Why is it that a devoted Christian can come up with bizarre interpretations of Scripture, while an unbelieving scholar can provide solid expositions of important passages?
One solution is the view that, everything else being equal, a believer's interpretation will be better than an unbeliever's. Thus, the accuracy of one's interpretation is affected by intellectual qualifications, acquired skills and exegetical experience, but it is also conceded that spirituality makes some kind of difference.
However, this reflects a nature/grace scheme and trivialises the work of the Spirit. It suggests that our reason, our natural gifts, and our humanly-developed skills take us thus far, then the Spirit gives us an additional little push. I'm too much of a Van Tilian to be happy with such an approach.
Anyone for exegesis?
An alternative solution is to recognise that a person's spiritual state is not an accurate predictor of exegetical soundness. Exegesis can be done by anyone: what distinguishes the believer from the unbeliever, the mature Christian from the immature, is the appropriation of the exegeted truth.
This too, is misleading. First, it draws too sharp a dichotomy between exegesis and application. The personal involvement of the interpreter is inseparable from exegesis at every level. Second, this approach splits the mind from the heart. The Bible does use the language of 'mind' and 'understanding' when it refers to our dependence upon God. These terms have a broader reference than the strictly intellectual, but that is just the point. The heart is the mind is the heart. It is unthinkable to suggest that the Holy Spirit is uninvolved in part of the interpretative process.
Divine and human
The key to our problem is that the Bible is both a divine and a human book. It is a false dilemma to say that the Bible must be read either as any other book or as a special book. We make a fatal error unless we read the Bible both as any other book and as a unique book.
Since the Bible contains a human language like Greek, one must apply the rules relevant to the study of Greek, and one needs to be a Christian to be an expert in this subject. Likewise, to the extent that the Bible reflects historical events, one should make use of archaeological data, and non-Christians with such training are far more dependable in identifying archaeological layers than are Christians who have never been on a dig.
Think of examples from other walks of life. Certain individuals are more skilled than others when it comes to driving a car. Consider Peter, a non-Christian, whose driving skills are totally reliable. Then consider John, a believer, who is a total klutz. It does not occur to us that John's Christian confession should have a noticeable effect on his driving skills, compared to Peter's. This is not to suggest that God is uninterested in John's driving - we do not want to divorce John's Christian identity from any aspect of his life, including his driving. But we never correlate driving skills (nor their result!) with the level of an individual's spirituality.
Most of exegesis has to do with the human features of the Bible: making sense of textual transmission by human scribes, identifying verbal forms in a human language, sorting out logical relationships in human discourse, reconstructing events in human history, assessing the significance of a human culture.
A submissive heart
Of course, the Bible is far more than a human book. It has to be read like any other book, but it must also be read as no other book. The divine qualities of Scripture are hardly subject to scholarly scrutiny. If God is the ultimate author of Scripture, and if this revelation is intended to lead us to a relationship with him, and if no one knows the mind of God except his own Spirit, then clearly we must receive the Spirit and be sensitive to him before we can hope to understand the Scriptures in their ultimate sense. It would be an unmitigated disaster if we gave the impression that, with respect to the essential purpose of the Bible, a submissive heart is optional.
Not just our exegetical labours, but every aspect of our existence - including driving a car - must be integrated to our Christian identity, and that means prayer, a spirit of obedience, and the commitment to subsume everything under the great goal of sanctifying God's name. But this is impossible without the ministry of the Spirit, who witnesses to the truth that we are God's children, who renews our minds so that we may understand the things of God, and who transforms our hearts so that we may learn to do only what is pleasing to the Father.
Dr. Silva is professor of New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary. This piece first appeared in the WTS Bulletin for Winter 1995/96 and is used by permission of Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, USA.
