Summing Up a Semester of Inductive Bible Study

Today was the last day of Inductive Bible Study. I spent it going through the process we had learned all semester and asking, practically, which parts of the process they thought were useful for real ministry (as opposed to ivory tower academic classrooms).

Here is our review with comments:

1. Pray...

a. not just for God to help your mind correctly understand the original meaning (like what Paul was trying to say to the Corinthians),

b. but your mind to know what your audience (congregation/children/youth/self/family) needs to know and

c. how their/your heart needs to be formed (conversion of the imagination)

d. how their/your behavior (feet) needs to change/act.

2. Decide what text you are going to use.

a. This is not just a matter of which translation you will preach from (assuming you are not facile with Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic). I suggested that when you have in mind what the text meant and what your audience needs to hear, you use the translation that best expresses it.

b. This is also a matter of textual criticism. Using a text that has or doesn't have a certain reading or certain verses is also an implicit decision.

I did have a couple who wanted (unless they were yanking my chain) to use the KJV. I suggest three possible rationale for doing so: 1) it is the version the congregation uses, 2) you think it represents the truest textual tradition (one should probably still shift to the NKJV if one thinks this), and 3) you think it represents the church's tradition! If it was good for God for 1500 years, maybe it's not too bad :-)

3. Tool #1: Survey the book or unit the text is in (observation--what did the text say)
4. Tool #2: Do a detailed observation of the passage (also observation)

I now asked them to caucus on what benefit these tools might bring, really, when you don't have to turn in an assignment.

For surveying, one student suggested it was a useful tool at the beginning of a sermon series, getting the big picture of the material you will be preaching on for the next several weeks. I suggested the themes you observed in your survey could become the sermon topics.

For detailed observation, we agreed that "blowing up" a text and then circling key terms and making key observations was not time consuming and very helpful not just for the leader but for people in their devotions (minus of course the categories I had given them--syntax, grammar, etc...).

5. Identify the right questions for interpretation.

There are other right questions too, ones that are ultimately more determinative for any specific sermon. But when determining what it meant, good questions come straight from your observation of the text, whether you did it formally as in this method or informally by just reading it.

Good big picture questions have to do with the key themes and patterns your survey identified. Good questions of specific passages come from detailed observations.

6. The Interpretive Cycle 1: The Immediate Context
7. The Interpretive Cycle 2: The Broader Literary Context (including genre)
8. The Interpretive Cycle 3: The Historical-Cultural Context (including especially the rest of the relevant testament)

One can only proceed through layers of context in a cycle. You have to start with the immediate context of the passage that your are "questioning" (see 5). You inevitably bring certain pre-understandings and presuppositions to the text. This is not all bad, since otherwise you wouldn't be able to connect to the passage at all.

The immediate context may seem to answer your question adequately without need for any further investigation. However, you really should glance at the broader context, the rest of the book in question, to make sure. In instances like Romans 6-8 or 9-11, looking only at Romans 7 or Romans 9 will throw you off track. The broader context is necessary to keep you from false conclusions.

Part of the broader context is the genre context, which blurs into the final context category, historical-cultural context. This is the "world behind the text," both the cultural background and the specific situational background. Sometimes, again, one is convinced from the text alone that you know what the text means, only to find out from the background that you were looking at the text through anachronistic lenses. Commentaries are some of the best sources for such information.

We might also add that the most immediately important background context is the rest of the testament in question. If you are asking a question in the Old Testament, look at relevant background information from the OT. If you are asking a question in the NT, you have not only relevant background from the NT but from the OT as well.

We go through this cycle over and over again. Each time we pass around the circle, our pre-understanding is in theory either confirmed or changed. Then we proceed through the "hermeneutical circle" again.

A word study is simply a type of interpretive study that goes through the cycle to define a word. In other words, it follows this procedure where the question you are asking is one of definition--What does this word or phrase mean? So you look at the immediate context where the word is used. Then you look at places where the word is used in the broader context. Then you look to the background context, most prominently the rest of the NT or OT.

Other kinds of interpretive questions include how questions, why questions, and many more.

So then we caucused again. What of these tools might someone use in actual ministry?

We suggested that hopefully they would pay attention to the evidence of the immediate context. The counter method is called "proof-texting," where you simply read the words of a verse and pay no attention whatsoever to the words that come before and after.

