Recognizing the many influences that shape how we read and obey the Bible can make us more aware of our limitations, lead us to interpret with greater care and skill, foster a humble posture of ongoing dialogue, and help preserve our unity.
This article uses material from my Intercultural Theology course given as an instructional lecture series with Northwest Baptist Seminary. All readers are invited to respond and challenge what I have written. I will be grateful for your insights and for continuing the conversation.
NOTE: Chatgpt was used for editing, but not generative purposes.
Part 3: Why we ask “why”: The Limits of Culture and Language
Asking “why” when confronting a biblical command acknowledges our limited ability, as enculturated human beings, to grasp the heart and purposes of God amid the cultural and linguistic realities that shape our interpretation. A hermeneutic that reads the Bible as revelation begins by recognizing that we are created with inherent cultural and linguistic limitations that constrain our understanding of Scripture. These limitations call for humility and caution, reminding us that our context influences how we interpret a passage and can lead us to mistaken conclusions.
The Cultural Dimension
In my intercultural theology class, I ask students, “How much of the Bible is God’s word, and how much is cultural?” The answer, of course, is that the Bible is 100% God’s word and 100% cultural because Scripture is, by its nature, a culturally conditioned document. It is easy to demonstrate that the Bible includes the words of human beings. For example, in 1 Samuel 9, Saul says to his servant, “Come, let us go back, or my father will stop thinking about the donkeys and start worrying about us” (v. 5, NIV). Clearly, these are the recorded words of a person in history. Moreover, every part of Scripture was written by human authors, so in this sense the Bible is fully the word of human beings.
How, then, can the Bible be the word of God while simultaneously being fully cultural? The task of the exegete is not to separate what is “God-breathed” (2 Tim 3:16, NIV) from what is cultural, but to recognize that God communicates his truth through the whole Bible—through human language, human understanding, human history, and human culture. The message is God’s; the medium is the cultural dimension of the Bible.
This stands in sharp contrast to the Islamic view of the Qur’an. According to Muslims, the Qur’an was written in Arabic in heaven and an original copy exists eternally with God. This heavenly message was dictated to Muhammad, and therefore, in their understanding, the Qur’an contains no human element whatsoever.
A neighbor of mine in Pakistan, a Muslim religious teacher, once borrowed a New Testament from me. When he returned it, he said, “This is not God’s word; it contains God’s word.” I asked what he meant and he pointed to a passage that said, “Jesus got into a boat.” “That,” he said, “is narrative—history. That is not what God actually said.” Then he turned to the Sermon on the Mount and read a few verses. Smiling, he said, “Now that is God’s word.”
What is the Christian, evangelical response to this?
It is this: Jesus did not merely deliver God’s word like a prophet; he is God’s Word. God’s self-revelation is not limited to spoken messages but is embodied in a person. Everything Jesus did—every action, every story—is a revelation of God.
In a similar, but limited way, throughout all of Scripture, God engages human authors and accommodates himself to human language and contexts in order to reveal his truth, character, will, and mission. By definition, the gospel must be expressed within the human realm—using human language and concepts—because it is, fundamentally, the communication of good news.
Not only is the Bible itself culturally shaped, but every reader approaches the text through culturally shaped lenses. The worldview in which we have been enculturated provides the interpretive framework we use to determine what is significant in a passage of Scripture. All theology—the human study of God—is perspectival. These cultural lenses can blind us to unfamiliar contexts, and it is easy to uncritically impose the theological assumptions we bring to the text. As a result, interpretations based on the “plain sense” can reflect our expectations and assumptions more than the intentions of the biblical authors.
There is no one-to-one correspondence between cultures. Concepts may overlap, but they require unique expressions depending on context. Universals can be expressed only in broad terms (e.g., love, grace), yet they must be defined and developed metaphorically or by stories within the parameters of each cultural setting in order to be applied appropriately.[1]
One evening, while traveling on the ferry, I noticed a star appear. It seemed to be behaving strangely—rocking back and forth and moving around. My first thought was, “What is wrong with that star?” The problem was my point of reference. Because I was moving with the ferry, everything on the vessel appeared stable, making the star look as though it were wavering. Only when more stars appeared did it become clear that the star was stable in relation to the others.
