Lutheran Laity Leaders

Lutheran Church in Kenya denounces ELCA

Mark Chapman — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 23:31:26 +0000

This is the official response of the Lutheran Church in Kenya, Africa, to the ELCA endorsement of homosexuality at its Chuchwide Assembly. It speaks for itself.

October 1, 2009

The Evangelical Lutheran Church In Kenya’s Statement On The Evangelical Lutheran Church In America’s Resolution On Same Sex Marriage

(Editor’s Note: We thank Holger Sonntag for forwarding this to us.)

This is the statement of the General Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya on 25 September 2009, in Kapenguria, on the decision of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) to roster among her clergy those who are in same sex marital unions.

We, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya, have received with shock, dismay and disappointment, the news that the ELCA, in her Churchwide Assembly held on 21 August 2009, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, resolved officially to open the door of the office of the public ministry to those who are in “committed” same gender sexual relations. We, therefore, would like the general public, particularly the Church of Christ here in Kenya and elsewhere in the world, to take note of the following:

that the church body involved in this act (ELCA) is not associated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya;
that we condemn in the strongest terms possible this unfortunate and anti-scriptural development in a church body that bears the name of the great reformer, Dr. Martin Luther;
that we condemn sexual perversion in all its manifestations;
that same sex marital union is not only contrary to God’s will as clearly expressed in the Holy Scripture, but also repugnant to the natural created social order;
that God’s plan and purpose of marriage is fulfilled only in heterosexual (one man – one woman) life long commitment;
that this act by the ELCA constitutes a loveless and callous disregard of the spiritual condition of those caught in homosexual bondage; and
that, most seriously of all, it is nothing less than a denial of the transformative power of the love we know in our Savior Jesus Christ, Who seeks all sinners in order to restore them to communion with the Father through the ministrations of His Holy Spirit in Word and sacrament.

Therefore, we must confess the Word of God and be faithful to it. In the name of our crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ, we call upon the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to repent of its apostasy from the truth. We feel compassion for those among us who are caught in homosexual bondage and want them to know the transforming power of God’s forgiveness and love. Thus we hereby dedicate ourselves anew into the service of Him Who came to serve us sinners, including those caught in homosexual bondage, and Who by the power of His cross and resurrection creates in us a new will to please Him in patterns of living that are chaste and pure. In saying these things, we are standing with our fellow redeemed in the great consensus of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church, particularly with those church bodies in the International Lutheran Council. We acknowledge there are many Christians within ELCA itself who are offended by the action of their church body, and we want them to be assured of our prayers and support.

Signed this 25th day of September 2009:

Rev. Bishop William Lopeta
North West Diocese

Rev. Bishop Richard Amayo
Lake Diocese

Rev. Bishop Thomas Asiago
South West Diocese

Most Rev. Dr. Walter Obare
Archbishop

Rev. John Halakhe
General Secretary

What happened in Minneapolis?

Mark Chapman — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:25:10 +0000

In the most recent issue of Forum Letter (October, 2009; Vol. 38, No. 10) editor Richard O. Johnson provides a full, detailed and insightful analysis of the Churchwide Assembly in August of this year that voted to open the door to the ordination of openly practicing homosexuals to the office of pastor, and the normalizing of homosexuality and same-sex unions in the ELCA. Pastor Johnson does not put the ELCA / gay-rights “spin” on this acton, but analyzes it from a biblical and Lutheran confessional point of view. It is not cheery reading, but it details the facts and actions of the Churchwide Assembly that we all need to know. Pastor Johnson was a press delegate representing Forum Letter, and so writes from first-hand observation and experience.

Forum Letter, together with its partner journal, Lutheran Forum, are the best voices for an independent, non-partisan Lutheran perspective on issues influencing Lutheranism today. The annual subscripton price for the two periodicals together in one package is reasonable, and well worth it to keep informed on Lutheran issues and topics of interest without the spin, without the bias, and without the denominational cheerleading.

