October 31 is a favorite holiday of children, when they get to go out trick or treating dressed as ghosts and goblins. I’ve always enjoyed Halloween. But it also is remembered for another reason. On October 31, 1517 Martin Luther posted a proposal to the church doors in Wittenberg, Germany. He wanted to debate the practice of indulgences. Known as the 95 Theses, they were not designed to provoke. The church door was commonly used as a bulletin board for the purpose of making announcements,. The 95 Theses were written in Latin, and he was looking for a debate among the theologians of the church. However, it grew to become a controversy between Luther and those allied with the Pope over a variety of church doctrines and practices. And three years later, Luther and his supporters were excommunicated. Thus began the Reformation. All the Protestant churches, from the Lutheran to the Presbyterian, from the Baptist to the Methodist can trace their roots back to what Luther did that October day.

The pillars of the Protestant Reformation are summarized in three short statements: only Scripture, the Priesthood of all believers, and Salvation by grace through faith. In celebration of Reformation Day next month, and because I am a theologian, I thought I’d discuss the first of those three things: the concept that the Bible alone was authoritative in the church for faith and practice. Protestants, thanks to Luther, rejected the authority of church councils and tradition. They insisted that each individual alone could interpret the Bible for himself or herself. The Reformers of the sixteenth century argued (among many things) that the Bible was “perspicuous” – a big word meaning that the Bible was easy for anyone to read and understand (unlike the big words the Reformers used, apparently). That said, it is also true that they recognized honest people can come up with any number of wrong-headed notions and feel justified in them, because for some odd reason, when most people read the Bible they fail to use the sense they have when they read anything else — such as the skills you are using to read this article.

Why is this? Because too many people use the Bible as if it is a book of magic incantations, seriously imagining that it can say just about anything they want it to say. It gets used too often like the poor fool who decided he wanted God’s word for him today. Opening the book and jabbing at a page at random, he read, “Judas hanged himself.” Feeling less than blessed by the words, he let the book flop open again and pointed at another passage: “Go and do thou likewise.” Thoroughly dissatisfied, he tried a third time: “What thou doest, do quickly.”

Most are not quite so silly as this (doubtless apocryphal) example, but how many people decide that some notion of theirs is the truth, and then hunt through the pages of the book trying to find verses that will support their idea?

How important is the context, the flow of the argument, the sense of the story? There was a fad, now mercifully past, of people selecting “life verses”. Guess they needed something that would look good on a T-shirt. Rebelliously, I picked Ecclesiastes 10:19. While this selection showed my contempt for the whole life verse thing, more importantly, it illustrated the importance of actually reading the Bible with one’s head engaged. What does the passage say?:

A feast is made for laughter, and wine makes life merry, but money is the answer for everything.

On the face of it, the passage seems to run counter to what most Christians would believe to be true, and yet, how can they argue against the Bible? If context doesn’t matter, then I guess they can’t. But let’s be a bit more reasonable.

Two important things to consider in reading and understanding the Bible:

One: Christians believe that the Bible records the progressive self-disclosure of God. That is, God did not tell the human race everything at once. Expecting Abraham to have as clear an understanding of theology as Isaiah is not reasonable. Why? Maybe an analogy will help. When my oldest daughter was fourteen years old she was first introduced to algebra. Signing her up for a calculus class the next day would probably have been a mistake.

Similarly, God has raised the human race like we raise children. Thus, being aware of theological development is going to have an effect on how a given passage is understood. This leads us to the last point.

Two: context is all important. Do you understand what’s happening on the page? Do you understand the historical setting? Does your understanding create conflicts with other passages of the Bible? Have you considered the cultural context?

The practical outworking of a given principle may be different in the Bible than it would be today. For instance, we rarely wash feet or greet each other with a kiss; thus, those “commands” from the pages of scripture will need reworking to make sense today. The commandment to worship God is today practiced differently than it was prior to 70 CE; there is no temple, so it is no longer possible to worship God by sacrificing animals. Thus, a reapplication of all the passages regarding such practice inevitably must be made. But the basic principle, to worship God, remains unchanged despite the change in conditions. Other clear examples of culturally bound materials: Exodus 21 regulates polygamy and slavery. Do we insist on “literalism” when polygamy and slavery are outlawed altogether today? Proverbs speaks of using a “rod” on children. Even proponents of corporal punishment don’t take a big old stick to their children. So perhaps “rod” is simply being used as a metaphor for discipline. Veils on women in 1 Corinthians 11? Even those who want to make women wear hats in church as a consequence of this passage are not making them abide by the clear “literal” reading.

The cultural translation of the Bible is an obvious necessity, as these passages make clear. It must be done by using firm, consistent, and objective standards. Just as in language translation, the culture of the Bible must be clearly understood, and the culture into which one is translating must also be clearly understood. Then, a connection between the two must be made. Subjectivism is to be eschewed, because it is too easy to dismiss as “cultural” those things that we may be uncomfortable with simply because of our guilt. But it is as big a mistake to literalize something that should be taken more allegorically.

Thus, while the Bible is easily understood, it is also easily confused if we are not paying close attention to what is going on. It is also certain that honest disagreement about interpretation among people of faith is inevitable. One would hope that these disagreements do not result in being disagreeable. Theology, like science and most other areas of human endeavor, has more questions than answers. Only in freely discussing matters can we hope to arrive at truth.

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