Literal Interpretation

People will look at me and say, RC, you don't interpret the Bible. Literally, do you?

Well, whenever anybody puts that to me, I have just enough mischievousness, I think, in my personality to sometimes use shock tactics to get somebody's attention. Because whenever anybody ever says to me, you don't interpret the Bible literally, do you? My standard reply to that question is.

Well, of course. You can hear the mischievous smile in his voice. but it really is an important question to consider. How should we interpret the Bible? Welcome to Renewing Your Mind this Friday.

Today is the final day we'll be airing Dr. R. C. Sproll's series, Knowing Scripture.

So if you want to study the remaining eight lessons, request your copy of the DVD before midnight at renewingyourmind.org. We'll also give you digital access to the series and study guide as well. Let's continue with Dr. Svoll answering the question of how we interpret scripture by beginning with another question. What does the text plainly say?

In this session of our course on understanding scripture, we're going to consider. The meaning And the function of the literal interpretation of the Bible.

Sometimes people will say to me, as I think they do to you from time to time, that that's your interpretation, isn't it?

Well, another one. that I hear very often, and I suspect you do too, Is that when I will be citing something from the Bible or giving a theological point and referring to the scriptures for support? People will look at me and say, RC, you don't interpret the Bible. Literally, do you?

And they look at me with kind of an expression of consternation and bewildered disbelief. And notice even how the question is phrased. It's not simply a direct question. It's not simply, do you interpret the Bible literally? But it's phrased more negatively than that.

It's, you don't interpret the Bible literally, do you?

Well, whenever anybody puts that to me, I have just enough mischievousness, I think, in my personality and makeup to sometimes use shock tactics to get somebody's attention. Because whenever anybody ever says to me, you don't interpret the Bible literally, do you? My standard reply to that question is.

Well, of course. Like Who doesn't? Who in their right mind doesn't interpret the Bible literally.

Now I know very well. that the idea of literal interpretation is an idea that's associated once again. With uneducated people People who are backwoods in their mentality, who are anti-intellectual and anti-scholarly and anti-academic and literalistic interpretation seems to be the chief occupation of such unlearned simpletons and certainly is not worthy of ministers of the church or teachers in seminaries by any means. And that's why I sort of get that mischievous kick out of saying, well, of course, you know, if you want to think that I'm a country pumpkin who knows nothing about biblical science, that's all right, too. I'll accept that.

But yes, indeed, I do interpret the Bible literally. But it usually provokes an engaging response where people's interest is piqued, at least for a minute, like saying, You do? You really interpret the Bible literally? And they scratch their heads, and there's sort of an interest awakened there, and they say, Well, you know, why? Why do you?

And as we pursue that line of reasoning and thinking, I'll respond even more simplistically by saying. What other possible way Is there to interpret the Bible. than to do it literally. Of course I interpret the Bible literally. But what's going on here, of course.

Is that when I'm speaking about interpreting the Bible literally, and my interrogator is asking me if I interpret the Bible literally? We're not talking about the same kind of a thing. When I talk about interpreting the Bible literally, I have something very. concrete and specific in mind. I'm talking about a method.

Of biblical interpretation. Again, a method that was very important. To the rediscovery of the Bible during the Protestant Reformation. and a method that was closely linked. to what I outlined in our last session.

as the grammatico-historical method of interpretation. Luther, of course, did not invent the idea of literal interpretation, but he did use. The technical language of what he called seeking The census litteralis of Scripture. The census literalis. It's a Latin phrase, S-E-N-S-U-S.

And literally, L-I-T-E-R-A-L-I-S. And all it means is the literal sense or the literal meaning of Scripture. And so The way in which Luther was talking is the way in which I am talking when I say the first real primary rule of biblical interpretation, of sound biblical interpretation, is to interpret the Bible literally. But what did Luther mean by it? In a simpler way, he said, What we should be seeking for.

As we come to the scripture. Is the plain sense of of the meaning of the text. And to elucidate further, What is meant? By interpreting the Bible literally in that classical sense, is simply that we are to interpret the Bible. According to its litera.

Which is according to its literature, according to the way. It is written.

Now If that's all we mean by literal interpretation, then we should interpret the newspaper literally, we should interpret poetry literally, we should interpret music literally. Anything that's written as literature should be interpreted as literature. Meaning That we follow The normal patterns. And the normal rules of literary interpretation.