Use the link on this blog to go to “American Lutheran Publicity Bureau” for more information.

Pastor Johnson, in Forum Letter, does a far better job of laying out the events, results and consequences of the Minneapolis Churchwide Assembly than I could ever do.

The Bible Study Library

Mark Chapman — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:30:00 +0000

Ideally, the only book you need to study the Bible is the Bible itself. The guiding rule and principle of the ancient Church, that persisted as the norm up until the 1800′s, was simply: “Scripture interprets Scripture.”

The Fathers of the Church and those who followed after them had an advantage over us with this guideline, however. They had a prodigious knowledge of the whole Bible, with large parts of it committed to memory from years of daily reading and meditating on Scripture. When the Fathers said “the clear passages interpret the difficult passages,” they had a massive mental cross-reference system that could move back and forth through the Bible to actually do this sorting out of clear passages that enlightened difficult passages. In the sermons and commentaries left to us by such giants of biblical study as St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and of course, Martin Luther himself (and this is a very short and incomplete list), we have an example of how these minds, immersed in the Bible, could “interpret Scripture by Scripture.”

But few of us today have that sort of command of the contents of the whole Bible, and even fewer have the knowledge of how to apply the rule of “the clearer passages interpret the difficult passage;” I know I don’t. We need help. We need books on our shelves to give us background, history and theology before we set out to interpret the Bible (the method of which I have treated in other posts). So here is my list of what I think are the basic books someone needs in order to be a well-informed interpreter of the Bible. Any good bookstore — on-line or with a real building and live people — will be happy to help you find and buy these books, especially as many of them tend to be rather expensive:

The Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible

The Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible

Peake’s Commentary on the Bible (latest edition)

There are many Bible Dictionaries and Bible Commentaries out there. I recommend these three because they are least influenced by political correctness and are all reliable, moderate options of modern biblical scholarship: not radically left or reactionary right.

The Orthodox Study Bible: Ancient Christianity Speaks to Today’s World

All Study Bibles today are biased toward a certain theology that determines how the Bible is interpreted, from all the varieties from radical liberalism to fundamentalist conservatism. The same is true for The Orthodox Study Bible wth a significant difference: it interprets the Bible from the perspective and method of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
This Eastern Orthodox Church approach is fundamentally unlike any western church method — Protestant or Catholic. It is spiritual, it relies on the wisdom of the Church Fathers, and sees Bible interpretation as aiding the Christian to a deeper experience of union with Christ.
Two unusual aspects that I think are useful rather than an obstacle: the Old Testament is the English translation of the Septuagint, the ancient Greek version of the Jewish Bible first produced ca. 200 B.C., which is “The Scriptures” to which the New Testament writers refer and quote; and the New Testament is the New King James Version.

The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church

See my other, detailed posting on The Book of Concord
Three of the writings in the BC should give you almost all the basics in theology you need for Bible Study: The Augsburg Confession; Luther’s Small Catechism, and Luther’s Large Catechism.

Good books to read:

Michael Dauphinais & Matthew Levering, Holy People, Holy Land: A Theological Introduction to the Bible

Dominique Barthelemy, God and His Image: An Outline of Biblical Theology

Aidan Nichols, Lovely Like Jerusalem: The Fulfillment of the Old Testament in Christ and the Church

Lesslie Newbigin, A Walk Through the Bible

Carl E. Braaten, Principles of Lutheran Theology (Second Edition)

Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther

Four Simple Steps to Studying the Bible

Mark Chapman — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 10:39:53 +0000

Reading and studying the Bible, either for yourself or leading a Bible Study group in church, does not need to be hard. All Bible passages can be understood and interpreted by applying, in ascending order, these four steps that get at the meaning of the biblical passage. Each is a sort of “informed meditation” on the Bible, and asks us to find the “sense” of the Bible, to listen to the Bible with its own voice and let it speak the Word of God to us, to increasingly enrich us in faith, hope and love. The four steps or “senses” for understanding the Bible are:

