The Bible and I

David Ewert

I heard the words of Scripture from infancy. My father always read from Luther's German Bible at the breakfast table. I heard the same version every Sunday at church.

I remember vividly the day when, as a young boy, I got my first New Testament. We were living on a farm in southern Alberta, and a representative of the British and Foreign Bible Society came onto our yard with horse and van. My parents put him up for the night, and next morning my father bought a New Testament for me. I was so overwhelmed that I snuck into the hayloft, kissed my New Testament, prayed and cried. It was a German New Testament, Luther's version, of course.

The Bible in English

It wasn't until my teens that I got my first English Bible. I earned it by memorizing 300 Bible verses. It was a King James Version; at that time, we didn't know there were other versions. Then, one day, I found a Twentieth Century New Testament in the used book section at Eaton's and bought it for 25 cents. This modern speech version was designed to speak to young people.

Listening to our elders discussing the meaning of biblical texts, and hearing sermons from a great many ministers, I became aware of marked differences in the interpretation of the Bible. Although I don't recall that our parents or ministers questioned fundamental teachings of the Bible, there were plenty of debates about the meaning of biblical passages.

One of our ministers, regardless of the text from which he preached, almost without fail got round to his favourite topic, the millennium. What kind of spiritual nourishment we were to draw from that topic escapes me to this day.

Formal study

When I enrolled in Bible school, it was not because I had a great thirst for biblical understanding. Once classes began, however, my appetite for the Word of God was sharpened. Through my studies of the Scriptures and my tenuous efforts to spread the Good News, God was slowly preparing me for a Bible teaching ministry. After five years of biblical studies, I decided to earn a B.A. at the University of British Columbia. Higher education was sometimes equated by our ministers with "the wisdom of this age", which Paul condemns (I Corinthians 1), and a secular university was thought to be a dangerous place for believers. I cannot say that I had intellectual doubts about the Christian faith during those years, even though some professors were outspokenly anti-Christian. I did not have the answer to numerous questions that arose in my studies, but I felt a bit like Jesus' disciples when asked whether they wanted to leave Him: "Lord, where shall we go? You have words of eternal life; and we have believed and know that You are the holy one of God" (John 6:68-69).

Then came seminary and graduate schools. Now biblical studies became serious business. First of all, this meant learning the biblical languages. I still recall the thrill of reading a few verses from the Greek New Testament for my daily devotions. With a Greek dictionary and a Greek New Testament, I worked my way through the New Testament. At first, I thought my major would be the Old Testament. I took several years of Hebrew, but in the end I concentrated on the New Testament. My Hebrew studies, however, were not in vain, for the Greek of the New Testament can hardly be understood without a knowledge of Hebrew.

There is nothing in my studies that has meant so much to me as the biblical languages. Among other things, they have given me a deep appreciation for the complexity of Bible translation, and they have kept me from getting upset when a new version of the Scriptures comes off the press.

It has been my privilege not only to study the Scriptures, but also to teach the Word of God for more than 50 years. And yet one feels like a beginner, because of "the boundless riches in Christ" (Ephesians 3:8) which we will never fully comprehend this side of eternity. My confidence in the trustworthiness of God's Word has not changed, but my understanding of it has.

At the threshold of my 76th year, what have I learned in my life with the Bible? Let me pick out a few lessons.

Defending the Bible

First, I have learned that I don't need to defend the Bible constantly. I grew up during a time when the Fundamentalist/Modernist controversy raged, although, as German-speaking immigrants in Canada, we were not exposed to this controversy in the same way our American friends were. Subjects such as Apologetics (called "Christian Evidences") were required courses in Bible schools in those days. I must admit, I never found these subjects very meaningful, and I was comforted later in life when I came across a line in C. S. Lewis's book, Reflections on the Psalms: "You can't always be defending the Bible; sometimes you also have to feed on it." The 18th-century biblical scholar Johann Bengel wrote, "The sun does not need to be illuminated by our own torch." For me, the Scriptures always were authoritative, and the many attempts at defining the inspiration of the Bible to this day leave me cold. In the end, what is important is not so much whether one holds to the "infallibility of the Bible", its "inerrancy" or its "plenary inspiration", but whether one seeks to live by the authority of the Bible.

Asking questions of the Bible

Second, I have learned that the Bible speaks to the deepest questions of our human existence. It does not answer all the questions we might ask of it. The Germans have a saying: "The Bible has often been over-questioned." The Bible is a religious book; it is the story of how God redeems fallen humanity. It should not be treated like an encyclopedia.

In my younger years, I tended to assume the Bible had answers to the many ethical questions I had. I soon realized that it didn't address many 20th-century questions directly. An older brother once told me that Mennonite Brethren in Russia, in an attempt to find a Bible verse that condemned smoking, had settled on I John 1:9, where it is stated that the blood of Christ cleanses us from all "Untugend" (as Luther's Bible had it). "Untugend" means "bad habit", and since smoking was a bad habit, clearly this passage condemned it. When I told this man that the Greek word is "adikia" ("unrighteousness", in English versions), he was distraught. The Bible does speak to current ethical issues, but to apply the profound ethical principles embedded in Scripture to current issues calls for interpretive skills.

The Bible has been compared to the headlights of a car driving through a dark night. As long as the driver keeps his eyes on the road, which is illuminated by the lights, he or she can drive safely. But when a person gets too interested in the dark landscape beyond the road, there's bound to be an accident. The Scriptures do not answer all the questions we may have, but they illuminate the road, and if we continue in the light, we shall not court disaster.

