Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

A lot of people are intimidated by the Bible. Some, so much that they avoid it all together or seek interpretations from other men, pastors, or priests, where distortions are bound to arise. Others, perhaps, because they subconsciously feel threatened that it might rebuke them for their idolatry (which they would be right).

But there are some things to work through in terms of understanding the nature of the scriptures, and Biblical interpretation is always something that needs to be considered. Is everything to be taken literally? Was Jonah really in the belly of a whale for three days? Or is there use of metaphor, allegory, and parables in the scriptures? Can we read whatever we want into them? Do things need to be put into context? How do we put them into context? Are all the books of scripture unconnected to one another or should we see in them a unified work? Is it a “code book” that takes a specialist to crack? Or are the words of the Lord plain? Is it impossible to know what God is telling us? Or can we understand His desires for us?

In his book, Paradise Restored (1985), David Chilton offers a few ideas on how to approach the scriptures. This is obviously not an exhaustive list, but it may prove useful even to many who already read the scriptures regularly. And hopefully, it will also help out the new or soon-to-be reader who has unnecessarily felt that the Bible is above their pay-grade.

He mentions the following approaches:

1) Being consistent and thorough. Biblical doctrines should be defended by showing that they flow out of the scripture and are not just some obscure part of it. In other words, we should not be “cherry picking” to suit our case, but citing numerous scriptures to support our claims and demonstrate a consistent theme. We shouldn’t have to work to find our own ideas in the scriptures, but should be able to easily show that the things we say come from the word. As Chilton says,

“Instead of trying to fit the Bible into a prearranged pattern, we must try to discover the patterns that are already there. We must allow the Bible’s own structure to arise from the text itself, to impose itself upon our own understanding” (p. 15).

In other words, exegesis over eisegesis.

We should be highly skeptical of the person who has one or two verses to cite for their doctrine, e.g., those thousands of men who think they can build their entire political theology on Romans 13 while ignoring the consistent theme of the sin, rebellion against God, and violence of statism in the Old Testament.

2) See the big picture. We need to see the value of following stories, patterns, typologies, word usage, themes, across different scriptures, and seeing that there is often one big picture. Obviously, things were written this way for a reason. As Chilton says,

“The Bible is literature: it is divinely inspired and inerrant literature, but it is literature all the same. This means that we must read it as literature” (p. 16).

We don’t need to shy away from poetic approaches at times, so long as we see that it is also more than poetry. Atheists do not understand this point when they write-off the scriptures as “fiction” due to any literary style found within it, as if God isn’t allowed to make His ethics known through stories of the prophets and metaphors of whoredom and prostitution as a way of explaining what men are doing when they cheat on God with the State (Ezekiel 16).

3) Understanding the symbolism. We need to see that much of scripture is symbolic and is trying to tell us something through use of some literary form. This isn’t a problem. But we need to seek to understand this symbolism by seeing how certain words are used throughout the Bible. As Chilton says,

“We must become accustomed to the Biblical vocabulary and modes of expression, seeking to shape our own thinking in terms of Scriptural categories” (p. 15).

4) Deciding when it’s appropriate to see something as symbolic or literal, being that both are used and alternate regularly. We have to know when to change our approach. He says, for instance, “One would not expect to read the Psalms or the Song of Solomon by the same literary standards used for the Book of Romans” (p. 16). 

And, he says, it’s usually clear when we can shift in this approach.

“Some parts are meant to be literally understood, and they are written accordingly — as history, or theological propositions, or whatever” (p. 16).

Some atheists are so dense as to disregard the scriptures thinking that everything has to be understood as literally true. They will think that, say, “there’s no such thing as a flying book,” and dismiss all of scripture based on this false and unneeded assumption. Here we need to understand different literary forms. But as Chilton says,

“We cannot understand what the Bible really (literally) means unless we appreciate its use of literary styles” (p. 16).

5) The Bible is not a code book. Using the understanding of the Bible-as-literature, which adopts metaphors and such to enrich our understanding rather than to wrap something in mystery, we must see that scripture is not some secret code book to crack, but rather that it requires us to study its themes. He says,

“The Bible is not a book for spies and secret societies; it is God’s revelation of Himself to His covenant people” (p. 17).