The Literal Sense
The Christological Sense
The Spiritual Sense
The Heavenly Sense

This is the oldest and most often used way the Church developed for getting at the meaning of the Bible, and for good reason. It is a way of deep listening. By listening to the Bible ever more carefully for each of these senses, we find that we do not presuppose what the Bible “must” mean or bring our own ideas of what the Bible “ought” to mean. Instead, we find that we must leave ourselves and our world outside, so that the Word of God has the opening in us to renew and revive us in our faith, and further conform our lives to Christ, both toward God as the Father’s children and toward the world as sisters and brothers to our neighbors in need.

Each sense is simple, but not easy. This is a way of thinking we are not used to. And each step or sense must feel completed and answered as far as we can go “this time,” before moving on to the next step or sense. Each sense builds upon what we have learned by listening to the Word of God in the way of the senses that have gone before. This is thinking by meditation, not by objective analysis. We do not take the Bible apart to find a meaning within or behind the Bible; we take the Bible as a whole and listen to it as the transforming power of God. This does not mean we just “make it up as we go along!” We still need to know some history and some theology as helps and aids. But learning history and theology need to happen before we sit down to really read and know the Bible.

The Literal Sense: What does this Bible passage say? Not what does it mean! What was it about, what is it about. This is where you will need to do most of your homework in Dictionaries, Commentaries, etc. Find out what you don’t know: people, places, names, historical background, unfamiliar words. What kind of document is this passage: a letter; biography; history; prophecy; poetry; advise for living; fiction (e,g. the Book of Esther)? How does knowing this help you understand the plain sense of the passage: what it is saying and to whom it is speaking? The literal sense is always the basis and foundation of what this passage means. The next three senses are not just flights of fancy; they must connect with the literal sense and come from the literal sense. The Bible says what it means and means what it says.

Christological sense: How is this passage God’ revelation of Jesus Christ as Savior? The Christian understanding of the Bible is that the whole Bible points to Christ as the fulfillment of all God’s promises of salvation, redemption, reconciliation, and glorification. What can you say about salvation in Jesus Christ based on this passage? Is it promise or fulfillment? Is it the Law of God from which Christ delivers us and frees us from its condemnation of our sins? Is it the Gospel — the “wonderful message of salvation in Christ” — that lifts us up, gives us assurance, comforts us, shows us God’s love and mercy for us, sets us in a right relationship (“justification;” “righteousness”) with God on account of Christ? The Christological sense is about Jesus Christ and the salvation he gives to us, for us; to me, for me, apart from and other than and before I ever do anything about it. We are justified before God by grace, through faith, on account of Christ, and not by any good works we do!

The Spiritual Sense: What does this passage show to us as what we ought to do because of what Christ has done for us? Try to be specific; keep tied to the literal sense; do not use generalities like, “help others” or “feed the hungry.” The spiritual sense covers both spirituality and morality — how we become like Christ before God (spirituality), and how we become like Christ in our relationships with others (morality). The key is become like Christ. Often, even usually, this is a gradual process, a “growth in grace,” a “conforming to the likeness of Christ,” that takes practice, repeating, and will experience falls and back-sliding; no one becomes entirely or perfectly conformed to Christ — holy — in this mortal life; that is why we trust ourselves in faith to the boundless grace of God that we receive from Christ, and not in our efforts to become Christlike. What guidance, hints, clues, directions, “do’s and don’t's” does this Bible passage in particular offer or suggest or lead us to find?

