In this video, Dr. Joel Kim suggests principles to aid Christians in their study and interpretation of the Bible.
I really appreciate this question about interpreting Scripture. How do we go about studying the Word? I work in a seminary, and we feel like our primary responsibility is to train folks to read the Word carefully and well. And in order for them to do so, there are certain principles that they have to keep in mind, both as a supposition to the text, as well as skills to apply to the text.
One of the things that we begin with is the reinforcement of the understanding that the Bible is the Word of God. I know that sounds like it's less of a technical thing for us to think about, but it's an important beginning point for us to think about the Word—that this is the very Word of God. That allows a different posture when we approach the Word. This is not about application of certain techniques, it's about the Lord, through His Spirit, teaching us to understand the Word, because these are His very words. And so that means as interpreters, we begin with prayer, depending upon Him to show us what we ought to understand from the Word.
Along the same line, we also recognize that the Word itself is unified. Unified simply means that though we have the Old and New Testaments, and though the Old and New Testaments are divided into sixty-six books. These are not sixty-six separate books, but this is actually one book—written by the divine Author, through various human writers and authors, to be given to us as a whole story. This is why we recognize that the overall teaching of God’s salvation in Christ Jesus is found not simply in the Gospels, but throughout the Scriptures—beginning with Genesis, all the way to Revelation where God reveals Himself to us and our salvation in the Word. That means as we read different parts of the Bible, we do so with the recognition that this is part of the whole.
The Old Testament looks forward to Jesus's coming. The New Testament looks back to the predictions and the promises of the coming Messiah. And that’s an important part of how we, as Reformed readers of the Word, approach the text. Along the same line, the confessions have always reminded us that the difficult parts of the Bible—and there’s certainly difficult parts of the Bible—ought to be read in light of other parts of the Bible. This is where we understand that Scripture interprets itself. Scripture interprets Scripture. The way we understand the Word is not by injecting what we assume to be true about the Word, but the difficult and less clear parts are approached in such a way that you see its particulars in light of the whole. For us to approach it in such a way that the unity of the Scripture allows us to interpret particular parts in light of the rest of Scripture.
And that’s an important part for us to remember, especially as we approach parts that are difficult for us to understand immediately. One last thing I would mention in terms of interpreting the Word itself is, despite the fact that we say they're unified, it doesn't mean that there are no individual particularities of the books. So, we call it an important element of literary reading of the Word, of seeing the individual author’s way of speaking and particular theological emphasis. Not contradicting one another, not separating them from one another, but recognizing that they each have a unique contribution to the overall writing of Scripture. Mark emphasizes the Lord coming to sacrifice Himself as our sacrificial offering. Matthew talks about the kingship of Jesus and in that particular way, here we see the individual authors offering a unique perspective on the Lord Jesus. And we, by the study of the Word, in terms of its language, grammar, structure, and the particulars, allow us to get a better sense of what the author wants to convey to us.