To read the Bible, we need to know grammar, which in the classic sense includes spelling, syntax, and other basic reading skills. We also need to grasp history because the Bible was written in a historical context. We should at least be aware of Ancient Israel, Babylon, and Egypt, and matters of that nature. Hence, to grasp the meaning of Scripture, we must use historical-grammatical interpretation.
People sometimes modify the approach slightly to add things like a canonical awareness (biblical theology) or a narrative approach to Scripture (the Yale approach). But all in all, these are implied expansions of the basic way we read the Bible.
I am not criticizing those approaches here. Instead, I would like to point out one way modern interpreters misunderstand historical-grammatical exegesis. It involves what I have elsewhere entitled “pong theology.” Specifically, this approach divests history of reality, and it makes words into signs that signify nothing outside themselves. It is an isolating view of history and grammar.
To clarify what I mean, I am going to advocate for something called grammatical-historical-realistic interpretation. The phrase is cumbersome, but for the sake of the argument, bear with me.
Example: reality-less interpretation from Genesis 1:26
Let me illustrate what I mean by showing how interpreting the Bible as history without reality—where signs point only to other signs and not to realities—misunderstands historical-grammatical exegesis.
Statement: Genesis 1:26 says, “Let us make man in our image.” Since Moses or any ancient author could not have known about the Trinity, the “us” either refers grammatically to the royal use of “we” in Hebrew, or it refers historically to angels or a divine council because such things existed in ancient Mesopotamian and Palestinian cultures.
Problem: While these interpretations could be correct, they exclude—for supposedly historical and grammatical reasons—one obvious interpretation: the “we” refers to the Trinity. God did not become a Trinity in Matthew 1:1; he was always a Trinity. The referent “God” in Scripture always points to the one God of Israel who is Father, Son, and Spirit. So even if this is the wrong specific interpretation of Genesis 1:26, the reality that God is means that reality itself plays an important role here.
Resolution: If we allow for reality within our historical-grammatical approach, we might also note that Genesis 1:2 speaks of the “Spirit of God,” and Genesis 1:3 names the Word of God as the means through which creation comes into being: “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” John obviously reads Genesis 1 this way since he calls God’s Word the one through whom all things came into being (John 1:1–3) and the true light of the world (John 1:9). So reflecting on the reality that the Trinity is—God, Word, and Spirit—Genesis 1 names God, Word, and Spirit in the first three verses. These verses thus contain signs (words) that refer to the reality that God is. From my point of view, then, I do not find it unreasonable to say that Genesis 1:26 uses the pronoun “we” to signify that God the Father, the Word from the Father, and the Spirit of God are the subject in whose image we are made, that is, God.
Example: reality-less interpretation from Genesis 6:6
Genesis 6:6 reads, “And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” Of the many ways to read this passage, let me first provide a sample statement of what it might look like if we exclude reality from history and from the signs which signify it.
Statement: God changes his mind. We change our minds when new information comes to light. Since God is Creator, he must do so in some powerful and inscrutable way. Even so, his regret in Genesis 6:6 tells us that God sometimes modifies his intent or will based on how we behave.
Problem: Christians have confessed that God does not change, but this verse affirms God “regrets” and “grieves.” Yet the reason Christians have done so is because they affirmed the reality that God is immutable (unchanging). Hence, when they came to passages like Genesis 6:6, they included the reality of God’s nature as an important context for their historical-grammatical interpretation of the text.
Resolution: If we allow reality its place, we realize that God is Spirit (John 4:24) and has no form (Deut 4:15–16; 1 Tim 1:17; Col 1:15; John 1:18). So he has no muscles, sinews, hormones, arteries, nerves, or electrical impulses. We do, which is where we feel grief or pain. We feel them in the flesh that God created for us. Furthermore, our brains, as a physical organ, store memories, and we move through time sequentially: one event at a time. So we regret our decisions.
By contrast, God has no fleshly hormones or organs. So he does not experience regret or pain like we do. Nor does he experience time as we do, as the Creator of change and of time. So whatever else we want to say about God regretting and being grieved, it cannot mean anything like our fleshly experience of these emotions or our temporal manner of life. We have passions and desires of the flesh; God does not. We move through time sequentially; God sees all things as eternally present to him.
Given all of this, what might the words regret and grief signify about the immortal, invisible, triune God who created heaven and earth? Negatively, Genesis 6:6 does not mean that he is a creature in the flesh. Positively, the verse must state something about God’s spiritual and immortal rejection of human sin and evil. For a fuller statement, see my article here.
No matter what we say, God is always who he is. Every passage that speaks about God as such points to the one God of Israel, the Creator of heaven and earth, who is Father, Son, and Spirit. He is Immortal, Spiritual, and Immutable. That is just who he is. And so every passage speaking about God refers to this single subject.
Grammatical-historical-realistic interpretation
What I have called grammatical-historical-realistic interpretation is really a long phrase to describe what most Christians have done throughout time. It is simply a historical-grammatical interpretation before we lost hold of reality and gave way to patterns of modern philosophy of history and science that claim we can only understand an historical text in accordance with empirical norms of what is available to the senses.
But Christians believe in heaven and hell, man and God, trees and demons, nature and miracles, and much more besides. Whatever else we mean by history, we include both sensible and intelligible objects. We accept what we can know by our senses (trees, clouds, documents) and what we know by the mind (angels, demons, justice, God). Obviously, these two modes of knowing are not separated in fact, but I am here mentally dividing them for the sake of explanation.
After all, Paul tells us we know God (an intelligible object) through created things (sensible objects), and that our knowledge of God through what he made is plainly known:
“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.” (Rom 1:19–21)
God’s invisible attributes have been clearly perceived “in the things that have been made.” For this reason alone, people are without excuse; Indeed, “they knew God” through “the things that have been made.” Yet the same people worshipped the things made in a divine betrayal since they “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images” (Rom 1:23).
If even creation is full of signs that point to its Creator, how much more the very words of Holy Scripture breathed out by God himself? These words tell us about the God who always has been—whether in the Old or New Testaments—Father, Son, and Spirit, with all the invisible attributes that God always has.
Thus, we can say that Jesus led Israel out of Egypt (Jude 5), or that Christ spoke from the throne room of Isaiah 6 (John 12:41), or any such statement. History is not somehow cut off from reality. God always is “I am who I am” (Exod 3:14). To read Scripture as if history excluded intelligible truths like justice would make the imputation of our sin to Christ, and his righteousness to us, a mere judgment. But there is a real exchange. In Christ, we are the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:21). The Spirit really indwells our hearts by faith; it is not a mere platitude.
Grammar and its classical entailments mean that literary words can indeed point to other words, but these words can also testify about reality. When God spoke, “Let there be light” in Genesis 1:3, his Word truly and really did create light. It came into being. This word really tells us about the Word of God who was in the beginning, with God, and was God. This is the Word through whom all things came into being; the Word above all earthly powers.
A reality-inclusive reading of Scripture allows history and grammar to be what they always were. It lets us read Scripture as Christians, seeing God in history and as the subject of the words of Holy Scripture. Nothing could be more pious, and few things are more perilous than a reality-less Bible.