The Heavenly Sense: What vision of our final salvation, our goal of union with God in Christ, is suggested by this Bible passage? What is heaven in the eyes of this passage or behind the surface of this passage? Is it “the New Jerusalem?” The “Kingdom of God?” “Becoming like Christ in the life of God?” Change from this existence into a “divine existence?” Victory over “sin, death, and the devil” (as Luther often put it)? A great and endless banquet feast or bridal feast? A return to “Paradise,” a new and perfect innocence like Adam and Eve before the fall into sin, only with no serpent and no possibility of sin in this restored Garden of Eden? Or some other image? Of course, nobody knows what heaven or salvation will be like or look like, what the experience of it will be. Even the inspired authors of the books of the Bible could not know, because heaven is transformed, transfigured divine life with the life of God in perfect happiness and harmony — and humans have no language to describe that, any more than we can describe God as God is in Himself. Here, in the heavenly sense, the three prior senses must be turned inside out to see the splendor and glory of God within each, concealed in each, shown in signs and symbols.

Following this four-fold way of interpreting the Bible is not just making it up off the top of your head. Even more, it is not merely repeating what you already think you know. It is opening yourself up to truly hear the Bible on its own terms. The Bible is the witness of the apostles and prophets to the cross and victory of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. This four-step approach is meant to pay attention to the voice of that witness.

Every step requires study and serious thinking. For example, the Christological Sense will be impossible to grasp if you do not have a firm grip on just what Christian doctrine teaches about salvation, atonement, redemption, reconciliation, and justification. If you are not able to explain to an unchurched person why Jesus died on the cross, how that death on the cross takes away our sins and the sins of the world, and what the victory of Christ’s resurrection triumphs over, then the Christological Sense will stump you. If you cannot tell that same person why believing in Christ is the most important thing in your life (and is it?), where it all leads, the ultimate goal of hope in salvation in Christ at death and beyond death and the grave, then the Heavenly Sense will have no meaning for you.

You don’t need to be a “theologian” to be prepared in these ways! Actually, all Christians are already “theologians.” “Theology” simply means to think about God. Just going to church on Sundays makes you think about God; so there you go — you already are a theologian! All you need is some guidance and incentive and insights from more experienced theologians to get you going and get you up to speed. Going to Bible Study classes and classes on Christian doctrine and beliefs at your church can get your mind working in “theological” ways. Ask your pastor for advice on books to read; don’t start out with weighty tomes — start small; short and basic, broad-view sorts of books. Martin Luther’s Large Catechism is a great place to start; he wrote it for beginner “theologians” who were responsible for teaching the basics of the Christian faith in their churches.

The four steps are not rigid; they are meant to lead, not to lock you in. This does not suggest that every Bible Study be divided into four equal sections of the same length to force you through each step until you get to the end and the “final results.” There are no “final results!” Let the Holy Spirit, and Christ the Word, and the passage you are studying, take you where you need to go. Especially early on, you may get no farther than the first two steps, and find the Christological Sense so deep and rich that it occupies all your time. Good! That’s where Christ and the Spirit wanted you to do your work this time! (The only thing you ought to watch out for and question is if you keep staying in the first step, the Literal Sense; there may be good reason for that, but it can also mean that you are getting bogged down in the “safe” world of fact-finding and historical trivia.)

The only way you will know if this four-step way works is to go and do it for a while. One try is not enough. It takes patience, so give it time. I think you will be surprised at how rich and fulfilling Bible study will become with practice!

Being Lutheran but not “ELCA”

Mark Chapman — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:19:51 +0000

Yes, I am staying Lutheran. The Minneapolis Meltdown of the ELCA, with the smooth passage of all the necessary provisions to make homosexuality a normal and “celebrated,” even God-blessed “lifestyle” in the ELCA, with gay marriage clearly on the horizon and unrestricted ordination as pastors of openly practicing homosexuals moved the ELCA up with the leaders of the progressive liberal Protestants, particularly The Episcopal Church here in the U.S., and the United Church of Christ. This “progress” and “liberty” (what “Liberal”/”Liberalism really mean) intends to make a major overhaul revision of Christianity from the roots up. This “re-visioning” of Christianity is not about homosexuality; the gay rights issues of church blessings of gay marriages and church indifference to ordaining openly gay and lesbian candidates to pastoral ministry are all symptoms of the real cancer eating away at Liberal Protestantism today, Lutheranism included.

