Reading the Bible: Now and Then

In the online article,"How to Read the Bible", the author talks about how there are two different approaches to understanding scripture. The first approach is a theological approach where the scripture is used to fit into an already established conceptual "blueprint" that is the bible. The approach is that we already know what the overall meaning of the bible is, and that we use certain passages of scripture to enforce that meaning. The second approach to reading scripture is what the writer deems a "smorgasbord approach." In this approach the Bible acts as a resource people us to answer questions or get advice pertaining to their life. In the first approach, there are many assumptions which we believe are true and we make the Bible fit into that. In the second approach, we actually believe that the scripture is a way for God to directly communicate with us and give divine advice.

In On Christian Teaching, Augustine discusses two types of learning. He writes that, "One consists of things which have been instituted by humans, the other consists of things already developed, or divinely instituted, which have been observed by them." At first read, these two ideals really did not seem to coincide with the article"How to Read the Bible", but after reading the extensive explanation Augustine gave for these two types of learning, they actually did seem to coincide to a certain degree. To me, they coincide on a more abstract level because Augustine was writing on a more abstract level in his work then in the online article.


Augustine explains that the scripture means nothing without a baseline knowledge of things, which coincides with the "blueprint approach" explained in the online article. For Augustin, we must know how certain things relate to the world to understand the metaphors or representations of these things in the scripture. We must have a baseline knowledge of numbers to understand the use of numbers in the bible, as well as we must have a baseline knowledge of music in order to understand musical references. He is saying that if we don't have baseline knowledge of certain things, the scripture will either have no meaning, or will lack the much deeper meaning it actually possesses. He also explains that all meaningful things are meaningful because humans decided they would be meaningful. Things become meaningful as a result of human institution. In reference to demons, Augustine writes, "They are not observed as a result of their influence, but they gained their influence as a result of being observed and recorded." He then explains that a writer choosing to write something in one language does so because it would mean something different if written in a different language. And "All these meanings, then, derive their effects on the mind from each individual's agreement with a particular convention. As this agreement varies in extent, so do their effects. People did not agree to use them because they were already meaningful; rather they became meaningful because people agreed to use them." He writes that signs are null and void unless accompanied by the observer's agreement. And the article is saying a similar thing with reference to the first approach to reading the Bible: If we do not have an underlying blueprint of what we think the Bible is really all about, than reading passages from it will have no meaning if not made into the building blocks in that blueprint.

Now, the second type of learning in Augustine and the second type of approach to reading the Bible may not be as similar as the first types, but I still think they go together nicely. Augustine writes, "Now those elements of human tradition which men did not establish but discovered by investigation, whether they were enacted in time or instituted by god, should not be considered human institutions, no matter where they are learned." He is saying that there are things man observes and views that were not his construction, but rather the construction of God or time (which all in all just wraps up into God). This intertwines with the second approach to reading the Bible because the people who take this approach really believe that these are the words of God and that we should interpret the Bible in just this way. We should look at it as God directly communicating with us, and we should take those words as advice to live a better life. Both these approaches view things as not man-made, rather they view them as God-made and we are just here to observe and study them.

For the last part of the blog post, we are to address whether these readings of the Bible are positive or negative. I firmly believe these are positive ways of doing things, and I believe Augustine agrees. At the end of his Book 2, he writes, "For what a person learns independently of scripture is condemned there if it is harmful, but found there if it is useful. And when one has found there all the useful knowledge that can be learned anywhere, one will also find there, in much greater abundance, things which are learned nowhere else at all, but solely in the remarkable sublimity and the remarkable humility of the scriptures." This means that Augustine believes we can learn many things outside of the scripture, but learning things in the scripture will give us the most meaning and clarity in our lives.