#STRask - Why Is There No Effort Towards a Neutral Interpretation of Scripture?

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

Questions about why there is no effort towards a neutral interpretation of Scripture that doesn’t take denominational preferences into account, and how so many people in different denominations that believe different things can all claim to be followers of Christ.   Why is there no effort towards a neutral exegesis—i.e., without taking denominational preferences into account—in light of the fact that there are so many denominations divided over hundreds of topics? Which inspiration theory and which explanatory system do you use? Considering there are so many denominations that all believe different things, how can they all claim to be followers of Christ?

Welcome back to hashtag S here. Are you ready for the first question, Greg? Sure. Okay, this question comes from William. Why is there no effort towards a neutral exegesis? In other words, without taking denominational preferences into account. There are over 38,000 Christian organizational denominations divided over hundreds of topics. Which inspiration theory and which explanatory system do you use?

I get so tired of this. this point that people made, the thousands and thousands of denominations. There is not a single person in the world that believes everything exactly the way I do. And there's not a single person in the world that believes everything exactly the way you do, Amy, or anyone else. We are all individuals. We have a host of... of points of view about things. I'm not sure the motive of the person who has raised this particular question.

It's often raised by detractors, skeptics. Do you know how many different forms of evolution there are? Forget about the intelligent design. Just there's all kinds of different things, and they fight with each other, the fundamentalists like Dawkins and the punctuated equilibrium folks like Stephen Jay Gould, who's gone now, but nevertheless, the school remains. These guys fight like cats and dogs. And by the way, that's not superlative. That's not exaggeration or hyperbole. These guys are nasty towards each other. And unless they're

fighting some kind of Christian, you know, then they join troops. But the scientific realm, which when he think is the bastion of knowledge and dependability, it's thick with varied opinions about every single thing under the sun. I have a master's degree. And philosophy. And in every single issue, there are contrary points of view, and they all have complicated philosophical names, because people disagree on all sorts of things. Why would we be surprised that people disagree when it comes to theological things within a given camp? Now, the camp that we're in is Christian. It has a name, and the reason it has a name is because it has distinctives that unify the class.

And if those distinctives did not unify the class, there would be no class. There would just be a bunch of people with different opinions. If we say Muslim, a Muslim is a person that adheres at least to a core set of concepts. Allah is God and Muhammad is his prophet. That's the starting point. You don't agree with that. You're not a Muslim. Okay, and then there are a couple of other things that are that are practices that they affirm, very basic.

And if you, now, are there variations, all kinds of variations. But within those particular, I should say within that group, that group is defined by these characteristics. The same thing is true with Christianity. Now, if people want to take exception with those basic, what Francis Schaefer or rather C.S. Lewis is called mere Christianity. Well, they're welcome to do that because Christians could be wrong in any given point, all right. But if people disagree with that, they're just not Christians anymore. They're Mormons, maybe, or maybe they're Christian scientists, or maybe they're what, the Watchtower Society, Jehovah's Witnesses, or whatever, more power to them, whatever. But they're not Christian because Christian means something, just like all of those words means something.

It's kind of interesting that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is troubled when people say that they're not Christian because they're virtually none of their beliefs in substance match classical Christianity. But when you have a Mormon group that accepts plural marriage, which they have a long history of in the standard LDS church, then they make a big deal like these guys aren't one of. us, you know, but notice how they're making certain distinctions. There are, those who are in the inside, those are on the outside, those are on the outside, whatever are one of us. We are this. So that's the same, this is essentially my response to the wealth, 138,000, blah, blah, blah, this, that the other thing. That's meaningless if you understand the larger concept. and a larger concept being that people have differences of opinions about everything. In fact, like I said, there's probably not a single person in the whole world, not even you, Amy, that agrees with everything that I say, all right,

theoretically or otherwise. All right. So everybody's got differences. But that doesn't mean they can't be unifying in some significant sense under categories that characterize them both, general categories, like Christian here. And so then the question becomes, well, harmonetics, well, that's a huge deal. I get it. That's huge. This is why we constantly stress this notion, never read a Bible verse, because we don't

