Audio Transcript

Each of us is a Bible interpreter. Each of us is trying to interpret and understand the meaning of God’s word accurately. So how do I know if my Bible interpretation is accurate or if it is false? It’s another great question from a listener to the podcast. This listener did not give us his or her name. But here is the email: “Pastor John, hello! Paul tells us ‘the law is good, if one uses it lawfully.’ That’s 1 Timothy 1:8. So the Bible is good if one uses the Bible biblically. So how can I know if I’m using my Bible biblically or using the law rightly?”

I would say that there are two ways to go about answering this question. One is you could gather together — and I will gather together — some biblical pointers that give guidance to how the law, or biblical teaching in general, is to be handled. That may be what they’re asking: “Show me some biblical pointers for how to handle the Bible or the law.”

Secondly, the other way to answer this question is to realize that there are people who insist that even the pointers that I give could be questioned, and then we’d have to deal with that problem. I could give, for example, five biblical pointers to how the Bible says we should handle the law. And a certain kind of person could say to me, “But how do I know that I’m reading those pointers correctly?” And I could give an explanation of the pointers and how they work. They could say, “But how do I know that I’m interpreting your explanation correctly?”

Then a Roman Catholic might chime in and say, “You can’t. You can’t be sure of any of those things, which is why Protestants are so divided. You should let the church, the Pope, ultimately decide what everything means and let him instruct you.” To which the person could consistently say, “But then how do I know when I’m reading what the Pope wrote in his encyclical that I’m interpreting the Pope correctly?” And so on, ad infinitum.

“There are spiritual and moral preconditions for a true handling of God’s word.”

There is a kind of person that is like that. You can see that those are two very different kinds of problems. The first person is simply asking, “Could you give me some biblical guidance for how to understand the law in the Bible and to help me know I’m interpreting it correctly?” The second person has a much deeper problem and is basically calling into question whether a human being can know anything. There are skeptics like that. They’re wired to be so suspicious and so skeptical about their own interpretations that they never come to a knowledge of the truth.

Handling the Law

Let me take these one at a time. Here’s the first one: What are some biblical pointers for how to handle the law — I’m thinking Mosaic law first and then Old Testament more generally — correctly?

1 Timothy 1:6–11

Let’s start with the context of the text they’re asking about, 1 Timothy 1:8, where it says this:

Certain persons, by swerving from [a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith], have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions. Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless . . . [to indict] whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted. (1 Timothy 1:6–11)

Here are some pointers for how to handle the law in that context:

Don’t swerve from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith because there are spiritual and moral preconditions for a true handling of God’s word.
The prohibitions of the law are not mainly for people whose hearts are right with God and are led by the Spirit under the law of love.
The law is mainly for the lawless who need to be shown that there’s an authority outside of them to which they will give an account.
A right use of the law accords with healthy doctrine, which, Paul says in 1 Timothy 1:11, is in accord “with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God.” Make the gospel of Christ crucified the touchstone for the right use of the law.

Romans 3:19–20

Here’s a second cluster of pointers from Romans 3:19–20. Paul says,

We know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

Here we get pointers like these:

Though the law is given to Israel, it stopped the mouth of the whole world.
It will never be the instrument of justification. No one gets right with God by law-keeping.
Through the law comes the knowledge of sin. That is, the law confronts us with our sin. It’s not the solution to the sin problem. It points away from itself to Christ. If we read the law rightly, we will see that the law points away from the law to Christ.

Matthew’s Gospel

Here’s a third cluster of pointers from Jesus. He says, for example, in Matthew 5, that the law is misused by the Pharisees because they don’t take it deep enough. “The law says, ‘Don’t kill.’ ‘Don’t commit adultery.’ But I say to you — and I’m getting at the real purpose of the law — ‘Don’t get angry’ and ‘Don’t lust.’” There are clues for how you handle the law in Matthew 5 (see Matthew 5:17–48).

“If we read the law rightly, we will see that the law points away from the law to Christ.”

Or another example is when the Pharisees condemned Jesus and his disciples for eating with tax collectors and sinners (Matthew 9:10–13), and when they condemned them for plucking some grain on the Sabbath and eating it as they walked along (Matthew 12:1–8). In both these cases in Matthew, Jesus said that the problem is the Pharisees don’t know how to read; they don’t know how to read their Bibles. He quoted Hosea 6:6: “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.” Then he said, “If you knew what this means, you would not have condemned the guiltless. You wouldn’t have used the Old Testament that way. If you knew what Hosea 6:6 meant, you wouldn’t have used the Old Testament to condemn us.”