Now, sometimes that throws conservative people for a loop. Evangelical Christians sometimes get very agitated with me when I say that a practical rule for literal interpretation is that we should interpret the Bible. like we would interpret any other book. That we should read the Bible in a certain sense like we read any other book. And this people hear with horror.

They say, What do you mean? The Bible's not like any other book. The Bible's the book of books. It's the norm of norms and without norm. The Bible's the word of God and alone the word of God.

It's inspired, it's infallible, it's inerrant. And I hear all of that, I believe all of that. But when I come to read it. And to interpret it. The rules for interpreting it.

Are no different. from the rules of interpreting any other book in this regard. That the Bible is written With sentences? And the senses have individual words. And all of the inspiration of God, the Holy Spirit, on the text of Scripture.

does not make it A magical book. In the Bible? A noun. is a noun. And a verb?

It's a verb. And if you want to understand how these things fit together, you have to understand the rules of grammar. If you want to take the trouble to learn the ancient languages of Hebrew and Greek, even though I believe that God the Holy Spirit inspired the Greek writings of the original New Testament documents, there's no such thing as what we call Holy Ghost Greek. The Holy Ghost and inspiration doesn't change. nouns to verbs and verbs to nouns.

And so I am still, as a human interpreter, Called to recognize the difference between adjectives and adverbs, questions and answers, indicatives and imperatives, and all of that. And so all Luther was getting at when he says, Come to the Bible and look for its literal sense, is look for its plain meaning.

Now, he did that for a reason because. There grew up in the Middle Ages A very strange approach to scripture, a kind of mystical approach to scripture. We're saying if you really want to know what the Bible says, you can't just look at the plain meaning. But there is a hidden. Esoteric.

mysterious, mystical. Spiritual meaning. Hidden behind every text.

So that if, for example, the Bible says And Paul went down to Jerusalem, or Paul went up to Jerusalem. Hidden behind that text is some mysterious allusion to people going up to heaven. And we just had to be able to crack the mystical code and underline and get beneath the layers of the text to discover that hidden, secret, mysterious, mystical meaning. That kind of stuff. really turned the Bible into a wax nose because everybody was free to discover all kinds of mysterious insights in the Bible that the text of the Scripture never said at all.

And Luther said, Let's return to soberness. Let's go to the text and read this text for what it says. There's to be no spiritualistic interpretation of the scripture. That is, literal interpretation is opposed to spiritualistic interpretation. Does that mean that we're supposed to be unspiritual when we come to the Bible?

That we're not supposed to pray? Or that, oh, no, no, no. Spiritualistic interpretation is that kind of interpretation which turns the Bible into a book of magic. There are different forms of it. And in our own day, I've seen on countless occasions earnest Christian people, evangelical people, caught up.

In one form of spiritualistic interpretation that I call Lucky dipping. You have a problem. A personal problem, and you pray about that problem. It's a spiritual problem, perhaps. And you want the mind of God, you want guidance from God.

And so the game of lucky dipping is played this way. You make your prayer to God, you say, God, I don't know. Whether I should go and take this job in Alabama. or stay in Boston.

Now, I have to make a decision and I want to please you, God.

Now, I'm going to ask you to guide me and to lead me, and I'm going to ask you, please, to do it through your sacred scripture. And so what I do is after I make my prayer I piously take my Bible and I shut my eyes. And I just take the covers and turn them upright and let the Bible dangle open. Then flip the book over. And then without looking.

I take and put my finger down on the text, and then I open up my eyes, and wherever my finger falls, I get my message. Yeah. And lo and behold, I might read there as I look at the text, And David Went down. Two The Naga. And I say, ha ha.

The Negev is the south of Palestine. David went down to the Negev. That's my answer. God is telling me of the two options, I'm supposed to take the southern one. And so that means I should take the job in Alabama rather than the job in Boston.

I'm not kidding, this goes on daily in the Christian world in the name of spirituality, in the name of obedience. And there's no difference between that And using a Ouija board. We take the Bible and turn it into a superstitious tool of magic. And some people might say, well, wait a minute, aren't there innumerable incidents in history? Where God has, in fact, used a verse of scripture in a very, very strange way to turn the lives of people upside down.