History and culture

Third, I learned that the Bible is rooted in the history and cultures of its day. James Smart, in his book, The Strange Silence of the Bible in the Church, observes, "The preacher faces each week the problem of bringing together the world that meets him in the Bible and the world in which he is living"; he must restate "the meaning of that text in terms that will make sense and have significance for his congregation and community".

This does not mean simply that the Hebrew and Greek words of the Bible have to be rendered in colloquial English. It means that the message of the Bible has to be transported into our day. Some people find this approach very unsettling, but it is the only way in which the Scriptures remain alive and relevant.

When Goodspeed published his New Testament, in which the woman who lost her coin took a "lamp" and searched the house (Luke 15:8), there was strong reaction, because the King James Version has "candle". The real culprit, however, was William Tyndale, who translated the New Testament into English in a day when England burned candles; the KJV took this translation from Tyndale. But anyone who knows about Palestinian customs knows that she did not light a candle; she lit an oil lamp made of clay.

When I was baptized and became a member of the church, it was still the custom at communion to greet one another with the kiss of peace (men and women sat separate in those days). I never particularly appreciated that form of greeting, but when I taught in Russia several years ago, I had to endure a lot of kisses of bearded Russian Baptists. A believer is no less biblical if he or she adapts to the form of greeting acceptable in his or her culture. Perhaps it is not up to the translator to render the holy kiss as "a handshake all round" as J. B. Phillips did (I Thessalonians 5:26), but certainly that preserves the meaning in a different form.

The Bible and science

Fourth, I learned that the written Word of God and the book of nature which the scientist investigates are not at odds with each other. When readers force the Bible to speak of science, they demand more of the Bible than it intends to give. In my youth, it was widely held that if one took the Bible seriously, one had to be at odds with biologists and geologists. I was greatly helped by Bernard Ramm's book, The Christian View of Science and Scripture. I came to the conclusion that the God of the Bible was also the God who made all things, and that the poetic, theological account of creation should not be trivialized by efforts to make it mesh with modern science.

Academic and devotional study

Fifth, I learned over the years that the academic study of the Scriptures and the devotional use of them are not enemies. In my Bible school years, the emphasis was largely on the devotional use of the Bible. That is a very important aspect of Bible reading, something I continue to do every day.

In the graduate schools which I attended, the professors took a more academic approach, and I discovered things in the Bible I had never dreamt of before. Some of the things I heard in class and some of the literature I read were unacceptable as far as I was concerned, not because they were "academic", but because they ran counter to God's Word as I understood it.

In evangelical circles, there is still an aversion to the academic study of the Bible. But if it weren't for biblical scholars, we would not have Bible translations nor good commentaries based on the Hebrew and Greek texts.

The late F.F. Bruce, a renowned biblical scholar, once expressed surprise that in other fields, such as medicine and economics, one looks to experts; but when it comes to biblical studies, one becomes disqualified if one becomes an expert.

Years ago, I had written an article for the Christian Leader and got a letter from a man who could hardly write English. He expressed disagreement with what I had written and quoted Jesus' words from Matthew 11:25: "I thank You, Father . .. because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants." In other words, how could I (whom he classified as one of the wise) possibly understand the Scriptures, when God has revealed it to babes? That I also thought of myself as one of the Father's "babes" evidently did not occur to him.

There have been outstanding biblical scholars throughout history who were deeply devout and whose overriding purpose in life was to build up Christ's church.

Balancing biblical truths

Sixth, I have learned that it is as important to keep biblical truths in balance as it is to discover new truths. When one biblical teaching is stressed at the expense of others, the end result very often is heresy.

In the 1940s, when I began to teach, there was considerable dissension in our churches over the question of "eternal security" (whether a believer can lose his or her salvation). Some of our ministers taught it; others fought it. The issue was earlier debated by Augustine and Pelagius in the 4th century, Arminius and the Calvinists in the 16th and 17th centuries, and the evangelists John Wesley and George Whitefield in the 18th century. It doesn't seem to be much of an issue in our North American MB churches today, but it is tearing churches apart in Germany and the former Soviet Union.

If only people would stop selecting those passages which support their pre-understanding of this issue and look at those passages which point in the other direction, the conflict would cease. In his book, Kept by the Power of God, I. Howard Marshall goes through the New Testament, placing the assurance passages next to the warning texts. Professor Mullins observed: "God did not build walls around us, so that we won't fall down the cliff; he builds wills within us (i.e., by his warnings) so that we won't get too close to the edge." When I enrolled in a course on Hebrews in graduate school, some students insisted that the intended readers could not have been Christians because of the many warnings against falling away. The professor reminded them gently but firmly that their problem was not the text of Hebrews but their dogmatic theology (Calvinism) through which they read the text. We need both: assurance and warning.

Love letters, dry sticks, and light

There are many other things that I have learned as my Bible and I have travelled together, but space is limited. In reading the Scriptures, I have sometimes felt like the Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard, who suggested that the Bible should be read the way one reads love letters. One reads them over and over again. One even reads between the lines (although some scholars have read so much between the lines they forgot to read the lines).

My daily Bible reading is not always a delight. At times, I have felt like John Bunyan, who confesses in his autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, that there were times when the Bible had been for him "dry as a stick". At such times, good Christian habits, such as daily Bible reading, keep us in the way we should go. The French scholar Blaise Pascal commented: "There's enough light in the Bible so that we don't have to lose our way; but there's also enough obscurity to keep us humble." By God's grace, I want to continue to travel together with my Bible until travelling days are done.

David Ewert is an outstanding MB Bible scholar, a former president of MB Bible College and former professor at MB Biblical Seminary. This article is reprinted, with permission from the Spring, 1997 issue of Direction, the Mennonite Brethren academic journal.


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