In the Bible we do not find proofs, but testimonies. It would be somewhat presumptuous to declare our reading of Scripture as the sole and “absolutely correct” view. Still, many people do it that way. I too once stood in that place. It is incredibly sobering when I realize that the only thing I can read from the Bible is this: it is in the Bible.

This does not relativize the Bible, but my assessment. As a testimony, it may have special qualities, but the intention is not to prove, but to testify. This refers to the application. The Bible is a summary of many testimonies. Among them are historical, poetic and pastoral testimonies, as well as many other types. They are given as a testimony with the goal that other people – you and I – will learn from them.

For example, the resurrection of Jesus is not proven in the Bible. It is witnessed. I see the testimony as reliable, but it is not proof. The apostles “witnessed His resurrection” (Acts 1:22). Testimony and evidence are two things that, while not mutually exclusive, intend something different. A testimony is about the meaning of what is being testified to. There the context resonates and the reason, as well as the goal. A proof is about the question “Can I prove this empirically today?”. This is something different. A testimony wants to have an effect on the listener, to take him into the story, so to speak.

So can I “prove” something with the Bible? No. But I can say that the Bible “testifies” to this or that. What this witnessing then entails must be carefully weighed in each context.

Poetry and truth

What I believe has a reason. The reason may lie in the Bible. Is that evidence then? No, that is not proof either. However, it does establish my understanding. When I trust this Bible, I am expressing that I trust the testimony. The fact that I do this has to do with my experience, which makes the words seem meaningful to me, and – if one wants to give room to it – with the working of God’s Spirit, who makes the words of the Bible understandable in me and invites me into the relationship with God.

Now there are also many assumptions about the Bible and about the meaning of Christ, about the church, about faith. Much of this is also sheer nonsense. Not every religious movement is divine by definition. Not every pious behavior is God-ordained, and not every tradition has anything to do with the Bible. This is not true even when one is amazed to hear that some things are not in the Bible, but they must be believed.

Whoever seriously wants to deal with the Bible can have an interest in distinguishing between poetry and truth. Poetry would then be the collection of human ideas about the Bible, while truth would already have to be clearly grounded in biblical statements. It is not a question of diminishing the value of traditions, but only of looking critically when they are imposed on the faithful with a claim to absoluteness. Truth is what I call the foundation here. It should not be confused with “interpretation”.

Fiction and truth, then, or: What is in the Bible and what is not? The point is to make a distinction. However, this is merely an aid to getting to the root of the matter. If I want to understand the Bible, I should first know the Bible and then also be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, namely to separate thoughts “about” the Bible from thoughts “from” the Bible.

What is written

In First Corinthians, Paul writes:

“Now this, brethren, I have applied as a figure of speech for your sakes to myself and Apollos, that you may learn in us not to think on things beyond what is written, lest you be puffed up.”
1Cor 4,6

That which is written we are to consider. But if we start to nurture any fantasies beyond that, then we are treading on black ice. Those who nevertheless beat their chests because of supposed “special findings” are “puffed up”. Faith is always sober. The Bible is sober.

Already one chapter before the apostle warned:

“The Lord knows the conclusions of the wise, that they are void.”
1Cor 3:20, cf. Ps 94:11

It is not a sign of strength to drift into fantasies. In Romans, Paul writes to the church as follows:

“But take heed to the weak in faith, but not for the judgment of inference.”
Rom 14:1ff

Now, of course, there are many Christian communities and churches that build on tradition. Modesty is the order of the day here: no one gets away entirely without tradition, or interpretation. But we can ask ourselves how tradition and the Bible relate to each other. Some will say that the Bible was just the starting point and since then the Church has been developing the statements. Still others see tradition and the Bible as complementary to each other. So you can’t interpret the Bible without tradition. Still others – among whom I count myself – try to see the Bible in its own light. The Bible then has its own testimony, which is not to be clouded by tradition. When I myself find a discrepancy between the Bible and tradition or doctrine, I always try to accept what the Bible says, while quarantining tradition and doctrine for the time being.

The challenge, especially for evangelical Christians, is to distinguish truth from fiction, that is, to be able to separate biblical statements from opinions. Why is this a challenge? Because many doctrines are sold as “biblical truth” even though they are “human poetry.” Those who want to rely on the Bible should be aware of the differences and be able to identify where certain teachings deviate.

Justification and conclusion

A sober examination of the Bible, then, requires discernment. But how do you achieve that? When I think of many a sermon and many a Bible study, the Bible was often referred to, but rarely anything was explained in context. “A quote here, a quote there” should justify the “biblical view”. Often it did not.

If you want to understand the Bible better, you must learn to distinguish between reasoning and inference. The two like to be interchanged. An inference is sold as a rationale. For example, it happens like this:

• The statement “When dying, the soul goes to heaven”.
• is justified with “the spirit returns to God who gave it” (Eccl. 12:7)

That is not a rationale. This is an inference. Anyone who has an assumption that “the soul goes to heaven when it dies” should justify it with an appropriate biblical passage. However, the biblical passage quoted says something quite different. It is not the soul that is spoken of, but the spirit. The latter returns to God, but there is no mention of heaven. The Bible passage does not substantiate the statement. It is not only inaccurate, but fundamentally wrong.

