Christian ministers spend hundreds of hours learning how to properly interpret the Bible. After all, the Bible is a very challenging book! But are all those hours of learning really necessary in light of the doctrine of the Clarity of Scripture (which states that with the help of the Holy Spirit, the message of the Bible is clear to anyone who seeks to know and obey God)? Is not the help of the Holy Spirit adequate? Well, yes, but as usual, things are bit more complex than this.
I find that when individuals seek to understand the message of scripture with the purpose of knowing and obeying God, the Holy Spirit doesn’t always make message automatically clear. Rather, I find it more common that the Holy Spirit, will lead the interpreter on a journey of discovery. This is precisely because one does not get to know a person through short, easy answers. Rather, we get to know people, I mean truly know people, through dynamic and challenging engagement; by being stretched.
This means that the Holy Spirit will lead the interpreter to navigate what is called “interpretation gaps”. Interpretation gaps are the various elements that separate modern readers from the meaning of any given biblical text (whether its a word, verse, sentence, paragraph, chapter, or even a testament). These gaps include language (the original texts of the Bible were written primarily in Hebrew, Greek, and some Aramaic), geography (the events of the Bible take place primarily in the Middle East which is removed from the majority of interpreters), history (the events of the Bible take place no less than 2000+ years ago), and culture (ancient Near Eastern patriarchal culture (the OT), and first century Palestinian Judaism facing Hellenism (NT)).
These four elements remove most interpreters quite drastically from the context of the text. Granted that all meaning is tied up in context, if context isn’t accounted for properly, meaning is lost.
The time that folks spend in learning how to interpret the Bible is focused on filling in these gaps. This means learning Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic, learning the contours of Middle Eastern geography, understanding the various dynamic wrapped up in the variety of historical settings of scripture, and getting a solid grasp of the cultural milieu.
Obviously, this is no easy task. The question, then, is: is all of that really necessary to understand the Bible? Isn’t the Holy Spirit enough? My understanding is that the Holy Spirit guides the student through the process of learning for the single fact that knowing and obeying God is a process; it is a journey. Automatic answers will not suffice to get to know God on a personal level. True relationship is developed when people challenge one another.
Imagine that you’re sitting down to a cup of coffee with someone you would like to get to know. During that time, you ask them probing questions. All the while, the person gives you only one-word, concise answers; no explanations, no emotion, no humanness. That would be quite boring! This isn’t what interpreting the Bible is all about. The Bible is not about knowing facts about God, but to know God personally. These are two very different things. Personal knowledge is relationship, struggle, discovery, emotion, surprise, intrigue, mystery, joy, and even frustration.
This is what overcoming the interpretation gap is all about— knowing God.
After all, Jesus’ greatest lesson in theology for his disciples was sitting down and sharing a meal with them. He wanted to know them not know about them. This is what the Holy Spirit does for us in or journey of discovering scripture.
