How are we to make sense of the scriptures of the church? Common sense suggests that we try to understand: 1) how a passage contributes to the testimony of the book in which it appears, 2) how a passage (in its book) works within the witness of the Christian Bible, and 3) how a passage has been understood in the life of the church.

No passage stands by itself as a meaning apart from its context, and every passage has multiple contexts. This does not require any specialized training in the Bible, but is merely common sense. A passage or text is part of a larger written document, therefore it should be understood in relation to that document and not simply on its own. But every document in the Christian Bible is there, where it is, because the church decided to put it there, as part of its faithful witness. Thus, a passage in its larger document is presented to the reader as a portion of the witness that is affirmed in the Christian Bible. And this witness is articulated and interpreted in the life of the church, as it is lived and expressed wherever Christian faith has taken root.

This does not mean that we can know the "original meaning" that a passage had for the person or persons who wrote it, or first read it, for generally we do know who these persons were.  But even if we know, as with the letters of Paul, we can never be sure we know what was in their minds. Nor can we conclude that a passage has only one meaning within the book in which it appears, because we cannot be certain the meaning intended by the author(s) or editor(s) of a book was understood in precisely that way by the community of faith that first read the book. Thus, there might have been at least two meanings for a passage at the very beginning of its life within the church: the meaning intended by the author and the meaning understood by the reader. Furthermore, as we consider the meaning of the passage during the long history of Christian faith, we may well find that there are various understandings that shape the life of the church's witness.

Certainly, however, we will be able to rule out some meanings of a passage, as inconsistent with the life of Christian faith, or as contrary to the testimony of the Christian Bible, or as unsubstantiated by the plain sense of the book in which the passage appears. Moreover, where different claims are made about the meaning of a passage, we may be able to say which of these seem to make more sense. We can look for coherence between the testimonies of the book and the Christian Bible, and also the witness of the church to its scriptures.

An example may make this clearer. In the gospel of Mark (7:1-23) we find Jesus being accused of breaking Jewish law, because he does not require that his disciples wash their hands before eating. Jesus is reported to have replied that men are defiled by what comes out of them, not by what goes into them. Then the gospel narrator comments that by this teaching Jesus meant to declare all foods clean. (Mk. 7:19) When we read an account of this incident in the gospel of Matthew, however, we find this comment by the narrator of the story in the gospel of Mark has been deleted. (Mt. 15:10-20)

If we read only the passage in the gospel of Mark, we might conclude that Jesus meant to declare all foods clean, thus overturning Jewish law. If we look at this passage, moreover, in the context of the entire gospel of Mark, we would find that this gospel consistently rejects Jewish law as a requirement for faith and salvation. Within the New Testament Paul's letters support this position, and the Acts of the Apostles contains a story of Peter's vision in Joppa that seems to confirm the same teaching. (Acts 10) Yet, the gospel of Matthew presents Jesus teaching that every bit of the Jewish law should be observed until the Day of the Lord comes. (Mt. 5:17-20) And in chapter 15 of Acts of the Apostles we find that certain aspects of the dietary restrictions of Jewish law were required of Gentile converts by the church in Jerusalem.  Thus, we cannot say the New Testament takes the position that is presented by the gospel of Mark. 

In the context of the Christian Bible, however, which includes the Hebrew scriptures that Christians call the Old Testament, we do find evidence that moral commandments are given priority over dietary and ritual commandments, at least at certain times in the history of Israel. Moreover, the latter part of Isaiah (chapters 40-66) begins to envision that God will rule all the nations of the world, not simply as their Creator, but because God cares about all peoples. Furthermore, it does not seem in these passages that God will impose the Jewish law on all the peoples of the world.  All this is evidence for the conclusions drawn by Paul and incorporated into the narrative of the gospel of Mark.

We might conclude, therefore, that in general the books of the New Testament see a widening of God's purpose to include Gentiles as well as Jews in some new kingdom of God, even if there is disagreement within the church over how Jewish dietary laws are to be "handled." It appears that the understanding of the church in Jerusalem, as articulated in Acts 15, may well have been the orthodox understanding of the church for centuries, as Christians refused to eat food sacrificed to idols even when this meant death at the hands of the Romans.  But after the number of Jewish Christians in the church declined, and especially after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, the other aspects of Jewish law that may have been required in the church for which the gospel of Matthew was written simply fell by the wayside. Given the various dietary restrictions of the medieval church, however, it seems that the radical position of the gospel of Mark and of Paul undermining all dietary restrictions was not firmly institutionalized in the church until the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century.

If we ask, therefore, what meaning the passage in Mark has, we must allow for various meanings in the Christian Bible and the life of the church, even though within the gospel itself the meaning of the passage seems more narrowly drawn. The main point that the Christian community of faith seems to have taken from this passage is not the comment of the narrator concerning dietary restrictions but the statement by Jesus that what comes out of a person matters more than what goes into him. The Christian teaching, if we may use such a definitive phrase for the varied history of this passage in the life of the church, is that we are not what we eat but what we do. Moral conduct matters much more than diet. Regardless of what we eat or do not eat, God calls us through the Christian Bible to live justly and to love our neighbors.

