Biblical studies

Let’s now look at the second major area of the traditional pastoral education –Scripture – and how it relates to theology. The Protestant Reformers had the slogan Sola Scriptura – Scripture alone. “Just give me the Bible,” some may say today, “and none of that theology stuff.”

But this is not what the Reformers meant – they all wrote books of theology as well as translating or commenting on Scripture. Scripture was the foundational standard, but not the only approach to understanding what it means to follow Jesus. Scripture, by itself, may be enough to lead a person to salvation, but history also shows that Scripture, by itself, can also lead people into some strange ideas! This is not the fault of Scripture, but of people who cut themselves off from the wisdom accumulated by the people who have studied Scripture before them.

The Protestant Reformers were responding to a slogan of the Catholic Church: Scripture and tradition as equal sources of theological truth. No, said the Reformers – the only infallible source is Scripture. Tradition can be helpful (all the Reformers used writings from the early church), but it’s not 100 percent reliable. Those early leaders could and did make some mistakes, and the only way we have of figuring out where the mistakes are is to compare what they wrote with Scripture. Each generation has to look at Scripture again.

God is the revealer. We cannot know any theological truth except as God has revealed this to us by means of the Holy Spirit. But this is usually done through Scripture. All sorts of people have claimed “God has revealed this new and exciting truth to me, and you cannot be saved unless you believe me.” Some people, more out of fear than of faith, accept claims like this. However, God has also revealed, to many more people, that you cannot be saved by trusting in the private “truths” that are revealed to one and only one person.

God is revealed most clearly in the person of Jesus Christ, and Jesus is revealed to us in a definitive way not through a study of history or through private revelations, but through Scripture. Scripture is the ordinary means of understanding God’s nature and activity. Scripture is the foundation for our theology.

But no one comes to Scripture with a completely neutral and unbiased view, as if we could arrive at objective and undeniable truth just by following a certain method or formula. No, we all come to Scripture with some pre-understanding of what it’s about, of who this “God” is that the Bible is talking about, and what the “salvation” is that Jesus offers us. But we let Scripture correct us when we are wrong, and we let Scripture teach us more. We let Scripture shape our ideas, and then we read it again, this time with more understanding, still willing to be corrected when our concepts do not yet fit the text. This process continues repeatedly, and we draw closer to God through the written word that testifies to the living Word of God – that is, to Jesus Christ.

We want to see the text clearly, but we do not see it correctly unless we see God through it. We are saved not by Scripture, but by God. Scripture is a means to an end, not the final goal, but it is an important means. If we just see the grammar, the vocabulary, the writing style and the historical context, we are missing out on the most important part of Scripture, and that is God.

We want our theological concepts to be rooted in Scripture, and when we examine Scripture, we do not want to push our theological concepts into Scripture – even when our concepts are right! For example, we may be convinced that Scripture teaches that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God, and yet there is only one God. But we cannot then turn to Mark 1 (which mentions the Father, the Son, and the Spirit) and conclude, “This passage proves the doctrine of the Trinity.” No, it is consistent with the doctrine of the Trinity, but it does not prove that doctrine. If our focus is on seeing proof for something we already know, then we may well miss what the passage is actually trying to say.

Not every passage in Scripture can prove every truth. If we simply bring our ideas to the text, and squeeze them into the text, then we are never going to find out where our ideas need to be modified. In order to let the Bible correct us, we need to be honest about what each passage does and does not say. We want to read it in light of what we know, but we do not want our “light” to be so bright that it washes out what is actually there.

Scripture and theology are in a dialogue, a conversation in which we let one speak, and then the other, and we learn more from the dialogue than we would from either one on its own. We let one passage tell us about the death of Christ, for example, and then we let another passage tell us something more about it. We put all those passages together to get a more complete picture, and then we come to the Bible again, asking, “Is this what it’s saying?”

But we do not come alone. We also ask that question of each other. We realize that we are fallible human beings, and perhaps we haven’t understood everything correctly. So we tell others, “This is what it seems to be saying. Does that make sense to you, or is there something in the text that I’ve been overlooking?” We may ask ordinary believers, and we might ask people who have studied it in great depth. And they tell us what they see, and we think about it together.

We study the text of Scripture as carefully as we can – that is what we call biblical studies – and then we put it together and think about its implications as best we can – and that’s called theology. Some theologians will focus more on Scripture (biblical theology), and some more on the logical implications (systematic and philosophical theology).

As we think these things through from as many angles as we can think of, we hope to draw closer to truth – not that we will somehow get a grip on it and have it within our control, but that it will have a more firm grip on us, and control us. It’s not like we are studying chemistry so we can invent some new compound that will make us rich. Rather, we are studying what God has revealed – not so that we can change reality, but so that we can ourselves be changed to be more in conformity with reality. God is the One teaching us and changing us; we have no reason to brag about how well we’ve done it.