“The Bible is clear.” This is a statement I hear on a fairly regular basis. On its own, I do not find the statement inherently problematic. There is much that is “clear” about what scripture teaches. Love God. Love people. “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” One would have to be obtuse to argue that these points are not clear enough when reading the Bible.

The problem is that the statement, “The Bible is clear,” is often used in connection with a rather controversial point. Someone will make a statement about the rapture, for example, and say, “The Bible is clear.” People will make claims about the age of the earth, determinism or free-will, sexual ethics, current political and cultural debates and then say, “The Bible is clear.”

My response is: You keep using the word “clear” – I am not sure that word means what you think it means.

The Bible is a more difficult book to interpret than we sometimes give it credit for. To even call the Bible a “book” is misleading. The Bible is a collection of books. It is a library, written in three different languages by various writers in several different genres. Such a library is, by its very nature, going to be open to various interpretations and understandings. 

Much of the Bible is poetry. Poetry is not intended to be “clear”. Poetry leaves itself open to metaphor, imagination, and play. It is not trying to be precise and detailed in meaning. Poetry is personal language, not technical language.

Perhaps this is the root of the problem: the Bible is not a handbook or instruction manual intended to lay out everything we need to know about the world with absolute clarity. The Bible is the story of God’s loving and relentless pursuit of humankind. The Bible is the great signpost pointing to God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ. The Bible does not exist to tell us what to believe on every controversial issue. The Bible exists to direct us to the Word made flesh.

Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). To try to pick out parts of the Bible and claim it as truth without connection to the larger story that leads us to the Truth that is Jesus is to ipso facto misread it. Only the lamb who was slain can open up the scroll (Revelation 5). Truth is not an abstract concept for us to hold up in support of our opinions. Truth is a person: Jesus.

One of the things my tradition, the Church of the Nazarene, gets right is our statement on the Bible. We believe that the Holy Scriptures are best understood as “inerrantly revealing the will of God concerning us in all things necessary to our salvation” (From the Church of the Nazarene Manual). What does the Bible do perfectly, inerrantly, infallibly? It directs us to God’s will for our salvation in Christ. Does it inerrantly tell us everything we want to know about history, science, and partisan politics? No. That is not what it is intended to do. It serves the larger purpose of God’s work of salvation. On this, the Bible is clear. Other, less pressing and less personal matters, are left for debate.

So is the Bible clear? Yes, the Bible is clear that God has revealed Godself to us in Jesus Christ. Again, “Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so.” But is the Bible clear on the age of the earth, how “the end of the world” will play out, and what our political opinions need to be? Perhaps less than we would like. The good news is that our salvation is not founded on such abstract matters. Our salvation is found only in the person of Jesus. Thanks be to God!