Interpretation of the Bible

[bostonian]

1 Timothy 2:11-12 says:

A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness.

But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.

But the Episcopal Church has many women priests, and many good ones. I am in favor of women priests, but after reading 1 Timothy, that seems unbiblical.

It is my understanding that "fundamentalists" are Christians who interpret the Bible literally. If I understand correctly, fundamentalists are the extremists that I hear on the radio telling people that they are going to hell.

It seems to me philosophically that reading the Bible literally would be desirable, but that seems to produce some rather wacky and militant Christians. (Is that a fair characterization?) On the other hand, 1 Timothy says what it says. How can we discard the Word of God?

My understanding is that Episcopalians do not interpret the Bible literally, but use "reason" to help to understand it. Is that correct?

How should I approach reading the Bible? If not literally, what can be used as a guide?

[christian]

There are those, especially the lefties in TEC, who would like you to believe that all "fundamentalists" narrowly interpret The Bible and these "fundamentalists" condemn anyone who disagrees with them. These lefties also want you to think that all who disagree with the leftist enterprise or oppose them in any way are of of this "fundamentalist" mindset.

While there are indeed such narrow minded people as these lefties would ascribe to all their detractors, the true meaning of fundamentalist can be found in the 39 articles where it is stated that all things necessary for salvation can be found in Scripture.

I am a fundamentalist myself because I believe that Scripture trumps any other theological consideration. You may sense in my words a bit of frustration with the lefties. This is because the lefties are trying to hijack my Church with their synchronistic theology which places man made things, such as the united nations millennium goals, above the plain meaning of Scripture.

For me the first verse of John clearly indicates what our attitude toward scripture should be, and the attitude expressed there is not contradicted or modified elsewhere.

///

In the case of Timothy which you cite, it appears to contradict other places in Scripture where women are presented with strong pastoral gifts and action. It is perhaps the case that this is an instruction to that particular church and has no broader application other than to churches of that sort. It may also be that priests today are to have no real authority over us, and thus the authority issue is moot. I must say that I almost always find a woman priest discomforting.

[christian]

In light of my fundamental belief in The Bible I believe that reason is a gift from God so that we might understand Scripture. Without reason only proof texting is available to us, and proof texting can not deal with apparent contradiction in The Bible such as your quote from Timothy.

Unfortunately it is easy to move from reason in submission to Scripture, toward Scripture in submission to reason. Be careful, or soon the lefties will have you interpreting The Bible in light of the things of this world rather than interpreting this world in the light of The Bible.

[srigdon]

Bostonian,

You've hit on one of the problems with using the Bible as a guide. And this is only the beginning. Deciding how to use the text is one of the central problems that divides us.

One could get an even more extreme regarding women in 1 Cor. 14:

As in all the churches of the saints,
[34] the women should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says.
[35] If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

There are some conservative churches which don't allow women to read scripture in church because of this. I'm not sure what the Roman Catholic Church does.

To get an idea of what problems one can encounter when using the Bible as a guide, look at Exodus 22:25 and Deuteronomy 23:19.

Ex. 22:25 (RSV) "If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be to him as a creditor, and you shall not exact interest from him. "

Deut 23:19 is in my signature line below.

There are a few other places in the Bible where the collection of interest is discussed. It is never put in a positive light. Deut 23:19 clearly condemns collecting interest from other believers. Jesus never repealed this restriction.

So, how do we justify collecting interest on our bank accounts? Surely there are other believers who are paying interest to us through the bank.

From wikipedia, here's what the Pope thought the Bible said about collection of interest in 1745:

"In 1745, the Catholic teaching on usury was expressed by Pope Benedict XIV in his encyclical Vix Pervenit, which strictly forbids charging interest on loans, although he adds that "entirely just and legitimate reasons arise to demand something over and above the amount due on the contract" through separate, parallel contracts."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury

In fact, that wikipedia page, there's a big list of 'usury' quotations from the Bible. (Usury has a connotation of 'excessive' interest today, but as far as I can tell, when the King James Bible was written, it did not have this connotation.)
Modern translations seem to use the word 'interest' instead of 'usury'.

The Biblical commentaries that I have say that the Levitical and Deuteronomical condemnations of interest collection 'do not anticipate' the notion of commercial loans. That seems apologetic to me - where's the evidence for this? And if some sort of 'understanding in modern context' exception can be made with this, can we allow for such understandings in other areas - like marriage, for example? Is it fair to say the biblical writers 'did not anticipate' that people of the same sex might be born naturally attracted to each other?

Some time ago, I challenged the conservatives on the board to come up with a better explanation for the interst/usury matter. I don't think they delivered, but you can look back in the archives for that discussion and decide for yourself.

