The Natural Sense
The Natural Sense
First, we must look for the natural sense of the biblical text. I will call this the principle of simplicity.
One of our basic Christian convictions is that “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). That is to say, it is as much the nature of God to reveal himself as it is the nature of light to shine. Now God has revealed himself chiefly by speaking. We may be quite sure, therefore, that he has spoken in order to be understood, and that he has intended Scripture (the record of the divine speech) to be plain to its readers. For the whole purpose of revelation is clarity not confusion, a readily intelligible message, not a set of dark and mysterious riddles.
This principle of simplicity strikes at the root of much popular interpretation. For example, the destructive criticism of radical Christians would limit the truth to a tiny minority of scholars who claim the competence to sift the wheat from the chaff in Scripture, while the fanciful reconstructions of some evangelical Christians would turn Scripture into a complicated jigsaw puzzle to which they alone possess the key. Over against these distortions we must assert that God’s whole purpose in speaking and in causing his speech to be preserved is that he wanted to communicate to ordinary people and save them.
It is true that in some matters Scripture is not as plain as in others. This is apparent from the fact that, although devout and careful students of the Bible, deeply concerned to submit to its authority, enjoy a very wide measure of agreement on the great fundamentals of historic Christianity, they still disagree on some points. One thinks, for example, of such questions as these: whether baptism should be administered only to adult believers or to the children of Christian parents as well, and whether candidates should be immersed in the water or have it poured over them; whether our doctrine of the church should be “independent” (each local church being autonomous) or “connectional” (local churches being in some way federated); whether the ministry of the church should be episcopal or presbyterian, or indeed whether the local assembly should rather have a nonprofessional pastoral oversight; whether miracles (for example, the instantaneous healing of organic diseases without medical means) should be expected in the contemporary church regularly, occasionally or never; and whether the “millennium” (the reign of Christ for a thousand years) is intended to be understood literally as a future earthly event or symbolically as a present spiritual reality.
When equally biblical Christians disagree on such matters, what should we do? We should be humble enough to reexamine them ourselves in the light of sound principles of interpretation. And we should be mature enough to discuss them with one another without rancor. If then we still disagree, we must regard such disputed points as being secondary in importance, and respect one another with mutual Christian love and tolerance. We should also rejoice that in all the central doctrines of the faith we remain agreed, for in these the Scripture is plain, clearly expressed and virtually self-interpreting.
God chose human language as the vehicle of his self-revelation. In speaking to men through men he used the language of men. As a result, although Scripture is unlike all other books in being the Word of God, it is also like all other books in being the words of men. Since it is unique because divine, we must study it like no other book, praying to the Holy Spirit for illumination. Since it is ordinary because human, we must study it like every other book, paying attention to the common rules of vocabulary, grammar and syntax. For if (as we saw in the previous chapter) God did no violence to the agents of his revelation (human persons), he did no violence to the instrument, either (human language).
It follows that no serious Bible reader can escape the discipline of linguistic study. Best of all would be a knowledge of the original languages, Hebrew and Greek. But most will read in English, and for them an accurate modern version is essential. Although popular paraphrases are useful additional helps, there is no substitute for a careful, scholarly translation like the Revised Version or the Revised Standard Version (both revisions of the Authorized/King James Version) or the New International Version (O.T. 1973, N.T. 1978), whose text has been quoted throughout this book. These are probably the best translations available in English. The Good News Bible also deserves a special mention, since it combines reliability with unusually simple and straightforward language. An analytical concordance (like Young’s or Strong’s) is another extremely valuable tool, for it not only groups the biblical words according to the English (AV) text but then subdivides them into the original Hebrew and Greek words and gives their meaning. Excellent concordances are now available for both the New International Version and the Good News Bible, although neither divides the words according to the original Greek or Hebrew.
In reading the words and sentences of the biblical text, we must look first of all for their obvious and natural meaning. In Sir Charles Odgers’ standard book on the interpretation of legal deeds and documents his third rule is that “words are to be taken in their literal meaning.” Unless the subject matter shows otherwise, he writes, “the plain, ordinary meaning of the words used is to be adopted in construing a document.”7
Unfortunately, the fanciful allegorization of Scripture has often brought serious Bible reading into disrepute. It was already indulged in by Jewish commentators before Christ, of whom Philo of Alexandria was the notorious example. It is not surprising that some Christian commentators in the post-apostolic period tried their hand at the same game. The so-called Epistle of Barnabas, for instance, an apocryphal work of (probably) the early second century AD, contains some outrageous allegorizations. In one passage the author quotes the Mosaic regulation that the Jews might eat every animal that divides the hoof and chews the cud, and explains it thus:
Cleave unto those that fear the Lord, … with those who know that meditation is a work of gladness and who chew the cud of the word of the Lord. But why that which divides the hoof? Because the righteous man both walks in this world and at the same time looks for the holy world to come.8
Now certainly to “chew the cud” of God’s Word is a very suggestive expression for Bible meditation, and also the Christian is a citizen of two worlds. But equally certainly this is not what Moses had in mind when he wrote about cud-chewing, cloven-hoofed animals!