want people just plucking, cherry-picking verses out of text that comport with their preconceived notions of what is right. And those notions could come from lots of places. One might be their community, their religious community. When, in fact, when you go back to the text, and by the way, we deal with this all a time when people have differing views on things like salvation and God's sovereignty and God's hearing from you and all the – they all have proof texts. All Christian groups use the Bible, including LDS and Jova's Witnesses and Christian Science,

et cetera, et cetera. The question is whether they are understanding accurately what the text means. How do you know that? You just read. You do reading like you read anything else. You just read it and try to connect. with the flow of thought. It's like you read to any other book and then try to charitably conclude what, at least what you think the author is saying. You may not agree with it. But that's a

different task, but at least you can get clear on what they're saying. And that's what this is about. Now, obviously, there are differences of opinion about quite a number of things. But I'll tell you, all of these denominations, these are inconsequential distinctions when it comes to the big picture. Now, it's meaningful to them. That's why they believe they ever practice it, whatever. But standard reasons and speakers routinely go to all kinds of different denominations, all kinds of different groups with all kinds of different beliefs, but we fit in because we share a common core. And we're defending a common core, and generally we're not fussing about the secondary or certainly the tertiary issues because they're just not critical.

Everybody can't be right. If we are Christians who are going to get what we think is right from the revelation, and that requires that we read it properly. And I don't mean like it magically. I mean like we would read anything else. We take into consideration the meaning of words in relationship to sentences, and paragraphs and chapters, we take into consideration the author and his intent in light of writing to that particular group at that particular time and that particular culture.

Sometimes that's easy. Sometimes it's harder. It's not an impossible task, and there's always going to be loose ends. But it's not, you know, people, you know, throw up their hands like, oh, you Christians. Now, it's not Christians. It's the world. every single discipline has the same concern. I think, so the question, why is there no effort towards a neutral exegesis?

I think there's a lot of people have never thought about hermeneutics. A lot of people grow up in their church and they're taught a system and maybe they've never looked into it. A lot of people don't know how to study the Bible. Maybe later on they start looking at things and maybe. they would think that some church has some aspect that they care about more accurately. But I think some of this comes from, yeah, I think we all come from a tradition because you can't, you have to start somewhere and you're learning from people who are teaching you things within a framework. And then as time goes on, if you care about what the Bible says and you start

looking into it and you learn how to interpret, you might end up moving around a little bit, but you can't avoid being taught a bigger picture. But like you said, Greg, any denomination that has the Bible as their highest authority, they're going to be able to fellowship with each other and do all sorts of things together because the main things are going to agree upon. Any denomination that brings in another authority, well, now there's no way to argue with them that they have something wrong or there's no way to do that. because if they have another authority that they place above the Bible, then they're obviously going to have different views on things. And this would be like the Mormons, which I would agree with you. They're not Christian. But I think they might even be included in this number because if this is the number I'm thinking of the 38,000, I think someone said that they were including all sorts of things that they don't necessarily have the Bible as their highest authority. So they brought another authority into it. And it could be a group that's an authority. Well, LDS has its books, but it also has its leadership.

And there are teaching magisturiums in generally Orthodox Christian denominations like Roman Catholicism and the Orthodox churches, et cetera, there's quite a number of them. They make the same kinds of claims that their teaching is the right teaching based on their authority. That's an example of an additional authority. being added to the scripture. So here is where this, and then I want to get back to his question at the end here, because I think we need to cover that still. But I think a lot of times this becomes an objection if you miss something very important.

If the church is the Savior, then it certainly matters that we make sure we have every little action correct. but we don't think the church is the Savior. We think that Jesus is the Savior. He is the one who saves. We're not saved by doing everything right. We're saved by what Jesus did for us. So we will have these differences. We may not know exactly the right way to give communion or the right way to baptize or whatever it is where these differences come.

But Jesus is our Savior. So when we come to the main things about the gospel and who God is and that sort of thing, that's what we are. That's what we need to know for salvation. So these other things, how you're running the government of the congregation. Well, let's say you get that wrong. It might be that your church won't function as well as another church if you get that wrong. But that's it. I mean, it's not that you're losing your salvation because you don't know the right way to do something.