There are two approaches to reading the Bible. You can begin by presupposing that it is the inerrant Word of God. Then everything which seems like a problem is not a problem, and some people will come up with all sorts of explanations why it's not a problem. Whether you find those explanations convincing is up to you. But if you challenge those explanations in conservative churches, don't expect to get a friendly reception. (And frankly, some liberal women priests will not give you a friendly reception if you get them to try to explain why they call the Bible the Word of God in spite of the above problems.)

The other approach is to make no assumptions about whether the Bible is the Word of God - and what that might mean - and make your own decisions about it as you read it.

I'll give you another example of something that will make you wonder what it means to call the Bible the Word of God.

In Mark 2:25-26 Jesus talks about a famous incident where David eats consecrated bread in an emergency, and says this occurred when Abiathar was the high priest.

But when you look back to read about the incident in 1 Samuel 21:1-6, it's obvious: Abiathar wasn't the high priest, Ahimelech was. Abiathar became priest later on. Is this an error in the Bible? Did Jesus forget? Did Mark make a mistake?

The fundamentalist approach is that no, it can't be an error, and so they seek apologetic explanations for why it isn't. You can read one of them here:

www.lookinguntojesus.net/ata20021013.htm

Only you can decide whether you think the explanation is convincing. But of one thing you can be sure: they didn't weigh the evidence to consider whether their explanation or an actual contradiction is more likely. They already know what the truth is and just want to convince you and themselves it's not a contradiction.

There are many, many, many problems like this. The vast majority of Christians are utterly unaware of them, including myself only a year ago.

So, to get back to your original questions: indeed, reading the Bible literally would make life so much easier. But I think there are no easy answers to approach reading the Bible.

My best suggestion is to become well-informed. Do lots of reading from lots of sources. Read the Bible along with an explanatory book. That's about where I am in my journey, and I have a long way to go.

You might be interested in knowing that the 'fundamentalist' movement is a modern movement, which arose to deal with the problems such as those above raised by modern biblical scholarship.

Sidney

[srigdon]

A few more thoughts after my last post: the Anglican/Episcopalian tradition appeals to a notion of being guided by "scripture, reason and tradition." Those are words originating with Richard Hooker, a Church of England theologian of the 1500s. Just how reason gets used is one of those things that is in dispute. I don't know much about Hooker, so I can't tell you what he originally intended. Wikipedia has an article about him; you could read a bit about him there.

There is another approach to the issue with 1 Timothy. Tradition has it that this was written by Paul, and most Bibles say that. However, modern scholarship has raised the likelihood of authorship by somebody else (either forgery, or some spiritual descendant of Paul). Had this been believed in ancient times, it in all likelihood would have been excluded from scripture.

Scholarship also challenges the authenticity of the 1 Corinthians excerpt I mentioned. It was originally accepted in ancient times that Paul wrote the letter to the Hebrews, hence its inclusion. Today that authorship is universally dismissed.

So, how should that affect how we view these texts? Again, that's up to the individual. Most people accept them as the Word of God in their own nuanced way.

My current attitude about scripture is that we should try to understand why everything was written, including the stuff we don't like. There are good reasons the ancient churches accepted these points of view and we would be unwise to ignore them.

[Canadian Phil]

I think srigdon's explanation of how to approach Scripture is mostly sound, although I think he has over-stated the degree to which conservatives are exclusively literalists. Some are. Some aren't particularly, but rather they are committed to seeing how Scripture hangs together as opposed to the other alternative of seeing how it doesn't (that isn't precisely fair either, but not inaccurate). You find literalists in both camps, but you also find more nuanced approaches. Hopefully, here you'll find a bit of both.

Good questions, bostonian, and ones we've been hammering away at on this forum for a long time as well.

Peace,
Phil

[anglicansablaze]

In my experience liberals can be quite literal in interpreting the Bible themselves when it suits them. While I have been accused of fundamentalism and literalism--often the two are confused in the mind of liberals--when I compare myself to a number of folks of my acquaintance and how they interpret the Bible, I am not a literalist at all. I do view the Bible as the divinely revealed word of God whereas liberals view the Bible as a collection of human writings. I believe that the supernatural agency of God was at work in the compilation of the Bible. This means that I view its authority differently from liberals on this forum. I employ conservative Anglican/Protestant principles in interpreting the Bible. This includes interpreting Scripture with Scripture, using reason that is informed and sanctified by Scripture, and last of all considering the opinions of ancient and contemporary Bible commentators where their views are agreeable to Scripture. Ultimately, as it was for Bishop John Jewel and his protege Richard Hooker (and is for classical Anglicanism), the final and supreme authority for me in matters of faith and life is the Bible.

The Bible uses figurative language in a number of places so one cannot interpet the whole Bible "literally". One must discern the figurative language from the non-figurative language. One must interpret the obscure passages with the clear passages. These are just some of the basic prinicples of Bible interprtation.

I will post a list of books for you that delineate basic principles of Bible interpretation. I think that you will find them helpful.