How to Use the Bible

I have an academic and a spiritual confession: I don't know how to read the Bible. I also do not know how to use the Bible. Let me describe what I mean very basically.

I read Scripture in two principal ways. The first way, is in reflective prayer. I read it several times a day, in a variety of corporate and individual settings, often in a tradition of lectio devina. In this practice Scripture surrounds my day, it begins with readings in the Psalms, Old Testament and New Testament according to the church calendar. It also ends the same way. My inspiration in this tradition of reading often comes from Catholic sources, from Ignatian practices, and from places, communities and people. This first method of reading profoundly influences my daily life, and feeds and funds my second kind of reading.

The second way I read Scripture is as a story, a complete whole through which I build theological constructs which translate into worldview'ish principles for engaging all of life faithfully. These constructs include things like sphere sovereignty and common grace, ideas that influence me deeply and show their marks throughout my thoughts and actions. The sources of my inspiration here are very diverse, but include books on reformed philosophy, the story of Scripture and finding our place within it.

Neither of these is exclusively spiritual or cerebral, both are integral parts of a whole reading and encounter with the Word. My real problem is these are the only ways I have been trained to encounter and engage Scripture.

My doctoral supervisor has challenged me deeply in my somewhat truncated reading of Scripture, to consider ways of thinking about and using it which do not - technically speaking - fit either of these traditions. He fills my head with ideas of reading books in the Bible politically and theologically, and discerning patterns for contemporary life - not mere reflective prayer, and not basic philosophical extrapolation, but bringing the Bible directly into conversation with political and social problems.

That I fundamentally lack skills at doing. I am even initially put off by this. But - as my supervisor tells me - pastors and theologians are constantly taking Scripture and applying it in backward and confused ways to social and political phenomenon they don't really understand, why shouldn't social scientists work alongside them, or work also to reveal what specific texts say to us about the fields we do know, at least a bit more, about?

Al Wolters writes in The Bible and the University that theology is no longer queen of the disciplines. To be honest though, I sometimes wonder how a book that is the breathed Word of God, cannot grant epistemological privilege to its students. If we're quite serious about Scripture playing this ultimate role, shouldn't it be incumbent upon academics of every stripe - not to mention thinking Christians - to cultivate a Biblical knowledge of their discipline in ways that far exceed the mere extrapolation of base philosophical and theological constructs - and ways that are more intellectually sophisticated than lectio devina?

Reformed theology suggests that one does not need to study Greek and Hebrew, or be a Biblical scholar to do social science well. But the plausibility of this is undermined by the examples of people I see around me. Almost none of the truly excellent and publicly engaged Reformed scholars that I know have not done divinity, theology or theology/philosophy degrees.

I want to be a good political scientist, a faithful thinking Christian in politics and culture. Is it - after all - time to finally give up, pack my bags and head to Seminary?