We recently had a short Sunday school class on how to read the Bible. A few principles to consider are:
Genre - Is the passage historical narrative, poetry, teaching, or apocalyptic literature?
Context - What is the context of the verse in relation to the chapter, the book, and redemptive history?
What was the meaning of the author?
What would it have meant to the original readers/hearers?
Without these guidelines, it is possible to misuse the Bible. Rather than asking what was the intent of the author, the text can become what I want it to mean to me. Authorial intent versus reader response. Instead of the Bible being about God's revelation of himself and his plan of redemption, I can read myself into the text and make the Bible all about me. For example, the story of David and Goliath. This is historical narrative that actually took place. It shows God's faithfulness to preserve his people and the line through which the Messiah would eventually come. The passage doesn't contain tips on how to use unconventional weaponry. Neither is it an allegory of how we will triumph over our personal Goliaths. David had a unique place in redemptive history. If anything, we should put ourselves in the shoes of the ordinary people who were too scared to fight.
As I've been reading A Fiery Gospel on The Battle Hymn of the Republic, I was struck by how the misuse of the Bible can mislead ourselves, but it can also mislead others. Julia Ward Howe used biblical-sounding language, thus it is easy to think she was a Christian, and therefore, her words can be taken as correct Christian application. But was she?
According to author Richard Gamble, Howe was a liberal Unitarian. She did not believe in the Trinity. She did not believe in the deity of Jesus Christ. She was heavily influenced by Emanuel Swedenborg, a former Lutheran turned philosopher and mystic, who taught "that the Bible has an inner, spiritual meaning encoded within the text." According to him, Genesis 1 is not about God creating the world for his good pleasure but "is actually the story of our creation as spiritual people—that is, it’s the story of how we can go from being completely focused on ourselves and the world around us to being caring people who manifest God’s love and wisdom as much and as often as we can." Howe gave credit to Swedenborg for her doctrine of "Christ" who did not come to save his people from their sins but "whose purity and pathos have had much to do with the redemption of the human race from barbarism and the rule of animal passions."1 This is not the Second Person of the Trinity according to the historic creeds and confessions, and to make matters worse, Swedenborg's "God" isn't divine but human. This doesn't sound remotely Christian to me but more like humanism that uses "Christ" as the high example, but we ultimately save ourselves. (Of note, the quotes from the Swedenborg site are not in A Fiery Gospel but from my own digging around on the Internet.)
So going back to the principles of interpretation, Swedenborg's view of the Bible was reader response rather than authorial intent. He influenced Julia Ward Howe who read the cause of the Union in the text, which led others to read later political and military ventures of the United States back into the text via the hymn.2 She solidified the connection between religion and state, and the genius (if it can be called that) of her writing is that it is vague enough that anyone can insert his/her theology into her words creating the perfect civil religion - ecumenical religious nationalism.
For some reason, this reminds me of the game of Telestrations. If you haven't played it, it's like the telephone game where you whisper something in a person's ear who passes it the next and so forth down the line. By the time it gets to the end, it may or may not resemble the original. In Telestrations, instead of the spoken word, you use pictures. I played this game once where the original was "breakfast cereal." So the 1st person drew a picture of breakfast cereal. The 2nd person wrote down what they thought the picture meant. It passed to the third who drew what the 2nd person wrote. So forth and so on until the end. By the end, "breakfast cereal" became "toxic waste." True story.
In the epilogue of A Fiery Gospel (I jumped to the end), Dr. Gamble writes that the manuscript of The Battle Hymn is now in the Museum of the Bible, which I find incredibly ironic given Howe's view of Scripture. Gamble notes that historians focus on what the Bible did to Americans, but perhaps the better question should be - What did Americans do to the Bible?
1. A Fiery Gospel: The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the Road to Righteous War, Richard M. Gamble, Cornell University Press, 2019. pgs. 58-60.
2. Ibid. 98-102.
3. Ibid. 242-243.
Genre - Is the passage historical narrative, poetry, teaching, or apocalyptic literature?