So as soon as you understand that the gospel is the important thing and not works, this whole question of the right church, disappears. Yeah. I've often put it this way that you need to ask yourself the question, did Jesus come to start an organization or an organism? An organization or an organism. Now, they had an organization before Jesus, this is called Jews, and they had all of their so-called cult of worship, all the details, everything that they did.

And Jesus and the New Covenant put an end to all of that. That was it. It was over with. the temple was destroyed soon after, so none of that could be pursued, okay? But then what happened is people started building organizations, and nothing wrong with that in itself, except for the idea they started getting the idea that this is the bona fide, one and only true organization that represents Christ, which therefore means everybody else, insofar as they disagree with us, is wrong in virtue of the fact that they're outside of the true church, and they ought to get into the true church. And it also

carries with it the very strong authority claim that everything we say is right, because we are the true church. Now, if you think that Jesus came to start an organization, then it's fair to ask which organization is the one he started. I have no reason to think that Jesus came to start an organization, but rather an organism of which he was the head, not any other human being. And there are guidelines about how that organism works and how local bodies work, and we have content in Scripture from apostles, chosen by Jesus, sent out by Jesus, to build that foundation. Ephesians talks about the foundation of the apostles and the prophets and Jesus Christ, the cornerstone.

Then we're building up, being built up on that. And so it's not an organization that we're looking for. It's being part of an organism called the Body of Christ. If there is one particular church among people who are following Christ that we all agree is the only way to salvation, if there's one church that says we are the only way, that is an indication that they've added something to the God. because no church owns Jesus. If you are trusting, and this is assuming they all have the true Jesus, and they know him truly, if someone's saying that only our church can get you to Jesus, now they've added something to belief that you have to do. I don't know how you can get around that unless they're saying that they have a completely different idea of who Jesus is.

Well, they might say that we're the true church, and this is the church that Jesus has selected, the way we are. Now, you can be outside of us and still be saved, not living optimally, but just keep in mind you're an outsider. You're not on the inside. You're an outsider who happens to be saved. Almost like the— Like the— Believing Gentiles. Believing Gentiles, yeah.

With the Jewish nation, you had these. God fearers. Okay, well, you're hanging around and God says, all right, gives you the nod, but you're not on the inside. You don't get it. And that's the way these groups are, which, by the way, is a, just so people know, that is one of the big red flags. When some group, if you're involved with a group, whether it's a church or on a campus or something, and it says, our group, this is the real deal. And others are not. It's our group. It's our group, you know, maybe our denomination or thing, and this is what a lot of these other groups that we mentioned have claimed, that's a red flag.

That's a huge red flag. So beware. So the end of his question was, which inspiration theory and which explanatory system do you use when you're interpreting scripture, I assume he means? Well, frankly, I'm not aware of a lot of different interpretive theories. right, maybe very, very generally, you could have kind of a straightforward interpretation or you can have a mystical interpretation. So a straightforward interpretation is you're reading the Bible in the ordinary way is the way I like to put it. People sometimes say, well, do you

read the Bible literally? And I tell them, I try to read the text with the precision that the author intended. If he's speaking in a metaphor or using hyperbole or some figure of speech or there's an allegory or this is poetry or something, I have to take that in mind when I'm reading. I presume that the writer is writing for a reason is trying to make a point that can be expressed in a straightforward literal way but using other techniques to get there more effectively or more artfully. Okay. So that's that's one way of reading it in the ordinary way, the way you read anything else, frankly. Then there's the mystical way, which I think is a huge mistake, because there's no, what do you call it, like there's no guardrails on it. Well, the mystical way is trying to find the deeper meaning, the deeper inside info.

What is the secret meaning going on here? And, of course, there have been a lot of groups in religion across the board that have this approach. You have mystical Muslims, you have mystical Jews, you have mystical Christians in this sense that the subjective is the important. Whatever deeper thing you see going on behind the scenes, that's the real significant thing. Now, the church, just as an historical matter, the church pushed back very hard against this in the second century because there was a group called Gnostics, the word Gnostic from Gnosticism, from the Greek word nosis, which means knowledge. They thought they had the inside track, the secret knowledge, and there was all kinds of problems with this. It wasn't real Christianity.

