As an artist, I sometimes notice that the way I read Scripture is asking different kinds of questions than what I learned to ask in church. The church often seems interested in questions of ethics or doctrine. Interestingly, I’m often more interested in the unfolding story being told. As it turns out, the Scriptures were authored by many fine artists, and tuning into that artistic register helps us understand how to read the Scriptures as they were meant to be read. Initially, I thought my artistic way of reading Scripture was a bias of my own profession, but I eventually came to see that Jesus himself was keenly aware of my artistic mindset for reading Scripture. In the next few posts, I hope to show you how he was.
To do that, I’m going to start with a little intro: three common ways of reading the Bible. I do this because comparing and contrasting different ways of reading Scripture can help us understand the kind of reading posture we unconsciously default to, just like learning a second language can help us understand our first language better. Once we identify the posture we default to, then we can better engage the reading style that Jesus wants us to engage with. All three ways of reading can be powerful tools, but I want to argue that one of those tools (the artistic one) ought to take priority for our life of faith.
Systematic Readings
The first way of reading the Bible is with the tools of systematic theology. Systematic theology poses questions to the Bible that we then go to the Bible to investigate. For instance, we ask: Who is God? What is sin? What happens at death? After investigation, we try to organize it into topics and synthesize what we find. I have a distinct memory of a systematic theology professor at my seminary speaking in chapel. At one point, while preaching from the gospel of Luke, he quoted the gospel of John to illustrate a point he was making. He then took five or ten minutes to talk about why it was okay for him to do that, complaining how academia produces siloes of expertise—experts in just the gospel of Matthew, experts in just Hebrew syntax, experts in just Greco-Roman background—without any attempt at synthesis. His basic frustration was that, contrary to common practice in higher education, it is indeed possible for diverse disciples to talk to each other. At its best, this way of reading Scripture is like a master ambassador: it gets people from different countries or disciplines into the same room to discuss common interests. That conversation not only can happen, it needs to happen. We need ambassadors.
Nevertheless, it is possible to jump to systematizing too quickly. In principle, I do not take issue with seeking unity. In practice, however, it is possible to synthesize in a way that smooths over anything that might require embracing tension, mystery, or the unknown. For instance, one really fascinating tension between OT and NT is how the new covenant is like and unlike the old covenant. What changes and what remains unchanged after Christ? I remember talking to a friend who defaults to systematic theology, and his solution was simple: there is only one covenant of grace, and all other covenants are just manifestations of that one covenant throughout various stages of history. While that solution sounds elegant, he literally invented a framework called the grace covenant—which Scripture never teaches—to erase tension within the biblical story. At its worst, this way of reading Scripture is like talking to a librarian: mystery, tension, or the unknown disappear because everything has a clean solution if you just find the right encyclopedia entry.
Let’s see systematic theology in action. If we ask the question “what happens at death?” we run into a riddle quite early. In Genesis, God says “on the day you eat from the tree, you will surely die.” But in the story, Adam and Eve do not drop dead the day they eat of the tree. It raises the question: Did they die on the day they ate from the tree? One solution systematic theology offers is to say, “If you search the whole Bible, you find different kinds of death talked about. There is spiritual death, moral death, and physical death. So on the day Adam and Eve ate from the tree, they must have died spiritually and morally but not physically until later down the line.” This is classic systematic theology. It searches the entirety of Scripture, organizes it by topic, and presents clean, philosophical solutions to questions that we pose.
Critical Readings
Another way to read the Bible is with the tools called critical methods. Methodologically, higher education and critical scholarship pose questions not so much about what the Bible says as about how the text came to exist on historical terms. For instance, they will notice that Matthew, Mark, and Luke share extensive passages almost verbatim. Given that Mark was likely written first, they reason that Matthew and Luke borrowed from Mark. They also notice passages where just Matthew and Luke use almost the same wording and infer that they must have shared another source, which they refer to by the German word for “source.” At its best, reading the Bible this way takes the human authorship of Scripture seriously. I mean that as a genuine complement because not every faith tradition can read their sacred texts this way. In the Christian tradition, however, if we accept that God revealed himself to us as a human being, then the same principle works for the rest of Scripture—God reveals himself to us through human beings and their messy, sometimes surprising, historical processes. It’s like a musician taking us into her studio so she can show us the iterative compositional process that she used. Turns out, she borrowed a folk melody here, thought of its three sections out of order, and wrote several drafts before settling on its final form. In the studio, we get a window into Scripture’s human process, as well as God’s providential way of partnering with humans.
