God and Biblical Interpretation

Chris Christian’s Bible discussion group has decided to learn more about interpreting the Bible by studying the Gospel of John.

Chris Christian: We’re beginning with John 1.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men.

This passage sounds pretty foundational in character. What do you think are the implications of beginning the Gospel in this way?

Peter Pietist: God is showing me how important Jesus is, and how fellowship with him should be central in my life. My devotion to him is of utmost importance. My fellowship with Jesus means communion with God himself, the Creator.

Dottie Doctrinalist: I agree with what you say, Peter. But that is not the main point. The passage indicates that God is bigger than your devotional life or mine. God is who he is forever. He was always there, before we were born, before the world was made. He isn’t just there to serve our devotional needs. Rather, we are here to serve him.

The passage is a passage of doctrine. It makes a propositional statement to teach us about the doctrine of the Trinity. It asserts that Jesus is the eternal God, with the Father. From other passages we learn about the Spirit as the Third Person of the Trinity.

Curt Cultural-Transformationist: Yes, this passage has teaching. But it presents God as Someone who is not just a teacher. God made the world. He acted. He is the source of life, and of our empowerment to act in order to change the world.

Missy Missiologist: Yes, Jesus brings life for the whole world, not just our circle. So we should take the message to everyone all over the world.

Laura Liturgist: The passage does not just talk about action, but about God. God does not just exist when he acts in the world. He exists eternally. The passage speaks of his eternal existence as Father and as the Word. Here is the mystery of the Trinity. None of us really fathoms this mystery. God’s greatness is more than we can imagine. We are to stand in awe of him, not just analyze him. We worship. The passage has propositional content, what Doctrinalist calls “doctrine.” But it goes deeper than that. It introduces the Word. The Second Person of the Trinity is not just a proposition but a Person whom we worship and adore.

Doctrinalist: Well, I admit I hadn’t thought of things this way. I believe that the doctrine of the Trinity is important. But it is also sound doctrine to insist that God is incomprehensible—he is infinitely greater than my propositional summary.

Missy Missiologist: Yes. Maybe there is more to this passage in the Bible than what I thought. I can see that the picture includes reckoning with who God is, and not just with the pragmatic process of missionary growth. Maybe the Gospel of John is going to enlarge my horizons, just as interaction with contemporary Christians from another culture would.

Fatima Factualist: I thought that the Bible was a book of rock-hard facts. And here are the rockiest facts of all: the Word is God, and he is with God. But somehow it is not what I expected. These are “facts” unlike anything else I have examined. Clearly, they are the most basic facts of all. But I can’t just manipulate them. Liturgist is right. I don’t fathom God. I can’t manipulate him. And he made everything. Maybe, then, I don’t comprehend fully the facts about what he is doing in what he made. It is rather upsetting. If God is this way, maybe he has other ideas in the Bible that don’t simply match my expectations.

Amy Affirmationist: Maybe we can all learn something. I admit that this passage does not exactly fit my expectations either. I am beginning to realize that the eternal Word is the ultimate measuring rod or standard for our words. And, looking ahead, I can see that pretty soon the Gospel of John is going to point out that there is darkness in human understanding. Maybe I have been a little too optimistic in thinking that everyone’s ideas are Spiritual.

Oliver Objectivist: We can all gain insight as we approach more and more to the one meaning of the human author.

Herman Hermeneut: Doesn’t this passage locate ultimate meaning in the Word? Doesn’t John point beyond himself to the Word? So how could we stop with John’s comprehension? Don’t we have to reckon with God’s comprehension?

Objectivist: God knows perfectly what John the human author means.

Hermeneut: Undoubtedly. My point is that both God and the human author seem to push us beyond the finiteness of the human author, to reflect on the infinitude of the Word. The language “Word” identifies the Second Person of the Trinity as in some way the transcendent Source of meaning that is embodied in the text.

Objectivist: But we must stick with what the text says.

Hermeneut: Would you be willing to add, “And with what God the Author means by it?”

From this conversation we may a simple but basic lesson: knowing God can shake up what we think we know about the Bible. Let us then consider the implications of knowing God.