The core issue is a conscious and intentional rejection of what the Nicene Creed defines as the four distinctive signs of the true Christian Church: One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. To reject the Church as apostolic is to reject the norm of Holy Scripture, the Bible, as the revelation of Christ and the Word of God which works faith, hope and love among. To reject the Church as catholic is to open up any and every sort of idea, practice or eccentricity that any single individual, congregation, group of congregations or even whole synods might find to be “relevant,” “inclusive,” and “non-judgmental,” regardless of what the Church through history and around the world has believed, taught and practiced. To reject the Church as holy means to discard the very nature and existence of the Church as the body of Christ and the spiritual calling of all Christians to be conformed to Christ in the whole of their lives; now any human ideology, any human

“-ism,” can take the place of Christ. To reject the Church as one is to dissolved the whole reality of the Church as such, for the Church is the one, indivisible, universal body of Christ; with unity gone, there is no universal, ecumenical check and guard, and every person and every congregation is cut loose on its own to follow “religion” as they might feel it.

The ELCA has pursued this course from its very beginning, and in the last ten years or so has sped up the process. Today, the ELCA cannot be considered a “church” in any honest way except as a schismatic sect.

My first impulse often is to do something dramatic and drastic when faced with a crisis like the ELCA and its demise, which affects the heart and soul of my life as a Christian. And so my first impulse (and second . . . and third . . .) was to consign the ELCA and Lutheranism to its own ruin, and go off to join the Roman Catholic Church. Many things appeal to me in the Catholic Church, more than a few of which were part of my upbringing in the LCA.

But after much wrestling, praying and pondering, I choose to stay a Lutheran — a Christian from within the Lutheran Tradition, not a supporter or advocate of anything coming down from the ELCA. Here are some of my reasons why:

