In These Last Days: The Dynamics of Biblical Revelation

Part 1

THE WORD OF GOD

1

Reading the Bible with understanding

This chapter is about how to go about reading the Bible, which, for those who have been doing it for years, may seem rather patronising. Please, indulge me! Most Christians agree that reading the Bible is a good and necessary thing to do. We all have some notion of the foundational nature of this book for the Christian faith, and we recognise its potential for guiding us and sustaining us in our faith journey. I suspect many have never had any advice or instruction on how best to tackle such a large and complex body of literature. Christians often learn Bible-reading habits by a kind of osmosis, by unconsciously absorbing them, or through observing how the Bible is dealt with in the family or at church meetings. Among different Christian groups, various traditions about how to read the Bible will be found. Some are helpful; others are not. I want to attempt to give reasoned guidance in this book.

The need for ‘Bible 101’

There was a time when most people living in nations that have a long history of Christian heritage would have had some idea of what the Bible is. They might even have been among the great generation of children attending Sunday school who could tell you a little about Abraham, Moses or Jesus. Sadly, those times tended to grind to a halt in the 1970s and 1980s. Now in this post-Christian era, if children do know the words ‘God’ and ‘Jesus Christ’ it is often because they have heard them as expletives on television or, all too often, in the playground or at home. It seems everybody knows the texting expletive ‘OMG’. The result is that when someone becomes a Christian in this twenty-first century, it is often the case that they have little understanding of the Bible and its message of hope. In their new experience as Christians and of churches, they may be introduced to all types of Bible-reading plans, or to no plan at all, but usually will be encouraged to get to know the Bible. This can be a daunting task for a beginner. Where does one begin? In this book, I want to explore some features of the Bible that will affect the way we read it if we want to understand what it is about and how to apply its teaching and grow towards maturity in our faith.

What is the Bible?

If you are a new Christian and in possession of a Bible for the first time, you will find yourself having to manage a very solid book of more than a thousand pages which is filled with all kinds of strange words and names. To begin with, you need to know that the Bible is a collection of sixty-six ancient books, originally written in one of three ancient languages (Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek), and written over a period of about 1,500 years, with the most recent documents coming from the late first century ad. Furthermore, none of the original documents (designated autographs) has survived, and we depend for our present text on early copies and translations into languages other than the original.¹ Nevertheless, we have grounds for confidence in the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament texts that we possess and from which come the translations into our modern languages.² We ordinary Christians can be thankful that the heavy lifting of translation has been done by scholars through the ages, and that fine-tuning continues in the hands of those with the expertise. Thus, while we should be aware of these facts, for most of us the issue is how we choose and use what is available to us today in our own language.

Christians are encouraged to read the Bible regularly for several reasons. The obvious one is that it is the sourcebook of Christianity: it tells us what the Christian faith is all about. The importance of this cannot be overstated. But the Bible is much more than a sourcebook; the most important fact of all about it is that it is the word of the living God. It is God’s revelation of his plan for his creation, for our lives and for our salvation. It is the medium through which God has chosen to speak to his children and to lead them in his way through life to the eternal glory that he has prepared for all that belong to him through faith in his Son, Jesus. Being a Christian means having fellowship with the living God, and fellowship involves his communication to us through his word, and our response to him in prayer and godly living. Although the Bible was written over a lengthy period of time by many different human authors, it is still God’s word written for his people and for all time.

We were not around when the various documents were produced, so no part of the Bible was written by its human author directly to us. Yet we believe that God’s Holy Spirit oversaw the process, so that what the human authors wrote was what God intended to say through them. No text of the Bible was written directly to us, but the whole Bible was written for us and for all God’s people this side of glory (2 Tim. 3:16–17). The amazing thing is that God speaks to us, and he does so in a way that demands that we listen and take notice of what he says.

Which translation should I use?

When I became a Christian as a teenager in 1950, the only Bible in common use was the Authorized Version (published in 1611), now better known as the King James Version (kjv). There was also the English Revised Version of 1881–5, but this was not in popular use. As a new Christian, I was soon encouraged to tackle the Epistle to the Romans because other Christians said it was important. I thought I understood the main thrust of chapters 1–6, at least to get the essence of Paul’s exposition. But when it came to chapter 7, I sank. I found the argument written in the kjv’s seventeenth-century English rather confusing, so I put it aside for another day. A new modern English version of the New Testament, the Revised Standard Version (rsv), was published in 1946, but it was not until the whole Bible was published in 1952 that the rsv began to find general acceptance. When I tackled Romans 7 again, this time with my brand-new rsv, I cannot say that I got it completely right, but I remember thinking that light had dawned with a modern English version that I could understand.³ The rsv was itself revised and the New Revised Standard Version (nrsv) was published in 1989, and later, also based on the rsv, came the English Standard Version (esv) in 2001. One of the most popular modern English versions has been the New International Version (niv), first published in 1978 (full Bible).⁴

This is not the place for a detailed discussion on the merits of different versions as there are now so many.⁵ However, we should consider the principles that may well affect the choices we make as we seek to be responsible Bible-readers. First, make one of the ‘standard’ Bibles your main version for reading and study. ‘Standard’ is a term usually applied to translations that have been produced by teams consisting of a number of scholars and linguistic experts.⁶ Each translator’s work is checked by others in the team to achieve the best and most accurate results. By contrast, some versions have been undertaken by individuals, and these carry a greater risk of error or ineptitude due to the single translator’s lack of expertise, or a present theological bias. This is not to say that no benefit accrues from reading publications such as The Message, or Today’s English Version (also known as the Good News Bible), but they should not be our permanently used versions. Beware of ‘simplified’ versions, for some are mere paraphrases that may or may not be accurate.⁷ I believe you should avoid those versions that decontextualise the biblical narrative and transfer it to some modern location.⁸