Knowing the Father and knowing Jesus Christ is at the heart of salvation: “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). As a summary of his work, Jesus declares, “I have made you [God the Father] known to them, and will continue to make you known” (John 17:26). The Bible gives us not merely information, but a knowledge of God. This knowledge in turn influences how we read and understand the Bible. How can we expect to understand the Bible without understanding its Author?

If we reckon with who God is, we can immediately exclude certain kinds of interpretation. Natalie Naturalist is wrong in her naturalistic worldview. Carol Critical-Method is wrong to exclude the possibility of miracles. Roland Relativist also comes to grief. He wants everyone’s opinion to be equally right. But in doing so he does not reckon with the fact that God too might have an “opinion.” God’s “opinion,” that is, what he knows, is the standard that measures all human opinions. Moreover, salvation comes not in whatever way we invent in our minds, but by the one way that God endorses: salvation comes only through Jesus the Son of God.

We can head off other misunderstandings on the basis of what the Bible says about God.

God is able to speak to human beings. Hence, the Bible can indeed be God's word Libbie Liberal’s friends are mistaken in thinking that they are dealing merely with human words that they may accept or reject as they please..

God the Creator is distinct from human beings, the creatures of God. Thus, unlike the New Age religion of Newton New Ager, we do not simply look deep within ourselves to hear our own inmost being, and treat it as if it were divine.

God is the ultimate authority, not human beings. Hence, proper interpretation does not merely involve imposing our own ideas on a text, as Danny Demythologizer and Theo Therapist might. We are listening to God. We ought to be willing to be surprised or have our minds changed.

Human beings are made in the image of God, with the capacity to have fellowship with God. Hence, it is possible for us, with God’s help, to understand. We do not give way to skepticism or despair, as Dick Deconstructionist might.

God demands our worship. Hence, our goal is not merely to fill our minds with correct information from the Bible, but to worship and obey God.

Such implications as these are elementary. But in our day they are worth saying. They exclude the approaches to interpretation in Libbie Liberal’s Bible discussion. Further reflection on the character of God would suggest ways in which each of the people in Chris Christian’s group has limitations. Sometimes, because of limited vision, they make claims that are false or only partially true. Even when they are at their best, they represent a one-sided, partial approach.

The Trinity and the word of God

To move beyond the limited vision in Chris’s group, let us consider another passage, John 17. John 17 is an important passage for us to reckon with, because it includes several key topics together: God, the word of God, and the accomplishment of salvation. It includes explicitly two Persons of the Trinity conversing with one another, and so is important for our understanding of language and communication.

In John 17 Jesus presents himself in both his human and his divine nature. The opening verse presupposes the human nature of Jesus: “After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed.” The expression “He looked toward heaven” describes Jesus as he was physically present before his disciples. Jesus the man, Jesus whom his disciples could see and handle, speaks the entirety of John 17. John 17 is frequently called Jesus’ “high-priestly prayer,” and rightly so. Just before sacrificing himself on the cross, Jesus prays for his disciples (verse 11) and for all believers (verse 20). He is our human representative and intercessor before God, just as the high priest of Israel was to intercede for the Israelites whom he represented (Heb. 7:23-28; Num. 17:1-18:7; Ex. 28:29-30).

But Jesus’ speech proceeds from his divine nature as well. In John 17:5 he speaks of “the glory I had with you before the world began.” Who is the “I” who speaks here? The Son of God became man at the moment of his incarnation. But, as this verse insists, this “I” had glory before the world began. The verse speaks of an eternal existence in the past. Such existence applies only to Jesus’ divine nature. We must conclude that Jesus is here speaking not merely from his human nature alone, but from his divine nature also. Such speaking continues throughout the chapter. The chapter contains repeated references to “glory,” alluding back to verse 5. And near the conclusion it contains another reference to eternal existence: “to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world” (verse 24). It says, “You loved me.” Here again “me” refers to one who existed “before the foundation of the world.” It thus affirms Christ’s divine nature.

