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On a number of occasions I have been accused of having a personal interpetation of the scriptures, and told that the subjectivist religion I believe in is false because of this. The source for this condemnation is 2 Peter 1:20-21:
"Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." (KJV)
It is true that I believe our faith to be essentially a personal one, that we all have our own ideas and understanding of God. This seems eminently reasonable to me; my thoughts are not your thoughts, and my experiences (which form the basis of my understanding) are not your experiences. Our understanding comes into our interpretation of the Bible. We can easily see this if we look at militant atheists - their interpretaton of the Bible is far different to ours, and often caused by bad experiences with Christians. In the same way we have experiences which affect our interpretation.
Naturally, our experiences are somewhat similar - we do share the same Lord - which is just as well otherwise we would have little fellowship, not understanding one another. We share experience, and largely share interpretations - that is how denominations and fellowships are formed. At bottom, though, we cannot share all our understanding of God with another, because they may see God in a different light. If I tell, for instance, someone who was abused as a child how close I feel to God as Father, then the chances are that our ideas about God as Father may be different - because of our differing experiences.
This is where my ideas about personal interpretation come in. I do believe we cannot avoid personal interpretation, simply because we are different people. So how does that square with Peter's statement that we can have no personal interpretation? I do, after all, believe the Bible.
The answer lies in the Spirit. In John 16:12-13 Jesus promised to give to His people a teacher:
"But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." (John 14:26 KJV)
"I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come." (John 16:12-13 KJV)
He sent us the Holy Spirit so that we could understand God. The Spirit lives in each and every one of us, teaching, guiding, comforting. That is God's promise, that we are born in the life of the Spirit. Peter warns us not to interpret on our own, for in verse 21 he says, "For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." The Spirit guided the prophets in their writing of the scriptures and 2 Timothy 3:16 tells us that the scriptures are God-breathed. "Theopneustos" is the word used here, made up from the words "theos" (God) and "pneuma" (breath). Pneuma is the word for both breath and Spirit in the Bible. The scriptures were written by the Spirit - by God - and the Spirit within us helps us to understand them. What we must avoid is ignoring the Spirit's guiding, and interpreting the Bible in anger, hatred or one-upmanship. If we let the Holy Spirit guide us in our understanding, we can reconcile the fact that we understand in diferent ways in God. The Spirit knows that we understand differently - God became man, He understands humankind, and the Spirit has always worked through people - the Bible shows the differing styles of its authors, and He still works through us today. If we follow the Spirit's prompting then we understand His intent truly, and through our own understanding. We do not lose ourselves to understand God, nor do we lose ourselves when God works through us - neither did the biblical authors. God reaches to our understanding, for otherwise we finite creatures could not understand our infinite God.
I can understand in myself, yet not alone, for I have the Spirit with me.
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law." (Galatians 5:22-23 KJV)
© Dubhóc MacEògainn, 2005.