In other words, there are key interpretive passages in the Old Testament that give guidance for how to rightly handle the law. There are many, many more pointers in the Bible to the right handling of the law. Just one example would be the book of Hebrews. Oh my — almost every page of the book of Hebrews is written to help us understand the limits of the law and the right use of it.

But How Can We Know?

Let me close by saying a brief word about this other kind of person who responds to virtually every effort you make to explain the Bible or help them understand the Bible by saying, “But I can’t really know if I’m interpreting you or the Bible rightly. How can I know?”

Now, Jesus has something to say about that person and to that person. His claim was blunt and unsympathetic. He said, “You don’t live that way.” That was his answer to people like that. “You don’t live that way. Your life shows that you really do live on the basis of your confidence in your interpretation of things. Yes, it does. When you talk that way, you’re a hypocrite.”

Here’s where I’m getting that. Listen to Matthew 16:1–3: “The Pharisees and the Sadducees came, and to test him they asked him to show them a sign from heaven.” They needed more signs. “We can’t understand what you’re doing. We don’t know where your authority comes from. We don’t get it. We need signs.” Here’s what Jesus said: “He answered them, ‘When it is evening, you say, “It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.” And in the morning, “It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and menacing.”’” To which Jesus says, “You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.”

In other words, they were saying they could not know how to interpret Jesus and his words and ways. “It’s all so uncertain. Who can know? We need more signs, more explanation.” But when it comes to their livelihood, they trusted their powers of interpretation just fine. “Red sky in the morning, sailor’s warning. Red sky at night, sailors delight. We can tell the one from the other, and we’ll stake our lives on it. We’re not going fishing today — there’s going to be a storm.” They were hypocrites. They were just plain outright hypocrites.

So I would say this to the person who is claiming not to be able to know how to read anything with confidence: you are probably inconsistent, and you may be a hypocrite who is just using feigned helplessness to avoid the clarity and conviction of Scripture.

When we come to Luke 4:41, near the end of this message, we are going to see something that has a direct bearing on your life in 2023 and on how you relate to demons and fevers and death and sin and the sovereignty of Christ over all of it. I point this out now lest you be tempted to think that these two-thousand-year-old stories are interesting, but not really relevant to “my issues today” or the problems swirling in our culture. That would be a big mistake.

Luke writes in verse 41 that “demons also came out of many, crying [to Jesus], ‘You are the Son of God!’ But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak.” Why? Why won’t he let them talk? They just spoke one of the greatest truths in the world: “You are the Son of God.”

That’s better than what their master, Satan, said back in Luke 4:3 in the wilderness: “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” These demons aren’t playing that game. They came out crying, “You are the Son of God.” There’s no if about it. They know whom they’re dealing with. So why does Jesus silence them when they speak such truth?

He gives the answer at the end of verse 41: “ . . . because they knew that he was the Christ.” Eventually, the word Christ became virtually a proper name along with Jesus — Jesus Christ. But in our text, it’s a title: “the Christ.” Luke tells us, “They knew that he was the Christ” — which is the English transliteration of Christos, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Mashiah (1 Samuel 2:10), which means “anointed one” or “Messiah.”

So the demons know that Jesus is the long-expected Son of David, the kingdom-bringing, world-conquering, enemy-defeating Jewish Messiah. They know this. And at the end of verse 41, Luke says that precisely because they know this truth, Jesus silences them. My point here is simply this: in that act of Jesus, when he silences that truth, there is a worldview that has everything to do with your life today. That’s where we are going. But let’s get there by starting at the beginning of the text.

Utmost Authority

His own hometown of Nazareth has just tried to throw him off a cliff (Luke 4:29). But they couldn’t. Because, for now, Jesus is untouchable. He will decide when he is to be killed. “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10:18). So he walks away unscathed through the crowd. And after a twenty-mile journey, he comes to Capernaum, where Simon Peter lives (which becomes significant in Luke 4:38). And on the Sabbath, he enters the Jewish synagogue and does the same thing he was doing in Nazareth. He teaches:

He went down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee. And he was teaching them on the Sabbath, and they were astonished at his teaching, for his word possessed authority. (Luke 4:31–32)

In other words, he spoke as one who had the right to tell them what they ought to believe about God. We know that’s the focus of his teaching because down in Luke 4:43, when he leaves to go teach elsewhere, he says, “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose.” When he mentions “other towns as well,” he means that’s what he was teaching here, in Capernaum — the good news of the kingdom of God.

And his teaching came with authority. In other words, he claimed to have the right to tell them what they ought to believe about God and his kingdom — the way God would rule the world, and the way people should live under his rule. And verse 32 says, “They were astonished.”

