Note: From, Contextual Theological Interpretation: An Integrated Model for Reading the Bible (Baker Academic, 2025). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Citations have been omitted.
Half a century ago, James Smart wrote about the disappearance of the Bible in what he called The Strange Silence of the Bible in the Church. He observed that in the United States the Bible featured less in preaching, its use in educational ministries was declining, and biblical illiteracy was on the rise. Smart did not look very far to cast blame; he faulted his own peers in biblical scholarship and theological education for the Bible’s demise. He believed the heart of the problem was a breakdown in communication. The seminary faculty was divided into multiple disciplines where they did not sufficiently communicate with one another, and collectively they failed to address the gap between the ancient context of the Bible and modern life. Smart described the work of the biblical scholar by saying, “The Biblical scholar determines scientifically the original meaning of the Scripture and then entrusts to others the difficult journey from the ancient to the modern world. Whether or not they reach the modern world without losing the precious meaning is not his responsibility. He need not consider it a function of his discipline that he should accompany them on their journey” [Smart, Strange Silence, 63]. According to Smart, the gap between the Bible and contemporary life is historical. Because biblical scholarship failed to bridge this divide, the Bible became increasingly irrelevant. The modern world is the concern and responsibility of theologians and practical theologians, not biblical scholars. Biblical scholars concern themselves with the past. History is what divides biblical scholars from theologians, and it became the stumbling block that kept modern Christians from reading the Scriptures.
As a biblical scholar and pastor, I also have a growing unease about the “strange silence of the Bible in church” but for different reasons. Certainly, historical challenges to interpreting the Bible persist. But what I increasingly observe is that the Bible’s silence is largely due to ideological and moral reasons, and my concern is that biblical scholars and theologians fail to sufficiently address these issues because for so long our disciplines have fixated on historical issues.
I teach at a Christian college, so it is Christian young people – many of whom have grown up in the church – who are raising these challenges, not agnostics or atheists. Whether raised in conservative or liberal households, they all question God’s justice when they read the Bible. In my introductory Bible courses, fewer of my students are concerned with age-old questions about whether biblical events actually occurred. Their primary objections to the Bible are moral and ethical. They have issues with the role of women in the Bible, the fate of non-Israelites, and divinely sanctioned violence. They object to the privilege and favoritism granted to Israel and God’s elect servants in the biblical narratives, and they find the monotheistic claims of Scripture to be intolerant and potentially oppressive. Students acknowledge that the Bible is a source of great inspiration for many, has fueled liberation movements, and has been used as a tool of oppression. They are moved by the power of Scripture in Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” sermon to inspire a nonviolent civil rights movement. Yet they also have witnessed a US president pose for a photo op in front of a church with a Bible in hand after giving a speech on “law and order” in response to racial protests following the killing of George Floyd.
Christian discipleship today requires Christ’s followers to read the Bible critically and as a sacred text, yet I well recognize these activities seem at odds. Is it possible to simultaneously exercise a hermeneutic of trust and a hermeneutic of suspicion, or will doing so create too much intellectual and existential dissonance? In our current culture wars, naivete and cynicism are incredibly alluring since they both provide the illusion of comfort and security. But neither should be mistaken for the path of Christian discipleship.
I also teach at a seminary where I observe similar trends. Some students enter seminary because they love Jesus and are drawn to ministries of justice and reconciliation, but they find that the Bible can problematize their theology and ethics. Some of them have seen people weaponize the Bible against their communities of color, so they view Scripture with suspicion. Moreover, they have taken cultural studies courses, so they cannot help but read the Bible with critical lenses. These students deeply value diversity and see its importance in theological education; yet they see that biblical scholarship is one of the least diverse theological disciplines, so they view it with suspicion or choose to ignore it altogether. Contextual biblical scholarship is an emerging discipline with varied and uneven resources, leaving students unsure about how to navigate them. Professors have diversified their reading lists, and they expose their students to multiple perspectives, but often students are left on their own to integrate nontraditional forms of scholarship theologically and ministerially. Biblical scholarship is an industry triangulating among educational, ecclesial, and publishing institutions. One need only to visit the annual conference of the Society of Biblical Literature to witness firsthand these operations at work. Yet currently the economic and numeric viability of all three of these institutions is precarious, and the academic discipline of biblical studies is experiencing tectonic shifts, changes on a scale not seen since the rise of historical criticism. Several recently published works propose new directions for biblical scholarship, such as David Janzen’s The Liberation of Method: The Ethics of Emancipatory Biblical Interpretation. Janzen is concerned with the future of the academic discipline of biblical studies. My work differs from his by its focus on the role of the Bible in the church.
