context, the genre (the type of writing) of what we’re reading comes into play, too. In the same way that not all ball games are played on the same pitch or according to the same rules, just because they feature a ball, so too, when it comes to genre in the Bible.
Aside from context and genre, we also need to take account of worldview (the way that people “think without even thinking” about “the way things are” in a particular place and time). Everything in the Bible was said (and everything that happened took place) in the context of the Ancient world, which is self-evidently not our world. The questions they were concerned about in their time and place were not necessarily the questions of our time and place (typically they were not, so we do best to assume they were not). We must tread carefully when we think we are finding answers in Scripture to questions that the biblical writers and their audience would never have had cause to be asking at the time. This is not to say that Scripture cannot help us with answers to the questions of our day, but we need to be aware that they will be indirect answers (they will be “help toward” answers). But even then, they need to be consistent with what was being asked and answered at the time. We shall need to be careful about describing something as “biblical,” or “what the Bible clearly teaches,” especially if that’s basically an exercise in proof-texting, however well-intentioned. Sincerity does not insulate us from being sincerely wrong!
So, we always need to start with what a text was saying then, for its original author and audience, and why it said it. Once we have established that, as best we can—including the “why,” which is too often overlooked—then we can move to the quite separate question of what it might be saying now. The options are, (1) exactly the same, if the situations then and now are for all practical purposes identical; (2) something similar, following the same values or principles, if they undoubtedly extend beyond any particular context; or (3) more controversially, perhaps, nothing at all, if that text clearly was and should remain timebound in its original context. Just because something in the Bible reflects a truth for its time does not make it self-evidently a truth for all times—it depends on what it is.
The Bible plays a critical role in mediating the things of God to us —who he is, what he is like, how he thinks and feels about things, what his priorities and purposes are, and so much else besides—so it’s vitally important to be reading it well. Only if we are reading it well will we be teaching and applying it well. I can recommend a couple of good books to help on the journey . . .