Interpreting the God-Breathed Word

How to Read and Study the Bible

Robbie F. Castleman

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780801095283
• eBook ISBN: 9781493414345
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Critica e interpretazione biblica

This biblical interpretation textbook provides an accessible introduction to the latest approaches in evangelical hermeneutics. Having many years' experience teaching hermeneutics to undergraduates, Robbie Castleman explains complex themes in an engaging way. She addresses all the current schools of thought in contemporary evangelical hermeneutics and incorporates recent important trends in biblical interpretation. This book helps students recognize the living Word as they read and study Scripture as an act of being engaged by the triune God of grace who breathed and still breathes "the word of the Lord."

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Hearing Scripture

What Does the Text Say and How Does It Say It?

Hollywood films set in New York City and made from 1973 to 2001 often include panoramic views of the Manhattan skyline. The shots of the skyline are usually incidental to the story of a romance, drug dealer, or spy ring that will unfold for the moviegoer. For the movie, the city skyline, dominated by two 110-story towers, was simply meant to place the story geographically and often served only as the backdrop for introductory credits or an early scene. The towering presence of the World Trade Center towers, completed in 1973 and furnished with its own zip code, provided around ten million square feet of workspace for nearly thirty-five thousand people and, on a clear day, a forty-five-mile view of the land and sea for the seventy thousand tourists who visited daily. During the 1990s, my family and I took in the view from the dizzying top of WTC 1, the north tower. I still have a postcard of the New York City skyline from our visit there.

Now when I look at the postcard or see the skyline dominated by the twin towers in a movie, I have a hard time seeing what is there without the jarring memory of what is no longer there. Such images now cause a twinge in my gut because of the jumble of memories from a day simply referred to as 9/11. This shorthand for the date September 11, 2001, doesn’t even need to include a year to mark its significance. It’s now nearly impossible to look at a postcard or a film clip of the World Trade Center prior to 9/11 and not see in the mind’s eye the twin towers, a plane, and a wave of building ash flooding a street filled with people running away in terror.

One’s experiences of significant events, people, places, and even certain smells create memories, both happy and sad. Seeing what is in front of us and appreciating it for its own sake is a challenge in the shadows cast by memories. The New York City skyline will be viewed through the events of 9/11 for a long time. This cognitive phenomenon is natural, but it can be unhelpful. To see a picture postcard clearly in its own light and time and place, one must set memories, assumptions, and acquired expectations aside to avoid casting a shadowy profile on what is there. The more familiar something is, the harder it is to dismiss the shadow of personal experiences and just observe what’s there. This is true of written texts as well.

Learning to read Scripture every time like it is the first time is equally challenging. The discipline of stepping aside to eliminate a personal shadow is one of the first requirements to seeing Scripture clearly and paying attention to what it says. Learning to read Scripture is harder than one might think. Hearing God speak in Scripture demands attentiveness to what our eyes read. We “hear” through our eyes and therefore must pay attention to the details of a text without the echoes of the first or the last time we read the text or heard it read, preached, or taught. Scripture is God-breathed in a dynamic way: the whole of what we read—from the occurrence of the original event to the recording of that event in the biblical canon—is the work of God’s Spirit. All of it is God-breathed; God spoke all of it into being. Having “ears to hear” demands the discipline of eyes that take the time to see what Scripture says and to note how Scripture says it. This must be done well before we can ask what a particular passage meant in its original context, let alone what it means to readers today.

In this chapter, we first discuss what “God-breathed” means as Paul’s modifier for Scripture when he wrote, “all scripture is inspired [God-breathed] by God.” Then we will explore the importance of hearing God’s word well and its connection to faith and discipleship. In addition, practical help for how to go about paying close attention to what Scripture says and how it says it will be emphasized. The challenges faced in taking the time to observe a passage in great detail so that we hear the word of God well are addressed. This is followed by how we learn to hear God’s word through our eyes and the important discipline of “reading out” of a text (exegesis) and how to avoid the regrettable habit of “reading into” a text (eisegesis). The chapter will end with suggestions for practicing how to see and hear passages of Scripture well.

Hearing the God-Breathed Word

The apostle Paul reminds his coworker Timothy that “all scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17, emphasis added). The word “inspired” in this passage is the translation of the Greek word theopneustos, which is from two root words, theos (“God”) and pneuma (“wind,” “spirit,” or “breath”). This compound word in Greek is translated “God-breathed.”1 New Testament scholar William D. Mounce helpfully summarizes Paul’s view: “The entirety of Scripture comes from the mouth of God. To read it is to hear him speak. It is therefore true, and it can therefore be trusted.”2

Reading attentively, carefully, and slowly is necessary to hear the word God speaks. To read the God-breathed word is to listen and hear through our eyes. We must pay attention to what we see if we are to hear well. The God who speaks has always spoken. The Spirit, the very breath of God, was the “wind from God” that “swept over the face of the waters” when God first spoke the universe into existence out of nothing but the power of his own word (Gen. 1:1–2). God kept speaking when he answered the virgin’s question—“How can this be?”—when told she would conceive “Jesus . . . the Son of the Most High” in her womb. Through the angelic messenger God said, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” It is no wonder that Mary replied, “Let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:30–38). Similarly, the Spirit, the divine wind, the very breath of God has “overshadowed” the original people, events, history, and reality that the text of Scripture relates. The Spirit “overshadowed” the prophet or evangelist, judge or apostle, through whom the word of God was remembered and written.

