A Church History Series: Through the Lens of Today - Reading Scripture Faithfully

How Christians Should Interpret Scripture

Before we can meaningfully discuss any doctrine of the Church, we must first understand how to read Scripture faithfully. Christians throughout history have understood that doctrine is not invented—it is discovered by drawing out what God has already revealed. But the method we use will determine whether we arrive at the Truth, or at a conclusion shaped by our own culture, assumptions, and denominational background.

Here, we will lay out essential interpretive principles, which are often neglected in modern Christianity. If we do not grasp these foundational truths, our attempts to understand Scripture, the sacraments, or any doctrine, will be distorted from the start.

1. The Bible Was Written For Us, But Not To Us

Modern readers often unconsciously assume that the biblical authors were writing directly to 21st-century Americans. They were not.

Scripture is not one book, but rather a library of God-inspired writings addressed to specific people in specific cultures, languages, and circumstances. The New Testament epistles were letters written to real churches, dealing with real issues, in the real social and religious world of the first century.

The Bible:

• 66 books

• Written over a period of approximately 1,500 years

• On 3 different continents

• With approximately 40 different authors

• In 3 different languages

We are the beneficiaries of these writings, but we are not their original audience.

To interpret Scripture faithfully, we must ask:

• How would the original recipients have understood this?

• What problems, assumptions, and cultural norms shaped the writer’s message?

• How does the author’s intention govern the meaning of the passage?

This is the starting point of all faithful theology.

2. English Is Not the Original Language of Scripture

Every English Bible is a translation, and these translations—no matter how excellent—cannot perfectly capture every nuance of Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, without the use of other contextual tools to help us along the way.

The gap between modern English and ancient languages is substantial. This is why looking to scholars who have the capacity to read the source manuscripts in their original languages is essential: they are able to examine the text directly rather than depending entirely on translation choices, interpretive decisions, and denominational biases that can subtly influence modern exposition attempts.

There is a reason for the expression “lost in translation.” And in the case of Holy Scripture, this is valuable to consider, because:

• Koine Greek words often have a semantic range far wider than any single English equivalent.

• Verb tenses in Greek convey shades of meaning that English cannot express.

• Vocabulary doesn't always transfer cleanly across languages, or across time.

This is why textual criticism, exegesis, and hermeneutics are necessary tools—not optional academic hobbies.

3. Exegesis vs. Eisegesis: The Difference Between Truth and Error

Hermeneutics is the method of interpretation.

Exegesis means “to draw out” the author’s intended meaning.

Eisegesis means “to read into” the text what we want it to say.

Faithful Christians must always aim for exegesis.

Yet in American Christianity, eisegesis is rampant—often unconsciously—because of:

• Denominational pre-commitments

• Lack of understanding historical context

• Modern cultural assumptions

• The colloquial drift of Sola Scriptura to be practiced as Solo Scriptura, where everyone becomes their own final authority

  
  

This is how five Christians from five different denominations can read the same verse and arrive at five different (and usually directly conflicting) interpretations—all claiming to be “biblical interpretation” and claiming that their understanding is "guided by the Holy Spirit".

Truth is truth. It's not relative. So, unless the Holy Spirit is schizophrenic, conflicting interpretations of Holy Scripture cannot all simultaneously be revelation of Truth.

When Scripture is read in isolation from context, from history, and from the early Church Fathers that discerned which writings were even to be included within the canon; the result is not biblical Christianity, but a verses-vs-verses theological debate, where people simply take turns pointing at their isolated “proof”-texts, in response to each other.

4. Context Is Not Optional—It Is Everything

“Taking the Bible literally” is not the same as taking it in context. Nor is ascribing things to mere metaphor, which were intended to be taken literally. To understand Scripture accurately, we must consider:

• Literary context

• Cultural context

• Historical context

• Political context

• Covenantal context

• Linguistic context

• The context of the entire biblical story

Cherry-picking verses and interpreting them through modern assumptions leads to distortions the apostles themselves would not recognize.

If the early Church Fathers—who spoke the biblical languages, lived in the biblical world, and were discipled by the apostles’ immediate successors—all read these passages in a particular way, it is reckless to assume our 21st-century interpretation is clearer than theirs.

5. The Intent of Scripture: A Unified Story, Not an Exhaustive Manual

The biblical writers were not assembling a systematic theology textbook. They were writing to hyper-oral cultures, whose population had less than 10% literacy rate. Much of scripture would have been memorized and communicated orally, so including more detail than absolutely necessary on issues which would have been common knowledge to everyone in that time, would have been counter productive to the goal.

