Interpreting the Bible: A Brief History

The following is a guest post by Alan Hicks.

Before the Protestant Reformation only clergy and highly educated people had access to the Scriptures because they were written in Latin, a language that most people at that time no longer understood. Therefore the masses depended on the Roman Catholic Church (really the only church around) to interpret the Scriptures for them, and to tell them what the Scriptures taught. As you might imagine, this made it very difficult for anyone to oppose church teaching because they did not have a Bible that they could read and argue from. So if the church said that you must pray to Mary, the mother of Jesus, then that is what you did.

Shaking Things Up

But at the beginning of the 16th century a German monk named Martin Luther noticed several church teachings conflicted with the teachings of the Bible. Though he was not the first to notice, he was the first to have the help of a printing press to circulate his writings.

Luther began to write against several key church teachings and to translate the Bible into German, a language that people understood. Others followed his lead as well. The battle cry of the Reformation became “sola scriptura,” which is Latin for “scripture alone.” This meant that the Bible was the final authority over faith and practice, not church teaching. This also meant that each Christian had not only the right, but the obligation, to read and interpret the Bible for themselves.

Who Has the Last Word?

But this posed a problem for post-Reformation Christians. If two people come to different conclusions regarding the meaning of a text, how do we know who is right? There was no longer a higher ecclesiastical body to force people to believe certain teachings.

Luther witnessed this very problem in his own lifetime. After he put the Bible into the hands of the populace, many different groups arose which claimed to have the “true” interpretation of the Bible, yet their interpretations were all different. Historian Stephen Tomkins comments on page 145 of his book A Short History of Christianity that, “they were up against the fundamental problem of Protestantism: they agreed that the Bible had the final say over their beliefs, but they could not agree about what the Bible did say.”

We are still up against the same problem today. The same groups which formed at the time of the Reformation are still around and still cannot agree with each other. There are even cults such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons which base their teachings on the same Bible that we use. So how can we ever hope to arrive at a correct reading of the Bible when there is so much disagreement?

The answer is that we must recognize certain rules of interpretation if we hope to correctly understand our Bibles. These rules of interpretation are called “hermeneutics.” In another post, I’ll discuss five rules of hermeneutics.

Alan is a M.Div. graduate of Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, NC. He and his wife attend Grace Presbyterian (PCA) in Kernersville, NC. You can follow him on twitter. He’s an awesome dude and a good friend of mine.

How Do You Stay Sane?

Last week I started reading Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality by Scott Belsky. The main premise behind the book is that creative people often are good at creating new and innovative ideas, but are bad at follow-through to reality. Belsky and his team researched various successful and creative people and teams to find out how they were able to successfully bring ideas from the brainstorming phase to reality (shipping it, selling it, publishing it, etc.). He lays out three common components of these successful “creatives” (a term I think he coined).

  • Organization
  • Community
  • Leadership

I’ve only gotten through part of the section on organization. The organizational component seems to have some similarities with Getting Things Done (e.g. breaking projects down into action items).

This book is particularly interesting because Belsky is trying to bridge the gap between the creative and productive, a feat that I think can be hard to achieve. Getting Things Done tried to achieve a similar goal of helping the reader to sort out his organized (or disorganized) world so that he can actually accomplish stuff.

I think one of the biggest challenges that I have faced in transitioning to full-time ministry is execution, taking the ideas or projects from paper to completion. Because today’s strong dependency on e-mail and communication in general, as well as the fact that much of what I produce is intangible, it is easy to get to the end of the day without a clear idea of what was accomplished. I imagine part of the struggle is just being a rookie and not defining my goals, processes, and projects as clearly as I need.

I’d love to get your thoughts. What systems do you have in place to stay productive? And with all the varied requirements of ministry (pastoring people, doing administrative work, planning a year in advance, thinking of a sermon series, developing your skills, etc.) how do you do stuff and not feel like you’re drowning in a sea of projects?

Three Thoughts from a Rookie Youth Pastor

I have a confession to make. The reason I volunteered to work in youth ministry was so that I would have a legitimate reason to play Halo. It’s true.

That was four years ago. Since then I’ve gone from being the Wednesday night chaperone to helping organize and run events. About a year and a half ago I quit my job as a professional computer nerd to get paid to work with youth.

Four years later, I am still a rookie to youth ministry. I think I’ll feel like a rookie for at least another five more years. But over the past four years, I have learned a bit about myself and the teens that I’ve had the privilege to serve.

Lessons I’m Learning

  • Teens don’t need another buddy. One of my pastors gave me this bit of advice and it has proven itself to be true. Teens don’t need me to be one of their peers. It’s weird when a 27 year old guy tries to dress and act “cool.” That is not effective relevance. Usually, they have plenty of peers who are already trying to shape their identity. What they need is someone who can remember what it was like to be a teenager, but who can show them the next step. They need someone to tell them hard things when they don’t want to hear it and love them no matter what. They need a mentor, not a buddy.
  • What you see is not what you get. Sometimes when I speak at the youth group, it feels like I’m speaking to a wall. A wall that is busy texting its friend about Justin Bieber and is more interested in listening to its iPod than hearing my sermon. I’ve discovered that even though these teens seem uninterested, they are listening. And they are processing what is being said. I am not certain, but I would guess that the situation is similar for other ministries that we can’t judge what’s going on in their hearts strictly by what we see.
  • Jesus is relevant. I think it can be easy, especially with teens, to fall into teaching a “how to” sort of mentality. How to be victorious at school. How to overcome pornography. How to be a better Christian. But one of the most exciting things I’ve been able to be a part of is preaching the inability of man to save or transform himself and the sufficiency of Jesus Christ as our substitutionary atonement. The most relevant thing I can teach a kid is that we have a living hope, that we can be given new life, justified before God and be made holy, on account of and through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I’d love to hear what you have to say about life and ministry. Have a helpful tidbit or pot-hole to avoid? Leave a comment and let me know.

Friday Giveaway!

Today is Friday Giveaway! I’m borrowing the giveaway idea from a couple of bloggers I admire. Today, I’m giving away two books.

The first is Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die by John Piper and published by Crossway Books. It’s a great book about the gospel that I’m reading through with some of the teens in my youth group.

The second book is Christian Beliefs: Twenty Basics Every Christian Should Know by Wayne Grudem and Elliot Grudem.

To enter, subscribe to the blog by rss or by email. You can also subscribe to the twitter account. Then email me at eddy[at]clearingtheattic.com and let me know that you subscribed. If you already subscribe to the blog and twitter, just send me an email and let me know!

Omnifocus for iPad Now Available

I received an email this morning from the Omni Group letting me know that Omnifocus for iPad is being released today. This is very exciting for all those GTD productivity nerds out there who have been holding out for this personal project manager on the their iPads.

You can get more information on Omnifocus from the Omni Group website. Here’s the link to the App Store (opens in iTunes).

I would love to hear what you think of Omnifocus. Drop a line in the comments section.

Update: Omnifocus for iPad has been released, but the change is still propagating to all the App Store servers. I haven’t been able to get to the App Store page. Let me know if you do.