There is a school of thought that says “You don’t have to interpret the Bible; just read it and do what it says . Why make it more complicated, any person can read and understand it? If you dig around too much you just muddy the waters and make what was clear not so clear”.
There is some truth in this “protest”. There is a “plain meaning” which needs to be arrived at. But can this be achieved through just reading it or should people use common sense that is enlightened by some excellent resources that are available today?
This article argues that getting at the “plain meaning” simply by reading is unrealistic because of the nature of the reader and the nature of Scripture itself .
The nature of the reader
Every reader of the bible actually “interprets” it in order to get to its “plain meaning”. Sometimes people can bring their own experiences, culture and prior understandings of words to the task.
The result can sometimes be ideas that are foreign to the author’s original intent, as evidenced by conflicting ideas that exist throughout the church regarding the message of the Bible. There are any number of examples of this, including different heresies and practices, all of which claim to be supported by the Bible.
For some, this is a reason for no interpretation, just reading. Others say the antidote to bad interpretation is not no interpretation but good interpretation based on common sense guidelines .
The Nature of Scripture
There is a dual nature to the Bible – it is at the same time both human and divine. In other words, human writers were inspired by the Holy Spirit to record God’s message. Every book of the Bible was written at a particular time in history and is conditioned by the language, time and culture of that time. It is for this reason that there is a need for interpretation.
In particular, God chose to use almost every available kind of communication including narrative history, poetry of all kinds, parables, letters, sermons and apocalypses. Each of these had their own set of rules for how to best understand them.
The fact that we are so far removed from the original recipients in time, and sometimes in thought, is a powerful reason for using good interpretation as a means of arriving at the “plain meaning”.
This article is a summary of the introduction to Fee & Stuart’s book