Again, we have to keep in mind that we’re dealing with divine literature that isn’t always meant to be taken exactly literally. So, as Chilton says,

“Understanding Biblical symbolism does not mean cracking a code. It is much more like reading good poetry” (p. 18).

When people get into this code-cracking mentality, they tend to think they have discovered some mystery that God secretly embedded in His word, and that they are special for having done so. But this tends to treat the scriptures as esoteric, as well as to assume that God didn’t send His word to be profitable and instructional to all of us. It invites the idea that men can’t read the Bible on their own, but are in need of other men (eg., priests or scholars) to do it for us, even though scripture itself suggests its given to everyone for understanding (Psalm 119:130).

6) Using scripture to understand scripture. When we encounter certain themes and words, we may turn to their use elsewhere in scripture, assuming that themes in this work of divine literature—the meaning of water, mountains, wilderness, swords, etc—has generally developed some meaning throughout itself. Thus, if we find, say, a symbolic use of water (e.g., Jesus speaking of the “living water”), we might go back to other uses of water to understand what scripture might be getting at by having employed water in such a way.

There is no issue with scripture being poetic and developing themes, but there is an issue with resorting to our own idea about what such themes might mean rather than to discover their use throughout the Bible.

As Chilton says,

“The real question…is not some artificial symbolic vs. literal debate, but a much more basic issue: Shall our interpretation be Biblical or speculative? In other words, when I attempt to understand or explain something in the Bible, should I go to the Bible itself for the answers, or should I come up with something ‘creative’ on my own?” (p. 17). 

We don’t want to make up what we think something means, but to turn to the scriptures themselves to understand these themes. As he sums up this idea,

“Don’t speculate or become abstract, but pay close attention to what the Bible itself says about its own symbols” (p. 21).

However, he cautions, we need to be spiritually guided when we do this and (once again) not assume we have found some “code” for what each word means every time.

“The symbolism of the Bible is not structured in a flat, this-means-that style. Instead, it is meant to be read visually. We are to see the images rise before us in succession, layer upon layer, allowing them to evoke a response in our minds and hearts” (p. 19).

7) Reading with our minds and hearts. This is a follow up from the last approach as well as the symbolic approach. This is a sort of summary approach that keeps all the aforementioned things in mind: reading scripture to scripture, understanding some things are symbolic, yet not thinking that things are a code book, etc.

Somewhat as a challenge to those who might break out their dictionary and perform their code-word investigation, Chilton tells us to allow this literature to cause our minds (to some degree) to envision things. He tells us to “try to picture what the Bible is saying” (p. 21).

Obviously, God got out His word the way He did: filled with symbolism, imagery, analogies, metaphors. Why? Couldn’t He have just said things more straightly? Obviously, He did this to enrich our understanding of things that might have been less rich if written more plainly. But He didn’t do it to leave us confused and leave everything as a mystery — and it’s greatly unfortunate if anyone thinks this and gives up over it. As Chilton says,

“The prophets did not write in order to create stimulating intellectual exercises. They wrote to teach. They wrote in visual, dramatic symbols; and if we would fully understand their message we must appreciate their vocabulary. We must read the Bible visually. The visual symbols themselves, and what the Bible says about them, are important aspects of what God wants us to learn; otherwise, He wouldn’t have spoken that way.”

Now, I think, we can finally see the full picture of these brief and few approaches to reading scripture: That words may be used symbolically, though are not some “code” that needs to be cracked but rather something that should cause us to search across the scriptures to understand and enrich the meaning of them in the proper use.

But we shouldn’t, however, think that God wrote to confuse or that everything is entirely symbolic, such that we are unable to understand anything we are reading. As he says,

“When the Bible tells us a story about water, it is not ‘really’ telling us about something else; it is telling us about water. But at the same time we are expected to see the water, and to think of the Biblical associations with regard to water. The system of interpretation offered here is neither ‘literalistic’ nor ‘symbolic’; it takes the ‘water’ seriously and literally, but it also takes seriously what God’s Word associates with water throughout the history of Biblical revelation” (p. 19).

When people find books like Daniel or Revelation hard, or feel like they don’t know what the prophets are talking about, it should be helpful to keep these things in mind.