What do students today know/believe about the Bible?

If you had to guess, would you assume that today’s students know more or less of the Bible than students in previous generations? While you’re thinking about that, would you assume that students are becoming more or less “liberal” in their orientation towards scripture?

I think that most people would probably assume that students don’t know the Bible nearly as well as they used to “back in my day” (whenever that was) and when they do think about scripture (which is not nearly enough) they are becoming alarmingly liberal.

On the surface of it, this wouldn’t be a bad assumption. There is a sort of entropy where cultures will gradually drift over time towards innovation and “progressivism” and away from older traditions, authorities, and assumptions unless there is some force exerted to temporarily stem the tide – a revival, a revolution, a crisis, or just plain nostalgia. To observe a drift away from traditional understandings or even concern for the Bible may alarm us, but it shouldn’t surprise us. And anecdotally it certainly seems as if we don’t read, love, obey, or just plain know the Bible nearly as much as we used to.

But what I have observed at least in our tiny little corner of the world doesn’t really support that narrative. Ozark Christian College has been giving a standardized test from the Association of Biblical Higher Education on Bible knowledge to incoming students for over 45 years. The average score for men over that time has been just over 40 percent. The average score for women is about the same – just under 39 percent. What is remarkable (at least to me) is that the score for incoming students has remained relatively unchanged over those years. Not one time did the scores go over 50 percent, and only two years were over 45 percent. In 1969 (the first year I have records) the average score for men and women was 36 percent. In the most recent year, the average score was 39.8 percent. You could argue from these scores that Bible knowledge has always been inadequate, but you can’t argue that students know less today than they used to.

What about orientations towards scripture? Our society is undoubtedly more liberal than it was even 10 years ago on any number of different, specific issues. It’s naïve to think that somehow our students have been immune to these changes. Before I go any further, let me add this disclaimer. I am on most things what you would call a pretty conservative person. But if liberals are guilty of idealism when it comes to the future (which they are), conservatives are certainly guilty of idealism about the past. Many of the beliefs, assumptions, and practices of our idyllic past needed to be called into account and changed (and changed sometimes because frankly we were getting scripture exactly wrong). There are occasions when progress and change should be embraced. My point is that not every innovation should be automatically cursed with the imprecation of LIBERAL. In fact, both sides should just chill on the name calling in general.

But back to my point. Are students changing their basic orientation to scripture? I have less data to draw on here, but from what little data I have, the answer seems to be no. Scot McKnight published a quiz some years ago designed to measure a person’s interpretive assumptions about scripture. It asks questions like: The commands in the Old Testament to destroy a village including women and children are: 1) Justifiable judgment against sinful, pagan, immoral peoples. 2) God’s ways in the days of the Judges: they are primitive words but people’s understanding as divine words for that day. 3) A barbaric form of war in a primitive society and I wish they weren’t in the Bible. A person’s score on this quiz will show where they fall on a spectrum from conservative to moderate to progressive. I’ve been giving this quiz for about five years in my third year biblical interpretation class. I use it as a way to talk to the students about the hidden assumptions that they make while interpreting scripture. These are mostly sophomores and juniors who are ministry majors. Since they are ministry majors you would expect them to be more committed to scripture than average. But as upperclassmen, you would also expect them to be a little more reflective and critical than the average freshman. I didn’t keep the averages from the first couple of years, but my past three years of classes have all averaged exactly 54.6 on the quiz. That is remarkable consistency. McKnight says that this score places you squarely in the “moderate” category and closer to conservative than progressive. In other words, not only do my students’ scores not seem to be changing, they are also remaining solidly moderate in their orientation towards scripture.

I know that this is a very thin slice of evidence. I could be totally wrong about larger trends in the church or in the culture. But as far as my students are concerned – students coming from mostly a churched background and demonstrating a desire for some kind of vocational ministry – they seem to know as little about scripture as their parents and grandparents, and despite the movement of culture in a more liberal direction, they have generally remained committed to the authority of scripture.

