Here are four main ways that I see us reading Scripture to grasp its meaning. By looking at each, we can grow in our awareness of how we read the Bible and hopefully become more skilled at reading Scripture through this knowledge.
When we read the Bible, we intuitively get its meaning. If we read a story about Abraham, we know that characters move through a story until its conclusion. If we read Proverbs, we know that we read wise sayings.
Yet our intuition mostly comes by way of basic education: we learned how to read and understand stories. So we apply what we’ve learned in school and in life to the Bible. And we attend a church where we hear the Bible preached. For that reason, we also have learned how to apply the Bible to our lives.
What we call intuition in large part derives from experience and education. And so it is worth considering how we get meaning from the Bible since we all bring something to the text. The question should be: are we bringing beneficial assumptions when we read it?
Here are four main ways that I see us reading Scripture to grasp its meaning. By looking at each, we can grow in our awareness of how we read the Bible and hopefully become more skilled at reading Scripture through this knowledge.
First, we read Scripture to understand its story (or argument).
As noted, we might read the story of Abraham and trace his call from Ur to go the Promised Land. We see how the story narrates its storyline. Or we might read a letter of Paul and trace his argument.
This is the most common way that academics and Reformed Christians aim to read the Bible—with varying levels of success
The main obstacle in this approach is moving from what the text said to what it now says. Put another way, the challenge becomes applying the Bible to our lives. Does the Bible talk about economics? Does it talk about how to overcome gender dysphoria? If it does, how?
And why should ancient stories or letters apply to specific cities universally to all ages and generations? One common answer is that while Scripture does not directly apply to every contemporary situation, it gives us principles that we can use to work through contemporary problems.
So, second, we read Scripture to understand spiritual principles.
Joseph fled from Potiphar’s wife. So when we fall into temptation, we too should flee from whatever tempts us to lust. That’s a spiritual principle. It has the advantage of being directly tied to a biblical passage. It has the disadvantage of not directly being the narrative’s communicative intent.
The Joseph cycle narrates how God kept his promise to Israel to bless them through Joseph’s brothers selling him into Egyptian slavery. What his brothers meant for evil, God meant for good. God will continue to bless his people and fulfill his promises despite famine and human evil.