Yes. Think of Augustine, You remember the story of Saint Augustine? Who was living a life of riotousness, licentiousness, immorality? His mother was a devout Christian. Monica was praying in tears every day for the conversion of her son.

And as the story goes, Augustine was walking through a garden on occasion, and children were gathered there. In a grove, and they were playing a game that had a little refrain to it in Latin, tolla lega, tolla lega. And he heard these words, and their literal meaning was, Take up and read, take up and read. And so He was fascinated by that, and there happened to be a copy of the New Testament there, and he just. picked it up and And he opened up the text and his eyes fell on the text of Scripture, not on riotousness and drunkenness, not on immorality or licentiousness, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the lusts of the flesh, and so on.

And Augustine says that that text gripped his heart and brought to him a dramatic transformation to the Christian faith. You say. Spontaneous reading of scripture, one verse, his eyes fell on one verse, but I'll tell you what. When that happened, in that holy moment. And that special occasion when Augustine picked up the text.

What converted Augustine was a correct understanding and application of the Biblical text. I don't doubt that the Holy Spirit used that special occasion to bring Augustine to the faith. But he used the plain sense of the meaning of Scripture to do it. Because the text that he saw and that he read and the Spirit used to convict him spoke precisely to the sin in his life. which is exactly the intention of that text.

It didn't require some kind of mystical, magical, superstitious twisting and distortion of the text in order to do it. Jonathan Edwards had the same thing when he was struggling over predestination, and his eyes fell upon the text: Now unto the immortal, invisible, only wise God. His soul was flooded. By the impact of that one verse, but the soul was flooded as a result of the right interpretation of the passage. And so what we're looking for.

is sober interpretation so that we can grasp. The real meaning of the text. which will mean the same thing for you. as it does for me. Its application.

Maybe different in your life. Than it is to mine. But I don't want to labor the point. The heart of of literal interpretation. involves a certain Little bit of homework that we have to do.

Literal interpretation is usually understood as a very simplistic thing, but in its actual practice in the traditional sense here, it requires really a high degree of sophistication, and in some cases some very technical knowledge. Because before I can interpret the Bible literally, And accurately. I must be avil. to recognize The literary forms in which Scripture comes to us. For example, to interpret the Bible literally requires that we be able to distinguish between poetry And historical narrative?

Between didactic literature Between Wisdom literature and apodictic literature, they're all different kinds of literary forms. And there are rules for interpreting poetry that are different. from rules that we use to interpret narrative history. or teaching portions of the epistles, for example, are different. from songs that we find in the Old Testament.

And we have to be able to learn to distinguish the difference. And it's not always easy. On some occasions, you pick up a piece of literature and it's very clear that it's poetry. It rhymes, it has rhythm, it has a certain structure to it that poetry has, and we recognize it as lyrical poetry and treat it accordingly. On the other hand, there are times when the literary forms.

are clearly historical narrative. But there are times when it's not always so clear. Take the book of Jonah. Let's look at Jonah, for example. Is Jonah history?

Or is it some other kind of special symbolism? Is it an epic poem? Is it a fable? Designed to teach a moral lesson? Or is it a real historical event?

Which is it? There's been all kinds of debates about that. I remember when I was a seminary student. I was at a seminary that was predominantly liberal at that time. And the Old Testament professor, a very warm and sanguine individual, very kind to his students.

But he had had his PhD. He had studied in a liberal college. He had studied in a liberal seminary. He got his doctorate in a liberal institution. And he was a liberal professor.

And one of the assignments that I had in an advanced course in Hebrew exegesis. was to write a paper, a term paper, on the question of the literary form. of the Book of Jonah. And I remember I undertook that question, and I produced a paper for this professor in which I argued that the book of Jonah was written. as historical narrative.

And the professor was beside himself, not in anger. He wasn't hostile. He was delighted. He. actually implored me to have this essay published in a religious journal.

And I couldn't understand why. And he said, well, it's so innovative, it's so novel. He had never heard anybody argue that Jonah was actually written as historical narrative. And he thought that my arguments were pretty good. He thought that it was a liberal interpretation.

