For my Biblical Hermeneutics class we were instructed to write a 3-5 page essay on the presuppositions and preconditions that color how we read and interpret the Scriptures. I thought I would share my thoughts and challenge you to think through your own. While it was fairly easy to point backwards to previous presuppositions, it was interesting to think through and codify current ones. How about you? What do you bring to the Text? What things from your story color how you interpret God’s words?

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Life is a progress, not a station.” Modern translation: life is a journey, not a destination. I would agree. Especially in my spiritual journey, the Great Progressor has taken me through a series of milestones that have influenced and shaped my Christian identity. Like any process, no single variable has contributed to my evolution, and not one area has been left untouched. In the area of biblical interpretation, for example, I can point to three “milestones” that have given me a few presuppositions and preconditions in regard to how I study the Bible.

My spiritual roots are in fundamentalist Christianity. Specifically, I grew-up in an IFCA (Independent Fundamentalist Churches of America) church that had a high, if not rigid, view of the Scriptures. A six-day literal creation was a given, and anyone who thought a more theistic evolution of the world could have occurred was branded “liberal.” A “Left Behind” understanding of eschatology was a part of my childhood spiritual journey, literally. I remember my church’s pastor moving through the Book of the Revelation during the evening service for two years, complete with charts and outlines of the chronology of the end of the world! Also, Sunday sermons were always inductive, expository events that delved deeply into the Scriptures. So for years I believed in a six-day literal interpretation of the creation event in the Book of Genesis, I was a hardcore dispensationalist who learned to read “signs of the times” in any newspaper, and preaching was a mining effort to expose the facts of God and “do and don’t” commands for living like a “good Christian.”

In looking back at this phase of my spiritual journey, I am thankful for a faith community that regarded the Scriptures as the central foundation for our life and determiner of reality. This community knew that the Bible was true and the Truth (capital “t”), and sought to teach both. But I also see how that experience shaped some basic, previous presuppositions: I have had difficulty distinguishing allegorical narrative from literal history; for a while the Bible was viewed and used as a manual for life, like a car manual or encyclopedia; prooftexting was a horrible vice, contributing to poor theology and unnecessary burdens; and the freedom of living that comes in Christ was quenched by reading into the text a conservative understanding of personal piety.

Another influencer on my spiritual development and means of handling the Scriptures was my experience at a Christian undergraduate university. This particular institution had a series of rules that regulated behavior, regulations that were presented as biblical and necessary for proper Christian living. The administration used verses to support certain regulatory decisions, but mostly those rules were the institution’s and denomination’s preference for how a Christian should live. This experience furthered my own misreading of Scripture and worldview projections onto the text of the Bible; my training in picking out verses to support preferences and my projection of preferences onto the Text was strengthened. Not until I moved to Washington, D.C. and out of a conservative ecclesial tribe did I begin to fully understand these presuppositions and how they colored my impressions of what God cared about.

The most recent milestone in my journey with Jesus and His Way came at the end of 2004. After “doing ministry” for a little over a year and feeling spiritually sapped and a bit disillusioned with evangelicalism, I asked God at the end of the year to revitalize my relationship with Him and move me to a new level of intimacy and understanding. In answer to that prayer, He brought me back to the centrality of Christ, in everything. Of my theology, doctrine, spirituality, ministry and life, God called me to drop all preconceived notions, deeply held beliefs and practices in an effort to make Jesus the most central figure. In so doing, I entered into a period of deconstruction and reconstruction, the likes of which I had never experienced in my theology and spirituality. Thankfully, in the midst of this “tearing and building,” I never rejected foundational, orthodox Christian teachings. Even though I held to the fundamentals of traditional Christian orthodoxy, I did reject and continue to re-understand my fundamentalist, evangelical roots, including how I interpret and study the ancient Scriptures.

That deconstruction was aided by the helpful and provocative “conversation” occurring in the emerging church movement. Through the books and conversations of many forward-thinking Christians, I began to look at the Scriptures very differently, not as a manual but as a tribal, communal document that told the story of how God has related to His people and how we are to relate to Him and others. A Reformed, Enlightenment structure for interpretation was also somewhat cast aside in favor of a more Redemptive hermeneutic that sees an on-going, dynamic (re)painting of theology, rather than simply a static, entrenched understanding of God and His reality. This recent deconstructions has also influenced a more open, free will understanding of God, over against a predetermined, Calvinist understanding. Finally, because I have seen the destruction that comes from sloppy, naïve, presupposed hermeneutics, sometimes I am hesitant to name and claim what is true about the Truth of God’s Holy words. It isn’t that I deny Truth or believe it is beyond our grasp, rather I employ a (healthy) sense of postmodern hesitancy as I study the Bible and teach others.

As I conclude this reflection, I can identify several past presuppositions and preconditions that influenced how I read and interpreted the Scriptures: I employed a rigid literalness to it’s events, writings, and prophecies; a fundamentalist, conservative framework was often projected onto the Text, creating undo burden for me and others; I used the text of Scripture and studied it as a sort of encyclopedia and assumed God gave us a book of facts and propositions, rather than a living story of God’s redemptive work through history and relational interaction with humans. Some current presuppositions might include a skepticism for all things Reformed and much of evangelicalism, a predisposition toward a Redemptive view of the Scriptures, an open view of God that influences how I view certain passages and books of the Bible over against other interpretations, and a postmodern hesitancy to make definitive truth-claims about a reading of the Bible.