The authority of Jesus is astonishing. I mean, if it doesn’t astonish you, you’re not paying attention, or your emotional capacities are out of whack. Listen to the way he teaches in his first extended sermon in Luke, one chapter later.

Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them [my words] is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great. (Luke 6:46–49)

If I spoke like that — if I said, “What you do with my words determines whether your life will be swept away in the final judgment” — you’d think I was a nutcase. That’s breathtaking authority. And, of course, they did call him a nutcase (Mark 3:21) and worse: “possessed by Beelzebul” (Mark 3:22).

Demons in the Light

But here in the synagogue of Capernaum, that’s not the effect. The effect of Jesus’s teaching here is not only going to astonish the audience; it’s going to drive a demon out of the darkness and make him a witness to the truth.

The reason I say that’s the effect of his teaching is because Jesus doesn’t do anything — nobody does anything — to cause the demonic outburst of Luke 4:33–34. Jesus is just teaching. He’s telling the good news of the kingdom. He’s magnifying God as king and liberator (Luke 4:18–19). And he’s doing it with unprecedented authority. And the next thing we hear is this loud demonic voice: “Ha! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are — the Holy One of God” (verse 34).

Verse 33 gets us ready for this outburst: “In the synagogue there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out with a loud voice . . .” Why? This is demonic suicide. Why did he do that? He knows Jesus is the Holy One of God. This is not going to go well for the demon.

I don’t know why he made such a suicidal appearance instead of keeping his head down. But what I see, and what you can see, is this: the teaching of Jesus with authority provokes demonic exposure — and then deliverance. It was true then. It is true now.

“The steady-state, normal way that demons are exposed and removed is the teaching of truth in love.”

In 2 Timothy 2:24–26, the apostle Paul said that if the Lord’s servant teaches God’s truth with clarity and authority and love and patience and boldness, two things may happen: (1) God may grant people to repent and come to a knowledge of the truth, and thus (2) they may escape from the snare of the devil, who had captured them to do his will. The steady-state, normal way that demons are exposed and removed is the teaching of truth in love. The devil is a liar and a hater. He cannot abide a heart or a community ruled by truth and love.

Absolute Sovereignty

Now at this point in Luke 4, someone might say, “I’m not sure bringing demons out of the dark is safe.” No, it’s not safe, unless Jesus is present and on your side. If you turn away from Jesus because you want to play with the demonic (sorcery, séances, necromancy, fortune-telling, Ouija boards, mediums, crystal balls, palm reading, witchcraft, astrology, yoga), you may draw the demons out of darkness, but you won’t have Jesus’s help. That is a dangerous place to be.

But if you stand with Jesus, if you trust him and position yourself under his authority and in his care, here’s what happens:

Jesus rebuked him [the demon], saying, “Be silent and come out of him!” And when the demon had thrown him down in their midst, he came out of him, having done him no harm. And they were all amazed and said to one another, “What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out!” (Luke 4:35–36)

Surely this is the main thing Luke wants us to see: Jesus is absolutely sovereign over demons. The people were “astonished” at the authority of his “teaching” (verse 32), and now they are “amazed” (verse 36). For when that teaching provokes demonic exposure, there is not only “authority,” but “power” — authority and power to dispatch that exposed demon and deliver the one who was in bondage. Let the last part of verse 36 sink in and be your boldness as a follower of Jesus: “With authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out!”

No Demon Can Disobey

Why? Why do they obey? I mean, the whole point of being a demon is that you don’t obey God. Demons hate God. So what’s with the obedience? Here’s the answer: God has two kinds of willing.

He has a moral will, like the Ten Commandments: “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. Don’t kill. Don’t steal. Don’t lie.” That’s God’s moral will. And demons don’t give a hoot about obeying those commands. The very meaning of being a demon is to be opposed to the moral will of God.

But the other kind of divine will is not the moral will, but the sovereign will: “Let there be light” — and there was light. “Lazarus, come out” — and the dead man came out. “Demon, be silent, and come out of him” — and he came out. He obeyed.

And the people were amazed and said, “What is this word?” (verse 36). Indeed! That’s the right question. The Ten Commandments are the word of God, and they don’t get obedience from demons. What is this word?

The closest we get to an answer is the last part of verse 36: “With authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out.” The Ten Commandments have authority. God has a right to tell us how to live. But this word of Jesus comes with authority and power.

“Jesus Christ forms a thought in his mind, he turns it into a word, and that word creates reality.”