I said, if I did that, I'd be sued for plagiarism because all I'm giving you is the classic, traditional, orthodox, conservative approach to the book of Jonah that he had never encountered in his lifetime. But the point is, even as I was doing that study, you see a book like Jonah. portions of it are written in a style That is very much like narrative history, but right smack dab in the middle of it, there's a lengthy poem that's clearly poetic. It has the stanza, the structure, the syntax, the versification of poetry. It's right there as poetry.

And how does it fit together with the narrative? It's not always an easy question. And here's something we need. to be very careful about. There are conservative people.

Who believe The Jonah was not a historical person. Not because they don't believe in miracles, but because they're persuaded that the literary structure, the literary form of Jonah. is not a historical form. and so that it ought not to be interpreted as history. On the other hand, you have people who are liberal who say, oh, it's a historical literary form.

But we know it's not history because it's supernatural and we know that miracles don't happen.

So their philosophical prejudice against miracle prejudges the interpretation of the text. And we have to be very careful of that because the Bible can be distorted both to the left and to the right, both by liberals and to conservatives, conservatives who want to impose a crass form of literalism in the popular sense when it ought not to be imposed. And on the other hand, liberals who, because they don't like what the Bible says, try to recast it into the shape of symbols or poetry when it doesn't have a poetic structure to it at all. What we don't want to do is to violate The way the book is written. I was in high school, I went to a course at a local church and the minister was explaining to us the miracles of Jesus from a liberal perspective.

And he talked about the feeding of the 5,000. And he said, well, we know that Jesus couldn't have miraculously fed 5,000 people from a couple of fish and a couple of loaves of bread.

So we can't interpret it that way. And he said, what really happened there? was obviously Some people brought their lunch. But most of them were not diligent enough to prepare for it. And so Jesus was able to persuade those who had brought something to share with those who had not.

And so the real miracle is an ethical one. And we thought, oh, isn't that marvelous? What a wonderful way to reinterpret the scripture. But that man Violated The text, because the text doesn't purport to teach that Jesus persuaded people. What the text is saying is that Jesus, through supernatural power, astonished everybody to think, no, you may not believe that.

But say that, say, I don't believe it, but you understand what it's saying. You see, the question of belief or unbelief is a question that comes after interpretation. First, we have to understand what it says, and then we have to say: do we believe it or don't we believe it? But we can't, because we don't believe it, reinterpret it. Or we've seen errors in the other direction, enforced literalism or enforced historicity when the Bible doesn't warrant it.

I've read more than one attempt. By conservatives and evangelicals who are trying to show how marvelously and wonderful the biblical prophecies are. That not only do you look at the prophecies of the future in Jeremiah and Isaiah and Micah and Joel and Nahum and that, but they will go back to poems in the book of Job or in the Psalms or in the Proverbs. And you'll see a poem there where somebody's worshiping the greatness and the grandeur of God, and it says, the word of God goes through the air to the four points of the earth. And somebody reads that and they say, You mean Job said that the word of God is sent through the air?

How is the word of God sent to the air? This is a prophecy. for the invention of radio, because today the word of God is sent through the air on radio beams or on television beams. That's not what that text was talking about. That text is talking about a poetic expression of the power of the word of God to encompass the globe.

It has nothing to do with television and radio, but in their zeal to prove that the Bible has predicted prophecy, which I think it does. They Read into passages. Prophetic content that was never meant to be. And so the idea of distorting the Bible by mistreating its literary form. is a pitfall.

that is shared both by the liberal and by the Conservative. And if we're really going to interpret the Bible literally, We will be careful. Not. To ignore. The literary forms.

in which the Bible is written.

So, the next time someone poses the question: do you interpret the Bible literally? We can answer yes. and I find the literal meaning by taking the literary genre into consideration. You've been listening to knowing scripture. A 12-part series designed to provide helpful guidelines for understanding, interpreting, and applying scripture.

If you found this series helpful, there are eight more lessons in the series. And for your donation today, we'll send you the DVD and study guide when you call 800-435-4343. Or you can make your donations safely online at renewingyourmind.org. Make your request before midnight to reserve your copy, and we thank you for your support. Most Christians would say that they want to grow in their faith.

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Next week on Renewing Your Mind, we'll begin another series by Dr. Sproll titled Five Things Every Christian Needs to Grow. Join us Monday here on Renewing Your Mind.