I wrote the article below in 1983 when I was in college. We had visiting speakers talking about creation and evolution. It was my view at the time that both speakers mishandled the scripture, using it improperly to “prove” their points. The article was printed in the college newspaper, and I still stand by it. I have made a few edits to improve readability.
The chapel series on creation and evolution has been very interesting but also disturbing. What has disturbed me is not the difference of opinion but the techniques of scriptural interpretation employed by our speakers. Both Dr. Brown, who spoke Monday from a creationist perspective, and Dr. Winder, who spoke Tuesday from a theistic evolutionist perspective, interpreted scripture in ways which I think ignore the meaning of the text. Let me illustrate with examples from their talks.
Dr. Brown, toward the end of his talk, quoted John 5:46-47 where Jesus, speaking to the scribes and Pharisees, says, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?” Dr. Brown claimed on the basis of this text that anyone who did not believe the Genesis account of creation as interpreted by the creationists will not believe what Jesus says. His interpretation of this scripture calls into question the Christian faith of anyone who disagrees with him about how Genesis 1 should be understood.
There are three difficulties with Dr. Brown’s approach. It is rhetorically heavy-handed; it distorts the force of Jesus’ statements in John; and it fails to call into question his own personal biases and cultural presuppositions. In fact, his interpretation merely represents his biases and presuppositions as authoritative.
Rhetorically, Dr. Brown’s exegesis of the passage in John was heavy-handed. It comes very close to “poisoning the well,” discrediting an opponent before they have had a chance to speak. Dr. Brown would have us believe that anyone whose interpretation of Genesis 1 did not align with his own was akin to the scribes and Pharisees whom Jesus castigated. This was not the sort of argument I expected to find at this conference.
In addition, there is a problem with the exegesis itself. Christ told the religious leaders that they did not believe him because they did not believe Moses. In the text, “Moses” clearly refers to the entire Law, the first five books of the bible. In shifting the emphasis from the whole of Moses’ writings to a single, particular passage, Dr. Brown distorts the force and direction of Jesus’ criticism. It is the whole Law and the Law as a whole which testifies of Jesus.
The third difficulty is very similar to one of the problems from our next example, so I will consider it later.
Dr. Winder made the remarkable claim that Scripture contains the principle of speciation, a principle integral to a theory of evolution. His claim is based on Isaiah 14:29c: “from the root of a snake will spring up a viper; it’s fruit will be a darting, venomous serpent.” Dr. Winder dismissed the pertinence of context to understanding this verse. He said that, even regarded metaphorically, the verse still points to a principle of speciation since the metaphor relies on an understanding that one species can beget another.
I think Dr. Winder’s interpretation also suffers from three difficulties. It fails to include the connotations of evil implicit in the biblical use of “serpent;” it squeezes metaphorical language into scientific categories foreign to its meaning; and it, like Dr. Brown’s, fails to confront the biases and presuppositions held by the reader.
The serpent is used as a symbol of evil throughout the bible. The choice of “serpent” in this context is not arbitrary. No other animal will do. A lion from the root of a lynx, for example, would not carry the connotation of malignancy implicit in snake/viper/serpent. Dr. Winder’s interpretation ignores these connotations.
Dr. Winder pointed out that the snake, viper, and venomous serpent were all species of the same general class—reptiles. His point was that one species gives rise to another, even if the verse is taken metaphorically. However, he imposes an artificial, scientific categorization upon the elements of the metaphor. The categorization is not a natural part of the metaphor and, in fact, detracts from it. The category “reptiles” is too artificial and too broad. The natural language of the verse calls for the much simpler category “snake.” As we have seen, the snake symbolizes evil, in this case, an evil that progressively intensifies. The snake begets the viper; the bad begets the worse. The principle here is not one of speciation but of intensification: “Let him who does wrong continue to do wrong…” (Revelation 22:11a).
The last difficulty is shared by both speakers and is the source of the others. Let us for a moment abandon the particular examples we have been discussing and consider a generalized hypothetical. Suppose someone holds a belief and is a Christian. As a Christian, they know that their faith should penetrate all of life, so they look for confirmation of their belief in Scripture. Will they find it? Very likely. They will find support for their belief regardless what the belief is. This is so because they are not actually reading the Scripture. Instead, they are looking for their belief in the language of Scripture. The interpretations we have looked at so far do not demonstrate the support of Scripture for the speaker’s belief; they demonstrate only the belief itself in language borrowed from Scripture. They reflect an invalid approach to understanding Scripture (or indeed anything).
When we read Scripture correctly, it challenges our presuppositions rather than confirming them. “The word of God is living… It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12). Understanding occurs when our biases and presuppositions are revealed and laid bare to the probe of conscience. When we read Scripture, we stand before a mirror1See James 1:22-25. It shows us ourselves. The goal is that we, by the power of the Holy Spirit, might be transformed into citizens fit for the kingdom of God.
Footnotes
- 1See James 1:22-25
One response to “A Glimpse Into How I Read the Bible”
It’s tempting to ask, “Who was right? The creationist or the evolutionist?” Of course, they were both right and both wrong. The creationist was right to insist, as the author of Hebrews put it, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” (Heb 11:3). The evolutionist was right to point out that science backs up evolution. There is abundant evidence for a common ancestor to all life on earth. Both were also wrong to exclude other viewpoints as invalid merely because they contradicted in some way. Contradiction indicates not that one or the other view is false but that a task for understanding remains.