Going to Rome makes much sense from a theological and intellectual view; I am very attracted to the Catholic Church in terms of doctrine, ecclesiology, spirituality, and piety.
But that is the very issue: What attracts me to Rome is “Catholicism” — the idea and ideal of the Catholic Church. I enjoy and benefit from reading Catholic theology far more than Protestant – Lutheran included. I agree in principle with the Catholic Church much more so than I do with the ELCA, in doctrine, morals, and spirituality. I admire, respect, and agree with Pope Benedict XVI, and have no problem accepting him as the universal pastor of the whole Christian Church; and my sympathies were and are the same, maybe more so, for Pope John Paul II the Great.
The same problem exists as much in the Catholic Church here in the USA as it does in the ELCA: Where is there a parish church and congregation that actually embodies and lives in visible and vital ways either “Catholicism” or “Lutheranism“? Where do you go to join an actual, living parish church and congregation in which you find the theology and ecclesiology actually trying intentionally to be figured out and lived out as daily Christian life and regular Christian worship? Just because Catholicism or Lutheranism officially “believe, teach and confess” the Christian faith and its dogmas in certain “theo-logical” ways in their intellectual life — which is vitally necessary, to be sure; the theological exposition of the biblical dogmas of the Church is fundamental to the identity and existence of authentic Christianity — does not mean that there will be unity or uniformity among parish churches and congregations; even more, it does not guarantee that individual churches will live by the dogma and discipline of the Church, but rather will drift — or rush — counter to that dogma or discipline to “be prophetic” or “be inclusive” or in some other myriad ways conform to some favorite cultural or social “issues” and ideologies in place of Christ and the Gospel.
The key point is: this is true both in the Catholic Church and in the Lutheran church. For me to go to the Catholic Church would be no different in terms of my lived life as a faithful Christian: in either place, given the prevailing cultural captivity of all Christian denominations today (and as it functions in the USA, the Catholic Church is just a “mega-denomintion”) I must seek out and go “church shopping” among Catholic parishes just as much as among Lutheran congregations to find the one that closest approximates the Christian ideal of either Catholicism or Lutheranism.
That the Catholic Church has a strongly defined ecclesiastical hierarchy and a dogmatic and canonical definitive teaching authority is by and large a good thing and an ecclesiology from which I believe the Lutheran church could benefit greatly. But observe Catholic parish church life in the US and you will find it little different from Lutheran congregational life — some bishops, priests and parishioners choose to be faithful to the Catholic Church’s teaching authority from Rome, while others — maybe most in varying degrees — either pick-and-choose what they like from the Roman magisterium and ignore the rest, or shrug their shoulders at the Pope and the Curia and do their “culturally relevant” and “progressive, prophetic, Spirit-led” own thing. My search for a “traditional,” “orthodox,” “confessional,” “evangelical” parish in the Catholic Church would be no different from my search for the same thing in the Lutheran church.
As a member of Transfiguration Lutheran Chuch, I already belong to a Lutheran congregation that intends to be evangelical, confessional, catholic and orthodox. I see as my ministry as a lay member of my congregation with special gifts for teaching, the offering of those gifts and their use to be a help and support in this catholic-confessional Lutheran ministry carried on here.
There is no love lost between me and the denomination ELCA; but then, as a “radical ecumenist,” I would argue that denominationalism in itself as a phenomenon in the Christian Church is the worst, most corrosive, and most destructive heresy in the whole history of Christianity. (But that is a topic for another time.) I am a Lutheran, not an “ELCA-an.” I have no intention of supporting the ELCA or doing anything the ELCA proposes, and I feel confessionally bound as a Lutheran — a “catholic-confessional” Lutheran– to oppose any efforts of the ELCA to impose any doctrinal or ethical teachings or practices on Lutheran congregations.
On the other hand, the ELCA does not care about me in the least. I exist to the ELCA as merely a statistical datum, and an undesirable one at that, being a “WMHM”: white, middle-aged, heterosexual, male of conservative opinions. I do not want the ELCA; the ELCA does not care about or really want me; and that situation suits me just fine.
As a catholic-confessional Lutheran my sole concern is my congregation, Transfiguration Lutheran Church. I desire to move her along the path to fuller identity as catholic, orthodox, evangelical and traditional in the best sense of the Lutheran tradition. The Lutheran tradition stands in and lives from the long stream of the historic and dogmatic inheritance of the Church faithful to the apostolic and prophetic witness to Jesus Christ. Beyond this concern and commitment to this congregation, I see no reason to pay the least bit of concern to the denomination called ELCA except to resist it.
Finally — and above all, I think — I choose to be and remain a Lutheran because rational logic always must yield to “the reasons of the heart” when it comes to matters of faith. Reason must stand aside, and let faith be Word and Guide. For my whole adult life (counting from my college years), I have not merely been “interested” in the “study” of Luther, the Wittenberg Reforms, and the Lutheran Confessions; I have found the depths and riches and truth of my life in Christ given word and form and realization in the Lutheran tradition and the church of that tradition. I simply am a Lutheran; it gives me joy in my faith when I am despondent, certainty and courage when faced with conflict, a sense of real union with Christ that is based on love and not duty-bound obedience, and a confident assurance of hope and salvation that is given to me and for me in preached Word and celebrated Sacrament no matter what my mental or emotional state might be. I do a very good job all on my own of beating myself up with the Law and then inviting the Law to beat me up some more just in case I missed something. Being a Lutheran lets me invite the Gospel of Christ in to beat down the Law and heal the wounds the Law inflicts. I simply would be lost in a morass of depression, panic and anxiety if I did not have the grace in Christ that is faith, that lets me surrender myself to the Gospel of Christ (and I am still a child and a pupil in Christ’s school in learning the power of that faith). Being Lutheran is a life-support system for me, and I am not going to pull the plug.

