Inductive study of the Bible: Is It Biblical?

A question that is often asked is how should we study the Bible? This is an extremely important question because how we study the Bible will often determine the theological conclusions we come to by it. The question of studying scripture has a theological term attached to it; hermeneutics. This is simply the method by which we interpret scripture. In any hermeneutic there is a series of theological/philosophical assumptions which act as its foundational principles. Curiously, inductive methods have become an incredibly popular way to study scripture. While these methods vary widely in their practical out workings, they share a common hermeneutic.

Inductive Method: Observation, Interpretation, Application

Observation and Interpretation:

This “Inductive” Method is named such because of its strong emphasis on observational awareness of the text. Just as a scientist studies nature through observation, so the faithful Christian must observe the holy scriptures to derive it’s sacred truths. This is a basic assumption which originated among pastors largely during the first Great Awakening during the 19th century. The influences of both the enlightenment and the overwhelming advance of science led Christians to believe that scripture was to the believer as nature was to the scientist. The negative side to this way of studying scripture is that it tends to neglect context. If scripture is truly God’s message to us, so this reasoning goes, then its truths should be accessible to anyone who reads it. One online article puts it this way;

"Because observation is discovering what the passage is saying, it requires time and practice. You'll discover that the more you read and get to know a book of the Bible, the more its truths will become obvious to you. You'll be awed at the wealth of spiritual riches contained in even the shortest books of the Bible—and you will have discovered it yourself! You will know that you know!”

By extension then, the linguistic, historical and cultural context become unnecessary for study and interpretation of a text. They are ‘supplemental’ helps. And well what’s wrong with this? Frankly it results from an abuse in the concept of scripture’s clarity. Traditionally, the reformers say the clarity or perspicuity of scripture was meant in a limited way, such that only those teachings essential to the salvation of an individual were clear and obvious to see. However, after a multifold theological revolution (and some would say devolution) this teaching was expanded to mean all spiritual/scriptural truths. Today it is safe to say that most evangelicals believe that all scripture is plain and clear in all of its teachings. This is a dangerous idea not only because it promotes all sorts of sophomoric argumentation and anti-intellectualism but also because it doesn’t take the full effects of sin seriously. If all our capacities are impaired by sin then our ability to reason has been impaired as well. To both the Catholic church and the Reformers this meant that scripture could not simply be read carefully and understood completely through a few hours of study. Catholics for centuries believed that the mysteries of scripture must be unveiled by those heavily disciplined both in mind and spirit. The Reformers as well, taught that scripture must be studied rigorously, utilizing all scholarship that is relevant and available.

Application:

A second major concern of this first inductive method is that it appears to assume that all scripture has direct application to our lives. More than this, many articles I’ve read seem to place the worth and usefulness of scripture solely in its personal application. There is perhaps no better way to see American pragmatism laid bare than in the evangelical obsession with the practical application of scripture. One article writes;

"This [Application] is taking the plain meaning from God's Word and putting it to practical use. This is about, 'how shall I respond' to the Word. What sin to get rid of, what commands to yield too, the pitfalls to avoid, what I need to be and do, what area I need to discover and grow in, the actions to engage in, and the promises we are to keep, what is God calling me to do?”

1st note the use of the word plain. I seldom here a pastor talk about studying scripture without describing its meaning as utterly clear and plain. For a discussion on this topic see my earlier post on fideism and anti-intellectualism. What I wish to discuss here is this bizarre assumption present in almost every church I have ever been a member of or attended that the conclusions of studying scripture must primarily be a personal perspective on it. That is to say an understanding of how scripture fits into our lives. 

My criticisms of emotionalism, emotivism and feel-goodism in the Church apply here as well. This isolates the Christian life and totally prevents any well thought out theological reflection of scripture. This is precisely because such a pragmatic and personalist approach only asks questions with personal pronouns in them and sees more abstract questions such as the function and role of the Holy Spirit both in the Trinity and in the life of the Church as meaningless speculation. Even when such questions are entertained, they are treated only briefly and with a surface analysis under this system.

To my mind, focusing on personal application totally misses the point of scripture itself, which is to edify the entire the Church as a whole. Whatever application you gain personally from scripture should center on the role you play in strengthening the Church and spreading the gospel. Whatever personal study is done on scripture it should be done with the goal of internalizing deep truths of both God and creation, mind and spirit as well as wisdom and truth. For instance look at 1 Peter chapter 1:13-21

"Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, 15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16 since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” 17 And if you call on him as Father whojudges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, 18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lambwithout blemish or spot. 20 He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you 21 who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God."

I will say this again and again, no author in either the Old or New Testaments makes a definite separation between theological doctrine such as the resurrection of Christ and the life of the individual Christian. The deep truths of Christ’s atonement and resurrection permeate the life of the Church so thoroughly that the two cannot be separated in any meaningful way. Paul states in this passage that we are to be holy (v 15) for the sake and by the power of Christ (v 19) and His grace afforded by Christ’s death and resurrection (v 21).

Like emotionalism, this pragmatic approach to scripture fails to see this blatantly obvious point of scripture simply because it approaches scripture with the wrong set of questions.