Translation is an exacting process and much can be lost through it. It goes without saying that accuracy in translation is to be desired, but that is not as straightforward as it may sound. On the surface, it may seem to the uninitiated that all you do is translate word for word from one language into another. But of course, that is not how it works. Every language has its own structure and idioms which are constantly changing. This applies to regional versions of the same language.⁹ Furthermore, every language has its own conventions on word order and syntax. The issue is this: while considering the differences between the original language and the target language, should the translator aim as far as possible at a formal translation of the actual words, or should the aim be rather to reproduce the ideas behind the words? Some translations are more literal, or formal, in translating words, and others go more for a dynamic translation of the ideas. There is a continuum here since no translation can be completely formal or completely dynamic. Does it matter? I think it does, but there is room for disagreement here.¹⁰

The more formal (literal) the translation, the more the technical use of keywords in the original can survive translation.¹¹ Those versions that are on the formal side include the kjv, rsv, nrsv and esv. Some readers find these a little stilted and hard to be comfortable with. Here, I believe, the problem is more with the reader than with the translation. I can only give my own opinion and encourage the modern reader to persevere with this because the more formal translations bring us closer to the words of the original. The niv is further towards the dynamic end of the continuum than the versions mentioned above. I repeat: find the Standard version that you are comfortable with and be prepared to work on it. Not everything in the Bible is simple, so do not settle for a simplicity that may compromise the meaning of the text. The cultural world of the Bible is not that of our modern world, and we must learn to relate the biblical world to our own.

Contextualisation is another issue. Beware of any attempts to transfer the biblical narrative from its own historical context into more modern ones. The same caveat applies to attempts to transfer the biblical events into the cultural context of the speakers of the target language. God incarnate came among us in Palestine some 2,000 years ago, and his birth is part of the historical process that the Bible records as happening in the Ancient Near East. I believe that even children can, and do, cope with the fact that Jesus lived in a place far away at a time when there were no cars or television; that he travelled mostly on foot; that he wore unusual clothes (from our perspective); and that swords, spears, bows and arrows were the weapons of warfare. We do not make the gospel more believable by trying to make the life of Jesus contemporary with ours.¹²

Digital or paper?

The universal use of smartphone technology presents us with a new area to consider. There is much to be gained from articles and study-helps available through the Internet. The Bible online was bound to be a hit. It is more convenient to carry your smartphone to a meeting than to take a bulky paper copy of the Bible. There are obvious advantages to having the Bible text available at your fingertips, but there are also dangers. It is important to be familiar with the whole Bible printed on real paper, rather than having a screen that reveals only a few verses at a time. I do not think one can aspire to be a competent biblical or systematic theologian using only a smartphone.

In an article published in the Australian Church Record and co-released by the Gospel Coalition Australia, a university student-worker, Matt Smith, made several points that digital users should consider.¹³ While acknowledging some benefits of having the Bible conveniently online, Smith made the following points. First, digital Bibles distract. The essence of this argument is that our phones are not dedicated to the Bible but share time and space with millions of other things, including phone calls and messages. Be honest! If you are in church following the exposition of a passage that you hold before you on your phone, and then a message comes in, how likely are you to ignore the message and attend to the sermon? Remember, God is speaking through his word in the Bible, yet we are tempted to prefer a friend’s message.

Second, says Smith, digital Bibles cut away the context of the passage being viewed. Instead of having the context of a text physically in our hands, we have perhaps five verses completely severed from the context. The matter of context is really what this book is about; the Bible is a unity, and thus holding the full Bible in our hands is a constant reminder that every text has a unique context within a wider context which, ultimately, is the entire Bible. From my observation of the popular use of digital Bibles, I believe there are grounds for saying that those whose principal way of reading the Bible is on a small screen are extremely unlikely to appreciate the big picture of the biblical message.

Very often an expository sermon or Bible study involves comparing texts in various places. Keeping a finger in Jeremiah 9:23–4, for example, while exploring its relationship with 1 Corinthians 1:31 and 2 Corinthians 10:17, is more meaningful than chasing and bringing these texts to the screen. The paper Bible helps us appreciate the distance between texts. Smith comments about digital use:

The result is that many people below the age of 25 have grown up in a world where some of the basic skills of comprehension (such as scanning for repeated words, mapping the logical progression of ideas, situating factoids in their wider context) have not been taught to them but rather done for them. Taken together, what we see are younger generations who (1) have had key skills for comprehension trained out of them and (2) are using a format of the Bible that reinforces that stunted growth.¹⁴

Smith’s third point is that digital Bibles limit our retention. This is because the digital display of a few verses does not provide the kind of memory markers that a paper Bible does. The three-dimensional Bible ‘has a certain size and shape and weight and thickness that subtly changes depending on which part you’re reading from’. He concludes that the paper Bible

engages more senses and in an entirely consistent way . . . A digital Bible offers none of those things. It is a disembodied text, stripped of the sensory advantages of a paper Bible, itself subject to change (at least in appearance) at the whim of its user.

We should consider these comments carefully. I really doubt the value of trying to pursue a serious study of the Bible using a smartphone. If my comments are valid, Scripture should be read and preached from a real paper Bible in church, not from a smartphone. The preacher should set the example by using a Bible in the pulpit, not a phone or tablet.

