Presuppositions, Problems in Reading

A fantastic piece by Paul Helm on the discussion of what happens when we read, specifically the presuppositions inherent in reading Scripture as Scripture.

There are various ways of articulating and defending our sensory and intellectual capacities in their role as gatherers of reliable information about the world around us. None of these is ‘biblical’ in any direct sense, of course. We cannot lift an epistemology off the pages of Scripture as we can lift a doctrine of justification off them. The epistemologies that have been used, in the history of Christianity, are at odds with each other, though parts of one are not necessarily at odds with parts of others. What matters is that we have reasons that support our belief in the reliability (though not the infallibility, of course) of our epistemological equipment. This will be sufficient to identify a book as the Bible, and to read and understand some, if not all, of what it contains. And then we are in business

The inherit understanding that the Scriptures, actually the truth contained in them, is available to us wholly, completely, and without mediation, is the primary mistake most people make when arriving. In Paul’s words “It [the Scripture] is not free from the vagaries and perils of sense-experience, something which has immediately descended from heaven and entered immediately into our souls.” It is this sense-experience contained within the Scripture that we must deal with. And we must deal without our own world and all its sense experience. Only by bringing those two pieces together can we actually approach an answer to the question of a Christian life.

As Paul again makes clear it is this experience that must be dealt with: “A person may be a disciple while not knowing even whether there be such a thing as Holy Scripture. Remember the thief on the cross. And the hymn ‘There is life for a look at the Crucified One.’” It’s great that we have a book – but the words in the book is not what this is all about. Don’t get sidetracked by it.