Gospel of Thomas is an expression of Gnosticism and other so-called gospels. And the church pushed back because there was no secret teaching in Christianity. It was all fully public. And so if people want to go that way, that's a hermeneic. Well, then it's a crapshoot because since it's so subjective, you're going to come up with all kinds of different things. If you are given to stick with the text because you believe the people who wrote the accounts had something particular to say and you're trying to figure out what they meant, taking in mind the people they were speaking to and the culture and language that they were speaking within. then you're going to have a much easier job figuring out what they intended to say. We're trying to figure out what they meant, just like people listening to this is trying to figure out what we mean. And we're working hard to try to be clear.

And if somebody's listening whose English is not, is our second language for them and they're in another country, it's going to be a little harder. Especially if I use Americanisms, you know, swing for the fences, for example. What's that? Through the gold posts. Wait, what's that? So there's going to be points of confusion because I'm speaking in terminology as culturally precise or it's culturally relevant and would be relevant to someone outside the culture. Anyway, I'm making all these points, but I feel like I'm just saying ordinary stuff.

It's so common-sensible. So the Holy Spirit inspires every word. So we believe that every word has been inspired and that we need to find out. the publicly accessible meaning of those words according to what was intended by the author. Right. I mean, that's basically the gist of it. The hermeneutical method, if you will. And there's a book called How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, and that will explain a lot of this.

And they also have one called How to Read the Bible. I think it's book by book. So as you read each book, you could read through that first, and it'll explain to you the principles with that kind of literature, how to determine what the author was intending to tell you. Right. The authors are Fee and Stuart. But that's great. And so much is just common sense.

Every once in a while, you get into something refined. I get that. But for the most part, it's not that hard. The New Testament was written in Coyne Greek, not Attic. It's not high Greek. It's not the Greek of the academics and the scholars. It's the Greek of the common folk, because it was meant to be communicated to common people in common ways. And this is why we have creeds. We have creeds because we're able to create

summaries of the points that all Christians agree on, taken from the scriptures. So this is, this is the core that we can all see very plainly. And as we, again, as we get out for ways we're living our lives, there can be more questions and disagreements. But the very fact that we can create creeds shows that there are very plain things in the scripture that we can all find if we're interpreting them to find out what the author meant to tell us. And I'm going to throw another question in here, even though we're past time, because it's so closely related. And I don't want to go back over everything we said again in a future episode.

This one comes from Carissa. What is Christianity? There are so many denominations and they all believe different things, but all call themselves followers of Christ. How can they all claim to be followers? Well, I think that's a more reasonable question nowadays, because this word has become something like a wax nose. You know, you can turn it and twist it anywhere you want. You have progressive Christians. As far as I could tell, there's nothing Christian about progressives. That's not to be disparaging. They have left Christianity on purpose and left almost everything

Christianity holds to be – historically has held to be the case. behind because they don't think it's sound. You know, it's culturally out of step. It's false. It's abusive. It's hateful. However, I want to characterize it. And so they've embraced something else, but they still call it Christian. So there is confusion there. You have Mormons that call themselves Christian. And why do you call yourself a Christian, given all these details? I'd ask one LDS person this. And she said, well, because we believe in Jesus. Well, at this point, my question is, are Muslims Christian? No, of course not.

Well, they believe in Jesus, too. There's more about Jesus in the Quran than there is about Muhammad. So you can see how there can be confusion. I'm sympathetic to that, but it brings us back to this main core thing, again, what Lewis called mere Christianity, these core creedal kinds of things that have survived since the beginning of Christianity. And in fact, many elements long before that, because their core elements of Judaism as well, from which Christianity sprang. And I would argue which Christianity is the ultimate extension and teleology purpose of. That's another issue, though. So again, this is

one of those kinds of challenges that sounds like, well, who are you guys to say you're right when you got all these other different ones. And these words refer, if they didn't, they would be meaningless. And words like Christian are meaning to pick out a group of people who are qualified by a certain set of beliefs. Now, that word has changed. Even the word evangelicals has changed quite a bit over the last 30 years, Amy. And so we need to be mindful that people might misunderstand the point we make. So, I mean, when I talk to people, and it seems like strangers, I'm talking, and it seems like they're Christian or whatever, tell them what I do.