Reading plans

An important aim of Bible-reading is to understand the message of Scripture in both its unity and its diversity. Picking up a Bible, and letting it fall open anywhere to a page from which we then read, is not the most useful procedure. It is a bad habit to get into which will inevitably stunt our growth in the knowledge of the Bible and of God. We need an intentional plan of reading based on the actual nature of the Bible. Understanding both the diversity and the unity of the Bible is essential to understanding the grand central theme of salvation through Christ. We need a framework to enable us to relate individual parts to the whole. Whatever plan of Bible-reading and serious study we choose, it should be disciplined so that reading is not haphazard or something we turn to when there is nothing better to do. Remember, this is God’s way of speaking to us. It should be a matter of amazement to all of us when we contemplate the fact that the Creator and Lord of all the universe speaks to us, his creatures. God does not merely want to speak; he does speak. The question is: do we listen? Not wanting to listen to his gracious words to us is the ultimate insult and an unmistakable sign of a rebellious nature.

There are plans and Bible-reading schemes in profusion available to us and the choice can be daunting. The rationale for any plan should be to help us come to an appreciation of the total content of the Bible and its great themes. Understanding how these themes relate gives greater depth to our understanding of the gospel of our salvation. Reading programmes should help us understand that Scripture first of all testifies to Christ. The better we know the whole Bible, the better we will understand the glory of Christ and the awesome salvation he brings. The Bible’s overall message can best be understood when we consider the developing historical nature of some key unifying themes of the sixty-six books. We should cultivate a sense of the content and purpose of each of the biblical books, and how its main message links with the central message of the whole Bible. Thus, it makes sense to try to understand the message of complete books rather than isolated texts. In an age of the easy fix, instant gratification, and shortcuts to anything and everything, the idea of working through whole books of the Bible to understand the book within the context of the whole Bible will not come easily to many of us.

After many years of reading, studying and teaching the Bible, I would offer the following suggestions. First, try to develop a two-pronged approach that aims to grasp the ‘big picture’ as well as the more detailed contents of each book. Avoid any programmes (often with printed notes to help) that are geared merely to finding the happy devotional thought (‘the blessing’) for each day. We can often identify these from their programme of readings: each day a passage from a different book, sometimes moving between the Testaments without any regard for the chronological relationship of the books. This approach easily appeals, especially if we conceive of the Bible as a kind of lucky dip of happy thoughts and promises. The Bible is not like that. It nowhere tells us that every reading, every snippet of text, should deliver a ‘feel good’ thought for the day. Such superficial piety is misplaced and should be avoided.

Second, making our first attempt to read the Bible a careful reading from cover to cover, starting with Genesis and working our way through, is unwise.¹⁵ It is not a good strategy for forming the ‘big picture’. The Bible is too big for that, and few will be able to persevere, simply because a New Testament text is more spiritually nourishing than, say, a series of laws in Leviticus. It makes more sense to start with a book about Jesus such as Mark’s Gospel, and alternate the reading of the New Testament with the Old. At the same time, we need to be building a sense of the Bible’s unity, but detailed reading from beginning to end should come later.

Third, start with a Bible printed on paper thick enough to mark with a highlighter. Some study Bibles also have wide margins so that we can annotate them as we go. This may sound strange if our main experience up till now is of the old family Bible reverently dusted off when another birth, baptism, wedding or death needs to be written up in the front. Some may think it is sacrilege to mark a Bible, but there is a significant difference between reverence for the Bible as God’s word and plain bibliolatry. God’s word is a living word; the paper and ink of a Bible are the God-given means to access his word.

Other kinds of programmes are well intentioned but can be counterproductive if followed rigidly. Some set questions to apply to the text may be helpful if used with discernment, but this process tends to dictate what we should find in a text. If asked to identify, say, a promise from God, a sin to avoid, and so on, one may find some benefit in concentrating on the text for answers to the set questions. But consider this: Jesus said that the Scriptures testify to him, that Moses wrote of him. Is it not, therefore, more important to aim at building an understanding of how any text does testify to him, rather than trying to find a way, often mistaken, in which the text speaks directly about us? The Bible is primarily about God and his Christ. Let me clarify that: when we read (study) a passage, and after we have determined something of what it means in its own context, the main question about the application should be: ‘How does this testify to Christ?’ Of course, we need to apply its teaching to ourselves, but Christian application is derivative of knowing Christ. This approach may sound strange to some when struggling to understand the relevance of some part of the Old Testament.

Because of the size and complexity of the Bible, we all need help in studying it. In developing habits of Bible study, a good plan is to arm ourselves with other aids in the form of books that assist us in knowing and understanding the message of the Bible. While clergy, preachers and Christian workers should aim at a more substantial library, all Christians who are able to do so should arm themselves with basic literature for Bible study. Let me suggest a few examples of such literature. Next to the Bible, a good concordance is invaluable. The concordance enables us to track down the book, chapter and verse of every occurrence of every word in the Bible.¹⁶ Next to a concordance is a good one-volume commentary on the whole Bible.¹⁷ Also available are commentaries on individual books of the Bible which are of a non-technical nature, written for the layperson who has no formal theological training.¹⁸ A more concise study aid is a ‘study Bible’. This usually contains brief commentary notes at the bottom of each page under the relevant texts.¹⁹

