Question: Do individual Christians have the responsibility to read and/or interpret the Bible for themselves?
The popular narrative of the Reformation Movement suggests that the Protestants rescued and restored the Bible, they cut the chain attaching it to the pulpit, scattering the Word of God in the city streets like someone feeding the ducks with bread crumbs. While this image is inaccurate, and very unfair to Roman Catholics, views about the Bible did change during this movement. Part of this is no doubt due to the technology: the printing press made reading material more accessible. But the Reformers also put a new focus on Sola Scriptura—the doctrine of “Scripture alone” as authority over all matters of the faith. With all this, there began to be a new idea that Christians had the individual responsibility to read and interpret the Bible for themselves. I personally think there is a lot of good in this idea (if we don’t take it to an extreme).
Firstly, Scripture instructs us. Zwingli, for instance, recognizes two ways that God instructs. He says: “God teaches through his Spirit and through the letter that has been written by the inspiration of his Spirit and ordinance, and he says: ‘Search the Scriptures’” (Zwingli Bek. 1; Pelikam, 187). The Reformers very much agreed that reading the Word of God, the Scriptures, was “required for a true knowledge of God” (Calvin Rom. 10:14; Pelikan, 188). Indeed, as Calvin explained, that gospel contained in Scripture could be called “the rule of life,” a rule that required the response of obedience (Pelikan, 206). As Romans 10:13-14 says, “For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” Reading Scripture is an encounter with the Lord, which leads to salvation.
Secondly, while church rituals (liturgies and sacraments) are important, indeed, necessary, their formative abilities are null and void without an individual’s understanding of Scripture. Of course, they have power even without knowing the Scriptural ins and outs, but they best shape us if we understand their meaning in the context of God’s revealed word. As the Zurich Consensus stated very nicely: “the sacraments are appendages of the gospel” (Cons. Tig. 2; Pelikan, 189. The preached Word of God is the center of the faith—it’s the content, the instruction, but also what gives life to other facets of Christian understanding and experience. All other rituals point back to the Word. But it should be noted that this “Word” is not merely the pages in your English translation of the Bible, but is something beyond even Scripture herself. However, in our day and age, one of the clearest ways—perhaps the best way–to encounter the voice of God is through Scripture which was shaped Christian practice and belief from before it was even collected together.
The previous two points affirm two ways that the Word of God is important. What Scripture contains is indeed very important. But to get at that importance, must a person read it individually or can they just receive the Word from the church? Ideally, Scripture is received both ways, but I do think an individual is individually responsible for learning from God’s revelation in Scripture. While I don’t think the Apostles imagined transformation apart from the church, there’s a lot of benefits for investing in our transformation on our own terms. Individual Scripture reading and interpreting are one of those ways. Pulpits, unfortunately, have the tendency to be very selective in their topics and texts; depending on them solely for your information might mean you miss out on gems in Leviticus or Song of Songs or Jude.
So Read it For Yourself
When you read a text for yourself, you can bring your own knowledge and experience to bear on it, noticing unique things that others might miss, downplay, or avoid. And that’s a good thing! There’s something valuable about getting different perspectives on Scripture (because there is not One interpretation—and if there were, how would we know we had it?), thus we should read Scripture in community with the living and the dead. Our individual reading contributes to the wider body of knowledge and can benefit others when we share it. But, in community, we always should check our interpretation against others and church tradition since, at the end of the day, the Bible does not belong to us individually but to the church universal.
So read your Bibles!
If you want to know how to get started with Bible reading, check out my post on Bible reading tips for the New Year!
Citations
Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: a History of the Development of Doctrine. Vol. 4. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