Chastened Epistemology

We need not think that hermeneutical despair ("anything goes") and hermeneutical arrogance (we have "the" interpretation) are the only alternatives.  We can acknowledge that we see and interpret "in a glass, darkly" or "in a mirror, dimly" and that we know "only in part" (1 Cor. 13:12), while ever seeking to understand and interpret better by combining the tools of scholarship with the virtues of humbly listening to the interpretations of others and above all to the Holy Spirit.

Westphal, Whose Community? Which Interpretation? (Loc. 174-178 Kindle Ed.)

Messy Hermeneutics

Interpretation is not an exact science. Understanding--be it of God, works of art, ourselves, or others--is both messier and more provisional than explanations that work with causal laws. Why should this be so? Three reasons: 1) because what we're trying to understand is often singular and unique, 2) because meaning is a matter of seeing the parts in relation to larger wholes of which finite human interpreters have only partial glimpses, and 3) because interpreters often have vested interests for seeing things in one way rather than another and lack the requisite virtues to see things as they really are coram Deo (before God).

Kevin Vanhoozer, Everyday Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), 36

Restoration Movement Hermeneutics

Cummins’ four guiding principles from The Declaration and Address (Sept. 7, 1809)
1. Every person has the right of private judgment (i.e., the right and responsibility to interpret Scripture apart from human authority)
2. The Scriptures will be the sole authority; no human creeds or inventions.
3. The sectarian spirit is evil; bitter jarrings and janglings of party spirit, clashing human opinions should be at rest; restore unity and peace.
4. The Bible alone for our rule; the Holy Spirit for our teacher of truth; and Christ alone as our salvation.

D. Duane Cummins, The Disciples (Chalice, 2009), 45.

Alexander Campbell

God has spoken by men, to men, for men. The language of the Bible is, then, human language. It is, therefore, to be examined by the same rules which are applicable to the language of any other book, and to be understood according to the true and proper meaning of the words, in their current acceptation, at the times and in the places in which they were originally written or translated. If we have a revelation from God in human language, the words of that volume must be intelligible by the common usage of language; they must be precise and determinate in signification, and that signification must be philologically ascertained--that is, as the words and sentences of other books are ascertained, by the use of the dictionary and grammar. Were it otherwise, and did men require a new dictionary and grammar to understand the Book of God,--then, without that divine dictionary and grammar, we could have no revelation from God; or a revelation that needs to be revealed is no revelation at all. Again, if any special rules are to be sought for the interpretation of the sacred writings, unless these rules have been given in the volume, as a part of the revelation, and are of divine authority;--without such rules, the Book is sealed; and I know of no greater abuse of language than to call a sealed book a Revelation. But the fact that God has clothed his communications in human language, and that he has spoken by men, to men, in their own language, is decisive evidence that he is to be understood as one man conversing with another. Righteousness, or what we sometimes call honesty, requires this; for unless he first made a special stipulation when he began to speak, his words were, in all candor, to be taken at the current value; for he that would contract with a man for any thing, stipulating his contract in the currency of the country, without any explanation, and should afterwards intimate that a Dollar with him meant only three Franks, would be regarded as a dishonest and unjust man. And shall we impute to the God of truth and justice what would blast the reputation of a fellow-citizen at the tribunal of political justice and public opinion!

Alexander Campbell, “The Bible-Principles of Interpretation,” Millennial Harbinger 3 (January, 1846).

Rationalistic Hermeneutics

The strongly rationalist ethos of the enlightenment was often reflected in what might be styled as a spiritual embargo on any kind of emotional involvement with Scripture, or any use of the human faculty of imagination…The Enlightenment forced evangelicalism into adopting approaches to spirituality which have resulted in rather cool, detached and rational approaches to Scripture…As Martin Luther constantly insisted, Christianity is concerned with totus homo, the “entire human person,” not just the human mind.