The big picture first

I grew up in Sydney, Australia. I saw the foundation holes being dug in early 1959 as the building of the Opera House commenced on Bennelong Point on Sydney Harbour. I was there in 1973 when Queen Elizabeth II opened the completed building. Whatever you might think of the Opera House, it has captured the interest and imagination of people worldwide. Let us suppose I have some visitors from out of town or overseas who ask me to show them around the Opera House. It would be odd if I were to hustle them quickly inside the now famous building and show them details of the underside of the concrete ‘sails’, or some part of the interior timberwork. It would make more sense to choose a vantage point to view the building as a whole, perhaps from one of the many ferries that cruise past, or from the Domain across Farm Cove. In other words, the big picture should come first before looking at details. Get a feeling for the thing as a whole before trying to appreciate details in the abstract from their context. The same goes for the Bible. Work hard to build up the sense of the overall contents and shape that bind the sixty-six books together.²⁰

Occasionally, I have suggested that there is much to be gained from an initial speed-reading of the Bible from start to finish. This is to get a feel for the unity of the whole and should not be regarded as the normal way to read the Bible. The idea is to read from the beginning but not to stop to deal with details or to make sure you understand everything: simply go for it to get a general impression of the contents, the historical sequences and what it is all about. I believe we all would benefit from this radical approach once in a while. In suggesting this, I am not contradicting my former comments about not trying to read the Bible closely from start to finish; but I am suggesting one way of surveying the whole Bible to get a sense of what is in it. A closer reading of the text would be the next step. Whether you follow this advice or not, try always to keep in mind two basic points: first, the main character of the Bible is God, and second, every text in the Old and New Testaments has some connection to the central truth, which is God who has come in the flesh: Jesus in his gospel.

In this book I will be dealing with both the big picture and, to some degree, the detail within that big picture. In the same way that we look at some famous piece of architecture or a celebrated masterpiece in an art gallery, we need first to stand back and get a sense of the whole at the same time as attending to details. It is a ‘both–and’ approach, not an ‘either–or’. The Bible has a unity contained between the accounts of creation in Genesis 1 and 2, and the final chapters on the new creation in Revelation 21 and 22. The big-picture question then is this: how does the plot unfold from creation to new creation? That question is what this book seeks to address. I want to highlight the unity of the Bible while, at the same time, showing how the diverse themes each follow a historical progression so that texts differ in their distance from Jesus, and therefore from us who, by faith, are ‘in Christ’.

Reading the Bible in a church community

The Bible tells us that God saves us into living communities of believers. We should express this basic Christian reality by belonging to a regularly meeting community of the faithful – to a church congregation.²¹ Among other things, the local church is where we should hear the Bible read and explained, and where we study it as a community. We live in a largely post-denominational era, and many Christians these days seem not to be so conscious of their denominational roots as once was the case. I was born into the ethos of the Anglican Church but have greatly benefited from association with other denominations.²²

Churches, by which I mean congregations, vary widely in their biblical convictions.²³ At one end of the spectrum, there are evangelical congregations who are conservative and Reformed. At the other end, there are churches that do not have the authority of the Bible foremost, and others who deny much biblical doctrine outright as outdated. Somewhere on the spectrum, there are those who interpret the Bible by their subjective experiences rather than interpreting their experiences by the Bible (see Fig. 1.1). When we are faced with making a choice of which church to attend, we should try to find a Bible-based fellowship where the gospel is central and the preachers explain the Bible. It is true that we attend church regularly (weekly) to worship God together, but one of the main reasons for belonging to a fellowship of believers is the New Testament teaching that the Church is the body of Christ. We express our union with Christ through our unity in community. Then there is the mutual encouragement and accountability involved as we learn God’s word together. There is an important sense in which the worship of God means gathering in a gospel-based community. When someone says ‘I can worship God without going to church’, they are fundamentally mistaken if that is their excuse for not wanting the responsibilities of church membership and regular attendance.²⁴ We cannot worship God by disobeying him. Furthermore, it is only in such a fellowship that programmes for service in the world can be worked out, supported and promoted – including evangelism, social action and the care of the needy.

Figure 1.1 Reading a text in context

One of the most important aspects of Bible-reading in community is that the gathered church becomes a key agent of the interpretation of Scripture. As we struggle to put biblical principles into action in the life and activity of the church, we are engaging in communal interpretation of Scripture. It is a distinct advantage when the regular public reading of various parts of Scripture is taken seriously.²⁵ Simply reading the passage that is about to be expounded by the preacher is not the way to attune a congregation to the breadth and depth of Scripture.

Summary

The Bible is central to our Christian being and growth towards spiritual maturity. It is essential that we hold more than a general idea of its importance or its content. I have not argued the case for the inspiration and authority of Scripture and will not do so directly in the remainder of this study. Nevertheless, the reader should understand that I come to the Bible with the firm conviction that it is the divinely inspired word of God and that what the Bible says is what God says. What I have to say in this book only makes sense if the Bible is God’s word written for us. The coherence and grandeur of both the unity and diversity of the Bible testify to the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures as God’s word written. The size and complexity of the Bible also oblige us to undertake a regular and careful study of its contents. Because it is God’s word to us, we should read it with reverent and prayerful awe. Having the Bible is a privilege that we should not take lightly.

I will summarise the key points thus:

1The Bible is our sourcebook for the Christian faith.

2The Bible is a large corpus that requires some method of reading it.

3The Bible is the historical and progressive revelation of God. Consequently, not all texts bear the same relationship to us modern readers.

4We need to study both the big picture of the Bible’s unity and the individual parts.

5The Bible is primarily a book about Jesus, and only then is it about us.

6We should use a reliable ‘standard’ version.

7Understanding the Bible involves us as individuals and as members of a church community.

