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.

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.
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First, he claimed that the Bible was written in a style to excite and inspire human imagination, not to persuade the intellect. Second, a proper reading of Scripture requires peeling back the layers of phrases and metaphors. In other words, the Bible did not record miracles but reported events robed in hyperbole and exaggeration. The seeds of Spinoza’s doubts later blossomed in nineteenth-century liberal interpretations of the Scriptures. Some New Testament scholars claimed, for example, that Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand was no miracle. Rather, Jesus stood before an opening of a cave, which was concealed by His long, flowing robe. His disciples then fed loaves of bread through the sleeves of His robe. The feeding was no miracle but rather a sleight of hand—a well-intentioned ruse meant to inspire selflessness.
In his Theological-Political Treatise, Spinoza argued that the will of God is synonymous with the laws of nature. On the other hand, a miracle is a violation of the law of nature. God’s will is unbreakable; therefore, miracles are impossible. Some philosophers, such as David Hume, simply dismissed miracles because of disbelief. Hume maintained that the testimony of Christ’s resurrection, for example, was likely false. Such testimony was therefore invalid for establishing the historicity of the resurrection. In the present, New Testament scholars such as Bart Ehrman make similar claims. Ehrman defines a miracle as improbable. Historians, however, can establish only what probably occurred in the past. Thus, a historian can never ascertain the historicity of a miracle. Regardless of the variations, the simple truth behind the rejections of miracles is unbelief—a rejection of God’s Word.

In dealing with the text of Scripture, Lucas offers a lesson for preaching: hold the line. “The line” in his metaphor refers to Scripture’s plain instruction. He urges us against deviating above the line, saying more than the Bible says, and below the line, saying less than the Bible says. Below the line, we might imagine such errors as liberalism, partisan neo-evangelicalism, church-growth pragmaticism, etc.; above it, fanaticism, pietism, emotional Pentecostalism, etc. Against all of these deviations, our expository emphasis should be on the plain teaching of God’s Word.

When we consider examples of preaching in the Bible, many of us go immediately to the New Testament—and we’re not wrong to do so. It may surprise us, though, to discover that the Old Testament is replete with early examples of expository preaching. Consider this one from Nehemiah:
All the people gathered as one man into the square before the Water Gate. And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law of Moses that the LORD had commanded Israel. So Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could understand what they heard, on the first day of the seventh month. And he read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand. And the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the Law. And Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden platform that they had made for the purpose. … They read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading. (Nehemiah 8:1–4, 8)
Ezra’s preaching was far from dull, for we’re told that “the ears of all the people were attentive” to him as he both read God’s Word and “gave the sense.” He proclaimed divine truth with a sense of liveliness that any preacher would do well to imitate. John Calvin, remarking on what happens in the act of preaching, wrote,
It is certain that if we come to church we shall not hear only a mortal man speaking but we shall feel (even by his secret power) that God is speaking to our souls, that he is the teacher …. He so touches us that the human voice enters into us and so profits us that we are refreshed and nourished by it ….
… [God] calls us to him as if he had his mouth open and we saw him there in person.1
Does the average church member have this picture in mind when he or she comes to hear the Word preached? Those under Ezra’s preaching certainly did. And if we wish for this to be true in our churches, we must pray zealously that God would break into our congregations, revealing His strength by His Word to our people. Getting to this place will require the hard work of diligent exposition.
So, what are the basics of expository preaching? To answer this question, we’ll examine its definition, dangers, and lessons through a biblical lens.
A Definition of Expository Preaching
Simply put, expository preaching is preaching that begins with the Bible. This doesn’t mean that every sermon must begin with the phrase “Please turn in your Bibles to such and such a passage,” although that is a good practice. Rather, beginning with the text means that regardless of the introductory content—whether a current event, a song lyric, or a pastoral issue—it’s immediately clear to our people that the biblical text has established the sermon’s agenda. The expositor allows Scripture to frame every part of his sermon. For this reason John Stott contended that “all true Christian preaching is expository preaching.”2
Exposition is more of a method than a style of preaching. Topical, devotional, evangelistic, textual, apologetic—these are all preaching styles. But as a method, exposition can be applied to a wide variety of sermon types as the occasion demands. What’s important in exposition is that the preacher and his people are anchored to the Bible, allowing the text to establish both the sermon’s framework and content.
Looking at it from another angle, we might ask of ourselves: “Does this sermon answer the ‘So what?’ question?” Exegesis answers the “What?” of the biblical text, exposition the “So what?” As such, it’s possible to preach exegetically without preaching expositionally. True exposition bridges the gap between, for example, Paul’s first-century letter to the Corinthians and the twenty-first century Christian. It always fuses the horizons of the world in which the individual lives with the world out of which the Scriptures come.
The Dangers of Expository Preaching
Given the case for exposition made above, considering its dangers may seem odd. But even good things can pose dangers if handled improperly. As preachers, we must guard against two assumptions: on the one hand, that our message is irrelevant; or, on the other hand, that our message is immediately relevant.
With the first assumption in mind, we should realize that we will almost always be preaching to at least a handful of skeptics. As we preach, they’ll think, This is irrelevant! This is nothing but a religious man giving a religious talk. Therefore, we must strive not only to offer good exegesis (helping the listener understand the text’s meaning) but also to establish its relevance in our hearer’s world.
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