That said, it is possible to use this method of reading as an end in itself rather than as a tool for our spiritual formation. In fact, it has often been weaponized against people of faith. For instance, critical linguistic scholars will look at the Hebrew of Genesis 1 and 2-3 and conclude that the language of Genesis 2-3 comes from a period early on in Israel’s history, but Genesis 1 comes from a period later on in Israel’s history. They are two different angles on creation that were stitched together down the line. Now, that observation may be true historically; but watch it get weaponized against faith. You might get taught that because Genesis 1 and Genesis 2-3 are different sources that were stitched together, that they actually don’t—and can’t—make sense side by side. At its worst, reading the Bible this way is a bit like an archaeologist studying rock stratification: this portion of rock came from Jurassic period, that portion of rock came from the Cambrian period, and so on. With this methodology, the Bible is understood as the gradual stacking of sediments or texts that need not accumulate into an interlocking structure. The layers actually need to stay separate for the purposes of good history and archeology.
Let’s see this methodology in action. If you ask them to solve the same riddle as posed above (did Adam and Eve die on the day they ate from the tree?), a historical scholar might say, “Asking theological questions of the text assumes a unified framework which can distract from seeing what’s actually there. The most important thing to notice is that Genesis 1 was written later than Genesis 2-3.” Using this methodology, one popular Bible scholars goes so far as to say that in Genesis 3, God is a liar and the serpent is the only one who told the truth—because after all, Adam and Eve didn’t die on that day. In other words, if Genesis 1 presents a good God, but in Genesis 3 he is a liar—no problem. Now, this interpretation is not standard, even among progressive critical scholars. But his way of reading Genesis 3 perfectly demonstrates the priorities of his methodology. He can come to a shocking conclusion like that because if he reads the text as simply a collection of different source materials, it doesn’t matter if the sources harmonize with each other. What does matter is following the data of historical questions, like when a given text was written.
Narrative Readings
A third way of reading the Bible is with the tools of biblical theology. Calling it “biblical” does not mean generically that it concerns the Bible. Rather, biblical theology is the discipline of studying how the different parts of the Bible meaningfully relate to other portions of the Bible as a connected story. For our purposes, one might call it narrative theology. If reading the Bible with critical methods is interested in what order a composer conceived of her melodies and sections, then biblical theology is interested in why the composer eventually put the piece in its final form. Eventually, the composer gathered the drafts, organized it on a piece of sheet music, and asked musicians to perform it in a concert hall. Even if the intro got written later on, or there are unresolved chord progressions as the piece gets started, narrative theology says, “Maybe that’s intentional.” Narrative theology at its best is like a music critic who wants to hear the piece performed in order from beginning to end.
I won’t say that this way of reading has a “worst” side. Of course it’s possible for narrative readers to be too proud to learn from other methods, and that’s not good. But I refuse to say that this way of reading has a specific shadow side because I believe it’s the closest we get to reading the Bible on its own terms. I say “on its own terms” because (as we’ll see in other posts) Jesus read the Scriptures this way, and because Jesus explicitly tells us that he learned this way of reading Scripture from the Scriptures themselves. To prioritize any kind of reading above narrative style—systematizing to where we can’t hear the music, historically inquiring to where we forget what the music sounds like—is to be deformed. We need to listen to the music as it has been handed down to us so that we can see Jesus at work in the world, and see him and his work as good and beautiful.
Let’s see this way of reading Scripture in action. If we pose ourselves the same question once more (did Adam and Eve die on the day they ate from the tree?), biblical theology would answer, “Let’s notice the language within the passage and follow its breadcrumbs into other parts of the Hebrew Scriptures. Notice that God banishes Adam and Eve ‘to the East’ of Eden. Notice also that this language is intentionally used to describe humanity’s exile in the east at the tower of Babel, as well as Israel’s exile in the east in Babylon. The solution to the riddle of death, then, is narratively rich. Exile is like death. To be exiled from God’s presence in the garden—or later, the temple—is a kind of death.” Reading the Bible this way is like reading an epic novel: the loose ends and clues that the authors leave us are part of what draws us in. The power of a text comes to us by situating it within the larger narrative.
Learning How to Read (Artistically) like Jesus
Do you see how artistic the narrative reading is? Even though most Christians would give lip service to the idea that the Bible is a unified narrative, most preaching and teaching that I’ve heard in my life gave me no resources to help me read the Bible this way. I’ve heard preachers quote Luke 24:27, “And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, and explained to them all the things concerning himself,” and then add, “Oh, to be a fly on the wall!” as if to say that they don’t know how Jesus did this. I didn’t know how to do it. I imagine that you also would like to know how Jesus read the Bible as a unified story about himself, and how it is that he learned to read the Scriptures this way. Well, Jesus actually gives us insight into how he read them this way. I wish I had known these things long before I did. So I want to share with you what I wish I knew when I was growing up: the skills I needed to read the Bible as a story that forms us into people who can recognize Jesus at work in the world—and see it as beautiful. Interestingly, this way of reading is fundamentally artistic: learning how to track with the narrative clues the author leaves us with. In the next few posts, we will uncover how to read with this artistic lens.