We don’t know how this works. We don’t know what kind of power this is. Electromagnetic? Bluetooth? Wi-Fi? Radio waves? Those are all mysterious enough. But Jesus Christ forms a thought in his mind, he turns it into a word, and that word creates reality — which we should expect, since Hebrews 1:3 says, “He upholds the universe by the word of his power.”

Fevers Flee Before Him

Then Luke wants us to see that this absolute authority and power of Jesus’s word extends not only to the world of demons, but also to the world of nature. So we follow him to Simon’s house in verses 38–39:

And he arose and left the synagogue and entered Simon’s house. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was ill with a high fever, and they appealed to him on her behalf. And he stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her, and immediately she rose and began to serve them.

Surely it’s not a coincidence that Luke uses the same word for how Jesus spoke to the fever that he did for how Jesus spoke to the demon. Verse 35: “Jesus rebuked him [the demon].” Verse 39: “He stood over her and rebuked the fever.” This is an even more graphic picture of how mysterious this power is. You might argue that a demon obeys the sovereign word of Jesus because he is a rational creature, making up his mind to do so and then obeying. But here, Jesus is talking to a fever — rebuking a fever.

What is a rebuke? It’s telling someone they’ve done something wrong, said something wrong, gone where they’re not supposed to go. So Jesus says in effect, “Fever, you should not be doing that. You don’t belong here.”

Now the fever doesn’t understand anything Jesus is saying. It has no ears. No brain. No comprehension. It has no will. And it leaves her. It obeys just like later, when the wind and the water obey him (Luke 8:25).

Do we have any scientific categories at all to explain that kind of power? No. This is the scientifically inexplicable sovereignty of the Son of God over all things. All demons. All nature. That’s what Luke wants us to see — the sovereignty of Jesus over demons and nature.

Every Demon, Every Disease

But suppose someone says, foolish as it may sound, “Well, that was a one-off. One demon. One fever. You can’t generalize this power to other situations.” Luke now shows that the power both over demons and over disease is not a one-off. Verses 40–41:

Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to him, and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them. And demons also came out of many, crying, “You are the Son of God!”

Various diseases. Many demons. When Jesus speaks or touches, they go. His authority and power are absolute. No demon and no disease can stand when Jesus exerts his sovereign will, which he can do whenever he pleases. Then and now.

Why Christ Came Once

And now we have arrived at the end of verse 41, where we started, and we can turn to the twenty-first century. The second half of verse 41 says that when the demons declared Jesus to be the Son of God, “he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Christ.”

Why didn’t Jesus want the news to spread that he was the Messiah? Jesus gives part of the answer in Luke 9:20–22, when he told his disciples not to spread this news. He says it’s because “the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

The common conception of the arrival of the Messiah did not include his crucifixion. It included his supernatural military triumph over all Israel’s enemies and the establishment of his earthly kingdom. That’s what they expected from the Messiah, and that was not going to happen for another two thousand years or more.

In Luke 4:41, when Jesus blocked the spread of that misunderstanding of the kingdom and of his Messiahship, he signaled a view of the world — a worldview — that accounts for the twenty-first century, for our place in history, and points to how demons and fevers and death and sin and the sovereignty of Christ relate to us.

The mystery of the kingdom (Luke 8:10) was that the Messiah, in his first coming, would heal the sick and cast out demons and raise the dead and forgive sins, and in this way he would give many signs of what his final, perfect, sinless, painless, deathless kingdom would be like, after his second coming. The mystery was that there would be an unspecified period of time between the inauguration of the kingdom in Christ’s first coming and the consummation of the kingdom at his second coming. That’s where we live.

God’s number-one purpose in the first coming of the Messiah was that he die in the place of sinners and so purchase forgiveness. “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

Until He Comes Again

So, here’s our situation between the two comings of Christ. By trusting Jesus Christ, his sacrifice for sin becomes mine. It counts for me, for you. All our sins are forgiven once for all (Colossians 2:13). There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus through faith (Romans 8:1). God’s just condemnation and Satan’s legitimate accusation are gone.

The one damning weapon with which Satan and his demons could ruin you is stripped from their hands — namely, the record of your unforgiven sin. That record was nailed to the cross. “This he set aside, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:14)!

“God is totally, one hundred percent for you and not against you, if you are in Christ Jesus.”

Which means this for our lives: We live in the period of time between the Messiah’s two comings. In this period, Jesus — the risen, reigning Son of God, who upholds the universe by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3) — is absolutely sovereign over demons and disease. But he does not remove them in this period of time. That’s the next phase of redemptive history, after the second coming.

But what he does remove, absolutely and completely, is your guilt and condemnation. Which means that in this period — in your life today — God is totally, one hundred percent for you and not against you, if you are in Christ Jesus. And if God is for you, who can be against you (Romans 8:31)?

