How To Use A Study Bible

How to Use A Study Bible by Andy Nesalli (via Desiring God):

A study Bible is a book that includes the full text of the Bible plus additional features that help readers better understand and apply the Bible. How should you use a study Bible? Here are some suggestions for what to do and not do.

1. Don’t use poor study Bibles.

In general, it’s better to use an all-purpose study Bible rather than a niche study Bible, such as one that targets cat lovers or sixteen-year-olds who like skateboarding and grunge music. So as a general rule, if the title of the study Bible is something like The Winnie the Pooh / Thomas Kinkade Study Bible, take a pass.

2. Use quality study Bibles.

I just finished about five years of work on a study Bible that recently released: the NIV Zondervan Study Bible. (Don Carson is the general editor.) As I helped to edit this study Bible, I consulted many other study Bibles. In my view, these were the four best study Bibles at the time: ESV Study Bible, NIV Study Bible (which is remaining in print), HCSB Study Bible, and NLT Study Bible. Now I think that the top two study Bibles available are the ESV Study Bible and the NIV Zondervan Study Bible.

3. Don’t use the notes as a crutch or shortcut instead of wrestling with the text itself.
There is no substitute for the primary text. One hour carefully reading and meditating on the Bible itself is worth ten hours of reading study Bible notes.

4. Don’t combine the authority of the God-breathed text with the notes.
God inspired the Bible. He didn’t inspire the commentary on the Bible.

5. Use a study Bible in the same way that you would responsibly use other resources that help you better understand and apply the Bible.

There are five theological disciplines, and a good study Bible helps you with all of them — especially the first.

1. Exegesis.

Exegesis draws the meaning out of a text (that’s good!), and “eisegesis” reads a meaning into a text (that’s bad!). In other words, exegesis interprets a text by analyzing what the author intended to communicate. Exegesis is simply careful reading. The text means what the text’s author meant. Exegetes are concerned primarily with interpreting a text; that is, discovering what the author meant. What does this involve?

• Genre. Establish rules for interpreting a passage’s style of literature.
• Textual Criticism. Establish the original wording.
• Translation. Translate the Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek text, and compare other translations.
• Greek Grammar. Understand how sentences communicate with words, phrases, and clauses.
• Argument Diagram. Trace the logical argument by arcing, bracketing, or phrasing.
• Historical-Cultural Context. Understand the situation in which the author composed the literature and any historical-cultural details that the author mentions or probably assumes.
• Literary Context. Understand the role a passage plays in its whole book.
• Word Studies. Unpack key words, phrases, and concepts.

A good study Bible takes all of this into account and highlights what is most significant for understanding books of the Bible and particular passages. The introductions to each book of the Bible explain the broad literary context and relevant historical-cultural context, and the study notes explain individual parts in that larger context.

When the text is the Bible, we must never stop with exegesis: We must also do theology — biblical, historical, systematic, and practical theology.

2. Biblical Theology.

Make organic connections with the whole canon on its own terms, across the storyline of the Bible, especially regarding how the Old and New Testaments integrate and climax in Christ. (I try to show how Harry Potter illustrates biblical theology in the four-minute video below.) This is a main distinctive of the NIV Zondervan Study Bible.

3. Historical Theology.

Survey and evaluate how significant exegetes and theologians have understood the Bible and theology.

4. Systematic Theology.

Discern how a passage theologically coheres with the whole Bible. This is a major strength of the ESV Study Bible.

5. Practical Theology.

Apply the text to yourself, the church, and the world.

Quality study Bibles are one of the most helpful all-around tools you can use to better understand and apply the Bible. So by all means use them (responsibly) as you focus primarily on the God-breathed text.

How To Read The Bible

A good piece by Don Carson on How to Read the Bible and Do Theology Well:

It’s been said that the Bible is like a body of water in which a child may wade and an elephant may swim. The youngest Christian can read the Bible with profit, for the Bible’s basic message is simple. But we can never exhaust its depth. After decades of intense study, the most senior Bible scholars find that they’ve barely scratched the surface. Although we cannot know anything with the perfection of God’s knowledge (his knowledge is absolutely exhaustive!), yet because God has disclosed things, we can know those things truly.

