Healthy Hermeneutics
The true measure of a biblical interpretation’s health is how it affects the poor, marginalized, and oppressed. Our hermeneutic, or scriptural understanding, should guide us toward radical, incarnational living that embodies Jesus’s ministry of economic and social justice alongside inner transformation. By grasping God’s nature through the multifaceted, holistic, and relatable image of Jesus, we ought to connect with Christ in a profound, intimate way that surpasses any institutional religious identity. It should call us into a relationship in which we are in constant presence and participation with the living God. Place our focus on God’s passionate, unprompted, and ever-present love for those who are hurt, burdened, and imperfect, which is all of us. This love precedes and enables repentance, meaning forgiveness precedes any response on our part. May that undeserved compassion and love guide us to an honest, nonjudgmental recognition of our personal shortcomings, vulnerabilities, and our need to approach others with humility and forgiveness. Approach the text with the mindset that, though our hearts struggle to love ourselves and others, they are still enveloped in the comforting embrace of divine love. Only then, when we understand God’s work, can we rejoice at the redemption of Egypt, Nineveh, and the redemption of our enemies.
More than a way to approach Scripture, a healthy hermeneutic is a profound awareness of God’s redemptive plan, and an understanding of the Bible as a narrative of our involvement.
Filter Scripture Through the Cross
A Cruciform Hermeneutic
Adopt a Cruciform Hermeneutic, making the self-sacrificial love revealed in Jesus Christ, particularly on the cross, the ultimate standard for interpreting all other scriptural depictions of God (Boyd, Cross Vision).
A Hermeneutic of Love and Justice
Prioritize the Great Commandment (love of God and neighbor) and the prophetic tradition of justice (e.g., Micah 6:8, Isaiah 58) as the supreme lens through which all other scripture is interpreted. Any interpretation that promotes hate, exclusion, or oppression must be challenged and rejected as inconsistent with the core gospel message of agape love.
- Interpret the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19) not as a command to convert, but as a call to humble service and cross-cultural living and learning. Evangelism is more about embodying love and justice to inspire others than about employing tactics for persuasion or conversion. The kingdom is not won through imperial conquest, but through love for enemies and radical transformation.
The Eschatological Imperative – Incarnational Action and Justice
Interpret scripture in light of the Kingdom of God, the future reality of perfect justice, peace, and wholeness (shalom) that Jesus initiated. This eschatological vision provides a standard against which current structures and interpretations must be measured and challenged.
- The Bible should be read as a deeply subversive and revolutionary text that critiques empire, wealth accumulation, militarism, and systemic injustice. This perspective challenges interpretations that align the church with state power or comfortable consumerism.
Progressive Revelation – Theological Development
Interpret the Bible as a developing theological narrative moving toward greater inclusion, understanding, and ethical complexity. Later texts (especially the New Testament and the life of Jesus) often supersede or revise earlier ones (e.g., Jesus’s revision of Old Testament laws in the Sermon on the Mount).
Identify the canon within the canon—the central, unifying theme or message of the Bible (often identified as the radical grace, compassion, and liberation embodied by Jesus Christ)—and use this core message to evaluate the ethical validity of other, more peripheral or troubling texts.
Interpret the entire narrative of salvation as tending toward universal reconciliation (apocatastasis), not merely as a hope, but as the inevitable conclusion reflected in God’s nature. God’s love and justice are inseparable and wholly redemptive. Hell, therefore, must be interpreted as a temporary, restorative state, or simply as a metaphor for alienation.
Understanding the Origin of the Bible
Cultural Accommodation
Interpret Old Testament passages (especially those depicting divine violence) as God accommodating his self-revelation to the limited, culturally bound, and sometimes tribalistic worldviews of ancient Israel (Boyd, Cross Vision).
Distinguishing the “Inscripturated Word” from the “Living Word”
Understand that the Bible is not synonymous with God but bears witness to God. Distinguish between the “inscripturated word” (the fallible, human-authored text) and the “Living Word” (Jesus Christ and the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit). The Bible is authoritative as a primary witness, but its authority is subordinate to the Living Word.
Interpret all passages describing God as needing punishment or sacrifice (Penal Substitutionary Atonement) as human error reflecting ancient, violent cultural expectations, not divine reality. A healthy hermeneutic is that God is pure, offers unconditional acceptance, and never requires a blood payment.
Biblical Diversity and Complexity
The Bible is a collection of diverse, sometimes contradictory, and culturally specific writings that model struggle, doubt, and questioning rather than offering a single, simple set of universal answers (Enns, The Bible Tells Me So).
The Historical Distance and Cultural Gap
Maintain a clear awareness of the massive historical and cultural gap between the world of the biblical writers and the modern world. Resist the temptation to anachronistically impose modern political, scientific, or social categories onto ancient texts.
Understanding Our Own Lens
Identify and Shed Western Blinders
Recognize that, as Westerners, we frequently misread Scripture by projecting contemporary cultural values, such as individualism, literalism, and linear time, onto texts rooted in communal, honor-shame, and ancient world contexts (Richards & O’Brien, Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes).