Verse 5 and verse 24 stand like two bookends, enclosing almost the entire passage. Together they indicate that the whole passage is a conversation between the Word (the Second Person of the Trinity) and the Father (the First Person).¹

How shall we understand Jesus’ relation to the Father in this passage? Clearly, we are confronted with the mystery of the Trinity. God is Three in One. The Father and the Son are eternal Persons, distinct from one another, who converse meaningfully with one another. They also indwell one another, so that they are in unity (17:20). The Father is God, and the Son also is God (John 1:1; 20:28). Yet there is only one God (Deut. 6:4). The Holy Spirit is “another Counselor,” distinct from the Father and the Son (John 14:16). Yet in the Spirit’s action of indwelling, the Father and the Son also are present (John 14:23).

John 17 does not explicitly mention the Holy Spirit. But elsewhere the Bible shows a close correlation between the Spirit and the glory of God.² 1 Peter 4:14 says that “the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you,” by analogy with the cloud of glory that rested on the OT tabernacle.³ Romans 6:4 and 8:11 assign parallel functions to “glory” and “Spirit.” “Glory” is closely related to the Spirit. Apparently, it is a manifestation of the Spirit or an effect of the Spirit. Hence, we may infer that the Spirit is still indirectly represented in John 17 through the mention of “glory.”

The word of God

What is the word of God?

John 17 ties the knowledge of God to the word of God. Words pass between the Father and the Son. John 17 exhibits the Son speaking to the Father. But in this speech he also refers to the “word” or “words” that the Father has given him (17:8, 14, 17). Jesus in turn has “words” that he has given to the disciples (verse 8), “these things” that he is speaking (verse 13). His words to the disciples are the very “words you gave me” (verse 8; cf. 14).

We can distinguish several levels of speech in John 17. First, the Father speaks to the Son. He gives him his “word” or “words.” Second, the Son speaks to the Father, in the whole of John 17. In particular, he acknowledges having received the Father’s words. Third, the Son speaks to the disciples during his earthly life. When the Son speaks, the Father also speaks: “The words that I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work” (John 14:10).

In these statements the New Testament as a collection of written documents is not directly in view. But there are hints. Jesus’ concern extends to “those who will believe in me” (verse 20). They will believe “through their message (word).” In this process the divine word is present. Jesus says, “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth” (verse 17). His request clearly hints that the word of the Father, as delivered through the Son, remains accessible among the disciples, in order to sanctify them. Moreover, the Holy Spirit is present as the divine Teacher (John 14:26-27; 15:26-27; 16:12-15, 25-28). The Father, the Son, and the Spirit, by virtue of mutual indwelling, have a deep unity in their speech. Jesus says that

he [the Spirit] will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears; and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you. (John 16:13-15)

John 17 by itself does not become explicit about the role of the Bible. But elsewhere Jesus confirms the divine truthfulness of the Old Testament (John 10:35; Matt. 5:17-20; John 5:45-47). And he commissions the apostles with his authority (John 20:21-23). It only remains for the New Testament in various ways to confirm that it has the same divine origin and authority as the Old (for example, 1 Cor. 14:37; 15:2-3; 1 Thess. 2:13; 2 Peter 3:16; Rev. 1:1; 22:18-20).⁴ John 17 itself is an example of the inspiration of the New Testament. The beloved disciple, under the inspiration of the Spirit, writes the words of Jesus for the benefit of “those who believe in me through their message” (John 17:20).

Thus, through the text of the Gospel of John, we also, modern readers, become recipients of the word of Christ. Our final list therefore includes the following kinds of speech. First, the Father speaks to the Son (John 17:8). Second, the Son speaks to the Father (John 17:1-26). Third, the Son speaks to the disciples while on earth (John 17:13). Fourth, the Spirit hears from the Father and the Son (John 16:13). Fifth, the Spirit speaks to the apostles and other inspired writers (John 16:14-15). Sixth, the Spirit speaks to us through the inspired writings (John 20:31).