Notes

1 Mainly Latin, Greek and Syriac. Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, the Masoretic Hebrew text contained in the Leningrad text (eleventh century ad ) was the earliest complete Old Testament known to us. The Scrolls contained only one complete Old Testament book, Isaiah, which dated from about the second century bc and showed that the transmission of the Masoretic text of Isaiah had been undertaken very carefully and accurately.

2 The Old Testament contains a few chapters written in Aramaic, a Semitic language related to Hebrew.

3 There are, however, some Christians and congregations that only use kjv as if this version alone gives access to the original texts. However, the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformers were convinced that the Bible and liturgy should be in the language of the common people. In the seventeenth century, the kjv was in the common language of the day, but it is no longer.

4 Other modern versions that have proved popular include the New King James Version, the New American Standard Bible and the Holman Christian Standard Bible.

5 See Leland Ryken, The Word of God in English: Criteria and excellence in Bible translation (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2002); and Glen G. Scorgie et al. (eds), The Challenge of Bible Translation: Communicating God’s word to the world (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003). I discuss this matter in Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel-centred Hermeneutics: Biblical-theological foundations and principles (Nottingham: Apollos; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), pp. 288–95.

6 Not all such versions carry the word ‘Standard’ in the title, e.g. the niv .

7 A paraphrase is on the extreme dynamic end of the formal–dynamic spectrum (see the discussion of this below).

8 One of the most extreme examples that I have encountered is Clarence Jordan, The Cotton Patch Version of Matthew and John (New York, NY: Association Press, 1973), in which the events of the Gospels are transferred to the modern state of Georgia (USA) while the English is claimed to be that of the southern United States. Such recontextualising of the biblical events is both futile and destructive, and ignores the already global significance of the biblical events.

9 There are many regional dialects within the UK and the USA. When I was a student in Cambridge (UK) in 1960, I was privileged to have some private New Testament Greek tuition from Professor C. F. D. Moule. Sometimes, when I struggled over a difficult Greek idiom, he would suggest we look at the proposed New English Bible ( neb ), of which he was one of the translators, and which was soon to be released. On more than one occasion I had to admit that, as an Australian, I had difficulty in understanding the distinctly colloquial British English idiom of the neb .

10 See n. 5 above. Ryken favours a more formal translation while Scorgie’s volume allows more room for dynamic translation.

11 For example, Jesus’ use of the theologically loaded title ‘Son of Man’ would seem to depend on the formal (literal) translation of the Aramaic bar ʾ ĕnaš in Dan. 7:13. The more dynamic translation would recognise it as simply meaning ‘human being’. If the Greek equivalent in the New Testament were to be translated ‘human being’, the theological connection with Daniel’s man from heaven could easily be missed.

12 Goldsworthy, Gospel-centred Hermeneutics , pp. 288–95.

13 Matt Smith, ‘Why You Should Ditch Your Digital Bible’, Australian Church Record and The Gospel Coalition, 2 June 2020: https://au.thegospelcoalition.org/article/why-you-should-ditch-your-digital-bible (accessed 17 January 2024).

14 Smith, ‘Why You Should Ditch Your Digital Bible’.

15 However, see my suggestion below regarding speed-reading at least once.

16 There are such helps to be had online, e.g. Google entry: Bible concordance. For example, Young’s ( kjv ) Concordance (originally published in 1879) shows the grouping of the words according to the Hebrew or Greek word so translated. Also available in hard copy are the concordances of esv and niv .

17 One of the best is D. A. Carson et al. (eds), The New Bible Commentary , 4th edn (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994). Be aware that not all commentaries are by authors who honour Scripture’s supreme authority.

18 For example there is the Bible Speaks Today series published by Inter-Varsity Press (UK); also the Reading the Bible Today series published by Aquila Press (Australia). The next step up would be a series such as the Tyndale Old Testament and New Testament Commentaries (London: Inter-Varsity Press).

19 An excellent comprehensive one is Lane T. Dennis, Wayne Grudem et al. (eds), ESV Study Bible (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008). There is also an niv study Bible.

20 My comments above concerning digital Bibles are relevant here.

21 As I continued to write this during 2020–22, the Covid-19 pandemic severely restricted our ability to meet. The wonders of technology meant that most of us could and did stay connected even though we could not meet in person. This only underlines the fact that church as community is central to the Bible’s teaching about the people of God. It also should remind us that the aged and otherwise infirm should be cared for by the community of faith. This is dealt with in more detail in chapter 18 below.

22 We should be aware that ‘church’ is a word that is used variously for a building, a denomination (Anglican, Baptist, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic etc.), the identity of Christians through the ages, and a local congregation. The last-mentioned is closest to the biblical usage designating a congregation. Referring to the building where we meet as a church is one of the least helpful in popular usage. The Church is faithful people meeting, whether that is in a home, a ‘church’ building or the open air.

23 I deal with being and doing church in chapters 17 and 18.

24 The aged, the infirm, the sick, and otherwise isolated Christians, of course can worship God in their isolation, but that is not the norm. It is much to be desired that such people are kept in contact with their congregation through visitation and support.

25 In the Book of Common Prayer services of Morning and Evening Prayer, it is directed that a passage from both Old and New Testaments is read along with one or more psalms. If the full seven-days-a-week lectionaries were to be followed for a year, the Old Testament would be read once, the New Testament twice, and the book of Psalms once every month.

2

A place to stand

In this chapter, I consider one of the chief problems in the gaining of knowledge and in reasoning. The assumptions or presuppositions that we bring to our acquisition of knowledge are a matter of concern if they are unexamined. No one comes to any intellectual activity or the learning of new things with a blank mental sheet.¹ This is especially so in the interpretation of the Bible. The search for knowledge always begins with some already formed assumptions that give us purpose and motivation. Liberals and evangelicals will both claim to preach and teach the Bible, but they have different starting points: different world views, and different opinions about God and the Bible. Thus, they will have different outcomes from their search for the meaning of the Bible.

