In the second constitutional law class I studied under him, during the fall of 1987, we started the semester with his instruction on how to do a detailed examination of a Supreme Court case. This is what he taught: First, get the facts. Second, get the decision. Third, get the reasoning supporting the decision, and even the reasoning of the Justices who dissented with the decision. Fourth, get the precedent. For that quarter, I enthusiastically applied that methodology to successfully studying Supreme Court decisions.
Several years later, less than a year after graduating from Virginia Tech, I turned to Jesus. Then I started reading the Bible. As a young adult, I knew less about the Bible than most of the people in my church. Yet as a Virginia Tech grad, I employed, and still employ, lessons I learned in Dr. Tubbs’ class.
First, I get the facts.
Second, I get the message.
Third, I get supporting Scripture and reasoning supporting the message.
Fourth, I get an application.
I steadily started learning more and more about the Bible. And that continues here twenty-seven years later, and with further principles for gaining messages.
Studying the Bible involves a rich dynamic, yet the bottom line is I want to gain messages God has in His revelations for us. The point of that large book is to learn from God so we can gain messages for our lives, starting with salvation, and the lives of others. So what we need first and foremost is content!
The Bible is an ancient text containing sixty-six books which were written over a period of over 1500 years, which had numerous authors, and which were written in different literary styles. The entrenched disagreement concerning certain Biblical messages between various Christian communities shows that Biblical interpretation is challenging. Yet for me, learning from God’s revelations are of upmost importance. After reading a number of Christian books in my early Christian days, I developed further principles, praise be to God.
Four critical principles for Biblical interpretation are:
First, be willing to be guided by the Holy Spirit. He is the One who inspired the Biblical writing.
Second, to get the message, take a verse in the context of the passage, a passage in the context of the chapter, a chapter in the context of the book, and a book in the context of the entire Bible. More simply put by many, interpret Scripture with Scripture.
Third, gaining context may include learning some historical information.
Fourth, gain the message, not getting derailed by semantics.
Regarding the fourth point, messages can be missed if you are caught up in some practice such as diagraming sentences like I had to do in the 8th grade. And in my opinion, sometimes there is a passage in Scripture which is not clear, and trying to force a doctrine out of such a passage is a mistake.
Details are still important! For example, in most cultures there is a difference between a town and a city. This was the case in Biblical times. (1) But if there is not a difference between a town and a city in a culture, then that student of the Bible would need to learn a Biblical history fact, which leads back to my third principle for Biblical interpretation. Once understood, the reader will recognize the distinction between the “City of David,” a term used in1 Kings 8:1 along with a number of other passages, and the “town of David,” a key term used in Luke 2:11. City of David refers to Jerusalem, whereas the town of David is Bethlehem.
Taking the class Interpreting the Bible at Colorado Christian University, I learned that context is an important element of content, but becoming pre-occupied with context can lead to missing the messages of God. God’s purpose of Scripture for us goes back to the content, so we may gain messages from Him and apply them in our lives. For a person who follows Jesus, we are to be carrying on with the Biblical story.
Hunter Irvine
(1) Patricia Dutcher-Walls, Reading the Historical Books: A Student’s Guide to Engaging the Biblical Text (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), 31.
Rebecca St. James has long been one of my favorite musical artists, and this is one of my favorite songs of all time, Lest I Forget:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYNeO7y5rBk