In a similar way, when we encounter a concept that lies outside our interpretive framework, it can seem absurd or illogical because we lack the contextual frame that would give it stability and coherence. We naturally rely on the “obvious” assumptions of our worldview or perceived framework of reality when forming conclusions. Ideas outside our worldview can appear incorrect because they fall beyond our frame of reference.
Even more subtle is the way we can be misled by concepts and words that seem obvious to us. We bring an enculturated understanding of ideas such as authority and the implications of gender to the biblical text, inevitably assuming meanings that seem normative and fit logically within our conceptual framework.
The message originates with God, but it is interpreted and expressed through human cultural lenses. While we can—and do—discover God’s truth in Scripture, the cultural dimension of that communication must be taken seriously.
The Linguistic Dimension
The nature of language also makes the interpretive task complex.
Imagine I find a lamp that I want to buy for our home. When I try to describe it to Karen, I quickly realize that a photo would communicate far better than my words. Seeing the item for herself gives a clearer, more accurate sense than any description I could give. Why is that?
Joel Green identifies four limitations of language:[2]
- Language Is Linear. To describe the lamp, I would have to begin with one feature and then sequentially describe others, one after another. Verbal description reshapes meaning differently from visual perception, which is holistic, immediate, and comprehensive. Language presents ideas in sequence through symbols (words) that refer to shared experiences and concepts. These cumulative descriptions gradually construct a complex understanding in the mind of the hearer.
- Language Is Selective. Each lamp contains details that a photo can capture instantly but that I cannot describe without selecting certain features and leaving out others. A speaker’s choice of words is shaped by personal assumptions and experiences which inevitably leaves “gaps” that the listener must fill in—sometimes in ways the speaker never intended.
- Language Is Ambiguous. Every sentence evokes a mental image in the hearer that may approximate—but never fully match—the speaker’s intended meaning. If I say, “I painted the steps in my house last summer,” you can understand the sentence easily enough. But what image comes to mind? How many steps were there? What were they made of? Were they inside or outside the house? What tools did I use—a brush or spray paint? And did I actually apply paint to the steps, or did I perhaps paint a picture of the steps on a canvas?
- Language Is Culturally Embedded. When we read the New Testament, we inevitably interpret it through the lens of our own cultural experience. Every reading of the New Testament is therefore an act of cross-cultural communication—an engagement between our world and the world of the biblical text. For example, our experience of a communion service shapes how we read Paul’s description in 1 Corinthians 11:17–34. The passage, in turn, helps us interpret our practice. But in reality, our experience tends to dominate what comes to mind when we think about celebrating communion or reading that passage. This is not surprising since the text is commonly used during communion services. Yet one of the major themes Paul emphasizes—the idea of a community meal, where everyone eats together—plays only a small role in the way most Canadians understand or practice communion.
In addition to these four limitations of language, the communicative process itself is not straightforward. Every written or spoken expression requires a language system, and that system cannot function without a wide range of shared understandings between speaker and listener. Words operate as symbols—labels that point beyond themselves to the physical or conceptual realities they represent.
For example, the single syllable “God” refers to the Creator of the universe—an infinite reality far greater than the word that names him. Readers or listeners can grasp the biblical author’s intended meaning only by drawing on their own experiential and cultural frameworks to approximate what is meant. When Scripture describes God as “Father,” for instance, the hearer interprets this image through personal exposure to the concept and through experiences of having or being a father, all of which are shaped by a cultural understanding of what “fatherhood” entails.
According to Charles Kraft,[3] communication occurs as we recreate the author’s meaning in our own minds, using the concepts and words familiar to us—because these are the only tools we possess for understanding. Once we form this perceived meaning, we can do several things with it:
- we can articulate it in our own words,
- we can respond to it, or
- we can draw conclusions from it.
