the Bible is clear…

Theological colonisation seldom begins with violence.

It begins with confidence.

“The Bible is clear…”

And when one community or people declare their interpretation as timeless, universal, and uniquely orthodox over every other community’s interpretation, then theological colonisation has begun.

“The Bible is clear…”

The problem with this kind of thinking is that even at the most basic level, it is not true to reality. Often, the Bible is not clear, makes conflicting statements, and appears to approve of things we might find reprehensible.

If the Bible is so clear to understand, then why have well-intentioned and sincere Christians (even highly educated ones) been arguing over issues as seemingly fundamental as baptism, the Lord’s Supper, or the interrelation of faith and works (cue Paul and James), let’s not even get started on the role of women, church polity, or gifts of the Spirit.

Most churches allow men to come to church with long hair and women without head coverings, but Paul expressly forbids both (1 Corinthians 11:5-6, 11-13). I don’t know anyone who has had to impregnate his deceased brother’s widow, in order to preserve his brother’s lineage (Deuteronomy 25:5-6). Despite God seemingly being fairly serious about this instruction, failure to do so could even result in death (Genesis 38:3-10). Many of us enjoy shellfish (Deuteronomy 14:9-10), don’t execute rebellious children (Deuteronomy 21:18-21) or false prophets (Deuteronomy 18:20), or force an unmarried woman to marry her rapists, with no possibility of divorce (Deuteronomy 22:28-29).

We all instinctively know these passages require interpretation.

No one I know gives money to everyone who asks (Matthew 5:42) or offers their mugger their shirt after being robbed of their jacket (Luke 6:29). Most people don’t make their wife sleep in a separate bed during her monthly cycle (Leviticus 15:19-23), build a parapet around the roof of their house (Deuteronomy 22:8) or condone slavery (Leviticus 25:44; Ephesians 6:5-6; 1 Peter 3:18). Again God, or the Bible at least, seems quite clear, at times, on most of those things.

Forgive me if the above paragraph feels slightly disingenuous. Any frustration you feel is not likely because you find yourself in agreement with the ongoing validity or ethical virtue of the above scenarios, but more likely because you know that the above readings display almost no awareness of the historical background or use of the appropriate hermeneutical tools or principles.

And that is exactly my point. None of us read the Bible “flat”, reading meaning straight off the surface of the text. We are always interpreting whatever we read. All theology is interpreted theology. There is just no other way. Even those who may claim to “just read the Bible” are constantly interpreting and contextualizing what they read. We may disagree on what methods or tools of interpretation we prefer, but that does not change the reality that we are always interpreting what we read.

Durham University theologian, Stephen C Barton, reminds us that “Meaning is not something that is simply discovered in the text or ‘read off’ the surface of the text. It is, rather, created in the encounter between text and reader…”[1]  What we see in any given text, and especially what we understand the implications of that text to be, are all too often determined by what our experiences, socio-economic context, political affiliations, and cultural values have trained us to see.

This may sound like I am advocating for rampant, unchecked relativism in biblical interpretation, and I am not. In a later post, we will discuss hermeneutical safeguards that keep us from plunging off the cliff of relativism, but for now, the key idea I want to focus on is that there is no such thing as a “pure” form of biblical theology unbounded by interpretation or context.

We all read Scripture through a contextual lens. Or to put it another way, we all read Scripture from somewhere. It is impossible to read Scripture from a neutral perspective because each of us is a contextually located reader. The late South African missiologist David Bosch reminds us that “Interpreting a text is not only a literary exercise. Our entire context comes into play when we interpret a biblical text. One therefore has to concede that all theology… is, by its very nature, contextual.”[

Despite colonial-era Western missionaries claiming to “just preach the Bible,” they were never preaching a neutral understanding of the text. Instead, they were preaching an interpretation of Scripture filtered through the lenses of Enlightenment rationalism, imperialistic ideals, and deeply embedded assumptions of racial and cultural supremacy. Historically, claims for neutrality in interpretation have masked power and economic interests.

Theological colonisation is when one contextual reading asserts its interpretation as the uniquely orthodox, universal, and self-evident interpretation, which must be exported unchanged and unchangeable to the rest of the world.

To ignore the role of context in interpretation, claiming instead some sort of a-contextual neutrality as post-Enlightenment Western theology often did (and which conservative evangelical theology often still does), is not to escape from the problem of interpretative subjectivity but rather to allow context to sneak in unrecognised, through the back door of the interpretive process. The unacknowledged context does not weaken but grows in power, ultimately dominating the interpretation process.  

And when that unacknowledged context is one of capitalist ambition, white supremacy, and Western Enlightenment philosophies, it cannot help but build theologies of dominance, greed, and raw power.

The answer is not the abandonment of Scripture but the fostering of a greater epistemological[3] humility, as we learn to read Scripture in community with those unlike ourselves. Our interpretation of Scripture is not weakened by our finitude, but enriched, deepened, and disrupted when we engage with other equally limited but contextually diverse theologies and voices.

[1] Barton, Stephen C. 2010. Historical Criticism and Social Scientific Perspectives in New Testament Study. In Green, Joel B. (ed) Hearing the New Testament: Strategies for Interpretation (Second Edition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. p47 

[2] Bosch, D.J. 1991. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. Orbis Books: Maryknoll, p. 423.

[3] Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the theory of knowledge. How do we know what we know is reliable? What are the limits of human understanding? Epistemological humility is the recognition that our knowledge is always partial, situated, and shaped by our context.