An invitation to weigh in . . .
Dear readers,
I am writing this from Heilgenkreuz, Austria while sitting in a small study that overlooks a beautiful pond nestled in the Vienna Woods. It is one of my favorite spots in the world. A beautiful setting in which to reflect and write and teach! Even though I officially began my sabbatical on June 1, I did not want to cancel this teaching assignment. It is my seventeenth year to be teaching students from Eastern Europe, and I am eager to begin. My class is entitled Biblical Eschatology. At lunchtime today I was asked to describe it to the people who will be doing work on the grounds, in the dorms, and in the kitchen. My description was simply this: Eschatology is about how we should be faithful disciples between Christ has come and he is coming back someday. Many of the ideas for my commentary will be tried out on the students beginning next week. Please pray that the classes taught by a number of professors will be a blessing to the students.
But I want to invite you to weigh in on a very important matter.
While flying over I read the June 8, 2009 issue of Newsweek. An essay by Ellis Cose (“Caricature Witness: The ugly assumptions behind the case against Judge Sotomayor”) on President Obama’s supreme court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, contained an interesting observation that in speech many years ago Judge Sotomayor basically argued that all judges have biases shaped by their experiences. Cose adds that “Surely anyone who has closely followed the high court knows it is impossible for judges to separate their backgrounds—and biases—from their judging.”
Now, let’s apply this to Scripture. Are you and I willing to acknowledge that all interpreters of Scripture have biases shaped by their experiences, namely, that it is impossible for interpreters to separate their backgrounds and biases from interpreting?
Do such biases make it impossible for us to understand the intended aim of biblical authors? Or in acknowledging our biases, are we more likely to be able to approach a portion of Scripture more freely so that we determine an author’s intended meaning?
What biases do you bring when you interpret Scripture? Can the biases be overcome? If so, how? If not, is it an impossible task to interpret Scripture correctly?
I will be interested in see what responses I get. Please, weigh in.
Related posts:
In my mind, I think working on two levels is important here. The first level is the level of the text. In other words, as we interpret we have the words of God through the writings of Isaiah or John or Paul as a piece of literature in history. Here we attempt to put biases aside (although an impossible task in my opinion) and utilize literary, historical, grammatical, etc. analysis in order to determine what the author was saying to his particular audience.
The second level is that of Scripture. In other words, as we interpret we have the words of God through a particular author to a particular group of people or person but also to the community of God’s people of all time. It is here that I think our biases, perspectives and culture are actually beneficial to the interpretive process. If I believe in the eternality of the Word, then my experience and the experience of the community of believers with which I am involved plays a huge role in the interpretive process because I am expecting God to speak to our situation.
With that said, there must be an interplay between the two levels of reading and interpreting. The first must inform the second. In fact, to have the second without the first will probably turn into a free-for-all, reader-response exercise that actually makes Scripture mean nothing.
That’s the long way of answering your questions! Can we get rid of our biases? Probably not. We can recognize them, work with them, and even allow God to work through them. Does that necessarily mean that we will interpret Scripture wrongly? No. For the past 3,400 years or so God’s people have been interpreting Scripture with a particular bias (wherever and whenever they were interpreting). Sometimes they got it wrong. Many times they got it right.
The bottom line is to remain humble when interpreting. Keep learning. Keep looking for different perspectives. Keep hearing from other interpreters. Keep hearing from the Lord.
By the way, I’d like to be in Austria with you! Have a great class.
“Are you and I willing to acknowledge that all interpreters of Scripture have biases shaped by their experiences”
Yes. None of us come to the Scripture as a blank slate, we all bring who we are to it. I think this is why so many of us in America can tame the words of Jesus. For example, and I risk oversimplifying, we know Jesus said we should love our enemies and that if we are to follow him it requires taking up our cross and dying, but more Christians than any other group find torturing terrorist suspects okay if it keeps us safe. We allow our American values to influence how we read scripture. Of course, it is not just Americans – all people bring different biases. Which is why it is important for us to read scripture in community – to compare our interpretation with other Christians throughout the history of the church, and throughout the diverse world of Christianity today.
“namely, that it is impossible for interpreters to separate their backgrounds and biases from interpreting”
I don’t think its “impossible.” It is difficult and maybe it is impossible to completely separate the two so that we stand above the text as completely objective. But I think being somewhat aware of our biases, and being in community with others, means we can somewhat be separate.
“Do such biases make it impossible for us to understand the intended aim of biblical authors? Or in acknowledging our biases, are we more likely to be able to approach a portion of Scripture more freely so that we determine an author’s intended meaning?”
I think the latter is true. I’ll just say I agree with what Frank said for this one
“What biases do you bring when you interpret Scripture? Can the biases be overcome? If so, how? If not, is it an impossible task to interpret Scripture correctly?”
Based on my upbringing, I have often brought an American evangelical bias to scripture (for example, salvation is making a “personal commitment to Jesus Christ”). I think the bias can be overcome. For me, it was meeting Christians of various other stripes from Christian Church at LCS to Mennonites around here to Catholics and many others. Along with that, studying church history and seeing that the church has looked different in different places over the centuries. This has helped me become humble as I interpret scripture and to focus on what holds the church through the ages and the world together as one body. Through this I no longer bring the same bias to scripture I once did, but I recognize that I have new biases. The key is, I suppose, to submit to scripture to continually allow the Holy Spirit speaking through it to confront those biases, continually sharpening and refining your theology.
