Approaching the Bible

SOME IMPLICATIONS OF A SOUND SCIENTIFIC APPROACH:

1. This approach offers a tremendous challenge to the study of the Bible itself. If the Bible is what it claims to be, and what Jesus and his apostles assert it to be—the fully inspired, infallibly authoritative Word of God written—this view enhances the importance of the Sacred Oracles, features the significance of textual criticism, gives impetus to the cultivation of minute exegesis of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, and spurs linguistic and archaeological research and any other pertinent studies which help in understanding the Bible better on the human plane.

On the other hand, subjectivist treatment of the Bible, to the degree that human reason sets aside the Word of God, tends toward a drastic reduction of interest in the biblical languages and minute exegesis of the original text. In fact subjectivist criticism tends toward study about the Bible rather than study of the Bible itself; its interest frequently stops short at the means to the end (studies relating to the Bible) rather than going on to the end itself (the study of the message and the meaning of the Bible in the light of these studies). Or if the study is applied to the Bible itself, the message and meaning are often explained away or largely set aside.

2. This approach fosters the spiritual understanding of the Bible as a unified revelation. Viewing Scripture as verbally in spired and fully authoritative calls forth faith, challenges Spirit-directed human reason, inspires intellectual humility, arouses holy expectations of the panoramic scope and consummation of sacred history and prophecy, and provokes scientific inductive study that, in turn, nurtures sound exposition based on solid exegesis, which furnishes the basis of an exhaustive biblical theology that is worthy of the name.

The subjectivist approach, to the degree that it denies scriptural authority, forfeits these benefits. Instead it inspires doubt, shies away from reliance upon the Spirit of God to guide human reason, engenders intellectual pride, quenches expectation of the fulfillment of prophecy in its panoramic scope, and is incapable of doing justice either to biblical exegesis or to the creation of an adequate biblical theology. This is conspicuously true of the old-line liberalism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is still true to a degree of neoorthodoxy and the “biblical theology” movement of today, which, although it strives at all costs to be biblical, nevertheless still clings to the unbiblical methods of criticism which the heretical liberals of the last century worked out under the false impression they were scientific.

An example of the inadequacy of the new liberalism’s theological content is Gerhardt Von Rad’s conclusion on the person of Moses. Following Martin Noth, Von Rad concludes that “the figure of Moses had no place in a great number of the Pentateuchal traditions.… But even those who believe that the historical element can be regarded as broader and more firmly founded than this are, for all that, far from gaining the picture of Moses as the founder of a religion so urgently sought by the modern reader. In every case they only reach very ancient individual traditions which are difficult to reconcile with one another” (Old Testament Theology, I, 14, 1962).

If this is true of Moses, a type of the Great Prophet to come (Deut. 18:15–18), what sort of a biblical theology may be expected under such a subjectivist approach? This is intellectual anarchy run riot, the result of the assumption that historical inquiry is only “scientific” when it is divorced from Christian presuppositions. If the biblical theology movement is to produce sound and exhaustive biblical theology, it will not do so until it realizes that Scripture is studied “scientifically” and “objectively” only when it is approached in full recognition of its character as Scripture, the infallible Word of God, and not assumed to be a maze of discordant traditions, with scholarly activity devoted to proving this and dedicated to rescuing a modicum of theological truth from the resultant debris.

But the scholar who is willing to approach the Bible on the basis of faith rather than unbelief, and who is willing to give it a chance to prove it is what it claims to be, a verbally inspired divine revelation, rather than starting out to prove it a fallible and faulty tradition, will be rewarded with a wealth of spiritually and intellectually compensating exegesis of the original text that will furnish the basis by inductive study for an exhaustive, coherent biblical theology. Moreover, such a reverent scholarly approach, using all the legitimate findings of modern biblical research plus the gains in textual criticism, will be in a position to see in detail as well as in panoramic perspective God’s plans and purposes of the ages. Fullness of detail and clarity of scope will characterize all of theology.

3. This approach encourages the highest and most God honoring type of interpretation. This, we believe, is the grammatical-historical-critical method that takes into account all the advances in Hebrew and Greek syntax, Bible history, geography, and archaeology, as well as the conclusions of sound criticism, both higher and lower. This sort of interpretation takes the full gamut of Scripture as equally inspired and regards all phases of the divine revelation as important. It seeks to deal with all and to interpret all as a unified system of truth. It seeks to reconcile seeming discrepancies and difficulties on the basis of rigid inductive logic. Never does it deductively superimpose doctrinal conclusions on the Bible; it allows the particulars to produce the generalizations. This is but saying that the Bible is to produce its own theology instead of having man’s theology imposed on it; in other words, the Bible is to be interpreted scientifically.

A correct and workable system of interpretation that harmonizes many difficult and seemingly conflicting passages is needed as a vital part of the apologetic for the truth of full scriptural authority. Part of the reason for the wholesale rejection of verbal inspiration is the refusal of many evangelicals to rise to a system of interpretation worthy of the Bible as a fully authoritative revelation from God. If unbelief is manifested in an unscientific rationalistic criticism that refuses full scriptural authority, unbelief may also be manifested by those who, although subscribing to this truth in theory, yet reject it in practice by refusing to interpret its teachings by a literal, grammatical, historical, critical, rigidly inductive method that believes the Bible says what it means and means what it says, and take all that Scripture says on a subject in its exegetical, expository, and theological systematizations.—Dr. MERRILL F. UNGER, professor of Old Testament, Dallas Seminary.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.