Context - What is the context of the verse in relation to the chapter, the book, and redemptive history?
What was the meaning of the author?
What would it have meant to the original readers/hearers?
Without these guidelines, it is possible to misuse the Bible. Rather than asking what was the intent of the author, the text can become what I want it to mean to me. Authorial intent versus reader response. Instead of the Bible being about God's revelation of himself and his plan of redemption, I can read myself into the text and make the Bible all about me. For example, the story of David and Goliath. This is historical narrative that actually took place. It shows God's faithfulness to preserve his people and the line through which the Messiah would eventually come. The passage doesn't contain tips on how to use unconventional weaponry. Neither is it an allegory of how we will triumph over our personal Goliaths. David had a unique place in redemptive history. If anything, we should put ourselves in the shoes of the ordinary people who were too scared to fight.
As I've been reading A Fiery Gospel on The Battle Hymn of the Republic, I was struck by how the misuse of the Bible can mislead ourselves, but it can also mislead others. Julia Ward Howe used biblical-sounding language, thus it is easy to think she was a Christian, and therefore, her words can be taken as correct Christian application. But was she?
According to author Richard Gamble, Howe was a liberal Unitarian. She did not believe in the Trinity. She did not believe in the deity of Jesus Christ. She was heavily influenced by Emanuel Swedenborg, a former Lutheran turned philosopher and mystic, who taught "that the Bible has an inner, spiritual meaning encoded within the text." According to him, Genesis 1 is not about God creating the world for his good pleasure but "is actually the story of our creation as spiritual people—that is, it’s the story of how we can go from being completely focused on ourselves and the world around us to being caring people who manifest God’s love and wisdom as much and as often as we can." Howe gave credit to Swedenborg for her doctrine of "Christ" who did not come to save his people from their sins but "whose purity and pathos have had much to do with the redemption of the human race from barbarism and the rule of animal passions."1 This is not the Second Person of the Trinity according to the historic creeds and confessions, and to make matters worse, Swedenborg's "God" isn't divine but human. This doesn't sound remotely Christian to me but more like humanism that uses "Christ" as the high example, but we ultimately save ourselves. (Of note, the quotes from the Swedenborg site are not in A Fiery Gospel but from my own digging around on the Internet.)
So going back to the principles of interpretation, Swedenborg's view of the Bible was reader response rather than authorial intent. He influenced Julia Ward Howe who read the cause of the Union in the text, which led others to read later political and military ventures of the United States back into the text via the hymn.2 She solidified the connection between religion and state, and the genius (if it can be called that) of her writing is that it is vague enough that anyone can insert his/her theology into her words creating the perfect civil religion - ecumenical religious nationalism.
For some reason, this reminds me of the game of Telestrations. If you haven't played it, it's like the telephone game where you whisper something in a person's ear who passes it the next and so forth down the line. By the time it gets to the end, it may or may not resemble the original. In Telestrations, instead of the spoken word, you use pictures. I played this game once where the original was "breakfast cereal." So the 1st person drew a picture of breakfast cereal. The 2nd person wrote down what they thought the picture meant. It passed to the third who drew what the 2nd person wrote. So forth and so on until the end. By the end, "breakfast cereal" became "toxic waste." True story.
In the epilogue of A Fiery Gospel (I jumped to the end), Dr. Gamble writes that the manuscript of The Battle Hymn is now in the Museum of the Bible, which I find incredibly ironic given Howe's view of Scripture. Gamble notes that historians focus on what the Bible did to Americans, but perhaps the better question should be - What did Americans do to the Bible?
The words on the page might stay the same, but appropriated for political, military, or cultural purpose unknown to the original author, do they truly remain the same?3It's one thing to play a harmless game like Telestrations with "breakfast cereal." It's another thing to turn the Word of God into what we want it to be and make it say what we want it to say. We may be misleading not only ourselves but others.
1. A Fiery Gospel: The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the Road to Righteous War, Richard M. Gamble, Cornell University Press, 2019. pgs. 58-60.
2. Ibid. 98-102.
3. Ibid. 242-243.
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