The tectonic shifts that concern me are not those of the academy; I am concerned about the massive demographic changes that have taken place in the church. While the church does not exist in a vacuum and therefore many of the concerns that Janzen raises also apply to the church, I write for different communities and for different concerns, so our proposals will inevitably differ.
Biblical scholars have long debated the question of whether biblical studies should serve the church or the academy. More often than not, the debate has taken place on Western soil that carries a legacy of Christendom and modernity. Finnish scholar Heikki Räisänen describes biblical scholarship: “Exegesis, as well as social sciences or medical science, can be pursued with the aim of providing people with means of coping with life – in this case, with their cultural and religious heritage” [Räisänen, Beyond New Testament Theology, 153]. The fact that he considers biblical study an acceptable “science” and part of the “cultural and religious heritage” reveals much about his sociocultural assumptions and context. Räisänen wonders why biblical scholars would choose to confine themselves to an ecclesial path when “the truly appropriate horizon today for biblical study (or any other discipline, for that matter) is humankind as a whole.” But what does one do when the culture is increasingly convinced that the Bible is the source of society’s problems? Räisänen has a post-Christian pluralistic society in mind, but he does not address postcolonialism’s critique of the legitimacy of biblical scholarship.
In an age of increasing polarization, I am sympathetic to Greg Carey’s desire for what he calls an increase in “public biblical interpretation,” and by no means do I think ecclesial interpretation should be done behind closed doors. Yet Carey’s proposal represents only a narrow slice of “the public,” since his interlocutors are academic biblical scholars who ignore or exclude biblical interpretations by multicultural ecclesial communities. Theological and ecclesial interpretation has been criticized for being insular, yet the irony is that biblical scholars are the ones who have openly questioned whether it belongs in the academy. The kind of ecclesial reading I am interested in does not call for fewer voices at the table but more. My ecclesiology is missional, so when I speak of ecclesial interpretation it assumes the important role of the Bible and the church in God’s economy of salvation for the world. Reading the Bible for a missional church is, in Räisänen’s words, for the sake of “humankind as a whole.”
My theological and ecclesial commitments are trinitarian and missional, so the “multicultural church” I speak of includes communities that affirm the ecumenical creeds, the growing number of Christians of color in the West, and the rise of evangelical and Pentecostal congregations in the Global South. I recognize many scholars involved in biblical studies, theological interpretation, and contextual interpretation do not have religious ties or ecclesial commitments. I certainly do not believe they ought to be excluded from the conversation, nor do I wish to insulate myself from any criticism they offer. While my theology is ecclesial, it is also public. To scholars who claim that the church has too heavy a hand in academic theology, I respond that the multicultural ecclesial communities I write for are often under-represented and marginalized in the academy.
This book is written for both teachers and students of the Bible who wish to learn how to read and teach it for the ecclesial contexts I have described. It assumes readers have been influenced by academic scholarship and wish to engage it, so while I care about “ordinary readers,” this book is not aimed at them. When I speak of the multi-cultural church, I refer to the church in my North American context as well as to the church global. By specifying North America, I do not suggest that this continent is more important than, or ought to set the agenda for, other regions. It is simply my attempt to identify the needs of my context and acknowledge the significant religious, social, cultural, and political differences among ecclesial communities that span seas and borders. Much of this book was written during a sabbatical in the United Kingdom, a country that shares much in common with the United States. Yet even there I was constantly reminded how differently my Asian race and US citizenship are perceived in another country and continent.
I consider the terminology “multicultural church” redundant, but I deliberately use it because often public discourse in the United States speaks of Christianity or theology only in reference to what is deemed normative for Euro-Americans. For example, historical, literary, and theological interpretation are not considered “contextual”; that label is reserved for interpretations such as womanist, African, and Native American. Another unhelpful title, “global interpretation,” is also applied to these “contextual” interpretations. However, scholars use the term “global” to refer to different spheres, so it is important to determine what such language includes. I will refer to “people of color” rather than using the expression “ethnic minority,” and I will use the term “contextual” for practical purposes, recognizing that all such language has limitations. “Contextual” is especially problematic because it often assumes Eurocentric models where scholarship is legitimated by its ability to address the intellectual interests and cultural norms of white audiences. Thankfully scholars of dominant cultures in North American have also begun to reflect on how their own social cultural location affects their scholarship. Hopefully better terminology will someday prevail, but for now I will use “contextual” to refer to multicultural biblical interpretation.
Excerpted with permission from Contextual Theological Interpretation: An Integrated Model for Reading the Bible by Bo Lim. Copyright 2025, Baker Academic.
Bo Lim, professor of Old Testament, Seattle Pacific University