Hearing the word involves paying careful attention to what the text says and how the text says it. The two questions, What does the text say? and How does the text say it? must be asked repeatedly when studying the God-breathed word. As we do so, we depend on the Holy Spirit to teach us, as the apostle Paul writes:

As it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him”—these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. . . . No one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit. (1 Cor. 2:9–13)

Most assuredly, one of God’s gifts given to bless and benefit his people is Scripture.3 God is still speaking through the particularity of the written text of Scripture, still breathing through the Spirit these words, this truth, his story into the lives of those who read Scripture that they might have “ears to hear” (Mark 4:9, 23; Luke 8:8; 14:35). Those “ears” that hear are disciplined by eyes that take the time to carefully see what the text says and how the text says it. This discipline, this “self-control,” is a fruit of God’s Spirit who is active, alive, and breathing his own character into the disciple’s life (Gal. 5:22–23). The Spirit’s fruit of self-control moves us out of the way and keeps us from casting the shape of our own shadow (our desires, agendas, and opinions or what we want to hear God say) onto the text of Scripture. Dependence on the Spirit of God is imperative in order to see and hear the word of the Lord clearly.

Faith Comes by Hearing

Hearing God’s word is an idea that threads itself all the way through Scripture. God speaks, God calls, and God’s people are commanded to hear, shema.4 The Shema in Deuteronomy 6 draws our attention to seeing, hearing, knowing, memorizing, reciting, and obeying the God-breathed word:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deut. 6:4–9)

This passage from Deuteronomy offers more than a few ideas concerning how to go about the task of exegesis, of “reading out” of a text. First, let the words, the rhythm, and the pattern settle into “your heart” (v. 6), to gain a sense of the way a text is to be read and heard. Read the passage several times out loud, in several different ways (as a command or a comfort, loudly or softly, as if to a person who is ill or to a young, energetic child) and gain a sense of how the text was meant to be heard.5 Second, think through how a certain text might be read and heard in different places or times of the day (v. 7). Third, notice the order of how the text is written, the shape of a sentence, paragraph, or passage as a whole (v. 8). Think about the words that contrast in the text and note how those contrasts are connected to one another by a conjunction or other structural device. Note what words are repeated in a passage and how a repeated word connects distinctly or similarly in a sentence or paragraph or passage. Fourth, write out the passage by hand several times to help slow down and possibly note details that may have been missed when reading (v. 9). These disciplines of hearing God’s word described in this ancient text run in stark contrast to the noisy, fast-food, quick-post, brief-tweet, highly distractible world of today.

Hearing the word well also includes noticing the passage’s genre.6 Is the passage a poem, a story, a teaching, a sermon, or a parable? Is the text an illustration? If so, does it reflect on the narrative before it, or does it set up the text that follows? Is the text an explanation of a different kind? Is a simile (“like” or “as”) used or does the text include a metaphor of some sort? The broader context is important as well. Always take note of what comes right before and right after the passage being studied. In a narrative text, note details that involve the five senses (hearing, tasting, seeing, smelling, and touching) for those originally present in the story. Consider everything that can be observed about the text: who, what, when, and where. But still, do not yet ask “Why?” When “why” questions arise, make a note of it, but don’t start the work of interpretation (hermeneutics) until the exegetical work is done as thoroughly as possible.

I often find it helpful to print out a passage I want to study, using wide margins and double spacing but without including verse markings or chapter breaks.7 Ignoring these artificial breaks and markings can help me see the text as a whole. For instance, taking out the break between chapters 13 and 14 in the Gospel according to John makes the text much clearer than when these chapters are divided. Certainly, Peter’s heart was troubled by the warning of Jesus recorded at the end of chapter 13, but this connection is lost if the chapter break is allowed to interrupt the flow of the text as a whole. Again, Paul’s beautiful words in Philippians 4:4–9 are often artificially severed from his admonition to Euodia and Syntyche in verses 2 and 3, which serve as the immediate context for the entire passage. Paul is still addressing these coworkers in the gospel in verses 4 through 9. When read rightly, not only will the reader better hear what Paul is saying to these women but will better hear also what God, through this particular word, is still saying to disciples today who find themselves at odds over something. Not only will the student of Scripture see and hear what is there, but careful observation will also lead to a better understanding of the text in its original setting as well as a more fitting contemporary response to the passage.

Hard of Hearing?

The discipline of slow reading, attention to detail, and delaying interpretation of what the text says and how the text says it is hard work. Answering the “what” and “how” questions is not as easy as it seems. Exegesis takes time and practice to do well. Like the enjoyment of a gourmet meal, it is wise to take smaller bites and to enjoy chewing and tasting. “Taste and see” is the psalmist’s good advice for enjoying the goodness of the Lord (Ps. 34:8), but it is also good advice for savoring the content of Scripture. Exegetical discipline also leads to an understanding of G...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Hearing Scripture
• 2. Once upon a Time
• 3. The First Voice
• 4. The Second Voice
• 5. The Third Voice
• 6. Meditation in a Canonical Toolshed
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Scripture Index
• Subject Index
• Back Cover