Biases? What biases? I always approach Scripture with a complete submission to the Holy Spirit, no preconceptions, no axes to grind, no points to prove. I hope you realize those words were written “tongue-in-cheek”.
My biases? A black and white expectation. There can be no grey area for me – makes it kind of hard to live the “in essentials unity, in opinions liberty” thing. A strong aversion to anything that smacks of John Calvin – so when I come across passages that support his theology I find myself doing spiritual contortions to explain it all away.
Does my background influence my approach to Scripture? You bet it does. How do I overcome those biases? I force myself to listen, and listen carefully, to those with whom I disagree. One of my favorite periodicals is “Touchstone”, published by the Fellowship of St James and heavily Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. The articles make me think, and think hard. They stretch my faith and my understanding of faith. What keeps me balanced, or at least somewhat balanced, is the “iron-sharpens-iron” encounters with others, personally or in print, that lie beyond my understanding of the text.
And, underlying it all, is prayer and the inner working of the Holy Spirit. God is still faithful and true.
I believe our backgrounds shape who we are. Our biases are formed from the principles and lessons we learn throughout life. I appreciate how people step out of their culture to teach or work with people from another geographical and cultural background. What usually ends up happening is a revelation of the fact that we have so many different presuppositions and biases because of the culture around us. I believe that it is the experience of realizing the impact our culture has had on us (acknowledging our biases) that helps us to approach the Scriptures more freely. If we do not acknowledge our biases, we tend to remain closed-minded. However, in accepting the fact that we have been brought up in a completely different culture than the ones in which the Scriptures were written, we are able to open our minds to try and understand the culture of those times and places in order to interpret the words that were written.
I personally know that biases can be overcome. There are many things that I was completely biased against a short time ago that as I have pondered and studied them, I have accepted the reality. For instance, coming to the Proverbs with the idea that they are declarations of absolute truth because they are in the Bible was something I believed in strongly. When I began to understand the fact that they are not declarations but general instructions of wisdom for life, it was a struggle for me, but the more I studied and thought about it, the more true it became. Now, if you add on top of that the fact that the culture these Proverbs were written in is completely different from our culture today, I still have a long way to go in understanding much of the book.
Theologically, I struggle sometimes reconciling who God is with the theological schools that have developed in the last 1900-2000 years. Augustine and Calvin seem to have influenced so much of the Christian culture I know today. Augustine and Calvin make some good points in their theology, but so do those who oppose their thoughts, such as Origen, Arminius, and John Wesley. The difficulty in reconciling, I am convinced, comes from the background, influences, and biases that form in my mind from hearing and reading thoughts of people from the different schools. To reconcile the idea that God hears my prayers and speaks to us and has a relationship with us with the idea that God has control in the world and intervenes in our lives is difficult but not impossible.
All this to say that biases are very dangerous if we do not accept their influence and acknowledge them. On the other hand, if we do accept the influence they have on us and acknowledge them in our studies, we are able to open our minds in order to allow the Holy Spirit to guide us to a more accurate interpretation of Scripture. Humility is extremely important, and arrogance becomes a wall to our understanding.
I agree we all have biases; no way around it (although there are some (many) who are too arrogant to think they don’t have them). In light of that I wonder what the most fundamental bias(es) are we have… Could it boil down to one’s view of God? Is the fundamental bias that shapes how we view all of Scripture whether or not one has a “Reformed” or “Armenian” or “Open” (or somewhere in-between) view of God? Those biases will influence and shape how we read certain texts.
After recently studying doxazo (“glorify, praise”) in the NT it seems this is more and more the case. It seems a fundamental part of that word is ‘changing/elevating one’s opinion/view of God’. Granted, NIDNTT said that the secular component of the word dropped out in NT usage due to the influence of the LXX…but I think that is an overstatement (maybe I misread their statement a bit…). [in what follows I'm leaving out the other part of doxazo - that of being, or clothing in splendor - e.g., Jn17:1]
When Jesus performed miracles people often glorified God, not Jesus (except in Jn11 w/ Lazarus – that was so Jesus would be glorified). Yet Jesus also says that our good works are to be done so that God is glorified (Mt5:16) – i.e., so that people’s opinion/view of God change and they come into a covenant relationship with Him (cf. 1Pet2:12). In the OT the “glory of YHWH” was often a physical manifestation of His presence…undoubtedly that changed/enhanced people’s view of God. How much more then is people’s opinion of God influenced/enhanced when we (with the Holy Spirit in us) show people that God has/wants to drawn near to them? For a Reformed person (I think) doxazo would mean that God is being given the “glory” He deserves. For an “un-Reformed” person – doxazo means we need to make sure our lives are lived in such a way that people’s perception of God is changed… (granted, in that statement I ‘overstated’ to make a point…I’m not saying a Reformed person would disagree with statement ‘b’)
I think I got a bit off topic – but it still revolves around biases. Obviously a bias I now have has been influenced by study in His Word (I would like to think they all have been at least influenced by the BIble). Granted, everyone will claim that, so where is the mediating ground? As you’ve said numerous times before – humility, seeking to learn from others, not badmouthing opposing views, reading opposing views, prayer for conviction, etc. Perhaps another way of overcoming biases is seeing where the conclusions lead us. You think “a” about this text and I think “b” – but what is the end result of those differences? If we can honor those differences (even while disagreeing) at least we’ve furthered our own view by seeing how others connect the dots.