The Nature of the Bible

The Bible is both natural and supernatural, temporal and eternal, human and divine.

The Bible is divine because it is the Word of God.  It is God's message for all human beings for all times.  Through the Bible, God speaks to all people of all ages in all cultures.  The message of the Bible is eternal.  It transcends time and cultures.  It is relevant and speaks during the time of Moses, the time of Paul and to all of us today.

The Bible is human because God chose to speak through human beings who lived in a certain time and culture in history with an specific language.  It is temporal because some of its elements such as the original language used in its  original writing is not being used today.  So God's eternal Word and message is conditioned and contained in a specific time in history with its own culture and language, and is recorded by means of 'human style' of literature.  It is these two natures of God's Word that requires us to apply basic principles of interpretation to understand God's message for us today.

The Bible should be interpreted like any other literature.  This does not mean that the Bible is just like any other book.  The Bible is unique in many ways and no other book is like the Bible.  But the Bible uniqueness and inspiration doesn't change its literary form.  The Holy Spirit will convict us of the truthfulness and significance of His Word in our lives.   But to understand the literary style or genre, historical background, and the meaning of words should be our task in studying the Bible.  Our claim of the Holy Spirit's guidance shouldn't be an excuse for laziness in studying. (see objection)

Example: Matthew 25:1-13 (The Parable of the Ten Virgins)
     In order for us to fully understand the message of this parable, we need to know background information about first century Jewish customs of marriage and wedding.  Otherwise, we wouldn't understand some of the events that occurred in the parable and their significance in the Parable.  In this parable, there is an eternal message from God for us to learn, but we must see it in the human elements that contained it.

Adapted from Gordon D. Fee & Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible For All Its Worth, pp. 17-19  (see Bibliography)

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