Communication in the Trinity

The first, second, and fourth levels are particularly significant, because they all involve communication among the Persons of the Trinity. As we have already seen, the Son’s words to the Father, recorded in John 17, involve Christ’s divine nature. God the Son speaks to God the Father. In like manner, the words of the Father to the Son are divine words to a divine Person. For example, “the words you gave me” in John 17:6 are those to which God the Son responds in the rest of the passage. God the Son must first have heard the Father in order to respond. Moreover, the “me” in 17:6, like the “I”, “me”, and “mine” throughout John 17, is most naturally understood as referring to the whole Person, divine and human. Only with great artificiality could we try to excise a purely human “me” from a context filled with indications of exalted knowledge and unprecedented intimacy with the Father. The whole Person of Christ, divine and human, is involved in the speech in John 17.

We must still deal with one possible objection. John 17 has a focus on redemption. So someone might argue that it is wholly limited to redemption in time. Does the passage have implications for divine action, as we have argued? Let us reflect again on “the words you gave me” (John 17:8). The language of “giving” is closely associated with the language of “sending,” as in the expression “you sent me into the world” (verse 18). The focal purpose of the giving and the sending is for Christ to come into the world with the message of salvation and the presence of salvation. The giving and the sending are oriented to the specific task of redemption. This redemption takes place at a specific time and place in history. It involves the incarnation and Christ in his human nature. But “sending into the world” already presupposes existence before he is sent. In the case of Christ, this existence is eternal preexistence, as John 1:1 declares explicitly. The specific redemptive task, far from excluding thoughts of Christ’s deity, presupposes it. Likewise, any “giving” of instruction to Christ’s human nature presupposes a giving of the entirety of knowledge to the divine Son (Matt. 11:27).

The Father’s and the Son’s communication to the Spirit is also fully divine. The Spirit’s hearing, as mentioned in John 16:13, involves hearing from God the Father and God the Son. In the neighboring verse 15, “all that belongs to the Father is mine” is comprehensive. God the Father and God the Son speak to the Spirit.

Theologians immersed in the atmosphere of modernity have often supposed that the language concerning God speaking must be a sort of oblique and inadequate way of talking about something that in reality is beyond all speech, a “Wholly Other.”⁵ Speech would be a garbled manifestation of a wordless Beyond. But John 17 clearly has something quite definite in view. These specific utterances, recorded in John 17, are utterances spoken by God to God. They are divine discourse.

Infinite meaning

When we reckon with the divinity of Speaker and Hearer, the discourse has a most extraordinary depth. How can we as finite creatures understand speech and communication with this depth?

A husband and wife, after years of marriage, may have developed certain “code phrases” that evoke rich memories of shared knowledge. “The pink rose” may allude to a long period of working through forgiveness and healing. “The upside-down diaper” evokes sweet laughter of common memories.

Or consider a humorous story. A new inmate came to a grim prison with few amenities. He joined the group of prisoners sitting together. One said, “14,” and the group responded with chuckles. Another said, “29,” and the group burst out with uproarious laughter. “55,” and there were hee-haws.

The new inmate said, “What’s going on?” His companion explained, “In the whole prison we have only one book of jokes. Everyone has heard the jokes so many times that we know them by heart. So all we need to do is mention the number of the joke, and everyone knows what it is.

The inmate, eager to experiment, said, “17.” Utter silence. “Why didn’t they laugh?”

“That one isn’t funny at all.”

Now Jesus says, “And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began” (John 17:5). Every phrase, as well as the whole taken together, evokes depths of common knowledge between the Father and the Son. “The glory” gestures toward the eternal divine richness of splendor and majesty. “I had with you” speaks of the indwelling and sharing among Persons of the Trinity. “I” and “you” of course refer to the fullness of the divine Persons, known fully only to one another. “Father” evokes the intimacy of love between Father and Son. “Glorify me” encapsulates the crowning action of the entire plan of redemption, as played out in the crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, sitting at God’s right hand, and even the Second Coming (John 17:24-26). Though some aspects may be more in focus than others, the whole must be included. “In your presence,” bears the freight of the distinct experience of presence with the Father that only the Son has (John 1:1b).

