The Words of the Word

What is a legitimate method of studying the Holy Scriptures? This is surely one of the hardest problems on the theological agenda of our time.

The study of the New Testament seems to throw the question of method into focus. Bible believers tend to feel anxious about this question. They fear that the Scripture will be victimized by scientific vivisection, and that critical-scientific approaches to the Bible will take away its direct, clear, and uncomplicated meaning for the Church. The anxiety is understandable.

Although the problem of scientific approaches to the Holy Scriptures has been with us for many centuries, newer methods have made the old problem more intense. The study of the Gospels has been particularly affected. The process by which the Gospels came to be as we have them, plus the special facets of each evangelist, especially the three Synoptics, have been the object of much study. For a long while, objections were raised to speaking about the “theologies” of Matthew, of Mark, and of Luke. But today we use this phrase freely, because we understand that each evangelist had his own conscious purpose in writing of the Christ. The differences had to do not only with matters of style and language but also with the way Christ and his redemptive work were described and interpreted.

Herman Ridderbos’s article “Tradition Editorship in the Synoptic Gospels” (in Jerusalem and Athens, edited by E. R. Geehan, 1971) gives a neat overview of several critical problems in the study of the three Gospels. Ridderbos has for some time shown the importance of method in the study of Scripture, but has at the same time always warned against the danger of personal whim in selecting methods. And this sets before us one of the core problems. Some have had nothing to do with the question of method precisely for fear of arbitrariness in selecting a method. They seem to think they can get rid of the problem by ignoring it.

Some Roman Catholics, for instance, have shied away from form-criticism for fear that it would subvert the dogma of the primacy of Peter as it was supported, they assumed, by Matthew 16. But some Protestant theologians, too, have feared to take note of a subjective role of the writers of the Gospels, a special personal purpose and an interpretation given by the writers. This, they thought, would subjectivize revelation itself: the New Testament witness would, they feared, be turned into a creation of the early Church instead of being a revelation of God.

In response to historical methods, many readers of the Gospels have wanted to make a sharp cleavage between historical reporting and interpretation. But to make this sort of division is just not possible. Thus many orthodox students of the Bible have been willing to take account of the nature of biblical writing by observing that the witness and the interpretation of the evangelists was taken up by the divine purpose into the inspired Scripture. They were not intending to be critical of the Scripture; they wanted to deal with the actual words of the Scripture as they came from the pages.

No one who wants to understand the New Testament can escape the question of method. The word “method” is related to the Greek word hodos, or “way.” A way must be walked toward understanding the Scriptures. A way must be followed into an understanding of the varied Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John. What does each evangelist’s special approach mean for us? Is it not true that interpretation is something very different from falsification? And is it not true that in each evangelist’s interpretation the unique significance of Christ and his work comes to expression?

Methods have changed through the years; this too must be noted. In the Middle Ages the allegorical method dominated scriptural exegesis. But the allegorical method frequently brought distortions into understanding; for instance, it was commonly thought that every passage had four possible interpretations.

Calvin, in his commentary on Galatians, branded the allegorical method a device of the devil. He discerned in it a serious unwillingness to let the literal sense of Scripture have its right, and in response to it he demanded respect for the actual words of Scripture. This Reformation respect for the actual words resulted in careful attention to details, to variations, to the relation between the evangelists, and to the special purpose of each of the writings. And thus the richness of the Scriptures was not diminished but brought to clearer light.

In our time, a time in which method is a very acute question, we are again faced with the danger of arbitrariness. It is possible that in our struggles over methodology, we may neglect the mystery of the Scriptures while we lose ourselves in details; we can keep looking at the trees of problematics and never see the forest of the Gospel. Karl Barth warned against this danger in his Romans commentary; he complained that scholars have often buried themselves in textual problems so deeply that they never heard the message Paul was preaching. The danger implicit in the quest for method is just this, that in asking how we are to go about understanding the Scriptures, we forget to listen to what the Scriptures say.

Still, the dangers must not prevent us from admitting the rightness of the question. The fact that the Word of God has come to us in the human form of human language compels us to deal with the problem of method. Luther saw this, and he wrote:

If we love the Gospel, let us pay attention to the languages. For God has not given us the Scripture in two languages: Hebrew and Greek, for nothing. Let it be said, that without these two languages, we would not have the Gospel.

Luther went on to say that the jewel is encased within these human languages; the drink comes with the mug, the meal with the dish. If we forget this, we will lose the actual Gospel. It was this Reformation respect for the very words of Scripture that led to the seriousness of exegesis—and thus to the question of method.

This does not put faith at the mercy of science. It does mean that scientific study is put to the service of a right understanding of the Bible. This is surely the case with the enormous amount of labor put into Bible translation. It is also the case with the exegesis of Scripture. Decisions are made here that can, if made wrongly, put the Bible at the mercy of the exegete. Existentialist exegesis tends to force the Bible to fit our understanding of our existence. Pneumatic exegesis tends to set the Spirit loose from the Word.

But these temptations only make the question more urgent. Anyone who takes the words of the Word seriously has to take seriously the question of the method of understanding the words. Let the words of the Word speak to us. And let us not fear to spend ourselves prayerfully and carefully in the question of how rightly to understand the words of the Word of God.

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