We need to regain confidence in the message contained in the plain meaning of the text.

Be alone with the Holy Scriptures—if you are not, you do not read the Holy Scriptures. This being alone with God’s Word is a dangerous matter. But one may defend himself against God’s Word. Take the Holy Scriptures, shut your door—but then take 10 dictionaries and 25 commentaries—then you can read it just as quietly and coolly as you read the newspaper.—Soren Kierkegaard

I heard Nelson Krabill talk about what had changed in the Mennonite church in his 12 years as president of Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Ind. One observation was that the use and authority of the Bible had declined. This decline is part of a much longer historical trend that corresponds roughly with the increase in educational levels among our people. However, it is not only the intellectuals who are less likely to see the Bible as an authority; it is pretty much across the congregation.

From the perspective of the pew it goes something like this: You read the Scripture, it seems to have a pretty plain meaning and you assume it should help guide your life. But then you meet someone who points out that the meaning of a key term, say “peace,” in Greek or Hebrew is really a way of talking about justice and therefore you do not understand what the text says.

Or someone points out that in the ancient culture a particular action or practice, say hitting someone on the right cheek, cannot be done without disgracing the hitter, so the meaning is different from what you thought. After repeated instances of this, you begin to think the Scriptures are not something the layman can understand, and Bible reading becomes problematic. Add to this that the pastor is tempted to spend much time talking about the translation and culture and historical setting of the text for the day and less and less time talking about precisely what it says.

The causes of this systematic deconstruction of the text are not hard to find. First is a negative cause. The rapid decline in the idea of word-for-word literal inspiration has not been replaced by a commonly accepted notion of authority. The reasons many of us cannot subscribe to the traditional doctrine of literal inspiration are well known. I think the decline of this doctrine is all to the good. It is nearly impossible to square such a view with a serious respect for the Scriptures. Still, the results of this change in approach has been corrosive. If we cannot accept each specific proposition on face value, then what should our faith be based on?

There is also a powerful positive cause: the rise of a radical theory about the meaning of texts. As a shorthand, I will refer to this as postmodern theory. In its most radical form it claims that no text has an inherent meaning. No text wears its meaning on its sleeve. Meaning only arises as the reader brings her presuppositions, personal history and cultural baggage to the text and thus creates a meaning. This means there are only personal meanings in texts and no foundational, objective, explicit meaning. Once this idea takes hold of one’s understanding, it is difficult to avoid a radical relativism. If what I get out of the Scripture is only valid for me, only personal truth, then it is at best inspirational, not authoritative.

“Sola scritptura” (Scripture alone) was a leading idea of Anabaptist reformers. Scripture was the foundation, the touchstone. It was the anchor that tied the church together, no matter how fractious and diverse were the understandings. The postmodern view is radically antifoundationalist. It is based on the conviction that there can be no objective, universal truths. A view that is securely anchored on the foundational belief that there can be no foundational truths is the most disastrous kind of foundationalism.

These and other causes lead the layperson to pretty much give up trying to use Scripture as an authority. Still, no one swims in the chaotic world of possible ideas-values-commitments without an anchor or at least a life raft. In particular, two approaches to Scripture seem to promise some refuge in the wreckage left by postmondernism and the passing of literal inspiration.

One approach is represented by the Jesus Seminar. It is based on the hope that modern linguistic and historical tools will make it possible to sift out of the Gospels the words and sayings that can be ascribed directly to Jesus. The methodology is based on secular scholarship and rational principles. The approach is designed to ignore doctrinal beliefs and faith commitments. The project extracts a discouragingly small set of words and sayings that can be said to be authentic.

The clear implication of this project is that only the authentic words and sayings can be used as authoritative sources for Christian belief and action. It is hard not to see this effort as leading to a new literalism. It is designed to provide a new, albeit truncated, gospel that is authoritative on much the same basis as the old literal inspiration. As tempting as this is to the drowning soul, there are those niggling doubts. First, could their choice of authentic sayings have been influenced by their own biases? Might another group of scholars come up with a different set of authentic passages? And new scholarship, new theories and new historical understandings will come along and become the basis of a revision of the certified words. Can it be right to leave one’s religious life in the hands of unknown experts who have no accountability to the Christian community? What kind of faith does this entail?

There is a second, more established approach to gaining some measure of confidence in the Scripture. Here the hope is not to discover the very words of Jesus but to develop a way to find the literal intent of the writers of Scripture. If it was possible to come close to the actual intent of the biblical authors, then surely one would have moved close to the truth hidden in the text.

General textual scholarship leads us to expect that a close study of the languages, histories, cultures and parallel literatures of the original texts should make it possible to settle some of the puzzles that come with ancient texts. If one knew, even approximately, what was in the mind of the writers, then surely it would be appropriate to trust this message.

This general approach lies at the root of all textual scholarship. It is a task essential to any trustworthy translation of Scripture. No one should doubt its importance and validity. Unfortunately, it is not a task that can or should be assigned to the ordinary Christian. It is important to draw a distinction between the task of translation and the everyday action of reading for meaning. These two things tend to be confused by the idea that one has to find a way to get behind the text to discover its hidden meaning. In so far as a believer bases her confidence in some more or less hidden intention that lies behind the text, she is put back into the medieval position of receiving the message from the priest. The priesthood of all believers has disappeared, and one is left again waiting for the high priest of biblical scholarship to reveal the truth. The biblical scholar certainly ought to deliver us a trustworthy text, but she ought not deliver us the meaning of the text. Translation is a technical task. Understanding words is an everyday task.

Neither of these approaches leads to confidence by the lay Bible reader. The church needs an authentic, nontechnical, serious way to read the Bible. The history of missions is replete with stories of those who have come to Christ by a chance copy of the Gospels. It is hard to believe the text does not pretty much bare its central message on its sleeve. We need to regain confidence in the message contained in the plain meaning of the text.

Marion Deckert is a member of Bethel College Mennonite Church in North Newton, Kan.