My Bible Study Journey

This month is unofficially Major Doctrines month, this year, over here at The Renaissance Biologist! Since in the context of the Bible, "doctrine" commonly means (and can be translated) "teaching," how does one access the teachings of the Bible? The most common answer I see is Bible study. Come along for a somewhat organized summary of the journey I've taken in the last year or two, regarding my own Bible study.

What are the major viewpoints on Bible study?

Historically, there have been--and still are (though with changed proportions)--several views on the believer-Bible-study relationship:

1. Individual Bible study is best reserved for leaders of congregations or parishes (pastors/priests) using extensive study aids based on previous scholarship, and laypersons should learn Biblical doctrine primarily through preaching.
2. Individual Bible study is most important for pastors/priests, and laypersons should learn Biblical doctrine through preaching and through group Bible study under pastoral supervision. In both cases, use study aids appropriate to the level of knowledge.
3. Individual and group Bible study are equally appropriate for pastors/priests and laypersons, with or without study aids based on previous scholarship, and with or without (usually without) pastoral supervision of the layperson.

View #1 - Priests-Only

This stance was dominant in the Roman Catholic church around the time of the Lutheran Reformation. Because Luther wanted to reform a group of interrelated teachings and practices, and ended up forming the Lutheran church instead (which later fragmented), this view on Bible study was changed along with other doctrines about the sacraments, liturgy and worship, and justification before God.

There were several factors playing into this view (Roman Catholic source). Because Bible reading is technically distinct from but often conflated with Bible interpretation (exegesis), the church saw danger in allowing unsupervised lay readings of (= study of) different interpretations of Scripture that verged on heresy. In historical context, the intellectual preparation of priests and laypersons was vastly different. And it does take a baseline level of knowledge (which few laypersons had at the time) to recognize correct interpretations of Scripture.

This quote from the link above summarizes the conundrum, speaking of the 20th century Roman Catholic practice of not encouraging, but not forbidding, individual layperson reading and study of Scripture: 

"It was never forbidden to read the Bible. But some priests were worried that congregations would come up with dozens of conflicting interpretations of Scripture. These priests knew of over 300 Protestant denominations who had distinct beliefs about the interpretation of Scripture. Many of these interpretations conflicted with each other yet every one of them claimed divine inspiration. As a whole, neither Catholics nor Evangelicals are into relativism (which says there are many truths)."

View #2 - Priest-Supervised

This stance has become more dominant in at least the LCMS. It is what I grew up with, and a very close variant is where I am now. The concept of small groups (as opposed to pastor-plus-group-in-church) grew out of the Pietist movement. Congregations whose pastors were opposed to Pietism in any form (not just its excesses) do not allow small Bible study groups unless they are led by a pastor or other called, ordained minister.

I think that the ACNA, at least the parish in which I am currently a member, has a variation on this view. One unique feature of Anglicanism, which has been quite different from my past experience within the LCMS, is due to the combination of episcopal (vs. congregational) structure and the difference in scope and rigidity of confessional documents (39 Articles versus 600+ page Book of Concord). The priests at our parish do supervise Sunday morning and weeknight groups, but have said that nothing in the bylaws requires their presence at each study group. Stay tuned!

View #3 - Un-Supervised

I'm going to spend the most time here because it's fairly common, and I see a large number of problems with it. Denominations tending to take this view run in the non-Roman-Catholic and sometimes non-Reformed streams. For background information on differences in major and less-major beliefs between denominations, please check out Ready to Harvest. Let's take a look at two doctrines related to this view, specifically particular views on each doctrine.

Doctrine #1 - Perspicuity of Scripture

A basic formulation (Roman Catholic source) of the "perspicuity" (clarity) of Scripture is that it assumes that anyone who reads the Bible with a basic understanding of the English language will find its message clear. A narrower formulation (LCMS source) is what I grew up with, and still hold to: that the parts of the Bible speaking about salvation are clear to the layperson. With the caveat that some understanding of translation principles and how salvation was talked about in first-century Jewish and older terms is required to determine which parts of the Bible are speaking about salvation, this is a fairly decent formulation.

However, the broader formulation has major implications and is, I believe, an incorrect and untenable view. Here's a short list off the top of my head:

• Let's say two laypersons disagree on what is literal and what is figurative language in a biblical text. How can they determine who's right?
• How do verses that directly state that some Scriptures are confusing fit in?
• Why do Christians (block quote above) therefore disagree so strongly on what verses and longer texts mean?
• Where in the Bible does it specifically say that each layman should engage in personal, daily Bible study by him- or herself, apart from indirect or direct pastoral guidance?
• Is Scripture so clear that it's less necessary to learn about what the text actually says than to jump to applying it to one's own life (see methods section below)?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, one's views on perspicuity relate very closely to doctrine #2 . . .

Doctrine #2 - Priesthood of All Believers

The most basic formulation of this doctrine, based on 1 Peter 2:8-10, is that each Christian has access to Christ and does not need to go through a priest or pastor to relate to Jesus. Simple enough, yes? Husband thinks otherwise (emphases mine):

"I don’t know how to put it concisely, but there’s also the Charismatic tendency to believe that the Holy Spirit will guide private reading of scripture to right understanding independent of historically and culturally nuanced exegesis; Craig Keener’s book Miracles Today comes to mind here as relates that miracles happen among just about every group that believes that the Holy Spirit has promised to work miracles through them, regardless of their doctrinal minutia (e.g., cases among Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists, and Pentecostals, suggesting that while the Holy Spirit will in fact work through people today, He probably won’t interpret people through the Bible as though working a Ouija board. Also the tendency to ignore how much the way people think is shaped by cultural surroundings—lack of hermeneutics, causing folks not to try to learn how the humans involved in writing of the books of the bible thought as well as their original audiences, as well as how we might be misreading it today for similar reasons."

