Are There Two Ways of Reading the Bible?
Have you ever wondered why sincere Christians can read the same Bible and arrive at very different conclusions—especially when it comes to prophecy?
Often, the difference isn’t the Bible itself. It’s the method used to interpret it.
Long before Uriah Smith wrote Daniel and the Revelation, the Protestant Reformers embraced this principle of Bible interpretation. In the preface to Daniel and the Revelation, Uriah Smith describes two general approaches to interpreting Scripture and explains why the Reformers—including William Tyndale and Martin Luther—embraced the literal method of interpretation.
The following excerpt (paragraphs 6–7) by Uriah Smith is followed by a page from William Tyndale’s The Obedience of a Christian Man, where Tyndale explains this same principle in his own words.
Two Systems of Interpretation
Excerpt from the preface to Daniel and the Revelation by Uriah Smith
“6. There are two general systems of interpretation adopted by different expositors in their efforts to explain the sacred Scriptures. The first is the mystical or spiritualizing system invented by Origen, to the shame of sound criticism and the curse of Christendom; the second is the system of literal interpretation, used by such men as Tyndale, Luther, and all the Reformers, and furnishing the basis for every advance step which has thus far been made in the reformation from error to truth as taught in the Scriptures. According to the first system, every declaration is supposed to have a mystical or hidden sense, which it is the province of the interpreter to bring forth; by the second, every declaration is to be taken in its most obvious and literal sense, except where the context and the well-known laws of language show that the terms are figurative, and not literal; and whatever is figurative must be explained by other portions of the Bible which are literal.
7. By the mystical method of Origen, it is vain to hope for any uniform understanding of either Daniel or the Revelation, or of any other book of the Bible; for that system (if it can be called a system) knows no law but the uncurbed imagination of its adherents; hence there are on its side as many different interpretations of Scripture as there are different fancies of different writers. By the literal method, everything is subject to well-established and clearly-defined law; and, viewed from this standpoint, the reader will be surprised to see how simple, easy, and clear many portions of the Scriptures at once become, which, according to any other system, are dark and unsolvable. It is admitted that many figures are used in the Bible, and that much of the books under consideration, especially that of the Revelation, is clothed in symbolic language; but it is also claimed that the Scriptures introduce no figure which they do not somewhere furnish literal language to explain. This volume is offered as a consistent exposition of the books of Daniel and the Revelation according to the literal system.”
William Tyndale on the Literal Sense of Scripture
The following page is reproduced from William Tyndale’s The Obedience of a Christian Man. Writing during the Protestant Reformation, Tyndale explains why he believed Scripture has “but one sense”—the literal sense—and why it is the foundation for understanding God’s Word.
