Recently, I had a comment from a listener on the difference between how Catholics and Protestants view the Bible. They said, “If you give the same Bible to two billion people and tell them to interpret it for themselves, won’t they come up with more than two billion interpretations?” They then explained that the Catholic solution to this problem is the Pope, the successor of Peter, who is elected by cardinals who are in turn inspired by the Holy Spirit in their election of him.
I’d like to consider the problem that the listener raises and the solution that he offers.
Why are there so many interpretations of the Bible?
For the person unfamiliar with the Bible, it's worth stating clearly that Christians agree on far more than they disagree. The great central truths of who God is, what Christ accomplished on the cross, and the reality of eternal life and judgment are not where the disagreements live. On the things that matter most, the unity is remarkable.
There are disagreements, however, and the Bible itself explains where they come from.
1. Some passages are harder to understand
While much of the Bible can be readily understood, some passages take more work to understand. Peter, for example, said of Paul’s letters: “There are some things in them that are hard to understand” (2 Peter 3:16). One thinks also of the Ethiopian eunuch who was reading the scroll of Isaiah when Philip asked whether he understood what he was reading. In Acts 8:31, he replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?”
Much of the excitement in rewatching a movie by Christopher Nolan or Martin Scorsese, for example, comes in seeing things you missed the first time and enjoying the depth in the layers of meaning. The Bible is a book that God has given us to read and reread for the rest of our lives. We shouldn’t be surprised that we don’t understand it all the first time we open it.
2. Biblical illiteracy makes people vulnerable to error
Jesus confronted people who had different ideas about many things that He did. Repeatedly, He challenged them with the words, “Have you not read …?” and then pointed to Scriptures they were obviously ignorant of (Matthew 12:3, 5; 21:42; 22:31). The less you read the Bible, the more likely you will be to draw wrong conclusions about it.
3. False teachers exploit areas that are unclear
Just as the serpent tried to sow doubt in Adam and Eve’s understanding of God’s words, the Bible warns, and history shows, that false teachers have been doing this since the beginning. 2 Peter 2:1 warns, “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies…”
The fewer people who understand what the Bible says, the easier it is for false teachers to confuse them.
4. Sin distorts our reading of the Bible
I wish we could blame all of the different interpretations on the Bible’s complexity or on false teachers. Unfortunately, however, we’re part of the problem. The Bible makes it clear that sin distorts our reading of God’s Word.
Paul said, for instance, that some people don’t “accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them” (1 Corinthians 2:14). Jesus said something similar in John 8:43, “Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.”
The Bible isn’t like a Geography textbook. It makes spiritual and moral demands on us that we often try to avoid. The stubborn resistance of sin makes us twist Scriptures that God has made clear. What sounds like a different interpretation is sometimes just a sinful denial of God’s truth.
What should we do about the different interpretations of Scripture?
The Catholic solution to the different interpretations of Scripture is the Pope. In the words of the listener, he’s “the ultimate interpreter.” That sounds like an attractive solution. It would be wonderful to have someone who could arbitrate every disagreement and perfectly interpret every passage. The problem is that Scripture never teaches that there is such a person. In fact, in Scripture, the people in the top positions of religious authority can sometimes be completely wrong.
Think of Jesus’ interaction with Nicodemus. He was an elite Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin, yet Jesus said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?” (John 3:10) Just trusting that the person at the top is always right might provide unity, but it can’t avoid error.
The Protestant solution has been to make Scripture the ultimate authority, and to encourage all believers to do what the Bereans did, “examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11), but not to do so in isolation.
Knowing that some passages are harder to understand, we value the place of rigorous Bible teaching. Knowing that biblical illiteracy makes people vulnerable to error, we encourage daily Bible reading. And knowing that sin distorts our reading of the Bible, we test our interpretations against the historic creeds and confessions that have guided the church. Not that we hold that the historic church was infallible—it, too, must be subject to Scripture—but it can guard us against extremes, point out blind spots, and protect us from error.
The answer to confusion about Scripture is not a human authority standing over it, but God's people sitting under it, reading it, studying it, and letting it guide them.
In awe of Him,
Paul