Acknowledge that every reader brings their own social location, biases, and privilege to the text. Employ a hermeneutic of suspicion to critique texts and traditional interpretations that have historically been used to marginalize (e.g., women, enslaved people, people experiencing poverty, LGBTQIA+).
Embrace the ANE Context
We must understand that the Old Testament was written in the Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) worldview and primarily addresses issues of function and ordering (e.g., in Genesis 1) rather than material origins as understood by modern science (Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One).
Metaphorical and Symbolic Interpretation
Recognize that much of the Bible, particularly the Genesis accounts, apocalyptic literature (like Revelation), and miracle stories, uses myth, poetry, and metaphor rather than being a strictly literal, scientific, or journalistic account. The focus should be on the theological truth being conveyed, not the literal historicity of the message.
Rethinking How We Approach the Bible
Unforgetting Lost Meanings
Hermeneutics should be an act of unconcealing or “unforgetting” the cultural, literary, and linguistic nuances that have been lost over time, resisting the temptation to flatten the text into familiar, simplified narratives (Litore, Lives of Unforgetting).
Contextual Plurality and the Historical-Critical Method
Acknowledge that the Bible is a collection of texts written by many authors over a millennium, reflecting diverse historical, cultural, and theological contexts. Employ the historical-critical method to determine the original meaning of a text in its own time (e.g., distinguishing between biblical description and prescription).
While a hermeneutic of suspicion critiques oppression, a hermeneutic of affirmation seeks out and uplifts the often-silenced voices and experiences within the text (and the community). This involves actively seeking narratives of inclusion, healing, and boundary-crossing (e.g., the Syrophoenician woman, the Ethiopian eunuch) as essential to the biblical vision.
Voices of the Marginalized (The “Bottom-Up” Hermeneutic)
Listen to and consider the interpretation of any scripture from the perspective of those it has historically been used to oppress (e.g., post-colonial, feminist, liberation theology viewpoints). Interpretations by those in positions of power or privilege need additional scrutiny. The Bible was written by the marginalized, a people oppressed by Rome (empire). Any voice that uses those same verses to justify conquest or the suppression of others needs to be rejected.
Rethinking How We Apply the Bible
Read for Wisdom and Relationship
The Bible’s primary purpose is to foster a relationship with God and teach wisdom for living, not to serve as a science textbook, a history textbook, or a legal code for all time (Enns, How the Bible Actually Works).
The Bible Works Through People
Scripture is an ancient, living, and adaptive text that has been interpreted and utilized by communities across millennia; its power lies in its ongoing ability to shape faith, not merely in its static, literal meaning (Enns, How the Bible Actually Works).
Allow for Modern Theological Maturity
Christians must move beyond fear-based fundamentalism to articulate a sensible, honest, and mature theology that engages difficult contemporary questions with integrity (Thomas, Ten Things Your Minister Wants to Tell You).
Distinguishing Ethos from Form
Recognize that the ethical ethos (the underlying spirit or purpose) of a biblical law or narrative may remain relevant, even as its cultural form (the specific manifestation) has become obsolete. For example, the ethos of the Sabbath is one of rest and justice for all, while the form of rigid prohibitions on activity can be set aside.
Focus hermeneutically on the negative space, the things Jesus didn’t say, the people the epistles didn’t condemn, and the marginalized voices that were excluded from the writing process. This silence is interpreted as an invitation for our modern, diverse community to fill the void with radical, Holy Spirit-led affirmation.
- When addressing contemporary issues (such as politics, environmentalism, and modern finance), recognize that biblical silence on a specific topic does not imply that God is not concerned with the matter. The general trajectory and underlying principles of scripture can guide interpretation where specific guidance is absent.
Recognizing the Incompleteness of Scripture
Understand that the Bible is a record of ongoing revelation, not a closed, final statement. It is a historical witness to how God has spoken, leading the community to remain open to the Holy Spirit’s continued guidance and inspiration, which fosters new theological insights and ethical growth today.
Expanding on the Greatest Commandment
Expand the Great Commandment to include all sentient life explicitly. Interpret biblical passages that sanction animal sacrifice, dominion, or unnecessary consumption as early stages in humanity’s progressive revelation that are now ethically obsolete under the hermeneutic of universal compassion.
Humility over Dogmatism
Prioritize Trust Over Certainty
The primary aim of faith is to trust and to establish a relationship with God, rather than to achieve intellectual or historical certainty about every detail in the Bible. Excessive certainty can become an idol that hinders authentic faith (Enns, The Sin of Certainty).
Maintain a spirit of intellectual and spiritual humility. Recognize that all interpretations are partial and provisional, and remain open to correction from new scholarship, scientific discovery, and the lived experience of others. Dogmatism is the opposite of this approach.
Insist that certainty is antithetical to faith and love. The goal of hermeneutics is not to find absolute truth, but to continually question, doubt, and remain perpetually open to new revelation and self-correction. Any interpretation claiming absolute certainty should be examined, including the ones on this list. I would encourage you to develop your own conclusions that align with your understanding of God and continually refine them to honor the beauty and glory of God.
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Published
June 1, 2026
