To Bible or Not To Bible…but How?

          So what is it about Biblical interpretation?  How can some Christians welcome and some condemn homosexuality and homosexuals?  Much less the questions of acceptance or rejection of gender self-identification?  How can theology swing so far back and forth in its treatment of people?  In the name of Jesus?   

          Who is our Biblical interpreter?  Is it our local pastor? Some other leader, perhaps of a denomination or a large church?  Local?  On television? 

          Does someone reading this feel like they can begin to develop the tools for how to interpret the Bible for themselves?

          I have not posted for the last couple of days because this very issue has jammed up my thought processes.  I have put down a lot on what I think the Bible says and how I think the Bible should be interpreted.  And maybe if somebody likes what I have to say, they will go with me on this journey. 

          This does not even begin to get at the source material.  The Bible is quite the volume.  In my Bible, there are 66 “books”, running from half a page to a hundred and fifty chapters.  There are ‘chapters’ that are two verses long and chapters that are dozens and dozens of verses long.  There are ‘verses’ that are two words long and some that are run on sentences.

          Then there is the problem of history.  The same church/denomination/faith group can see its interpretation change over time. 

          Then there is the problem of consistency.  Is it an interpretive fallacy to claim that the Bible speaks with one voice?  I presuppose that one voice is consistent with Biblical interpretation, although with very particular caveats. 

          But wait, there’s more!  For the PCUSA, there is an entire book of Confessions, documents written at various places and times that speak to the truth of the Scriptures as understood in those moments.  Does not mean they are Bible-grade God-stuff, but as good as the Humans could put together in their times and places. 

          And there are things that read as fairly contradictory on first blush.  But God wrote it…didn’t He (is it He? She? Them? What does the Bible say about that?)

         They say the first step to solving a problem is acknowledging that there is one.  So I suppose this little stream of consciousness did that.

Peter Hofstra