Biblical Interpretation and the Communion of the Saints

As society has changed and evolved, so has our approach to hermeneutics. What once was a communal exercise has now become the exercise of the individual. Where the Church once saw Biblical interpretation as a theological effort, driven by faith, we now see it as driven by method. Where the Church used to confess in the communion of the saints, we now confess in the communion of ourselves. There is a serious loss of this communal aspect in the Church concerning Biblical interpretation. However, we as a society and a Church are in a transitional period of moving out of this modernistic approach to interpretation. Post modernism, despite its obvious flaws, has in a way brought us full circle. We as a Church are again becoming aware of the roll of community in Biblical scholarship.

The pre critical era, which would have spanned the time from the apostles up to around the 1600s or later depending on who’s making the timeline, was an era which approached Biblical interpretation universally. The Church, in order to declare right and proper doctrine, convened in counsels and synods. They gathered theologians from all around the Church. These men came together for months and sometimes years at a time to study the Word of God. Interpretation was not seen as an individual effort, but rather the effort of the Holy Catholic Church, that is to say, the Body of Christ. They saw the Scriptures as the infallible, inerrant word of God. On top of that, the Church read the Bible for the Church’s edification. It was an approach that did not have the flaws of the modernist systems, where one scholar sits alone in his room and finds an interpretation and then declares it as truth. Rather, it was a system that gathered the opinions of many scholars and theologians and then came to a consensus. There were flaws, of course. Were they aware of their presuppositions? Were they considering the historical context of the texts they were studying as much as they should? Kevin Vanhoozer points out all of these flaws in his introduction to the Dictionary of Theological Interpretation of the Bible. Despite the flaws though, the Church, not the individual, was tasked with Biblical interpretation and because of that, interpretation was more organic. We see this method used from the time of the Ante-Nicene Fathers all the way through to our great Reformed confessions.

With the rise of modernism though, there was a shift. Modernism created a gap between theology and interpretation. Faith no longer played a roll; rather interpretation became a product of method. If an interpreter would simply follow the correct method, it would lead them to the right understanding of the text. The upside to this was that interpreters became more aware of their own presuppositions. The downside is that interpretation no longer became the exercise of the Church, but rather the individual. On top of this, modernism showed a huge shift away from the idea that the Scriptures are infallible and inerrant. As Kevin Vanhoozer points out, its tendency was “to treat the biblical texts as sources for reconstructing human history and religion rather than as texts that testify to God’s presence and action in history.” In other words, the modernists were missing the point of the Bible. If the modernists are right, and it is proper method that leads to the right understanding of Scripture, then one would expect to have a great Ecumenical unity in the modern era. After all, anyone can be taught method. The problem of course is that we do not have that unity. Interpreters still come to their own conclusions and many of them are vastly different than someone else’s interpretations. Unfortunately, instead of making the modernist pause and question this approach to interpretation, it leads to them questioning the methods themselves. Perhaps there are more steps needed in the method. Instead of fifty steps to proper Biblical interpretation, we need seventy two steps. This has become a running joke in my hermeneutics class. How many steps will need to be added before the modernist finally throws his hands up and says, “This methodology stuff may not be the best way to approach interpretation”?

Fortunately it appears as if we are coming into an era where the modernist approach is being abandoned. While it may be easy to classify post modernism as an abandonment of absolute truth, what the post modern era is really about is moving out of and away from modernism. This has its downsides, but it also has some serious benefits to the Church. Biblical interpretation stands to benefit greatly from a stepping out of modernism. Interpretation is seen again as a communal effort, not the effort of individuals armed with the proper methods. Again, there are flaws here as Kevin Vanhoozer points out. He writes, “Postmoderns typically deny that we can escape our location in history, culture, class, and gender. Our readings of the biblical text will be shaped, perhaps decisively so, by our particular location and identity. The goal of interpretation is therefore to discover “what it means to my community, to those with my interpretative interest.” Still, the benefit is that the roll of community in interpretation is once again seen. While the modernist era did away with the synods and Church counsels, the post modern era may see us returning to that holistic way of interpretation. The Gospel Coalition, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, and even organizations like Evangelicals and Catholics Together are examples of the Church coming together to understand what the Scriptures say and mean. Are we interested in brushing our differences under the rug? No, but that’s not the point. The point is to recapture the idea that to be in Christ is to be part of a covenant community. We are not interested in doing away with our confessional convictions; rather, we are striving to recapture the importance of the community. We are striving to bring the Church back to a point where we can all confess, “I believe in the communion of the saints”.

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