The communication, then, has infinite content. But this conclusion might seem paradoxical to some. How can words belonging to human language carry infinite content? One possible response is to say that the content communicated to human readers of John 17 is still finite. But that still leaves infinite content in the communication from divine Person to divine Person. So the paradox is still there.

Should we say that the sense, the meaning, is finite while the referent is infinite? The sense remains confined to the finite function of the words, while the reality to which the words refer has infinite content. We might produce some analogy to this situation in human communication. Suppose I tell you, “Wellington defeated a French general at the battle of Waterloo in 1815.” My statement provides only limited information about Napoleon, whereas much more information could come from an encyclopedia article on Napoleon. We can then distinguish linguistic meaning from encyclopedic information. By analogy, God has complete encyclopedic knowledge of all facts. But he does not necessarily put that knowledge into words when he speaks to someone else.

Things are not quite so simple, however. The expression “glorify me” in John 17:5 evokes the complete plan of God concerning the climax of salvation—all events and all their significance, in general and in detail. We are still dealing with an infinitude. Can we escape by using the analogy with Napoleon? Let us see. My limited statement about Napoleon evokes in an expert a host of memories about Napoleon. The memories concerning Napoleon are not actually implied by what I say. Indeed, I might not even know what the expert knows. The memories are a secondary effect that I did not even intend.

Is John 17:5 operating in the same way? I do not think so. Jesus’ request to the Father is not merely a statement that evokes the Father’s memories. It relies on the knowledge shared between the Father and the Son. The Son requests the Father to act, to do everything within the scope of the plan. The Son requests the Father to do A, B, C, D., and so on, all in their relations to one another and in their total significance. He requests an infinitude of actions and purposes. Or, if you will, in the one overall request he includes by implication an infinite number of subordinate requests. The Son does not simply allude to an infinity that resides elsewhere. He includes the infinity in his act of requesting. The Son intends to convey that infinitude of implications to the Father, and the Father understands this infinitude. As finite human beings we do not possess the infinitude, but in the context of the mutual knowledge of the Father and the Son, the Son requests an infinite content through a single sentence.

Similarly, consider the statement in John 17:4, “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.” “The work you gave me to do” encompasses an infinity of implications. The Son declares, by implication, that he has accomplished A, B, C, D, and so on, everything that belongs to “the work.”

I conclude, then, that at least some of the divine speech in John 17 has infinitely rich content, infinite meaning. What about the rest of John 17? Much of the time the Son speaks to the Father concerning events and facts “within the world,” we might say. Aren’t these merely finite? The world, the created things, are finite. But the key redemptive events within the world take place through the providential actions of the Triunity of Persons in their interaction with one another. Events and facts within the world imply certain grounding divine acts, undergirding them. God plans, ordains, and powerfully orders whatever happens (Lam. 3:37-38; Eph. 1:11). God’s acts are infinitely rich and incomprehensible to us. Hence, it seems reasonable to conclude that the other utterances in John 17, in their context of divine knowledge, imply an infinitude of meaning within the divine interpersonal mutual commitment, as request, assertion, and compliance take place.

But how can this be? The words, we may tell ourselves, are words belonging to human language. They are simply finite, creational, nothing more. I think that there is a permanent mystery here. And we would wander too far from the main point if we undertook here an extensive analysis of language. We must be content with several observations.

First, God fits together the words in John 17 into sentences and discourse. He says something new, something different, though he uses words that occur also in other contexts. The speech in John 17 is something quite different from mechanically mashing together a heap of words, without regard to order. The meaning of the whole does not consist merely in the sum of the meanings of the individual words. It has its own unique character.

Second, discourses make sense only within a context of speaker, addressee, and situation. The speech in John 17 is loaded with infinite meaning because it is a particular speech by the Son to the Father, within the context of the knowledge that the Father and the Son have of one another. Similarly, the husband and wife can share rich knowledge using a few words. The human declaration “Guilty!” pronounced by a judge in the context of his official authority has momentous consequences.⁶

Third, words themselves do not have a merely human origin. It is customary in our materialist Western culture to think that they do. But that is because the West is in flight from God, trying to forget about the presence of God. The Bible reminds us, precisely in John 17, that the languages that we call “human” languages are not merely human, but shared with God who speaks and listens.