An Alternative Method: To my mind there is no reason to develop cutesy 3 step methods to studying scripture, especially those with vague and abstract descriptions of supposedly practical guidelines. If you really are serious about studying scripture you can't just read scripture you have to study the context in which it was written in.

When it comes to reading a portion of scripture you cannot gain a complete understanding of it unless you also read the entire book surrounding it. So if you want to study the book of Job don't start in the middle, read it beginning to end, preferably in one sitting. This is important because it allows you to identify the purpose and overarching themes of the passage you wish to study in depth. You will also need to gain a sense of grammatical structure of a passage. Thus it will be necessary to understand sentence structure and parts of speech. I've found sentence diagramming to be useful tool towards this end. Other resources that will be needed are; a good Greek/Hebrew lexicon (i.e. blueletterbible), a socio-rhetorical/social commentary on the book in question, a historical/critical commentary on the book in question, as well as introductions and dictionaries on the Old and New Testaments. A nice Systematic Theology book wouldn't be all that useless either.

"But that's so much reading the Bible's meaning should be plain, not this complicated right?"
- The more basic teachings of scripture are fairly simple and easy to grasp yes (it is easy to grasp the essence of the gospel that Jesus died for our sins, for instance). However, if you want to grasp deeper wisdom from scripture, you do have to use the brain God gave you and use it to the fullest.

An excellent book to get you started on studying scripture in a more rigorous way, even without many scholarly resources would be "How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth" by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stewart. Its pretty cheap and extremely helpful in clearing up your thinking during personal study.
 

Science and Philosophy: Which is Better? Part 1

The relationship between science and philosophy has been a highly controversial and complex topic. It has also been one of very little discussion between scientists and philosophers, with scientists assuming that science is prima-facie more important than philosophy while philosophers are in large disagreement on the issue. Yet, whether scientists like it or not, it is beyond dispute that science sprouted from philosophy and perhaps even religion. Philosophies of the enlightenment praised human reason and the power of the mind to discover the world around it. This led directly to the industrial era, electricity, mass access to refrigeration etc. Even before the enlightenment, however, philosophers of nature, as they were called, desired to discover the inner workings of God's creation. This brought about numerous advances in agriculture, medicine, the understanding of human biology, the movement of planets and various rudimentary models of our solar system. The crux of the issue then, is whether or not science has supplanted philosophy in its usefulness and is thus superior to philosophy as a discipline.

What is science?

A bizarre mystery and point of contention in the realms of both philosophy and science is the question of what the heck science actually is and what counts as science. If science is defined simply as an inductive method then this would rule out most of evolutionary biology, cosmology and anthropology as these fields perform their research largely based on making inferences from the available data to the best explanation of that data (i.e. inferring common descent from the fossil record). In other words, large portions of science are abductive in their methods. However, if we say that science is any discipline that employs inductive and abductive reasoning then all study of history, archeology, sociology, and psychology must be seen as science as well.

Another issue is the relation between science and mathematics. Whereas science is taught as being a primarily inductive method mathematics is seen as largely deductive in its reasoning. Mathematicians prove equations with as much precision and certainty as possible and no induction seems clearly needed in their work. And yet much of science is essentially mathematics. Physics in particular involves copious amounts of calculus and experimental equations which form the core of all cosmological theories regarding the way our universe works.

Science then involves a variety of methods and so it doesn't seem helpful to define science in terms of methodology alone. Perhaps then science can be best defined and distinguished from philosophy in terms of subject matter. All of what is agreed to be science relates primarily to what is empirical and scientific study always seems to aim at gaining a better understanding of the way all things empirical work. In contrast history, linguistics, sociology and other humanistic disciplines aim to understand more about how we as people work. Given this framework, however, there is no clear point of distinction between science and other disciplines. Rather we can see the range of academic disciplines as a spectrum with each field overlapping with other fields. This makes sense of why all sorts of discipline seem to have such fascinating implications for each other. Unfortunately this view also makes it dually difficult to assign value to one discipline over another.

What is Philosophy?

Unlike other disciplines, philosophy is not defined by its method or its subject matter. Thus, as expected, there is enormous disagreement among philosophers (and everyone else) over what philosophy is. Indeed all well-developed methods of research and study in academia have their roots in philosophy. In addition, unlike science and most humanities philosophy is not directed towards finding the right answers, but the right questions. Even so, philosophy does wrestle with the underlying reality of the universe science studies. For instance, a major question in philosophy is whether or not mind has primacy over matter or vice-versa. In other words whether all matter is really information or whether information is really just a set of useful fictions employed by material based minds to understand matter. Obviously we have to take some sort of position on these issues, whether we realize it or not we make assumptions and assertions about the fundamental nature of reality. In this way everyone is a philosopher and philosophy permeates everything we do and believe.

Is science more “useful” then philosophy?

In some senses, at least, we can answer this with a definite yes. In other ways, however, the very question seems ill posed. Clearly philosophy as the discipline of questioning and thinking never directly led to major advances in technology at the rate we see today. In this sense science is clearly more useful than philosophy.