At this point it might be noted that in seeking to understand the passage from the gospel of Mark we have not engaged in any scholarly analysis of the Bible, and we have avoided all sorts of jargon about reading scripture that I do not intend to introduce now. We are simply using our common sense in studying the Christian Bible. We are reading it from within the community of Christian faith, but we are not reading it to prove a set of Christian beliefs or to reduce its witness to historical and literary observations. We are simply looking for the meaning of the Christian Bible in the context of the scriptures and their understanding throughout the life of the church.

Reading the Christian Bible this way is a rational process. It allows us to rule out certain interpretations as inconsistent with the overall coherence of the Christian Bible and the church's understanding of its witness. Does it also allow for a revision of Christian understanding? An example related to the passage we have already discussed may help us answer that question.

If we look at Galatians 1-2, we find arguments by Paul against imposing Jewish law on Gentile converts. Paul says he went to Jerusalem early in his ministry and met with Cephas (Peter) and James (the brother of Jesus, who at some point becomes the leader of the church in Jerusalem). Paul says little about what happened, but he does not report any conflict. Fourteen years later, however, when he returned to Jerusalem and met with James, Cephas (Peter), and John (apparently the former disciple John, whose brother James was also a disciple), Paul says there was controversy about his ministry to the Gentiles. But, Paul reports, these three "pillars of the church" supported his work and only required that he take up a collection among the Greek-speaking churches for the poor of the church in Jerusalem. Shortly thereafter, however, men sent from Jerusalem by James bring a message to the church in Antioch that causes Peter to stop eating with Gentile members of the church. Paul is livid, denounces Peter as a hypocrite, and argues that the gospel does not require Gentile Christians to keep the dietary laws specified for Jews in the law of Moses.

The meaning of this seems clear, except that Acts 15 seems to contradict the obvious reading of this passage. The passage in Acts relates that James, Peter and John met with Paul and his associates in Jerusalem and agreed that Gentile Christians should be required to observe a few of the dietary restrictions of Jewish law. In fact, the Acts account says that Paul was given the responsibility of taking this message back to the Greek-speaking congregations of Jews and Gentiles that he has helped to organize. Here we have a clear inconsistency in the New Testament. How are we to make sense of it?

In the history of the church this problem has generally been resolved by assuming that Acts 15 reports a meeting with Paul after the conflict in Antioch, where the differences between Paul and James led to Paul backing down and accepting the authority of the church in Jerusalem. The problem with this conclusion is that nothing in the letters of Paul supports it, and much suggests that Paul's conflict with the "pillars of the church" in Jerusalem continued until the end of his ministry.

If we assume that Paul's conflict with the church authorities in Jerusalem was not resolved at the end of his lifetime, and that he had not agreed with James as Acts 15 seems to indicate, then we have to explain why Acts 15 reports that Paul has changed his position. Because Acts reports on the ministry of Paul, we can safely assume that it was written after the letters of Paul. But there are many discrepancies between Acts and Paul's letters, which imply that the author of Acts was not familiar with the letters written by Paul. 

Moreover, the author of Acts says at the beginning of the gospel of Luke that he is working from various accounts and trying to present an orderly account of the beginnings of the church. We can be sure, therefore, that Acts is not the testimony of a witness but an editor's summary of past events. Did the author of Acts rely on a mistaken report about Paul's participation in the agreement with James that is reported in Acts 15? Or, if he lacked confirmation of Paul's presence, did he assume that Paul must have been included in such an important meeting concerning the mission to the Gentiles and that Paul would have been the obvious person to report on the agreement to the Greek-speaking churches? If he did make either of these assumptions, and if these assumptions were wrong, then the inconsistency between Galatians 2 and Acts 15 would be resolved.

This understanding of the two passages would allow that Acts 15 is factually incorrect, but it would not require attributing to the author of the gospel of Luke any intention to mislead his readers. It would only reflect his lack of correct information about events that occurred some time previous to his efforts to prepare a summary account of the early church. Even though this is not the understanding that has generally been taught within the church, it is a rational construction of the passages involved and does not violate the meaning of the Christian Bible that has been the testimony of the church. The gospel message that the grace of God in Jesus Christ offered salvation to the Gentiles as well as to the Jews is not undermined in the least by this suggested understanding. What we do see, however, is that conflict within the church in the first century about what Christian faith requires of church members continued longer than Paul hoped and the author of Acts assumed.

We can best understanding the Christian Bible by interpreting a passage in the context of the book it is in, the entire Bible, and the history of the church's testimony to scripture. We can, therefore, testify to the authoritative and inspired word of God, even as we recognize that the word of God has changed in subtle but significant ways during the history of the church. Traditionally, this is understood as the work of the Holy Spirit. This kind of Bible study enables us to make sense of both the Christian Bible and our own faith.

For other reflections on reading the Bible today please see:

Who Speaks for God?

Bible Study in the 21st Century 

Exegesis

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