The allegorical school of interpretation was further promoted by Origen of Alexandria in the fourth century AD and by medieval churchmen. It is greatly to the credit of the sixteenth-century reformers that they rescued Scripture from this kind of arbitrary treatment and insisted that what is simple and straightforward is always to be preferred to subtleties. John Calvin put it admirably:
Let us know, then, that the true meaning of Scripture is the natural and obvious meaning; and let us embrace and abide by it resolutely. Let us not only neglect as doubtful, but boldly set aside as deadly corruptions, those pretended expositions which lead us away from the natural meaning.9
To look for the natural meaning of Scripture is not necessarily the same as looking for the literal meaning. For sometimes the natural meaning is figurative rather than literal. Jesus himself had to reproach some of his hearers for their excessive literalism. Nicodemus misunderstood his reference to a second birth so completely that he asked incredulously whether a man can reenter his mother’s womb and be born. The Samaritan woman seems to have supposed that the living, thirst-quenching water which he offered her was down Jacob’s well. And when later Jesus claimed he could satisfy people’s hunger by giving himself to them as living bread, they asked, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (John 3:3–4; 4:10–15; 6:51–52). These examples should be enough to warn us against a dead and rigid literalism. It should have been obvious that Jesus was using figures of speech.
His favorite form of instruction was the parable, though occasionally he used the allegory. The difference between them is that in an allegory the similitude is drawn at many points, whereas the parable is an everyday story told to illustrate one main lesson, the wealth of detail being added not to teach subsidiary lessons but for dramatic effect. Examples of the allegory are the good shepherd in John 10, the vine and the branches in John 15 and the sower in Mark 4. An example of the parable is the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29–37). Jesus told it in answer to the question “Who is my neighbor?” and taught from it that true neighbor-love transcends the barriers of race and religion. It is not legitimate to press the details—for example, to suggest that the inn represents the church and the two denarii given to the innkeeper the two sacraments. This would be to turn an obvious parable into an allegory and to provoke questions about what is represented by the brigands, the oil, the wine and the donkey.
Scripture is very rich in metaphorical language, and in every metaphor it is essential to ask at what point the analogy is being drawn. We must avoid arguing from analogy, that is, elaborating the correspondence beyond the limits which Scripture sets. Thus, God is our Father and we are his children. As our Father, he has begotten us, he loves us and cares for us. As his children, we depend on him and must love and obey him. But we have no liberty to argue, for example, that since God is our heavenly Father, we must also have a heavenly mother, on the ground that no child can have a father without a mother. Nor can we argue that because we are called “children,” we can avoid the responsibility of adult thought and action. For the same Scripture which commends to us the humility of a little child also condemns in us a child’s immaturity.
If some Scripture is literal and some figurative, how are we to tell which is which? The fundamental answer is that we are to look for the natural sense. Common sense will usually guide us. In particular, it is wise to ask ourselves what the intention of the author or speaker is. Let me give two examples.
First, it is often said that the Old Testament authors conceived the universe as a “three-decker” construction with earth as man’s dwelling place, heaven above him like a great canopy punctured with holes through which the stars peeped, and sheol (the abode of the dead) beneath him; that they believed this in a literal and spatial way; and that when it rained, for instance, God had literally “opened the windows of heaven.” I do not of course deny that this is the kind of language they used, but I do seriously doubt whether they believed it literally or intended their leaders to understand it literally. Take Psalm 75. In verse 3 God is represented as saying that “when the earth quakes,” it is he who holds its pillars firm. Did the psalmist think that the earth was literally balanced on stilts? I think not. In the next verse God commands the wicked “do not lift up your horns” (a symbol of prosperity and success) and in verse 10 it is written that “I will cut off the horns of all the wicked,” while in verse 8 we are told that in the Lord’s hand there “is a cup full of foaming wine” (a symbol of his wrath).To me it is quite gratuitous to insist that the author thought the earth was set on literal pillars, unless we are prepared equally to insist that he thought the wicked have literal horns (which will one day be cut off) and that God literally holds a cup of foaming wine which he will one day pour out upon all the wicked of the earth.
My other example is taken from the special form of biblical literature called “apocalyptic,” which claims to set forth hidden truths of both present reality and future history, usually in a series of weird and wonderful images. The Book of Revelation is a Christian apocalypse. In it God’s redeemed people, gathered round his throne, are said to be wearing white robes which they have “washed … and made … white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev. 7:14). Now to take this literally would be rather repulsive. It would also be impossible, since robes laundered in lamb’s blood would not come out white. No. The author clearly intends the expression as a symbol to be interpreted, not as an image to be visualized. We are to understand that the righteousness of God’s people (their “white robes”) is due entirely to the death of Christ (“the blood of the Lamb”) in which they have put their trust (“washed their robes”). Thus, in this case, too, the “natural” sense is the figurative, not the literal.