The real issue is how we read and understand the Bible. Consequently, one of the chief tasks in Christian apologetics and in forming one’s attitude to the Bible is to examine our presuppositions and assess their validity.² Robert Reymond refers to the great Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper and his use of the illustration of the Ancient Greek scientist Archimedes.³ In studying the mechanics of the lever, Archimedes is reputed to have said: ‘Give me a place to stand [Gk pou stō, ‘where I may stand’] and I will move the earth.’⁴ Thus, he recognised the need for both a place to stand and a fulcrum for his lever, which are outside of both himself and his object of focus, in order to understand. Reymond goes on to use this principle to illustrate the need for a transcendent authority for our understanding and knowledge. The word of God is that authority. A more modern analogy is the early computer jargon which gave us the acronym GIGO: garbage in, garbage out. How your computer is programmed (its presuppositions) determines its output. How our brains are programmed will determine how we think about eternal things. So how do we go about establishing sound presuppositions?

Presuppositions and prejudices

Whenever we come to some text, we bring a lot of already formed assumptions and presuppositions that affect how we assess the meaning and usefulness of what we read. Sometimes we need to assess our assumptions to see if they are sustainable rather than being merely unexamined prejudices. Our assumptions, or presuppositions, are part of our world view, which is the way we see and interpret reality around us. Evangelicals claim to be ‘Bible people’. When we assert this, we know full well that every other Christian would claim the same but with qualifications based on their distinctive presuppositions about God and the Bible.⁵ The evangelical distinctive is to claim to assign full and final authority to Scripture, in contrast, for example, to those who maintain that Scripture is only one authority among others. Thus, a well-used liberal claim is that authority is an amalgam of Scripture, tradition and reason. Some would go further and add experience, thus making the sense of authority even more diffuse. This is a complicated issue that challenges the very basis for our thinking about what is real and how we relate to it.

An evangelical reply to this is that such a triumvirate or tetrarchy of authorities is unworkable since there are false traditions when measured against Scripture or historical evidence. Tradition must be tested against Scripture.⁶ Furthermore, reason is flexible according to one’s world view, which includes one’s basic assumptions. What, after all, determines what is reasonable? Liberal Christianity has shown that, without a doubt, our presuppositions and prejudices determine the answer. For liberalism, many aspects of Scripture are challenged by reason, tradition or experience. But experience is such a subjective matter that it is unable to be an objective test of truth. Evangelicals assert that tradition, reason and experience must all be tested by Scripture because that is God’s authoritative word. Of course, tradition, reason and experience are legitimate parts of the equation but, in the final analysis, there can be one, and only one, supreme authority. Those who adopt the ‘multiple authorities’ approach will usually assign primacy to their supposedly neutral reason (liberalism), to tradition and reason (Roman Catholicism), or to experience (Neopentecostalism).⁷ In every case, it is Scripture that is sacrificed and made to conform to a supposed superior authority.

Let us, then, accept as a working hypothesis that the evangelical position is to assert the supreme authority of Scripture, to which tradition, reason and experience all must submit. The matter now becomes at least threefold. First, what is the canon of Scripture and on what basis can we assign to it final authority; why can we claim that this collection of books is the very word of the living God to us and all humankind? Second, how may we regard the text that has come down to us – the content of the canon?⁸ Linked with this concern is the question of the confidence we can have in the processes of translation from the original languages. Third, once we have settled the first two matters, however tentatively, how do we understand the relevance of this collection of ancient texts that we call the Bible; what is the meaning that we acknowledge as authoritative for us? Thus, the three major concerns are: what is the canon of Scripture, what does it say, and how do we understand what it says in relation to ourselves? The truly evangelical quest for the application to us will always reckon with the role of Jesus as the mediator of the word of God, and with the fact that Scripture primarily testifies to him.

Accepting that we have the divinely ordained canonical Scriptures and that the matter of translation is well served, the most pressing problem relates to the hermeneutics of Scripture. How we read and interpret these ancient texts and how we use them to build our body of theological formulations is an ongoing process requiring constant attention.

In the matter of apologetics, how does one arrive at and defend one’s presuppositional starting points to an unbeliever? One approach to applied apologetics involves finding areas of agreement between believer and unbeliever that we can build on to try to convince the unbeliever of the truth of the Christian faith. This method is frequently labelled ‘evidentialism’ as it seeks to find in history and artefacts, in the Bible, and in human experience, reasons or evidence why an unbeliever should accept the claims of Scripture. The critics of this approach, while not discarding evidence, raise the question of the presuppositional gap between faith and unbelief which is so basic and wide that what constitutes evidence for the truth of Scripture mostly cannot be agreed upon by believer and unbeliever.