So it was from the beginning. Even before human beings existed, God spoke to create the world and what is in it. “Let there be light,” and there was light (Gen. 1:3). Before creating man, he discoursed with himself, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness” (Gen. 1:26). “Us” and “our” indicate a plurality. God confirms that this plurality is genuine by saying in Genesis 3:22, “The man has now become like one of us.” Interpreters debate whether the immediate reference is purely to God or to the court of angels that minister to him (as in Job 1:6; 2:1; 1 Kings 22:19-22; Ps. 89:5-7; and other passages). But the court of angels is a created shadow or reflection of God’s self-consultation with his wisdom (cf. Prov. 8:22-31). Thus the deepest root for his speech in creation is his speech with himself.

The speech between the Son and the Father in John 17 is thus not an isolated peculiarity. It is an instance of the same kind of divine speaking that has gone on from the beginning.

Now let us look again at the speech in the beginning of Genesis. The speech in Genesis 1:26 is a foundation for the speech that God will conduct with the human beings that he has created. Right after the act of creating man, God speaks to them: “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.” (Gen. 1:28). As God gave names to created things, so Adam engages in naming the animals (Gen. 2:19-20). Human speech is possible because God made man in his image, in his likeness. Human speech is imitates divine speech and is analogous to it. Not only so, but speech in human language can be used and is actually used by both God and man to speak to one another (note the interchanges in Gen. 3:9-19). In fact, language is a principal mode through which God and human beings bring to expression and promote the personal, spiritual, and responsible relation that they enjoy with one another.

The phrase “human language” is thus a one-sided and potentially misleading label. God “is not far from each one of us.” (Acts 17:27). “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Every “human” language on the face of the earth is also divine language, superintended and fashioned by God’s providence and wisdom to be an instrument through which he speaks.

“But,” the objector still sputters, “it is all impossible. Human language involves human vocal chords, human ears, human brains, and air waves. These elements are creatures, not divine.”

So they are. So is the human nature of Jesus Christ. In his incarnate state on earth, Christ has vocal chords, ears, brain, and all. God uses these created means to speak. The created means are not thereby magically divinized. But neither does divine speech lose its divinity.

It may help us to realize that the medium of speech can be transformed without evacuating speech of its meaning. Among human beings, substantially the same speech can be delivered through air waves alone, or aided by a microphone, or over the radio, or through a tape recording. Or we may develop written media, CD-ROMs, sign language, and so on. The speech may remain in human memories even when all other physical copies have disappeared.

Jesus says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away” (Matt. 24:35). What does he mean? He is not claiming that copies of the Bible do not burn up or wear out. But the message and the speech remain in other copies. If, hypothetically, all copies were destroyed, the whole could still be reproduced from God’s mind (Jer. 36:28-32).

Even human words do not simply evaporate or vanish into nothingness over time: “But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matt. 12:36-37). A particular human speech is not a mere dumb created thing, like a rock, that unconsciously sits there. Human speech is personal action before the face of God. A human being speaks the truth of God, truth that remains for ever; or perhaps he fails so to speak, and violates that truth. A human being commands in a manner attuned to the divine authority of divine command; or he fails so to command, but rather issues unrighteous commands violating divine norms. Thus human speech sits, as it were, within the web of context formed by divine speech and divine knowledge and divine norms. The idea that its context is purely human is an artifact of modern spiritual blindness.

We conclude that God can speak to human beings in language. But does he? Genesis 1:28 and subsequent passages indicate that he does. God speaks to the disciples when Jesus speaks to the disciples while he was on earth. God spoke the Ten Commandments to the Israelites in a loud voice at Mount Sinai (Ex. 20:1-19; Deut. 6:22).

We hear in the Bible about the fact that God speaks. Is the Bible only a later report, a merely human report, of these speeches? Or is it also the word of God?