This is the third article in a series dealing with enemies
of sound biblical interpretation.
You can find the first two articles here and here.
Today I’d like to address overriding presuppositions. Sometimes people come to the study of
the Bible bringing with them presuppositions that preclude certain
interpretations of a given passage.
(A presupposition is something that we believe without it being
proven.) They begin with a
conviction that a certain belief is true so that any interpretation that would
call that conviction into question is ruled out.
One huge area of overriding presuppositions pertains to the
character of God. I have been
guilty of approaching Scripture presupposing what God would and wouldn’t
do. "A God of love wouldn’t do this
or that." I was right to believe
that God is loving – the Bible says so.
I was wrong to bring presuppositions about what that looks like into my
study of the Bible.
The first time I remember doing this was in my study of the
doctrines of grace. For many
years, I rejected them because they seemed incompatible with my preconceived
notions of a “God of love.” I was
convinced that a God of love would not choose certain people to be saved and
not others. A God of love would try
to save everyone. This caused me
to massage certain passages of Scripture so that they allowed for unnatural
interpretations.
For example, I interpreted Romans 8:29 in a way that is
foreign to the text and both the near and larger context. This verse reads, For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the
image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. I presupposed that God would not
predestine certain people for salvation and not others, so I ruled out the
possibility that foreknowledge and predestination in this verse could refer to
God establishing a relationship with a particular person. Having ruled out this natural reading (which is validated by
a myriad of OT and NT texts), I had to find an alternative. So I read into the text that this foreknowledge referred to God
foreseeing faith in particular people.
In other words, I believed that God foresaw those who would choose Him. (Mind you, this is not in the text nor
is it in any way implied.) God
then took that group of people and predestined them not to salvation, but to
sanctification. So in my mind this
passage in no way referred to election, but to God foreseeing who would be
saved of their own volition and predestining that those who made that choice
would eventually be like Jesus.
All of this resulted from a preconceived idea of what a God of love
would and would not do.
I’m so thankful that the most important thing my parents
taught me is that the Bible is true.
Eventually, that conviction, in conjunction with the text of Romans 9-11 and John 6,
would show me that I had a wrong presupposition regarding the love of God. I then began to allow the Scriptures to
dictate to me what God’s love looks like rather than me dictating to the Scriptures what His love looks like.
The appropriate presupposition with which to approach study
of the Bible is that the Bible is true.
That and that alone should be our starting point. The Bible should mold our other
foundational beliefs, including our beliefs about the character of God. There is a relatively small body of truth about God that can
be gleaned from general revelation, that is, from the world around us. Certain attributes, namely His eternal
power and divine nature, are evident through the things that have been made
(Rom 1:20), but all other truths about Him must come from the Bible.
Beyond presuppositions about the character of God, we can
bring into Bible study presuppositions regarding a host of other things, including social and political issues
like divorce and remarriage, homosexuality and gender issues, abortion, the
supposed heavenly endorsement of capitalism and democracy, etc. It never ceases to amaze me how
powerful our presuppositions can be.
They can cause us to completely disregard the natural reading of a given
text. They can cause us to read
things into Scripture that simply are not there. They can even cause us to hold
that a given text means the exact opposite of what it says!
So how can we spot these overriding presuppositions? A telltale sign is when we find
ourselves trying to argue that a text does not mean what it says. Let's go back to one of the examples
from the last two articles. 1 Tim
2:12 clearly reads, “I do not permit a
woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man.” The context supports the natural
reading of this verse. Yet often,
people approach this text presupposing that there are not different but
complimentary roles for the different genders. Those who hold this presupposition are forced to find a way
for this passage to not mean what it so clearly says. When we find ourselves doing this, it is likely that an
overriding presupposition is at work and we need to identify what it is and
allow the Scriptures to override it.
God’s Word is true and it should shape our thinking on every
issue of life. We should never do
the opposite – allow our thinking on any issue of life to shape our view of God’s
Word. If we do, we’ll often find
ourselves at odds with sound interpretation.
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