Articulating the meaning is not an act of theologizing but an act of translation—rendering a perceived meaning within a context different from the original text. The latter two actions—responding and drawing conclusions—constitute theology, as we infer doctrinal or ethical positions from the text. The key point is that this entire process takes place within our cultural context and is shaped by it at every step.
For example, after reading Gen 1-2 we can articulate that God created the world and everything in it (translation). However, when we conclude from this text that God is greater than us and greater than the universe, or that God is good, we are theologizing.
There is no “middle step” in which we extract a culturally neutral proposition from Scripture and then insert it unchanged into our linguistic framework. Rather, theology is always a contextualized reflection, shaped by culture at every stage—from translation, to interpretation, to application.
The translation dimension
A further implication of the cultural and linguistic dimensions of interpretation concerns translation, which itself is a form of interpretation. If we assume that we possess the “universal truths” of the gospel in a pure, culture-free form, then the expressions of other cultures need not concern us; people in other contexts would simply be expected to adopt what we already have. Yet such “universal truths” are always experienced as local, contextualized expressions because they are perceived through our own cultural location.
This raises an important question: How do we communicate truths through other languages and cultural forms—whether in translating the Bible, sharing the gospel or communicating theology—when we ourselves can only access those truths in a limited fashion through our own cultural lenses?
Lamen Sanneh distinguishes between mission by diffusion and mission by translation.[4] The former characterizes Islam, while the latter is the pattern of Christianity. Mission by diffusion means that a religion is tied to a particular cultural identity and therefore maintains its integrity by transplanting that culture wherever it spreads. This is evident in the central role of Mecca, the Qur’an in Arabic, and Shariah Law in Islam. Muslims believe that the truth of their faith can only be expressed in Arabic: the Qur’an is memorized in Arabic, prayers are offered in Arabic, and religious writing and art are shaped by Arabic language and culture.
In contrast, mission by translation recognizes that the receptor culture need not be rejected or replaced. Instead, Christian faith, the Bible, the gospel, and theology are contextualized within the new setting. As Kraft defines it, contextualization is “the process of learning to express genuine Christianity in socioculturally appropriate ways.”[5] Timothy Tennent (2007:2) similarly describes “theological translatability” as the ongoing reality in which “the universal truths of the gospel are being revisited and retold in new, global context.”[6]
As an example, consider the Psalms. Although originally written in Hebrew poetry, they can be reshaped into another language to convey their depth of meaning. In Pakistan, a significant part of church worship involves the Punjabi Zaboors found in the popular Punjabi hymnal—select Psalms that have not merely been translated but rephrased in Punjabi poetic style by a respected Christian poet. These songs resonate deeply with the Punjabi Christian community.
Bible translation, which I have been involved in for more than 35 years, is an example of the conviction that Scripture is fully translatable—a conviction affirmed throughout Christian history and expressed today in translation efforts around the world. Theologically, this rests in part on the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, when the apostles proclaimed the same gospel in many different languages (Acts 2). In that moment, other languages and cultures were affirmed as fully suitable vehicles for expressing the gospel.
These cultural, linguistic, and translational complexities create a challenge in relation to the Fellowship’s statement of faith. The article on the Bible affirms our belief that “the Bible is the final authority in all matters of faith and practice and the true basis of Christian union.” But how are we to interpret Scripture in light of the contextual displacement we inevitably experience whenever we read the biblical text or seek to communicate it in another cultural setting?
This is the question we will address in the next article.
[1] The important relationship between metaphor and theology, as opposed to propositions and theology, will be developed in Part 5: Developing theology as key to the hermeneutic of reading the Bible as revelation.
[2] Joel Green, “The Challenge of Hearing the New Testament” in Hearing the New Testament: Strategies for Interpretation (Eerdmans, 1995).
[3] Charles Kraft, Communication theory for Christian Witness (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1991), 72-80.
[4] Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1989), 7,8.
[5] Charles Kraft, Anthropology for Christian Witness (Maryknoll: Orbis 1996), 376.
[6] Timothy Tennent, Theology in the context of world Christianity : how the global church is influencing the way we think about and discuss theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan 2007), 2.
