Simplifying the Bible

Biblical Simplification is identifying a single purpose or truth as more important than all others in Scripture and reinterpreting all of Scripture according to this one truth or purpose.

Those who preach to be relevant make the popular response to the Gospel most important. If people don’t respond, goes the reasoning, we haven’t truly fulfilled the Great Commission. So a felt need is identified, and one or more proof-texts give a Biblical flavor to the preacher’s advice. Seemingly at the other end of the spectrum, those who take a Christocentric approach to the Bible reason that if people are judged based on their response to Christ, we must always preach Christ. Furthermore, since we are to preach the whole counsel of God, it only makes sense that the whole counsel of God be about Christ.

The Internet Monk is unashamedly in this camp.

So when I come to a passage of scripture that has no actual clear reference to the Gospel accounts of what Jesus said and did, or in the Biblical revelation of who Jesus is and what he means, I make sure that I start, stay with and end with Jesus in my reading of that passage.

If the whole purpose of the Bible is Christ, why do we have the whole Bible? Why aren’t just the Torah and then the Gospels enough? Forty authors over two millennia…for what purpose? It is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

Taking the Bible and distilling its message co-opts authorial intent, making the Bible a puppet of the exegete. The Bible is not just about that one, exquisite, pinnacle point of theology. The Bible addresses many mundane matters, but these mundane matters connect our congregations to the text. The Bible’s authority in the matters of mundane life prove its authority in the divine.

A minister friend of mine spends his days ministering in a rural church. These are farmers who usually have only a high-school education. They are not impressed by typology in the Psalms. They have no pretensions to being concerned about critical apparatus. There is the woman whose husband walked out on her three months ago; the man with cancer, and the family whose son has become rebellious. This pastor calls the Dean of Students at his alma mater and says, “Do you know what I learned in seminary that helps me minister the most…Nothing!”

If the Bible enables the man of God to be competent, equipped for every good work, and if seminary equips the man of God to understand and communicate the Bible, why does someone leave seminary and come to believe that he wasted his time there? Perhaps the seminary failed. Perhaps he was a poor student. But perhaps we have reduced the Bible to something we can comprehend.

This is why Biblical Simplification is so harmful. The Bible is complex. It reveals truth about reality even in the way it communicates. If it is reduced to one primary principle, it has been  constrained to fit within the mind of a man. And being so constrained, it can only speak from within the understanding and imagination of that man. It can no longer correct his understanding of the world, and this is the very occasion when the Bible’s intimate connection to reality can be most compelling. By its unwavering presentation of reality it can rebuke any misunderstanding of the world or the Faith.

This is the implication of inerrancy: The Bible speaks with higher authority than anything else I have access to. Here the Bible must instruct us individually. Finding others more ignorant of Scripture than we are is too easy and does not lead us to wisdom. How much fervor has been roused and spent on fools who deny even the possibility of miracles without increasing our understanding of Scripture?  Though it cost me all I have, I must learn to understand the Scriptures. I must learn to read them the way they were written because they were not written the way I, in the 21^st century, read. If I try to read them my way, I wallow in confusion. When I learn to notice the clues leading to authorial intent, I move from confusion to understanding.

One continual hurdle we face is that we forget this transition from confusion to understanding. For all practical purposes, we forget that there was a transition—or transitions - plural. We discuss doctrine as though these truths are self-evident, relying on our understanding of Scripture as though that understanding were as reliable as the text.

To be honest, we can never purely discuss Scripture apart from the limitations of our understanding, but we can listen to one another with humility. Remember that what may be difficult to understand today may be understood tomorrow—and it may even be more important. More difficult, though, is the unlearning that greater understanding must often bring. Misunderstanding must be dismantled in order for true understanding to be gained. There is that implication of inerrancy again.

If we have simplified the Bible—if we have made the Bible easy to understand, then we have trimmed away the details that can correct our understanding of the world. And if we cannot learn to better understand the world which Jesus created, how can we learn to know him better?

The Bible is about reality. From historical realities such as “God created the world” to future realities such as the establishment of the Messianic kingdom, the Bible is about reality. But it is in the present realities that the Bible proves true in the hearts of God’s children. The Bible is more closely wedded to reality than we are. It describes reality more faithfully than we can perceive it. And the Bible is profitable for teaching us to accurately perceive reality and live in harmony (Shalom, if you prefer, Sam) with reality.

This is why 40 authors over two millennia wrote so much about mundane matters. They knew better than we do how to communicate truth to the hearts of people. In these mundane matters we learn to read the Bible as it was written, and we learn how God put this world together, how he intends for it to function. And as we understand these things, we gain the ability to understand the divine as well.

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