But the central question is whether or not science is better at answering questions of fundamental reality than philosophy. In this case, however, the question itself seems slightly flawed because as noted above neither philosophy nor science seems to be clearly defined by methodology, but rather by subject matter. Science is restricted to the material realm, the observable universe and perhaps universes like it. Philosophy, however, has branches in many matters of observable reality (questions of epistemology and ethics for example) but also goes deeper than this and questions whether or not the universe is all there is.

So basically if science is more useful or the only useful way to understand reality, then we must deny that there is much else other than what is observable to us in some way or if there is something else, we have no access to it. In other words to suggest that science has overtaken philosophy requires certain philosophical assumption. Given this, for belief in the superiority of science to be coherent it must include enough use for philosophy to justify its philosophical viewpoints. Moreover, if this sort of scientism is to be justified it must leave room for debate of its philosophical viewpoints and admit the validity of philosophical objections (such as objections to naturalism).

Aha! But how does one deal with the argument that all philosophical questions are becoming scientific questions? Well even supposing the trend of philosophy converting to science were true, this is still just another way of putting the position described above. Embedded is the assumption that the empirical is all there is. All arguments for this position, however, seem more philosophical in nature and less scientific. For instance, if there were something other than and outside nature why can we explain everything within nature by nature? Of course, this question is only pressing to various philosophical positions if its presupposition that everything within nature is explainable by nature is true. However, the logic and inferences made from that to the position that nature is all there is are firmly philosophical, and can be challenged on philosophical grounds. For instance, the position that anything outside of nature would need to interact with nature could be questioned. In addition, the position that everything within nature is explainable by nature could also be debated on philosophical grounds. For example, it is not at all obvious that morality is entirely explainable by natural/empirical processes and material objects despite what many neurologists and evolutionary psychologists think.

So now the question is whether or not areas of philosophy are being taken over by science?

Again to a degree this is obviously so. Science began as a new empirical approach to nature. As knowledge of nature grew, so did the methods of studying it. New fields of science became born as more was discovered about the basic elements of matter, biology and the nature beyond earth. As such philosophy became ill suited to study nature with the degree of detail scientists were employing.

Today there are numerous fields of science which claim to replace philosophy as the meaningful form of analysis; neurobiology, evolutionary psychology, cosmology, quantum physics and quantum mechanics, to give the most notable examples.

Neurobiology:

Many scientists who are doing cutting edge research on the brain believe they are finding the essence of human consciousness. Their basic claim, as it is relevant to this study, would be that philosophy is no longer needed to study the mind or what it means to have thoughts. A number of experiments and evidences are brought forward in support of this conclusion;

Libet experiments:

Benjamin Libet, a neurobiologist, carried out a series of experiments to see what exactly happens in the brain when making simple decisions like moving your hand. He found that 300 milliseconds before activity in the frontal cortex began increasing, areas of the brain responsible for movement became more active. Libet argued that this must mean that our consciousness does not really drive our decisions, but merely facilitates them. If this is true then we really have no free will and our conscious thoughts are more or less determined by chemical reactions in our brains. However, Libet makes one glaring assumption that our consciousness just is neural activity within our frontal cortex. More than this, even accepting that our consciousness emerges from neural activity in our brain Libet’s argument doesn’t logically follow. It could just as easily be the case that the increased activity in our motor cortex is for the purpose of preparing for a persons conscious decision and not the decision itself.

Moreover, Libet’s experiment is not evidence at all of science replacing philosophy, but science informing philosophy. We see science providing data by which philosophers can analyze, interpret and draw implications. This is nothing new, science has been performing this function for centuries. This process may involve a sort of replacement of philosophy as certain possibilities become unlikely given the scientific evidence. However, here the reverse has also happened, where science has actually added content to and stimulated philosophical discussion.

http://www.bethinking.org/human-life/the-libet-experiment-and-its-implications-for-conscious-will

Many scientists have pointed to the general advance of neurobiology in explaining consciousness to support their scientistic thesis. Their reasoning is essentially if our consciousness lies outside of our brains why does all our behavior seem to be linked to neurological activity? Moreover, why do things like our memories and emotions seem to be correlated to specific areas of our brain?

As far as I can tell, this reasoning is again assuming what it is trying to prove; that all consciousness starts with neurological activity. But suppose the reverse is true, that the conscious mind is causing the nuero-chemical reaction. The analogy has often been given by philosophers of a pianist playing a piano. Every note and sound coming out of a piano can be explained by the various parts in the piano itself. However, it is still equally true that they are all explained by the skills of the pianist. How could this be dis-proven through empirical observation or study? We can object that such an assertion might have a certain ad-hocness to it or even that its inability to be empirically disproven makes it a proposition without a truth value (aka meaningless, incoherent etc.). However, these would clearly be logical and philosophical objections, not scientific ones and so it could not be clearly said that science is replacing the philosophy of mind, just that philosophical arguments support a more materialistic view of consciousness and this is another weak sort of scientism we’ll discuss in part II.

Interesting discussions on quantum physics and philosophy:

http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2012/04/28/a-universe-from-nothing/
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all&
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm/
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/opinion/sunday/what-physics-learns-from-philosophy.html?_r=0