I say, well, you love, oh, so you love the Lord, too. Yeah, I love the Lord. Okay, well, I mean, Christians love the Lord. And but non-Christians who claim to be Christians, they think that's a funny way to put it. I mean, that's the way I would characterize their own convictions. They just seem odd, you know, in that response. So there are a lot of people who I self-identify as Christian, some 65 or 70 percent in this country, and when you question them about the content of their convictions, it turns out very few have anything like a robust Christian worldview. So I'm sympathetic to Carissa's concern here.

and when it comes to the word Christian, we have to sometimes just be more specific what we mean. Yeah, and I think one of the quickest way you can find out the differences is to ask what is your understanding of the gospel. And very quickly, you will see people divide into two camps. And sadly, even in churches that are Orthodox churches. Otherwise, yeah. Where people may not understand what they're doing. or who they're worshipping or why or anything, I think that's the sad truth. But I think you'll

see people divide very quickly into two camps. And one of them will tell you the gospel that Jesus died for our sins, to pay for our sins, and we are saved by grace. And then other people will say, Jesus came to show us how to live. He came to condemn power structures. And now we can live in ways that condemn power structures. Now, you can see they've turned it into a law. They've turned it in to legalism, to Jesus coming is a way to show us the right way to do things. So that's like, at the most basic level, assuming they all have the same Trinitarian view of God, that might be even a deeper level to start with you on a Trinitarian view of God. But beyond that, so what is your view of God? What is your view of the gospel? And I think pretty quickly you can determine

if their authority really is the Bible because the people, again, this goes back to our previous question, the people who have the Bibles are highest authority, we're going to agree on almost everything and certainly all the things that are the most important things. So those are two questions you can ask. By the way, I did write a piece of a mentoring letter, which, by the way, people who are listening do not receive the stuff we send out every month to help train people. people at no charge, you need to sign up. You can go to STR.org in the upper right hand corner. There's a place where you can subscribe. But one of the things on alternating months that I send out is a mentoring letter. It's 800 words, basically one page, both size, easy. And this one was just referring to the three questions that I recommend people ask whenever they encounter some group that claims to be Christian but may seem a little.

little odd. And the three questions are, who is Jesus? And simply put, the right answer, he's the God man. The second question is, what must I do to be saved? And this is from Acts 16. And the simple answer is, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. Notice the Lord, Jesus Christ. So the Lord is God. Jesus is the man, that's the God man, and Christ is his role as Messiah. and you will be saved. And the third one is, who says? Who gets to say? And I think the right answer is the scriptures are the ones that get to say, not anybody else

on their own authority. That is, scripture has authority, but not anyone else. Not even you or me, Amy. And if we are making a point, we are making the point based on something. We are not speaking from our own authority. As if somebody were saying, who are you to say? I said, what kind of question is that? I'm me.

Everything I say is always right. How could you ask such questions? Obviously, we're not speaking on our own authority or making reference to a different authority. And just one final little thing to throw out there. This doesn't mean that even within – and this is something I mentioned before, but even within a church where they have good hermeneutics, they're teaching the truth, there could be people in there who don't know all, even the important things. You can be saved.

I mean, certainly when people are first saved, they're not going to know all of these things. So you can have grace for people. You don't have to point a finger and say, oh, you're a heretic. Well, it could be that they just don't know enough yet. And that's fine. I think the test comes if when you show them what the scripture says, they don't want to submit to it and they want to keep their own views, that's when I'd start. to question, are you really following Jesus? Do you really want to know what he said? If you do,

then when you read these things, you might struggle with them, but you'll work to understand them and you'll want to submit to them because you believe this is God's word. So don't just dismiss people simply because they have a different view before you start to show them. Are you interested in knowing what the Bible says about this? Anyone who's following Jesus will be interested. So hopefully that helps. This is a long one. But I wanted to get that second one in there. Thank you, William and Carissa. We appreciate hearing from you.

And we'd love to hear your question, too, on X with hashtag STR Ask. This is Amy Hall and Great Kokel for Stan Tereson.