Bible Interpretation Quotes

There is a completely separate page of quotes on early Christian Bible interpretation. This is because I find a much stronger emphasis on figurative interpretation and a more frequent appeal to nature and life arround us as proof for a particular interpretation in the pre-Nicene (before the Council of Nicea) writings.

Also, you'll find throughout Christian History for Everyman that I believe there was a great change in the church, and thus Christianity, after the Council of Nicea. This is not because the council itself was bad or inaccurate, but because afterwards most of the Roman empire became "Christians," the huge majority in name only. The behavior of the church was significantly affected, and its leaders were often mere political appointees.

Thus, this page will contain quotes on Bible interpretation from after Nicea (A.D. 325), and the other from before Nicea.

N.T. Wright, 1997

Thinking the thoughts of any great writer after him or her is a risky and tricky business. The best we can often do is an approximate guess. But the measure of success must always be to ask the question: does looking at Paul in a particular way illuminate passages that were previously puzzling? Does it enable his letters to gain a new coherence both with their particular situation and with one another? Does it give us a big overall picture of what Paul was about, without doing volence to the little details? Does it actually enhance the significance of those details? When we look at the treatment Paul has received in the twentieth century, we find again and again that the answer to all these questions is No. Gains in one area are balanced all too frequently by losses in another. (What Saint Paul Really Said, p. 12)

[Albert] Schweitzer bequeathed to us, in a nutshell, the four questions that are always asked about Paul.

1. Where do we put Paul in the history of first-century religion?
2. How do we understand his theology, its starting point and centre?
3. How do we read the individual letters, getting out of them what Paul himself put into them (the scholars' word for this task is 'exegesis', as opposed to 'eisegesis', which means putting in a fresh meaning that Paul did not intend)?
4. And, what is the pay-off, the result, in terms of our own life and work today?

History, theology, exegesis and application: all writers on Paul implicitly or explicitly engage with these four questions. (What Saint Paul Really Said, p. 14)