Rightly Understanding God’s Word: Context, by Craig S. Keener
Context is the way God gave us the Bible, one book at a time.
After one begins reading the Bible a book at a time, one quickly recognizes that verses isolated from their context nearly always mean something different when read in context. We cannot, in fact, even pretend to make sense of most verses without reading their context. The method of isolating verses from their context disrespects the authority of Scripture because this method of interpretation cannot be consistently applied to the whole of Scripture; it leaves many verses left over when it is done. Preaching and teaching the Bible the way it invites us to interpret it—in its original context—both explains the Bible accurately and provides our hearers a good example how they can learn the Bible better for themselves.
If we read any other book, we will not simply take an isolated statement in the middle of the book and ignore the surrounding statements which help us understand the reason for that statement. If we hand a story book to a child learning how to read, the child will probably start reading at the beginning. That people so often read the Bible out of context (I will offer examples below) is not because it comes naturally to us, but because we have been taught the wrong way by others’ examples. Now we must accept the opportunity to begin teaching the next generation the right way to interpret the Bible. It is important that we not get so wrapped up in the details of the text (or worse yet, the point for which we wish to use it) that we miss the larger picture of the context. Just as we would feel misrepresented if someone quoted us out of context, changing our meaning, we should avoid quoting the Bible out of context.
Category: Biblical Studies, Spring 2003