They all showed enthusiasm for Blue Letter Bible and strongly indicated they would use it. I suggested they should at least hit the C button on a verse they were using to see if there was anything quirky about the Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic that jumped out at them.

I suggested they should all at least look at one commentary on the passage they were using to see if there were any blind spots about the text, something you couldn't possibly know without background information or because their pre-understanding was getting in the way. Of course we all know that no commentator can eliminate their own pre-understanding either.

9. Reach a Conclusion

on the answer to your interpretive question, at least as far as the original meaning of the text is concerned. We will be wrong very, very often. But fear not. As long as you preach the law of love (God and others) and the rule of faith (the consensus beliefs of the church), your audience will be edified. Misinterpret boldly that the Spirit may come. But preferably misinterpret unintentionally rather than on purpose :-)

10. Integration

a. Perhaps the first step toward integrating biblical texts is to understand each individual text fully in the light of its particular historical situation. We have already addressed this context in interpretation, but it is not the particular situational aspect of a text that we connect to other texts but its underlying dynamic, dare we even say principle.

Here we cannot move directly from any individual text to application because...

b. The texts of the Bible are in a "flow of revelation." The NT often sends us in a significantly different direction than the OT does. Even within a testament, we can find differing trajectories. Did God or Satan put it in the heart of David to number the children of Israel? Should Priscilla teach Apollos or shouldn't we let a woman teach a man?

This flow is not as simple as dispensationalism or covenantalism might suggest, at least not if we listen to the way the NT authors use biblical texts. We...

c. find the biblical center on a particular topic not simply from the Bible alone, which does not tell us how to prioritize its teaching. In general the NT gives us the authoritative lenses through which to read the OT. In ethics, it has set the final filter for behavior--love God and love your neighbor as yourself.

But to find the center of doctrine is more difficult. On issues like the sinfulness of humanity, the nature of the Messiah, the resurrection, the nature of suffering, the NT significantly redirects or modifies the OT. Yet on these topics God has continued to clarify and extend Christian understanding. Creation ex nihilo, the Trinity, our continued existence between death and resurrection, these are at best shadowy teachings in the biblical text. In such cases the tradition and consensus of Christendom help steer us to the proper texts as biblical centers on such topics.

But before these "orthodoxies" emerged, the other side had biblical texts at least equally supportive of their positions.

The class today agreed that everyone integrates biblical texts together whether they intend to or not. There are verses that seem to say conflicting things. Everyone choses, usually on the basis of the tradition they are from. In such cases it is best for us not to pretend that we are simply following the Bible but admit that we are Wesleyans or Baptists, Lutherans or Reformed, charismatic or Catholic.

11. Identify the right questions for appropriation/application

The right questions for your congregation, children, youth group, self, family are not only a matter of their needs and desires. God's word stands over us even when we don't want to listen.

But sermons and Bible lessons usually have an address, and this address has much to say about the questions with which we come to the Bible looking for answers.

a. What do I/we/you need to learn from the Bible this week?

b. How do I/we/you need to be formed and changed in my/our/your heart and imagination?

c. What do I/we/you need to do this week?

In practice we will come looking to the text for answers and begin the process here rather than with some arbitrary text. We will start asking the Spirit to bring us to the right text for the needs of our audiences.

Answering such questions is a matter of wisdom and the Holy Spirit. The Spirit just as often helps us through the wisdom of others rather than by investing us with wisdom that we do not normally possess. If you are a preacher without wisdom, you must seek out the wisdom of others.

12. Appropriation/Application

The goal of appropriation is to join the questions of appropriation with the relevant biblical center of integration. We too are in the flow of revelation. We too are the people of God. There are...

a. points of continuity and discontinuity between our time and the time of the biblical center. These can change the way teaching and ethics are appropriated today. These differences between then and now often help us clarify cultural aspects of biblical times and transcultural aspects. Aspects of biblical teaching that were different from the culture of the time seem particularly transcultural, while teaching that is the same as what everyone was saying at the time often turns out to be cultural.

On the other hand, there is always the danger of assuming that our culture is always right too. God's word ultimately has to stand over us.

b. Ultimately the task of appropriation is both a spiritual and an ecclesial task. The trajectory of Christendom is set by the Holy Spirit working through the church catholic. The lone Christian is less likely to recognize prophetic correction. We best decide the big issues in dialog with as many "Spirit-filled" believers as we can.

There's the whole course (and a little more, I fear)...