What’s the Key to Interpreting the Bible?

Last week in my series on “What Do Mennonites Believe?”, I explored how many leaders in Mennonite Church USA understand the authority of the Bible. This then brings us to a crucial question: what is the right way to interpret the Bible?

When Martin Luther translated the Bible into German so that the common people could read it for themselves, he assumed that the message of the Bible would be fairly easy to understand. History has proven him wrong. What happened instead is that a wide variety of different ways of interpreting the Bible proliferated. That’s because the Bible is a large, complicated book, written by many different authors over many centuries, with different perspectives and purposes, and not all agreeing with each other! Because there are so many tensions and differences within the Bible, and because its message and purposes are not always clear, the reader needs to make interpretive decisions. The result: thousands of different interpretations!

For example: Martin Luther believed that certain books of the Bible that he believed articulated the central message of the Bible most clearly should be used to interpret other books of the Bible that were less clear or central. He chose the Gospel of John as the clearest gospel, and Paul’s letters to the Romans and the Galatians as the clearest letters. For Luther, these books made it clear that the central message of the Bible is that we are saved by faith alone in Jesus Christ, not by works. Other books, such as the Epistle of James, Luther thought were woefully inadequate and misleading. This approach is called a canon within the canon. In other words, some books are more special–even more inspired–than others.

John Calvin, another great reformer, disagreed strongly with Luther about this. Calvin taught that all books of the Bible, indeed all verses of all books of the Bible, are equally inspired and have equal authority. The Old Testament is just as much the church’s authoritative scripture as the New Testament. There is no canon within the canon. Calvin believed that despite the tensions and apparent disagreements within the Bible we are obligated to make them all consistent with each other. One way to do this is to say that New Testament commands to love our enemies and be nonviolent are meant for our personal lives, whereas the Old Testament laws about capital punishment and war are for society and government. We apply different scriptures for different aspects of life, or for different times and places, so that they are all equally true and consistent with each other.

Mennonites agree with Luther more than with Calvin on this point. The Bible is not a static book; it is a book that is dynamic, responding to different situations and cultures and new questions. It is a holy dialogue among the authors (even within the books themselves) and they don’t all agree. There is movement; there is direction; there is sometimes progression in thought and understanding. There are sometimes a “minority report” which–later–becomes the dominant message. To honor this dynamic and movement we must find the interpretive key. There is indeed a canon within the canon.

But Mennonites disagree with Luther as to what is the canon within the canon. Rather than privileging Paul’s message of salvation through faith rather than works (Mennonites believe this isn’t what Paul is saying in any case), Mennonites make Jesus’ own teachings and example the key to interpreting the rest of the Bible. If Jesus is indeed the Word made flesh, the clearest and most direct expression of God’s self-disclosure, then it is his life and teachings which ought to be the beginning point for understanding the entire Word of God. And of the four Gospels, it is the first three (especially Matthew and Luke) that actually contain the most teachings of Jesus. Here is where we find all of his parables, his guidance on moral questions, and most of his healing ministry. And when it comes to Jesus’ teachings for guiding his disciples, the greatest collection of his teachings of all is the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew, chapters 5-7). For Mennonites, this is the high point of the Bible, the clearest expression of God’s will for us. Everything else in the Bible should be interpreted in this light.

That doesn’t mean the Old Testament is inferior. Indeed, everything Jesus teaches is first found in the Old Testament. So Jesus actually helps us find the best path through the Old Testament.

But even if we use Jesus’ teachings as the key for interpreting the rest of the Bible, there will still be many disagreements about how to understand and apply various parts of the Bible today. Are we doomed to have a church in which everyone simply interprets the Bible for themselves, resulting in a permanently splintering church? Mennonites believe that the most sound interpretation of the Bible is discerned by all believers studying and praying together. Scholars can help us understand what the Bible meant in its own time, but only a church of practicing disciples can rightly discern what God is saying to us now through these scriptures. So the Mennonite church tends to be a “bottom up” structure, rather than “top down.” It is all of us, interpreting together, that must decide what is the best way to do God’s will now in this moment and circumstance. That doesn’t mean the group always is right, but the group has a much better chance of being led by the Spirit of Christ than our own individual interpretations.