What guidelines should we follow as we interpret the Bible? Irenaeus of Lyon, a second century church leader and theologian, offered several such hermeneutical rules.
Theologian Richard Jenson notes that Irenaeus “lamented a captivity of Scripture to a pretentiously scholarly mode of interpretation alien to the purposes of the church, and countered with the first explicit reflection about proper churchly exegesis—the first, at least, of which we have a preserved document.”[i]
Irenaeus’s hermeneutical reflections remain worthy of our consideration today. Below are five principles for interpreting the Scriptures from Irenaeus, as summarized by Jenson.
1. Treat Scripture as a Whole
“Scripture is a whole. None of its constituent documents or traditions or pericopes or redactions is to be read in isolation from any other. The preacher preparing his or her sermon is not to stare at the given text, hoping for it to emit a bright idea or two. He or she is to read the text with a mind that brings with it the whole Bible, and labors to locate the text in that whole. Or, as Brevard Childs would say, the canonically shaped Bible is the unitary object of interpretation.”[ii]
2. Treat Scripture as a Singular Grand Narrative
“Scripture is a whole because and only because it is one long narrative. All Scripture’s detours and extensions and varieties of literary genre are to be read as moves within the telling of a single story. Therefore, for example, the single most important task of the preacher working on a parable-text is to ask what it means that Jesus told this parable, and that the one who told this parable is the risen Lord of all, and that it was Israel who heard and believed or did not believe, and that it is the church that retells it. When the preacher has worked out what place Jesus’ telling of this precise parable has in Jesus’ story as the climax of Israel’s story, and what precise place the church’s retelling of the parable has in Jesus’ story with the church, the preacher has his or her sermon. All the rest of the preparation is mechanics and decoration.”[iii]
3. Know the Main Plot in Order to Understand the Bible’s Many Parts
“To be able to follow the single story and grasp Scripture whole, we need to know the story’s general plot and dramatis personae, much as playgoers sitting down to a long, complex, and mystery-laden play need the playbill with its list of characters and synopsis of the plot. Scripture is not in that sense self-explanatory, that anyone simply coming across the unfamiliar book and reading through it is likely to find in it what God intends to be found. And it is not because Scripture is obscure that we need this prior knowledge, but rather precisely because Scripture is very clear about the kind of book it is.”[iv]
4. Interpret within the Church Community
“It is the church that knows the plot and dramatis personae of the scriptural narrative, since the church is one continuous community with the story’s actors and narrators, as with its tradents, authors, and assemblers. The Gnostics thought they needed special channels of information and access back to the revelation hidden in Scripture. And Irenaeus said they were right: they did need special channels to Scripture’s truth, since they belonged to a community other than that in which Scripture appears and is at home. But the church needs no such channels to make contact with Scripture; it does not need to make contact with Scripture at all, since Moses and Isaiah and Paul and John and Irenaeus and you and I are all members of a single community.”[v]
5. Interpret in Conversation with Theological Tradition
“The church’s antecedent knowledge of Scripture’s plot and dramatis personae, without which she could not read the Bible as a whole, is contained in what Irenaeus calls ‘the rule of faith,’ the canon that the church propounds and teaches to her members regarding how to think and talk as Christians. When Irenaeus stated this rule, it came out as something much on the lines of the Apostles’ Creed.”[vi]
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The task of biblical interpretation belongs properly to the church—the community to which Scripture is addressed and in which Scripture is embodied. If one seeks to understand the Bible, he or she must do so within that community of faith, which propounds the main plot of Scripture by which one understands its many parts. In other words, we should interpret biblical passages in conversation with historical theology, in conversation with others in the church, and in light of the Bible’s singular redemptive plotline.
[i] Robert W. Jenson, “Hermeneutics and the Life of the Church,” in Reclaiming the Bible for the Church, ed. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2016), 95.
[ii] Jenson, “Hermeneutics and the Life of the Church,” 97.
[iii] Jenson, “Hermeneutics and the Life of the Church,” 97.
[iv] Jenson, “Hermeneutics and the Life of the Church,” 97.
[v] Jenson, “Hermeneutics and the Life of the Church,” 97–98.
[vi] Jenson, “Hermeneutics and the Life of the Church,” 98.
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