And if you say, “Demons can be against me; disease can be against me,” no, actually, they can’t be. Because in Christ Jesus, whatever disease and whatever demon assaults you, Jesus turns it for your good (Romans 8:28). This is the good news of the kingdom: Jesus is sovereign, and he is for you. Trust him. Be valiant for him until he comes or until he calls.

ABSTRACT: In today’s intellectual milieu, pride and sloth are the two chief interpretive vices. Partisan pride protects its beliefs behind the shield of identity politics, while systemic sloth shrugs indifferently at the pursuit of truth itself. In response, today’s Bible interpreters need more than the right kind of method; they need to be the right kind of people: readers marked by interpretive virtue rather than interpretive vice. With boldness, they oppose systemic sloth and proclaim what God has said. At the same time, with humility, they resist partisan pride and remain humbly open to correction. Meanwhile, local churches have the opportunity to become cultures of virtuous reading, places that form Bible readers to be people of interpretive virtue.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Kevin Vanhoozer, research professor of systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, to describe a hermeneutics of boldness and humility.

Of the writing of books about reading the Bible there appears to be no end. Twenty-five years ago, I published one such book: Is There a Meaning in this Text? The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge.1 It was the high noon of postmodern theory, and I wanted to provide a Christian alternative to two deadly sins of interpretation: modern pride (a too confident belief in reason, truth, and method) and postmodern sloth (a too dubious disbelief).

I believed then — as I still do — that biblical Christianity, by definition, depends on being “biblical,” that being biblical requires a high view of Scripture and the wisdom to read it rightly, that reading rightly is challenging in every age, and that reading rightly requires you to be more of a saint than a scholar.2 I also believe that fulfilling Jesus’s Great Commission to make disciples of all nations involves helping Jesus’s followers to follow God’s word where it leads with minds and hearts, thus becoming readers and doers.

There is a place for exegetical methods in learning to read the Bible rightly, but even heretics may know how to parse verbs, diagram sentences, and so forth. Methods alone are no guarantee of truth, which is why I ended my hermeneutics text with a section on the importance of humility and conviction — qualities of the reader, not steps in an impersonal process.

From Intellectual to Interpretive Virtue

Hermeneutics may be “the science of textual interpretation,” but good reading, like good science, requires readers to have certain personal qualities. So does good knowing, as I discovered in Linda Zagzebski’s Virtues of the Mind.3 I knew about moral virtues — characteristic traits and habits of a “good” person — but even though I studied philosophy in college, I had never heard of intellectual virtues. Opinion became knowledge (so I was taught) thanks to the process of justification. By way of contrast, Zagzebski defined knowledge as what a person attains by acting with intellectual virtue (“a state of cognitive contact with reality arising out of acts of intellectual virtue”).4 Intellectual virtues are habits of thinking that lead to truth rather than away from it, habits that accord with the mind’s “design plan,” the way it should work in order to achieve its proper good: knowledge.5 Put simply, an intellectual virtue is what leads to an intellectual good.6

My proposal (which I believe was the first to make explicit mention of interpretive virtues7) was similar: an “interpretive virtue” is a personal characteristic or habit that leads readers to the interpretive good of understanding. It all starts with a heartfelt desire for the interpretive good of understanding: “making cognitive contact with the meaning of the text.”8 Good readers respect both the author’s intention and what is objectively there in the text rather than trying to come up with self-serving interpretations.

Reading relates to virtue in two distinct ways. Some people read the Bible (the proverbial “good book”) for the sake of virtue formation. William Bennett’s The Book of Virtues is a compilation of hundreds of character-building stories whose tales help children and others learn the importance of moral traits like self-discipline, loyalty, and compassion.9 Karen Swallow Prior does something similar in her book On Reading Well, pairing classic novels with virtues (e.g., Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities and justice, or Shusaku Endo’s Silence and faith).10 Prior knows there is a difference between reading for moral virtue and reading virtuously, and she deals with the latter in her introduction: “Reading virtuously means, first, reading closely, being faithful to both text and context, interpreting accurately and insightfully.”11 We can read about virtue, and we can also practice virtue while reading.

The latter possibility is our concern here. The key premise should be obvious: how you read is related to the kind of person you are. When it comes to hermeneutics, the who (the kind of person you are) is as important or even more important than the what (the particular method you use).

To avoid modern interpretive pride, our certainty must be tempered by hermeneutic humility; to avoid interpretive sloth, our skepticism must be tempered by hermeneutic conviction. Both boldness and humility are appropriate in biblical interpretation because, as James Eglinton observes, the form of theology must be suited to the subject matter.12 A theologian’s voice must be bold when reporting what God has said, and modest when claiming to say what it means: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8).