I have heard and read many such “justifications”. You have an idea in your head and then you look for a Bible passage “that superficially says it like I mean it.” That’s a problem. With regard to the aforementioned example, it must be clear: There is nowhere a biblical confirmation that “the soul goes to heaven when it dies”. There is no such thing in the Bible.

If I want to check this, I just have to enter the combination “soul” and “heaven” in a search. Then in the Elberfelder translation there are two hits, neither of which says what the claim was.

What do we want exactly? This is to be clarified here. Am I merely seeking to justify my views on the Bible or do I want to understand what the Bible itself says? Let us therefore distinguish the following:

Justification

The justification of a view must be made with a statement of the Bible. If I don’t find it, my view probably comes from another source, i.e. there is nothing about it in the Bible. Furthermore, I should understand each text in its own context, and not simply take texts out of context. Accordingly: Citing any text is not yet justification.

To give a reason means to find a biblical statement on the subject, coherent according to the context and the basic text, in which one knows and can interpret the words and expressions in context, without making inferences.

Conclusion

An inference is an imaginative idea about what the Bible means, even if it doesn’t say it anywhere. The Trinity is, among other things, an inference, something that is nowhere clearly taught in the Bible. The embellishment of hell is a verbalization of what Jesus said about Gehenna. There are many more such inferences.

Healthy words

Not everyone stands in the same place. My hints here do not have to be the solution to your questions. Those who question their previous assumptions can do so – as I said – for very different reasons. The approaches I share here relate to my own experiences and are for those people who still want to take the Bible seriously and are looking to let the Bible speak more for them. It is about the question “How can I learn to read the Bible in a new way?”.

Even if I want to go directly by the Bible, I may understand that none of the people in the Bible had a Bible as we know it. It might seem quite strange to the people of the Bible if they saw how some people treat the Bible today. At the time of the New Testament, not even the Tenach (the Old Testament) had been canonized, much less the New Testament established as the “Bible.” So we read about people who have lived their faith with fewer writings. They have mastered this in the best possible way. (See also: “Abraham’s Bible.”) However, we can look for clues as to how they dealt with the statements of God at that time. These we can carefully and cautiously try to interpret.

We find a hint, for example, in Paul, who writes to his co-worker Timothy:

“Have a pattern of sound words which you have heard from me, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.”
2Tim 1:13

Healthy words, healthy teaching – these things deserve attention. In the article “Healthy words” this text is further commented. These are words that Timothy heard from Paul. This is what he should have in mind, combined with faith and love. In a simple comparison, it could be that someone else had approached Timothy with completely different statements, to which Paul now says “keep to the sound words you have heard from me.” Do not be distracted, Timothy! Stay healthy in your thinking! In other words, know your sources and be careful with assumptions and statements. Interpretive: Stay with the words of the Bible if you want to understand and say what the Bible formulates.

If we do as Timothy did, we can keep Paul’s healthy words before us.

Separate the wheat from the chaff

If you ask various Christians what they believe, you hear things like this more often than average:

• Trinity
• When you die you go to heaven
• When you die you will be with Jesus
• Endlessness (“Eternity”)
• Heaven and hell
• Free will
• Immortal soul
• Those who believe are saved, the others are lost
• Resurrection of the body
• etc.

What is amazing is that none of these things are even mentioned in the Bible. None of this list is in the Bible. They are all inferences. I find it frightening when Christians claim to base their faith on the Bible, but confuse a house of cards of human inferences with the Bible. On this website, many of these statements have already been commented on and refuted – so if you want to know more about any of these topics, you can find more posts here.

My perception is this: There is a discrepancy between poetry and truth, and poetry is simply more popular. However, if you want to separate the wheat from the chaff, you need a better understanding of what the Bible itself says. If you look for it, you will also get answers and old views can be replaced by new ones.

Tools for deconstruction and reconstruction

When I mention that I have deconstructed my understanding of the faith, I mean to say that I have examined some assumptions about the Bible and exposed them as false. To the extent that these assumptions grounded my understanding of faith, I wanted to let go of these assumptions and thus lost something like a “previous understanding.” It has made way for a new understanding that I think is much better derived from the Bible.

The Bible itself is my preferred tool with which I question doctrinal buildings. It is also the tool with which I can realign my trust in God. The Bible is for me the tool for deconstruction, as well as for reconstruction.

Is the Bible the only tool? No! But since I set out on my own, I’ve been expanding my horizons. I no longer read only writings “of one’s own direction”. This also creates much more space in thinking. I was able to learn a lot. I don’t have to perceive the world in black and white. There is no longer just right or wrong. It’s been my turn for 40 years. The process is not finished, but I have gained a lot of confidence.

Sometimes people are bothered by the fact that I base myself on the Bible and yet criticize certain teachings. That doesn’t fit in at all with the common perceptions. For there, one’s own doctrine is the “biblical view,” while all others are “liberal” and “do not take the Bible seriously.” But if I take the Bible seriously and expose some ideas as “foreign to the Bible”, I am often not taken in thanks. This is not strange, but it shows that we are dealing with ideologies rather than biblical teaching.

However, something else happens again and again, namely the encounter with people who have walked such paths, with people who also live and share a liberated Christianity. Maturity looks like this. And then we can become free to follow this advice of Paul:

“But if we are true, we should make everything grow in love, into Him who is the head, Christ.”
Eph 4:15