McGrath in David L. Little, “Inductive Hermeneutics and the Early Restoration Movement” in Stone-Campbell Journal 3 (Spring, 2000): 16.

Inductive Hermeneutics

Methodological Common Sense…is connected with the American exaltation of Francis Bacon. It is the assertion that truths about consciousness, the world, or religion must be built by a strict induction from irreducible facts of experience…This aspect of the Common Sense Tradition, which contributed its share to the general scientism of nineteenth-century American intellectual life, played an unusually large role in evangelical thought. Early in the nineteenth century, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Disciples, and Episcopalians, in journals ranging from Bibliotheca Sacra to The New Englander, asserted generally, as Presbyterian James W. Alexander put it specifically, “that the theologian should proceed in his investigation precisely as the chemist or botanist proceeds…[This] is the method which bears the name of Bacon.

Mark Noll in David L. Little, “Inductive Hermeneutics and the Early Restoration Movement” in Stone-Campbell Journal 3 (Spring, 2000): 13-14.

Inductive Hermeneutics

Appeal to the understanding of the common populace found particular resonance in the religious life of America. It addressed several topical issues of the time, including the proclamation of certainty among religious confusion, a confidence in the ordinary mind to understand God’s word, a return to biblical language for clarity, and an equalizing factor between the clergy and the laity. That pious individuals could upon their Bibles for themselves and understand it without the intercessory services of the clergy was a revolutionary idea in tune with the early American ethos. Echoing the rhetoric of the American Constitution, Alexander Campbell, among many others, called for the “inalienable right of all laymen to examine the sacred writings for themselves.”

David L. Little, “Inductive Hermeneutics and the Early Restoration Movement” in Stone-Campbell Journal 3 (Spring, 2000): 10.

Preunderstandings

If God has revealed truth in the Bible, then it seems reasonable also that He has made us capable of apprehending that truth, or at least some measure of it. Thus, though we inevitably bring preunderstandings to the texts we seek to interpret, this does not mean that we cannot apprehend the meaning they impart…Since we accept the Bible’s authority, we remain open to correction by its message. There are ways to verify interpretations or, at least, to validate some interpretive options as more likely than others. It is not a matter of simply throwing the dice. There is a wide variety of methods available to help us find what the original texts most likely meant to their initial readers. Every time we alter our preunderstanding as the result of our interaction with the text we demonstrate that the process has objective constraints, otherwise, no change would occur; we would remain forever entombed in our prior commitments.

Klein et al in Zuck, Rightly Divided (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1996), 80-81.

Principles of Interpretation

1. A close reading of the text cannot be done without a perspective provided by one’s preunderstanding as identified by a “sociology of knowledge” perspective.
2. I must distinguish presupposition from prejudice.
3. We must seek controls that enable us to work with presuppositions (the positive) rather than to be dominated by prejudices (the negative).
a. We must be open to new possibilities.
b. We must understand the dangers of merely assuming our presuppositions.
c. The interpreter must not only address the text but must allow the text to address him or her (the hermeneutical circle).
d. Polyvalent interpretations per se are unnecessary, but a pluralistic or polyvalent attitude is critical.
4. We must all good hermeneutical principles to shape our exegesis and to control our tendency to read our prejudices into the text.
a. Consider the genre or type of literature and interpret each according to the proper rules of their particular language game.
b. The structural development of the passage provides a control against artificial atomistic exegesis.
c. Semantic research further helps the reader to discover the sense and reference of the passage.
d. A judicious use of background information helps us avoid the opposite error, namely, ignoring the historical aspect in favor of the poetic.
e. The implied author and implied reader in the text provide an indispensable perspective for the intended meaning of a text.
f. The question of verification of competing interpretive possibilities is essential for any system. This is a threefold process: inductively, deductively, sociologically.

Grant Osborne, The Hermeneutical Spiral (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2006), 516-519.