The Situation Today: An Old and New Challenge

Getting the delicate balance right of a hermeneutics of humility and conviction is more important than ever. Pride and sloth remain the chief interpretive vices, infecting yet another generation, even if 25 years on they have mutated somewhat to adapt to a new cultural situation. Pride now expresses itself as uncritical partisanship that breeds distrust; sloth has developed into systemic skepticism, cynicism, and apathy.

Bonnie Kristian’s Untrustworthy calls out the knowledge crisis that, in the words of her subtitle, is “polluting our politics and corrupting Christian community.”13 Americans no longer trust experts or institutions — unless they agree with their identity politics. Instead of giving reasons for what one believes, one has simply to wrap oneself in the mantle of one’s identity (e.g., “Speaking as an X”). This is what I mean by partisan pride — the idea that me and my tribe are in a special position to know. Unfortunately, if you disagree, you become my antagonist: “Speaking as an X, I am offended that you claim B.”14 To a proud partisan, every disagreement is a hostile act. You are either for or against me; there is no neutral third space for impartial dialogue — or rationality.15

Partisan pride does not need to listen to others; it already knows. Partisan pride is not only tribal but destructive of true democracy. In a culture of identity politics and partisan pride, people on the other side of the aisle — whether in Congress or in church — are not interlocutors, but potential enemies. It’s not even safe to talk about the weather anymore, at least not if you connect the dots between record flooding and climate change. A Chicago Tribune headline declares, “Meteorologists Feeling the Heat from Viewers.”16 Forecasters are without honor in their hometowns. Apparently, whether or not you trust your local weatherman is a function of your party politics.

Twenty-five years ago, I suggested that sloth was the signature temptation of postmodern theorists. Since then, however, the suspicion that truth claims are in fact power plays has become something of a fixture in public consciousness, resulting in systemic skepticism and cynicism — an inability to trust or believe in anything or anyone: “Whereas pride claims knowledge prematurely, sloth prematurely claims the impossibility of literary knowledge.”17 Postmodern suspicion has spread, like a virus, from the labs of French literary theory to Main Street.

To think that no one is in a position to know what texts, including the Bible, really mean is disheartening. Why begin to climb a mountain if you know you’ll never make it to the top? Why start a game of chess if you know the best-case scenario is a stalemate? What began as a hermeneutics of suspicion has developed into systemic skepticism, and it breeds what theologian Uche Anizor calls a “culture of apathy,” which does not merely tolerate but nurtures “an attitude of indifference” toward what used to be important.18 What distresses Anizor is the extent to which this attitude of indifference, even toward spiritual things and biblical truth, has become normal.

The partisan pride and systemic sloth that characterize contemporary culture had a long gestation period. In America’s Book, Mark Noll identifies 1844–1865 as a particularly momentous period because debates over slavery “signaled the end of a civilization premised on white Protestant scriptural agreement.”19 In three consecutive chapters, each entitled “Whose Bible?” Noll shows how conflicts over whose reading of the Bible’s position on slavery was right eventually led people to think that every appeal to Scripture was politically motivated.20 Ironically, partisan pride fueled systemic sloth; interpretive sin feeds off itself.

The Civil War was not the first time disagreements over what the Bible says triggered a political and theological crisis. Christians in the early church had to contend with Gnostics and other heretics, all of whom claimed to be reading the Bible rightly. How should Christians cope with competing visions of biblical Christianity? The interpretive virtues were born for such a time as this.

In Praise of Boldness (But Not Too Much)

Martin Luther is the epitome of interpretive boldness. In the presence of the Holy Roman Emperor at the Diet of Worms, on trial for heresy, he was asked, “Martin, how can you assume that you are the only one to understand Scripture?” Luther had the courage of his convictions, but he was also open to being shown — from the Bible, not human tradition — that he was wrong. Of course, like other virtues, boldness sits on a spectrum between opposite vices and therefore needs to be regulated. Someone else might have caved to the pressure, manifesting interpretive cowardice, not boldness. Alternatively, it is possible to have too much of a good thing: an unregulated boldness leads to rashness, foolhardiness, and, at the limit, begins to resemble the ugly partisan pride that esteems one’s own interpretations only.

Luther’s response at Worms also serves as an example of what the French philosopher Michel Foucault says about courageous speech (parrhesia) in a series of lectures later published as a book, Fearless Speech, whose original French title, Le Courage de la Vérité, means “The Courage of Truth.”21 Foucault discovers bold or fearless speech (parrhesia) in ancient Greece, where it was held to be an essential virtue for democracy. Foucault contrasts boldness of speech with other types of discourse, such as flattery and sophistry. What sets parrhesia apart is its commitment to speak the truth, even when it is dangerous or unpopular to do so.