It has long been recognised that evidentialists come to the task with their own presuppositions and that presuppositionalists certainly appeal to evidence. The point of difference lies in determining what constitutes valid evidence. The problem lies with the nature of sin and its effects on our reasoning powers. Certain a priori assumptions determine what are acceptable criteria by which to judge the value of proposed evidence. The pietistic evidentialist may point to the criterion of experience, as does the once popular Christian song affirming that Jesus lives: ‘You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart.’⁹ The presuppositionalist may well appeal to the logic and historicity of the resurrection narratives, but the final evidence is simply: ‘You ask me how I know He lives? The Bible tells me so!’¹⁰ The Reformer John Calvin maintained that this conviction depends on the inner testimony of the Spirit of God that confirms the word of God to the believer.¹¹

The essential difference between evidentialism and presuppositionalism lies in the former being basically a rationalistic (as distinct from a rational) approach that assumes meaningful common ground between believer and unbeliever about ultimate truth. By contrast, presuppositionalism recognises the radical difference between the mindset of faith and that of unbelief. This is, at its heart, a fundamental theological difference involving the question of how far humanity fell at the Fall.¹² Thus, the unbeliever, even the religious one, interprets all ‘facts’ without the God of the Bible, and will use them as evidence against God because they are assumed to have ultimate meaning without him. The believer understands all facts as controlled by, and as interpreted by, the God of the Bible. This is not merely a difference in epistemological method and opinion;¹³ it is a matter of the effect of humanity’s moral revolt against God and the refusal of the unbeliever to accept the Bible as the word of God. It is a matter of the noetic effect of our sinfulness and the need for regeneration to rectify it.¹⁴

The believer’s apologetic should consciously stem from regeneration and enlightenment by the Holy Spirit. It treats seriously the difference between the renewed and the unrenewed mind.¹⁵ The unregenerate mind cannot perceive the kingdom of God (John 3:3–8; 1 Cor. 2:14). Its arguments stem from a rebellious mindset that God has given over to foolishness (Rom. 1:20–3; 1 Cor. 1:18 – 2:16). In all of the unbeliever’s counter-arguments there is a spiritual disability: ‘The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned’ (1 Cor. 2:14). There are some evangelical Christians who may assert the truth of sin’s effects while still holding to the idea that all sinners have it within themselves to think clearly about spiritual truth and to freely ‘decide for Jesus’. The effects of sin are thus greatly and gravely underestimated.

What, then, is the point of contact that makes conversation between believer and unbeliever possible and not merely a waste of time and effort? This is the question that confronts both the evangelist and the apologist. Apologetics is rightly regarded as pre-evangelism and thus a necessary part of the process of communicating the gospel. Because presuppositionalism shuns humanistic rationalism and thus mistrusts the evidentialist approach, it does not follow that it is irrational. In fact, it is a rational application of the biblical truths about the unregenerate mind and the need for its regeneration.¹⁶ Nor does presuppositionalism shun all evidence. It differs from the naturalistic approach in what it accepts as evidence and why. Evidentialism assumes the validity of the unbeliever’s thinking and reasoning and considers them to be not necessarily wrong but only inadequate and needing further instruction.

Along with the unregenerate state of the unbeliever’s mindset, presuppositionalism includes the function of the remnant of the imago Dei,¹⁷ the image of God, as Paul expresses it in Romans 1:18–20. The presuppositional apologetic emphasises the radical difference between faith and unbelief, rather than focusing on the supposed similarities, which at best are superficial. The only real point of contact is that which the unbeliever ‘knows’ in their heart is there but suppresses and refuses to acknowledge (Rom. 1:16–20). It lies within the image of God in us, however distorted by sin. It needs the sovereign working of the Holy Spirit in regeneration to bring the sinner to hear the gospel with understanding, and ultimately to faith in Christ.

Reformed and evangelical presuppositional apologetics engages both negative and positive arguments. The negative approach assesses the alternative world view, that of atheistic humanism, including that of the ‘benign’ religious humanist, and seeks to demonstrate the impossibility of the cases put forward to defend its stance. The positive defence is the rational cohesion of the biblical world view. A recent leading exponent of presuppositionalism was Cornelius Van Til.¹⁸ His general presuppositional position has been ably put by Carl Henry,¹⁹ Rousas John Rushdoony²⁰ and John Frame.²¹ My own presuppositional point of view is supported by several factors. First, by the biblical doctrine of creation and the subsequent fall of humankind. The effects of the Fall mean that the epistemological and ontological frameworks of faith and unbelief are radically opposed to each other.²² While believers and unbelievers will agree on many things, they do so only to a limited degree. When it comes to the ultimate and eternal meaning of such things, there will be no agreement. The unbeliever interprets all facts as facts without God; the believer understands all facts to be God-facts.

One of the main reasons for being concerned here with apologetics is that it not only speaks to our evangelistic stance but also affects our own approach to the authority of the Bible. As we investigate the dynamics of progressive revelation, we will need to touch upon some areas that are quite deeply affected by the position we take. For example, within evangelicalism there are quite significant differences over the meaning of the sovereignty of God, and about the place of a literalistic interpretation of prophecy.²³ There are other, perhaps more subtle, examples of controversy that are addressed by our being concerned with the dynamics of revelation. It will be evident that certain evangelical approaches to Scripture are to some extent rationalistic in accepting principles of interpretation that are not drawn from Scripture itself but are said to be reasonable or self-evident. It is also possible for evangelicals to be so entranced by their inner experience that their apologetic approaches that of the philosophy of existentialism. The counter-argument is that the only consistent approach to spiritual reality is that the principles of the interpretation of Scripture must be revealed in Scripture itself. Furthermore, if Scripture is the word of the sovereign God, it must be self-authenticating, since there can be no higher authenticating authority than the God whose word it is.