The authors were:

• Teaching real churches

• Recording actual events

• Addressing contemporary issues

• Operating within a shared covenantal worldview

• Writing directly to readers that already understood many cultural realities, which would not require extensive elaboration, in order to sufficiently communicate the intended message

  
  

So, Scripture was not written to be an exhaustive manual, which is why essential Christian doctrines—such as the Trinity—emerge not from a single isolated verse, but rather we use exegesis, hermeneutics, and other contextual understanding to identify golden threads that run through Scripture that clearly communicate ideas, beliefs, traditions, and practices of God’s people from which we can derive principles and apply them to the formation of our theological and doctrinal beliefs and practices.

For example:

• No verse in the Bible says, “The Trinity is one being in three persons.”

• Yet the entire narrative and testimony of Scripture informs this conclusion.

  
  

The same is true for doctrines like baptism and the Eucharist—doctrines the early Church universally understood, because they inherited the living apostolic interpretation of Scripture.

6. Why Modern “Bible-Only” Interpretations Fail

Without context, lingual clarity, history, and apostolic teaching, Sola Scriptura in 21st-century American Christian practice becomes:

“Whatever I, or my group, think this verse means.”

This is how we've arrived at:

• 45,000+ Protestant denominations

• Doctrinal chaos

• Conflicting interpretations of virtually every major doctrinal issue

• Individual Christians forming private theological systems disconnected from early church history

  
  

The early Christians would not have recognized this. They had no category for a church:

• Without bishops

• Without apostolic succession

• Without sacramental authority

• Without continuity of doctrine

  
  

The earliest believers judged all teaching by one standard:

Does it match the faith handed down from the apostles through their successors?

Luke 10:16

¹⁶ “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.”

7. Corrective Lenses: Why Early Church Tradition Is Necessary

Rather than banging our heads against the wall in a verses-vs-verses debate, when dealing with issues of theological importance, which aren’t clearly defined in detail within Biblical canon, it makes sense to look to other authoritative sources of interpretation.

Not instead of looking at Scripture, but rather as a lens with which to look through, in order to derive the true meaning of Scripture more clearly.

When a person has faulty vision, and they are trying to read the words on a page, the text can appear blurry to them, so they aren’t able to decipher meaning. As an aid, they will use corrective lenses, which will help them to see the text more clearly and, therefore, allow them to derive true meaning from the text.

It is important to note that the text was always there. What the text said, and meant, never changed. Even when the person couldn’t clearly decipher the words on the page (their faulty vision). The text always said what it said and meant what it meant. Looking through the corrective lenses didn’t change anything about the text on the page. And the corrective lenses didn’t supersede the authority of the text on the page. Rather, the corrective lenses were just an additional tool to look through, to aid the reader to bolster their capacity to be able to accurately see what was written on the page all along.

If you’re trying to find the interpretation of something, and there’s no direct interpretation in Scripture, the obvious place to start is with the earliest interpreters of the spoken teachings and written text.

Apostolic and early Church tradition does not compete with Scripture—it helps us see Scripture accurately.

If a doctrine was universally taught by:

• The apostles

• Their disciples

• The early Fathers

• The entire undivided Church

…then any modern interpretation contradicting that consensus is almost certainly wrong.

This is why the earliest interpreters are higher authority than the latest theologians of today.

Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Athanasius, Clement, Justin Martyr, Chrysostom, etc... lived in the world of the apostles; modern interpreters do not.

So when the early Church fathers unanimously affirm:

• Baptismal regeneration

• Infant baptism

• The Real Presence in the Eucharist

• Apostolic succession

• The sacramental worldview

  
  

…Christians today must take that seriously.

8. Tradition Is Not the Worship of Ashes, but the Preservation of Fire

Christian tradition is not dead ritual. It is the living continuation of the Church that Christ founded, safeguarded by generations of believers who received the faith directly from the apostolic foundation.

Tradition is not an alternative to Scripture. It is the Church’s way of preserving the text by functioning as a set of guardrails to ensure that we interpret it correctly.

Conclusion: Reading Scripture Faithfully

Before we can understand the meaning of Scripture, the sacraments, or any doctrine, we must commit ourselves to reading Scripture:

• With humility

• With awareness of our own cultural blinders

• With respect for the apostolic witness

• With commitment to exegesis

• With the guidance of the historic Church

• With full contextual understanding

• And with the willingness to be corrected

  
  

Only then can we hope to understand what Scripture truly teaches.

In the next installments, we will continue tracing how these principles illuminate the doctrines of baptism and the Eucharist—and why the early Church was unanimous on these issues.