Tag: scripture

A Template for Bible Studies

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Overview of [insert book title here]

Looking BEHIND the Text
Where did it come from?
Authorship
Who wrote it?		 
Date of Composition
When was it written?		 
Audience
For whom was it written?		 
Occasion
What was going on?		 
Purpose
What was author aiming to accomplish?		 
Looking AT the Text
What does it say?
Genre
What was written?		 
Outline & Integrity
How is it structured?		 
Literary & Rhetorical Features
How does it convey its message?		 
Content
What’s it about?		 
Living WITH the Text
What does it authorize?
History of Reading
How has it been read?
(Pre-modern, Modern, Postmodern)		 
Reading Synthetically
How does it cohere with other norms?
(Scripture, Tradition, Reason, Experience)		 
Reading Theologically
How does it inspire a biblical imagination?
(God, Church, World)		 

P.S. a few Discussion Starters

  1. The Gathering Question – how is this text assimilating us into the biblical story?
    • Is it speaking to how the person and work of God is worthy of our fear, love, and trust?
    • Is it speaking to how human nature and experience are both created and fallen?
  2. The Gospel Question – how does it give us Jesus?
    • Is it speaking to our adoption by the Father, union with Christ, and sealing with the Holy Spirit?
    • Is it speaking to how Jesus is not only a teacher and example, but also and primarily a gift?
  3. The Sending Question – how is it sending us on a lifelong adventure of faith, hope, and love?
    • How might it “equip the saints for the work of ministry,” so we can more faithfully live out our callings as priests before God, members of the church body, and witnesses to the nations?

Elements of a Doctrine of Scripture

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I. The Origin, Nature, and End of Scripture

  • How do the scriptures participate in God’s broader economy of salvation?
  • In what senses are the scriptures divinely inspired revelation & human artifacts?
  • How is the Word Inspired related to the Word Incarnate & the Word Proclaimed?
  • How does the Holy Spirit illuminate our reading of the scriptures?

II. The Attributes of Scripture

  • What is scripture’s necessity, sufficiency, unity, clarity, efficacy, and authority?
  • What is meant by sola scriptura? Where does it leave tradition, reason, and experience?
  • Are inerrancy and/or infallibility essential attributes?

III. The Contents of Scripture 

  • Which books hold canonical status and why?
  • Which manuscripts are to be privileged?
  • Which translations are to be privileged?
  • How are the OT & NT related to one another?

IV. The Hermeneutics of Scripture

  • Where do we look for meaning? To the author, the text, or the reader?
    • Constitutional analog: Originalism v Textualism v Living Constitution
  • What lenses of analysis are appropriate?
    • historical-critical, literary-rhetorical, ideological, theological?
  • Is there a “gap” between what scripture first meant and what it means today?
  • Are there multiple senses of scriptural texts? e.g. the pre-modern fourfold typology
  • How do the various parts and genres relate to the whole?
  • Is there a single organizing hermeneutical key or coherent metanarrative unifying its component parts?
  • To what modes of appeal is scripture amenable?

V. The Apologetics of Scripture

  • Are the claims of scripture conceptually coherent?
  • Are they internally consistent?
  • Are they claims to public truth?
  • Are they historically and scientifically accurate?
  • Were they reliably transmitted?
  • Are they morally sound?
  • Are they psychologically well- or mal-adjusted?
  • Are they ideologically invested?
  • The scandal of particularity — Why would God attest himself through earthen vessels? 

Robert Wilken on the language of scripture

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How, it is asked, are we to speak of God in an age of light bulbs and computers? The assumed answer is that we need to translate the idiom of the Scriptures into the idiom of our own time, to discuss the biblical faith in terms intelligible in the nonbiblical categories of today.

The difficulty with this program of translation is that the language of the Bible is irreplaceable, and more often than not the consequence of ‘translation’ is that the language of the Scriptures is supplanted by another language or relegated to the footnotes. It ceases to be the vehicle of thought. As necessary as it is to ‘translate’ the Bible into the though patterns of our age, it is also the case that Christians in every generation must learn afresh how to think and imagine in the language and idiom of the Scriptures.

from Remembering the Christian Past (Eerdmans, 1995), 175-6.

Note too that Augustine holds fast to the biblical language. A less gifted preacher—and especially a contemporary one—might be inclined to translate the biblical language into the current cultural idiom. Augustine, however, translates one set of biblical terms into terms from elsewhere in the Bible. He knew that the language of the Bible is more resonant, more affective, more enduring (because it will be heard again), richer in spiritual and moral content, and more edifying than any local idiom.

from The Sermon on the Mount through the Centuries (2007), 49.

Also don’t miss: “The Church’s Way of Speaking,” First Things, 2005