In the chat and comments sections of several live videos I've recently watched by such diverse Christians as Alisa Childers (Reformed apologist), Faith Womack (Presbyterian pastor's wife), and Melissa Dougherty (ex-New-Age, Reformed apologist), plus many channels that Husband frequents, there is a very unfortunate tendency for people to say flat out that they don't need (and don't trust) anyone else's work of doing the difficult task of figuring out and writing down what Scripture really means.

If a believer is refusing to use even a searchable Bible software (or a concordance, for that matter) because it's "man's word" and therefore "inherently untrustworthy," what is the real issue?

Could it be expressive individualism masked as piety?

What are the major methods of doing Bible study?

If you've read to this point in the post, you may be wondering why I'm bothering to include this section. Because I am in the middle position, and have an ever-increasing respect and appreciation for the decades of diligent scholarship done around the Scriptures, fleshing out and freshening the understanding of the Christian community as a whole on what the divinely inspired human authors of the various books meant to say to their immediate audiences, and how we can apply that knowledge to the message for us (not "to" us) today.

Individual

Bear in mind that study is more than devotional reading. In a cursory search, I found over 27 different techniques or approaches to individual and group Bible study. Individual methods are very briefly described here (sources: The Faith Space, Bible Gateway, Bible Study Tools, Desiring God, and When You Need God):

• Inductive. This method assumes that the Bible will explain (interpret) itself throughout, and has core steps of observation (studying the text in one or several translations, usually without anything but a concordance), interpretation (using cross-references and the dictionary to figure out what the text means), and application (to one's own life). This method has at least 17 acronym-variants such as SOAP, IDEA, and REST, which convey the same ideas but in more or less devotional fashions.
• Study of a passage of specified length (verse, chapter, book). The overall goal is to see how each length of text fits into the global message of the Bible.
• Topical, thematic, or character study. These methods assume an exhaustive concordance because one is tracing a specific subject through the arc of Scripture.
• Verse mapping. In this method, one writes out a single verse in several translations, defines the key words with a current dictionary, uses cross references, and writes a summary.
• Reuben A. Torrey's method (1856-1928, a Congregationalist in the revivalist tradition) is gratifyingly detailed. He encouraged daily, serious, diligent study of a ranked list of biblical topics.

Group

I test as an introvert on every personality assessment I take. However, I also glean more from group Bible study than from my own, lately, because I am aware of the narrowness of my own perspective compared to the wealth of work that scholars have already done, and that others have absorbed through their reading. (The last source listed above says the opposite, not really giving a logical justification - it is important to be aware of group dynamics and their pros and cons.) Of making many books . . .

Here are some methods uniquely suited to group-based Bible study:

• Discovery. This resource uses only the Bible in groups of 4-8 new Christians. Use of different versions is encouraged, with the goal of discovering basic God- and people-related truths about the passage in order to apply it to one's own life.
• A specific inductive study method, abbreviated COMA. This looks at the historical, literary, and thematic context of the passage; observes for key details and repeated themes; extracts the meaning of the biggest ideas; and applies it to group members' lives.
• Rick Warren developed 12 methods of study, essentially variants on each other. He does encourage Scripture memorization.
• Sword. This uses a picture of a sword to cue participants to ask what the passage says about God, about humanity, and application possibilities.
• Swedish method. This uses metaphors including a light bulb, question mark, and arrow to cue participants to ask 5 basic questions about each passage studied.

What resources are actually useful for Bible study?

For the "ordinary" Christian (layperson), you may have noticed above that shockingly few of the available tools are routinely recommended for personal study. I think this is related to over-credence given to the idea of Scriptural perspicuity, and the anti-intellectualism I've spoken about before. Channels such as How to Faith a Life, and Coffee and Bible Time, have done an admirable job in encouraging use of additional resources that capture and respect the scholarship related to the Scriptural text. However, some people prefer to read over watching or listening, so here is my list of what is useful for studying the Bible:

• Attitude that you do not in fact know everything 😉 and a willingness to delay making a firm opinion on something until you have truly looked at it from all reasonable angles.
• Translation on the word-for-word (literal versus paraphrase). Here's a neat graphic showing where translations fall on that spectrum. Please note that the textual basis (manuscript groups) differs - for example, some use the Textus Receptus for the New Testament, while others use Nestle-Aland.
• Concordance. Strong's Exhaustive is commonly cited.
• Commentary. Be very aware of the theological bent of the author(s) you choose. Some Christian traditions are less or more objective than others, and everyone has presuppositions that they may or may not admit, and may or may not be aware of. Philosophy matters!
• Scholarly or popular-level work specific to the text, expanding on a commentary. Let's say you are studying the Pauline epistles. The foremost New Testament scholar today is N. T. Wright. Or, if you're studying Genesis, don't omit the work of Old Testament scholar John Walton.

I hope you found something helpful to you in this post--happy studying!