As I listen and discuss and comisserate over the plight of the ELCA with a friend of mine who has already made up his mind that he is converting to the Catholic Church, who made a persuasive and convincing case for me to join him, I find myself having stepped back away from that bridge over the Tiber and choosing to remain Lutheran — not because I want a fight, but because that in truth is how I believe even while, at the same time, there are many good things in what the Catholic Church believes and teaches that I think, as a theologian, ought to fill out the content of the Lutheran faith and reform. Yes, I still think of Lutheran as “the reforming movement of the Western Catholic Church,” and a “church” of its own only by necessity and historical developments (which means the sort of “church” the Lutheran Reform should adopt ought to be the model of the Roman Catholic Church intended by the 16th c. reformers; Lutherans worship should be the Mass of the Roman Rite, Reformed– which actually would not be in significant diffeence from the current Roman Missal.

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Reading the Bible with the Church

Mark Chapman — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:31:12 +0000

Bibe Studies are a mainstay of a congregation. If the people of the church do not know and understand the Bible, then the liturgy will make no sense, sermons will be hard to follow, and what we are to do as Christians between Monday and Saturday will have no guide or focus.

Everybody knows that the Bible is old, indeed, very old, and so needs to be interpreted. Interpretation is not saying something different from the Bible; all interpretation does is to help us “get” the Bible, to help us think the way the Bible thinks and not the way the world thinks. There has never been a time when the Church did not interpret the Bible. Even the New Testament writers interpreted the Bible — which for them was what we know today as the Old Testament. Every sermon and every Bible study class is an interpretation of the Bible.

Everybody should be able to read and interpret the Bible. Interpreting the Bible is a skill to be learned, not a science or method that requires the exceptional and advanced knowledge of a scholar or specialist. The Bible is the Word of God for all believers, so the interpretation of the Bible is something all believers can do, with a very simple set of tools and the skills to use them.

The Church gives us the tools and training for reading the Bible with benefit – benefit, that is, to our Life in Christ and our calling to witness to Jesus Christ as Lord, Savior and God. The Bible is the Book of the Church, the Book of all those who have faith in Christ. The Bible is the Word of God from which we receive our faith in Christ, by which we constantly renew our faith in Christ, and through which we grow spiritually to become ever-more Christ-like (which is what Christians mean by holiness: to increasingly be joined in holy union with Christ). The Church exists to reveal by word and sacraments and works of love the living, real presence of Christ in and for the world. The incarnation of Christ never ends, but lives on in the Body of Christ, his Church.

The Bible is God’s revelation of Christ to the Church, so that the Church knows how to be Christ alive in the world and so that the members of the Church can spot and correct errors and deviations and wrong turns into bad neighborhoods or dead ends that always lurk to tempt the Church away from being the ongoing incarnation of the living Christ for the sake of the world and into becoming a generic religion that worships the powers and pleasures of the world.

The problem with focusing entirely on the historical facts behind the Bible, to find out what “really happened,” is to say that knowing the ancient history is to know the real meaning of the Bible. The Bible can only mean what its original readers thought it meant and what its original authors intended it to mean. Once we know that history, we know what the Bible means, we have all that the Bible can tell us. The interpretation of the Bible becomes the complex task of “translating” what the Bible meant into our world and our issues so that the Bible can mean something “relevent,” supportive of our religious ideas and ideals.

This is to treat the Bible as a “resource” rather than as a “witness.” And this is false to the Bible’s own purpose. The Bible — the Christian Bible of both Old Testament and New Testament — has only one purpose and meaning: it is the witness of the first Christians to their faith in Jesus Christ as Lord, Savior and God. The Bible is a single witness to faith in Jesus Christ. And as such, it must be interpreted as the unique and authoritative witnss to faith in Christ.

The Bible is not a religious resource that can be mined for what you think is valuable in it or “original” in it, and then use those resources to build up your own version of the “biblical religion” or the “historical Jesus.”

The Bible is a witness to faith in Christ from the first Christian believers. We have no right or power to change what that witness says or to pick-and-choose the comfortable or useful parts of that witness to justify our own beliefs or projects.