This brings us back to weathermen and other scientists, environmental or not, who seek to speak truth to power in service to the public interest. When Tyrone Hayes found evidence that Syngenta’s pesticide atrazine was harmful, the corporation’s public relations department attempted to discredit his research. Hayes persevered with his work, insisting, “Science is a principle and a process of seeking truth. Truth cannot be purchased.”22 This observation did not stop tobacco companies from going to great lengths to suppress the publication of negative data about the dangers of smoking cigarettes. As one ethicist notes, “Individual scientists rarely have the resources or strength to withstand such assaults.”23

Foucault was impressed by the Stoics’ willingness to suffer for their fearless truth-speaking (parrhesia) rather than betray their convictions. The early Christians, in particular the speech acts of the apostles in the book of Acts, are an even better example. Peter, John, Stephen, and eventually Paul all speak gospel truth to imperial power. Their fearless speech is one of the narrative highlights: “Now when they saw the boldness [parrhesia] of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished” (Acts 4:13).

Acts 4 records the arrest of Peter and John for proclaiming the resurrection of the dead. After being charged not to speak of Jesus, they are released, though they know the threat of persecution hangs over them. What else can they do but pray? “Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness” (Acts 4:29). Their prayers are answered: they are filled with the Holy Spirit, who encourages them to speak with boldness (Acts 4:31). According to the New Testament, this boldness of speech is more than a character trait: it is a divine gift in response to prayer. Significantly, throughout the rest of the book, until the very end, various apostles continue to speak boldly of the gospel and their hope in Christ (Acts 9:27–28; 13:46; 14:3; 18:26; 19:8; 26:26; 28:31).24

Contemporary biblical interpreters have, like the apostle Paul, been “entrusted with the gospel” (Galatians 2:7; 1 Thessalonians 2:4; 1 Timothy 1:11). Like Paul, biblical interpreters may have to speak gospel truth to the powers and the general populace, and they do well to pray to the Spirit for the strength to do so. However, unlike Paul, biblical interpreters today lack the qualifications and authority commensurate with apostolicity.25 Even the Reformers couldn’t claim to have the authorized interpretation of “This is my body” (Matthew 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19; cf. 1 Corinthians 11:24), which is why the conflict of Protestant interpretations is so painful.26 Each Reformer was presumably illumined by the Spirit, a responsible exegete, and a man of sincere conviction — and yet they disagreed about the nature of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper.

While it is clear from the book of Acts that boldness of speech is one of the principal means the Spirit uses to build up the church, it is also important to remember that boldness is not rashness. Nor is Christian boldness of speech a rhetorical technique. Rather, it is a personal quality: a willingness to put not simply one’s words, but oneself — one’s very life — on the line. The other early Christian witnesses were not mere orators, but martyrs: their willingness to suffer and die for their truth convictions was an embodied extension of their bold speech.

In Praise of Humility: Power in Weakness

Biblical interpreters must display boldness whenever the truth about the God of the gospel and the gospel of God are at stake. Bold speech is appropriate when we are witnessing to what God has done in Jesus Christ for us and our salvation. However, it is one thing to witness to what God has said and done, another to explain its significance. Jesus said, “This is my body,” yes — but what exactly did he mean? Pastor-theologians must speak boldly when witnessing to what God has done and what the biblical authors have said, but modestly when unpacking their implications.

As Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas knew, “Virtues cannot exist atomistically: in order to possess a single virtue, one must possess the virtues in their entirety.”27 The reason should be obvious. Without some counterweight, boldness easily slips into brashness, recklessness, or, at the limit, partisan pride.

Humble people (1) view themselves accurately, (2) consider others and not just themselves, and (3) are open to the possibility of being wrong.28 All three are crucial qualities for biblical interpreters. We must acknowledge, first, that we are situated in a particular place, time, and culture. Our finitude affects what we see in texts, as does our fallenness (even as a high school soccer player, I knew the other team were not the only ones committing fouls). Our situatedness inclines us to privilege evidence that confirms our biases. Grant Osborne states matter-of-factly, “We rarely read the Bible to discover truth; more often, we wish to harmonize it with our belief system.”29 Second, to be a person of “interpretive conscientiousness”30 we must acknowledge that other interpreters may be trying as hard as we are to read the Bible well. This leads, third, to an acknowledgement that we may misinterpret or misunderstand what the biblical authors have said. Without such interpretive humility, the idea of “always being reformed” (by the word of God) is only an empty promise.

