How To Read The Bible For All Its WorthSmakprov

What Can We Do with Problem Passages?

How do we go about finding the meaning of the Bible's problem passages?

Here are some guidelines:

1. In many cases the reason the problem passages are so difficult for us is that, frankly, they were not written to us. For example, when Paul tells the Thessalonians that they are to recall that he “used to tell [them] these things,” and therefore “you know what is holding him back” (2 Thess 2:5 – 6), we may need to learn to be content with our lack of knowledge. But we take it as a truism: What God wants us to know has been communicated to us.

2. Despite some uncertainty as to some of the precise details, one needs to learn to ask what can be said for certain about a given passage and what is merely possible but not certain. Look, for an example, at the puzzling words in 1 Cor 15:29. What can be said for certain? Some of the Corinthians really were being “baptized for the dead,” whether we like to admit it or not. Moreover, Paul neither condemns nor condones their practice; he simply refers to it. But we do not know and probably never will know the details.

3. Nonetheless, as we have suggested before, even if one cannot have full certainty about some of the details, very often the point of the whole passage is still within one’s grasp. Whatever it was the Corinthians were doing in baptizing for the dead, we do know why Paul referred to this practice of theirs. Their own action was a kind of “proof from experience” that they were not consistent in their rejecting a future bodily resurrection of believers.

4. On such passages as this one you will need to consult a good commentary. It is the handling of just such a problem passage that separates the better commentaries from all the others. The good ones will list and at least briefly discuss the various options that have been suggested as solutions, including the reasons for and against.

Finally, we suggest that even scholars don't have all the answers. You can more or less count on it: where there are four to fourteen viable options as to what a given passage meant, even the scholars are guessing! Texts like 1 Corinthians 15:29 (on which there are at least forty different guesses) should serve to give us proper humility.

Next time: We'll examine the next step in biblical interpretation.