A witness is an authority giving true testimony, and we must listen to the testimony of the witness to discover the truth. That is how Christians approached the Bible for eighteen-hundred years, and it is how we today must re-learn to listen attentively to the witness of the Bible.

A witness testifies to the truth in a court. What is that cout that hears the testimony of the witness of the Bible to Jesus Christ? It is the Church. The testimony to the truth of Christ that comes to us from the witness of the Bible, is spoken in the liturgy, the Scripture readings, the Psalms, and especilly in the sermon and in the sacrament of Holy Communion, the Eucharist. That is why Lutherans emphasize the unity of preached Word and celebrated Sacrament of the Eucharist as both together the necessary framework of worship for every Sunday’s liturgy. The biblical witness to Christ is heard, its true testimony given, by word and sacrament in liturgical worship.

So what does this man for how we read the Bible? At its most basic, it means we read the Bible as believing Christians, and not as objective observers who seek “scientific” or “historical” proof. Historical study serves faith; it does not, it cannot, “prove” faith. And the Bible must be read with the eyes of faith. We first must believe in Jesus Christ as Messiah, Lord, Savior and God, before we can read the Bible “with profit,” “with benefit,” as the witness to God’s own revealing of himself and his purpose in his incarnate Son, Jesus Christ. Without the eyes of faith, the Bible is nothing more than a marginally interesting collection of ancient writings from an obscure Middle Eastern people and a religious cult formed around veneration of a crucified rabbi by his most loyal followers.

The eyes of faith are not individual: all Christians see the Truth of the Gospel (cf. Gal. 2:5) with the one set of eyes, the eyes of the Church. There is a balance here. On the one hand, each of us by ourselves does not get to decide on our own what the Bible means; we must submit our ideas to the wisdom of the Church. On the other hand, the Church as it is in this world is still the “Pilgrim Church,” a church made up of sinners on the way to salvation, and so is capable of making mistakes in its interpretation of the Bible. We must trust the Church to be the voice of the witness of the Bible to salvation in Jesus Christ in preaching, baptism, Eucharist, prayer and liturgy. But we cannot become lazy and take all that for granted, as infallible, but must “not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1 [RSV]).

This is the very reason why Bible Study is a key part of the life of a congregation. The Bible Study class is — or should be — the place where our eyes of faith and the Church’s eyes of faith focus together on the testimony of the witness of the Bible. The Bible Study class is not a history lesson, except when some historical background or perspective is needed to keep us from a mistake in reading the Bible passage we are studying. The Bible, to repeat, is indeed very old; we can mistakenly bring modern assumptions and modern ideas to the Bible and “find” them in the Bible — or, not find them in the Bible and go away saying the Bible is “irrelevant!” So knowing some of the history is helpful.

But it is only helpful, and only when we need it to clear-up a problem in understanding. Bible studies get bogged down and go nowhere when they fall captive to historical facts and insights. The witness of the Bible is not a witness to the history that lies within or behind it; the witness of the Bible is to the living Christ active in the Church for the sake of the world today, here and now, in our own lives as we live them.

Bible studies become predictable and boring when we use the Bible as a resource to mine out nuggets of religious notions that are useful to us. We treat the Bible as such a resource which we control, whenever our Bible studies are talking to the Bible to tell the Bible what it “really means.” Faithful Bible studies are just the opposite: when we listen to the word of witness of the Bible, and allow the Bible to tell us what our lives “really mean” in the eyes of God.

When our Bible studies listen to the witness of Christ in the Bible, we no longer decide what the Bible means, but rather Christ the Word decides what we mean. In this way, reading and studying the Bible opens us up to true “repentance,” “conversion,” to turn and go that other way and learn that new language of witness to Christ (the literal meanings of “re-pent” and “con-vert”). And that is the whole and complete purpose of the Bible: to obey Christ: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1: 15); “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8: 35 [RSV]).