Humility is, of course, a prime Christian virtue.31 Paul urges the Philippians to have the mind of Christ, namely, the disposition to “count others more significant than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3). And there’s the rub. Humility — the willingness to listen and attend to the interests of others — is hard, because it may mean putting something in ourselves to death. This is precisely the way Jesus humbled himself, “becoming obedient to the point of death” (Philippians 2:8).

For a reader with Christian convictions, admitting that one’s interpretation may not be ironclad — or worse, that it may be wrong — is painful. This is why I so admire Augustine, whose Retractions surveys his publications and fesses up as to where he made mistakes. Augustine viewed himself accurately: this side of the eschaton, our knowledge is only partial (1 Corinthians 13:12). As Bonnie Kristian quips, now we know in part, “and often a smaller part than we imagine.”32

Interpretive humility is a first cousin to epistemic humility, the awareness that though objective meaning and truth exist, our grasp of them may be tenuous. Interpretive humility means being ready to admit that there may be meaning in the text that we have failed to see. There is a difference between feeling that our interpretations are right and being right. This gap is precisely why wise readers are prepared to listen to other readers and be open to correction. Sadly, when in the course of writing a book on critical thinking Adam Grant wanted an example of people more interested in protecting beliefs than in being right, he decided on the preacher, whom he contrasted with the open-minded scientist.33 The ability to rethink, and to be always reforming, “starts with intellectual humility — knowing what we don’t know.”34

“Pride goes before destruction” (Proverbs 16:18). It also preempts instruction. Pride is the preeminent interpretive vice, a guarantee that readers will be inclined to follow their own train of thought, not the biblical authors’. Conversely, humility is the prime interpretive virtue, an essential condition for displaying the mind of Christ. In an age marked by partisan pride and its reactionary opposite, systemic sloth, it is more important than ever for biblical interpreters to hold interpretive boldness and interpretive humility in balanced tension.

When the Corinthians challenged Paul’s apostolic credentials, the proof that Christ was speaking in him was a power paradoxically manifested through weakness (2 Corinthians 13:3–4). The endurance of faith, the pain of perseverance, demands both humility and boldness. Biblical interpreters must be willing to expose their readings and themselves to the conflict of interpretations, and to do so not to prove themselves right, but to attain to truth. This is as true on the corporate level as it is on the individual. The church in the West needs humility to listen to the global church — and to earlier generations of Christian readers.35 Modern methods and technology have not necessarily made Western Christians better readers.

The Local Church as Virtuous Reading Culture

It is good to teach students how to read the Bible in the original languages and to attend to grammar and historical context. Yet it is one thing to acquire knowledge and learn skills, quite another to acquire virtue and learn Christ. This is less a slam on the grammatical-historical method than a reminder: a tool is only as effective as the person wielding it.36

The acid test for any hermeneutic is how it prepares readers to handle interpretive disagreements, such as the doctrinal differences that have divided evangelical Protestants.37 A virtue hermeneutic that holds boldness and humility in tension will not resolve every doctrinal disagreement, but it may help Christians to navigate their way through the conflict of interpretations without going to war with one another.

Church leaders must be bold enough to be “able to teach” (1 Timothy 3:2), and humble enough to be teachable (Proverbs 5:12–13). So must interpretive traditions. As members of what is ultimately one body, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, and others must be willing to entertain the possibility that the Spirit may be using insights from other interpretive traditions to correct their respective blind spots.

We read to our children from their earliest ages, and then we teach them to read. Or do we? Textual understanding involves more than deciphering black marks on white paper. Consciously or not, individuals and interpretive traditions are always modeling (or failing to model) virtuous interpretation. The local church ought to be a place to exhibit and foster virtuous reading cultures — a place that forms Bible readers and believers to be people of interpretive virtue. Other interpretive virtues, in addition to boldness and humility, are important too: attentiveness, patience, honesty, charity, fairness, and above all, wisdom, the virtue that helps you to discern when a situation calls for boldness and when it requires humility — when to stand fast, when to admit defeat, and when to compromise.

In our partisan, skeptical culture, it is all too easy to find fault with opposing propositions. It is harder to find fault with persons who read the Bible with conviction and humility in wise equipoise. May local churches become places where readers are formed not to be partisans of earthly kingdoms but martyrs of the kingdom of heaven, able to say with Luther, “Here I stand,” with a boldness tempered by an openness to being corrected. Learning how to embody these interpretive virtues is sanctification too — and perhaps the best way to proclaim biblical truth in a culture rife with partisan pride and systemic suspicion.