Thoughts on Scripture and the Complexities of Interpretation

Deacon Douglas McManaman

There is no doubt that Scripture, the word of God, has mixed within it the “word of man”. The latter is very often culturally and historically conditioned, that is, not always right, certainly not absolutely and universally. But in order to come to some understanding of how Scripture can be the word of God without falling into fundamentalism, consider the following. As an analogy, think of a person who is in a state of grace (divine grace is the indwelling of the Trinity). This could be you, or your devout and faithful grandmother, etc. Since grace is a sharing in the divine life, such a person is “divinized” or “deified”–for there is a very real sharing in the life of God, which is supernatural. The person is human, but also more than human insofar as he or she shares in the divine nature. That sharing in the divine life brings about a certain illumination, a light of faith, and the gift of wisdom (which is one of the 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit) has its roots in the theological virtue of charity. So this person does not simply see the world from a merely human point of view, but also from a “divine” point of view, as it were. However, such a person still makes mistakes; he or she can be wrong about a particular matter, i.e., geography, or a scientific matter, or about what constitutes the best parenting strategies, or even about the will of God in this or that situation, etc.,. The overall direction of this person’s life, however, will be right. 

Such a person will grow in his or her understanding of God through a well developed prayer life, and through his or her own life experience, as well as through an increase in the light of faith and the gift of wisdom and understanding, and so what this person might have believed with great conviction earlier on in his or her life may undergo serious modifications later. We see such a development in the history of Israel. Our understanding of Scripture and our ability to distinguish between the word of God and the culturally/historically conditioned word of man develops in time through a kind of dialectic. We reflect upon our experience in the light of scripture (in particular, the life and teachings of Christ), and we reflect upon scripture in light of our own experience, and we reflect upon our life in light of insights gained through prayer and dialogue with others. This leads to growth in understanding, which is a kind of change. 

We certainly see this kind of development in the history of the Church, but we also see such development in Scripture itself as it moves towards the New Testament. For example, Scripture affirms the sacredness of human life (i.e., Thou shalt not kill), and yet we see in 1 Samuel 15 that King Saul was reproached by the prophet Samuel for failing to “put under the ban” (which means utterly wipe out) all the inhabitants of the Amalekite town. Do we really believe that it was God’s will that Israel destroy all the inhabitants of the Amalekite town? Some people believe that, but we certainly do not. The biblical writers were anthropologically limited, as all of us are. The word of God is there, but it must be extracted out, and doing so is not always easy, contrary to what many on the fundamentalist spectrum tend to believe.