Similarly, no one, absolutely no one, can read the Bible without some pre-understanding, for example, of God; even if the person is an atheist, the god whose existence he or she is denying is still some kind of god. So, you cannot approach the text without bringing baggage with you, in terms of what words mean, in terms of values–whether you think this is serious or not, whether it’s right or wrong–it affects all of it.

A layperson can read the Scriptures and understand the Scriptures. It is important to keep saying that. There is no esoteric guild of specialist priests who impose a certain kind of interpretation on the conscience of believers. And even in practical experience you sometimes see that, don’t you? Occasionally you’ll find an old woman or man who is semi-literate, and yet such people may have read their Bibles through again and again. Although they can’t self-consciously make all the correlations a sophisticated systematics can make, nevertheless, they have a kind of nose for error and heresy. Somebody comes along with some screwball idea, and they can immediately say about forty verses that make them question something or other.

You want to say even at a practical level, I want people to read and reread their Bibles. God himself says, “This is the one to whom I will look: he who is of a contrite spirit and who trembles at my word.” So, it really is important to say that before you start putting in footnotes about the importance of presuppositions and structures and all the rest.

We All Have Presuppositions – Good or Bad

But the converse danger of thinking you can do it all yourself from scratch is no less pernicious, and maybe more so. Take an analogy from science: no scientist has to start proving the existence of molecules every time he or she begins an experiment in chemistry. There are all kinds of givens based on what has already been thought through, discovered, or demonstrated before; but every once in a while, one of the scientific theories gets overturned because of new evidence. Nevertheless, any scientist brings an awful lot of presupposition to the next round of experimentation or the like.

Similarly, no one, absolutely no one, can read the Bible without some pre-understanding, for example, of God; even if the person is an atheist, the god whose existence he or she is denying is still some kind of god. So, you cannot approach the text without bringing baggage with you, in terms of what words mean, in terms of values–whether you think this is serious or not, whether it’s right or wrong–it affects all of it. Then on top of that, it’s sometimes the person who claims to be independent of systems who is, in fact, most shanghaied by a system. So that someone in the West, for example, who is steeped in individualism, will come to a text such as Galatians 3 and interpret the function of the law as a paidagogas, “a schoolmaster,” a tutor to lead us to Christ entirely in individualistic terms because we live in the individualistic world of the West.

Whereas the context shows that Paul is thinking primarily of salvation historically; that is, of the function of the law from the giving of the law [with Moses] all the way to Christ. He’s thinking of its function across history, and no doubt that has a bearing on how we think of the law’s function today. But it’s not primarily talking about the application of the law to the individual; it’s primarily talking about how we should think about the law in its role in redemptive history. We might miss that simply because we’re individualists steeped in Western heritage.

Culture is always highly diverse; people come from different backgrounds to any seminary. There is a sense in which, again, I want to be sympathetic. It is possible for your system–or, for that matter, for your epistemology–to be so well in place that it is incorrigible. It cannot be corrected by Scripture; it no longer really listens, and everything gets filtered through it. Even the best interpreters, the most experienced pastors, all of us, do this sometimes unwittingly. Three years later I could be studying the same passage again and think, “Uh-oh, I really blew that one,” and I realize I brought my baggage with me. So, there is a danger along those lines.

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