The Bible is a book about Jesus

If, as it claims, the Bible is the word of the sovereign creator of heaven and earth, our first task is to understand what he is saying to us. We must allow God to establish our presuppositions by his word. Jesus is God’s Word come in the flesh, a fact that raises some basic questions. In the first three-quarters of the Bible, namely the Old Testament, Jesus is never mentioned by name. How, then, can we say that it is about him? We do so because he does. When Jesus found himself in a dispute with some Jewish religious people over what he was doing and saying, he claimed to be doing the work of God his Father, a claim that stirred up much animosity against him. His critics claimed to be authentically Jewish by following the words of Moses. Jesus’ parting shot was: ‘If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?’ (John 5:46–7). His reference to Moses is to the Pentateuch, ‘The Books of Moses’, containing the first five books of the Old Testament, and arguably the most objectively foundational part of the Old Testament. Here is contained all that makes for us a place to stand, including creation and the law given through Moses at Sinai. The Sinai corpus has been the foundation of Jewish religious life ever since. Jesus said it was about him. Those who opposed Jesus clearly believed that they were the ones staying faithful to the teachings of Judaism and especially of Moses. Jesus’ claim was a problem for his contemporary detractors, but it also remains a challenge for us Christians of the twenty-first century. Christians generally agree that Jesus is the centre of our faith and that he defines us in terms of our relationship with himself. If, as John’s account records, Jesus says the whole Pentateuch (Genesis to Deuteronomy) is about him, and if we are defined by him, we must consider how the Mosaic corpus is God’s word to us and, through the mediation of Jesus, about us.

Now, consider another potentially/seemingly problematic aspect of the words of Jesus. His post-resurrection words to the disciples raise questions about the extent of his claims.

And he said to them, ‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.²⁴

(Luke 24:25–7)

Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.

(Luke 24:44–5)

Jesus’ address to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:25–7) referred to ‘the things concerning himself’ in all the Scriptures. This statement perhaps does not necessarily imply that ‘in all the Scriptures’ means that every part, every single text, of the Scriptures is about him. Nevertheless, I contend that ‘all the Scriptures’ does mean ‘all’. In his later address to his disciples in Jerusalem, Jesus speaks of ‘everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms’. A reasonable assessment of these texts is that Jesus claims that the entire Old Testament is a testimony to him. Some criticise this assertion as unsafe exegesis in that Jesus does not specifically claim that every single text in the Old Testament is written about him. But while he does specify his death and resurrection as a guiding theme for understanding the Scriptures (Luke 24:46–7), it would be no help if he somehow excluded much Old Testament material as not testifying to him. There is no indication that he means only certain salient parts of the Old Testament are about him. To do so would have required him to specify what parts were relevant to him as the fulfiller and which parts could be ignored as irrelevant. After all, no text in the Old Testament explicitly names Jesus of Nazareth as its subject. The safer conclusion to be drawn is that the unity of Scripture means that every text in the Old Testament bears some identifiable relationship to Jesus, a matter we must take up in more detail later. Some parts are more directly about the Messiah (the Christ), but it remains for us to examine this in the light of the Christology of the New Testament.²⁵ The question of how Old Testament texts anticipate future events, and, in particular, somehow foreshadow the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth, is a matter I address in later chapters.

The texts quoted above concern the way Jesus saw the Old Testament in relation to himself. But what do we say of the New Testament? Some parts refer to the past events of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, many are concerned with the life of the Church in apostolic times, and some point to the future and especially to the return of Jesus and the consummation of all God’s promises. None of them was written by its human author directly to you and me, but rather to first-century Christians. Being the most recent biblical documents does indeed bring them closer to us than the Old Testament texts. Nevertheless, they must still be understood in their own context. Thus, for example, when Paul writes to the Galatian Christians: ‘So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came’ (Gal. 3:24), how does that apply to us Gentiles who were never placed directly under Sinai’s law in the way Israel was?²⁶ Consider the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5 – 7) – words of Jesus that are often treated as timeless words written directly to the Christian Church. Can this pericope really be adopted as a kind of ageless Christian manifesto, or do we need to make some adjustments because the original context is very different from ours?²⁷ There is a dynamic to the development of the Christian Church that affects the way we relate to New Testament texts, a matter we must examine in this study.²⁸

These examples illustrate the problem that we as Christians of the twenty-first century have in dealing with the Bible. The problem involves the writer of the text, the text as transmitted and translated, and the historical and theological distance of individual texts from the modern reader. It has also become increasingly realised that the problem also concerns us, the readers. Thus, the most basic hermeneutical problem relating to texts and their meaning concerns where and how we find the meaning for us of any text. Are we tied to trying to understand the intention of the biblical author? What if his intention was to address Ancient Israel? What if the author was not crystal clear in the use of his own language? He certainly knew nothing of our language, and his idioms and figures of speech with their cultural backgrounds often differ from ours. Does the meaning lie in the text itself, irrespective of what the author intended? Or does the meaning lie in the reader and in the process of contemporary interpretation of an ancient text? I want to suggest that all three aspects are relevant to how we perceive the meaning of a biblical text: the author’s intent; the syntax, grammar and semantics of the actual text; and the preconceptions, expectations, experience and mindset of the present reader.²⁹ In addition, we must consider the implications of divine authorship behind the human authorship, and the fact that God must be able to communicate to us as he wills, even when he uses ancient human mediators who are part of a fallen creation.

The unity and diversity of the Bible

There are two major objectives of biblical theology as a discipline: first, to lay bare the theological diversity within the overall unity of the Bible; and second, to show the structure of the unity that encompasses this diversity. The historical perspective of unity and diversity implies two things: first, that every part of the Bible has some connection with Jesus Christ and, through him, with all who are united to Christ by faith (unity); and second, that not every text relates in the same way to Christ or to us (distinction). We can demonstrate the dynamics of revelation by reference to the various kinds of transition and development within the process that we call ‘salvation history’,