Trying to make sense of parts of the Bible and of the Bible as a whole can be challenging. What kind of study should be involved when any serious reader of the Bible tries to make sense of the Bible as a whole? Appropriate study involves several basic interdependent disciplines, of which five are mentioned here: careful reading, biblical theology (BT), historical theology (HT), systematic theology (ST), and pastoral theology (PT). What follows looks at each of these individually and shows how they interrelate—and how they are more than merely intellectual exercises.

Careful Reading

“Exegesis” is the word often used for careful reading. Exegesis answers the questions, “What does this text actually say?” and “What did the author mean by what he said?” We discover this by applying sound principles of interpretation to the Bible.

Fundamental to reading the Bible well is good reading. Good readers pay careful attention to words and their meanings and to the ways sentences, paragraphs, and longer units are put together. They observe that the Bible is a book that includes many different styles of literature—stories, laws, proverbs, poetry, prophecy, history, parables, letters, apocalyptic, and much more. Good readers follow the flow of texts. For example, while it is always worth meditating on individual words and phrases, the most important factor in determining what a word means is how the author uses that word in a specific context.

One of the best signs of good exegesis is asking thoughtful questions that drive us to “listen” attentively to what the Bible says. As we read the text again and again, these questions are progressively honed, sharpened, corrected, or discarded.

Biblical Theology

BT answers the question, “How has God revealed his word historically and organically?” BT studies the theology of individual biblical books (e.g., Isaiah, the Gospel of John), of select collections within the Bible (e.g., the Pentateuch, wisdom literature, the Gospels, Paul’s letters, John’s writings), and then traces out themes as they develop across time within the canon (e.g., the way the theme of the temple develops, in several directions, to fill out a “whole Bible” theology of the temple). At least four priorities are essential:

1. Read the Bible progressively as a historically developing collection of documents. God did not provide his people with all of the Bible at once. There is a progression to his revelation, and to read the whole back into some early part may seriously distort that part by obscuring its true significance in the flow of redemptive history. This requires not only organizing the Bible’s historical material into its chronological sequence but also trying to understand the theological nature of the sequence.

2. Presuppose that the Bible is coherent. The Bible has many human authors but one divine Author, and he never contradicts himself. BT uncovers and articulates the unity of all the biblical texts taken together.

3. Work inductively from the text—from individual books and from themes that run through the Bible as a whole. Although readers can never entirely divorce themselves from their own backgrounds, students of BT recognize that their subject matter is exclusively the Bible. They therefore try to use categories and pursue agendas that the text itself sets.

4. Make theological connections within the entire Bible that the Bible itself authorizes. One way to do this is to trace the trajectory of themes straight through the Bible. (That’s what the articles in the NIV Zondervan Study Bible do.)

BT often focuses on the turning points in the Bible’s storyline, and its most pivotal concern is tied to how the New Testament uses the Old Testament, observing how later Scripture writers refer to earlier ones....

Much more at the link. 

Sound Doctrine

From a post at Crossway 10 things You Should Know About Sound Doctrine by Bobby Jamieson, author of Sound Doctrine: How a Church Grows in the Love and Holiness of God.

1. Sound doctrine re-tells the single story that sweeps through all of Scripture.

From creation, through our fall into sin, to Jesus’s saving work on the cross and the eventual restoration of God’s rule over all creation, the Bible tells a single epic narrative that spans Genesis to revelation. Sound doctrine traces the contours of this story and repeats it in simple, memorable forms.

2. Sound doctrine summarizes and synthesizes the Bible’s teaching as a coherent whole.

For all its diversity, Scripture fits together as a marvelous unity because it consists of God’s own words, revealing God’s own thoughts and acts. Sound doctrine brings together all of Scripture’s teaching on every subject the Bible addresses.

3. Sound doctrine is a guide and guard for reading and teaching the Bible.

The goal of reading and teaching Scripture is to love God, and the way to love God is to know God. Sound doctrine tells us what God is like so that we may love him more. And sound doctrine is an important guard for interpreting Scripture. It helps ensure that we confess and delight in all that Scripture teaches, rather than setting one passage against another or drawing conclusions from one passage that contradict another.

4. Sound doctrine is God’s roadmap for the Christian life and the life of the church.

We listen to the teaching of God’s Word for the purpose of living it out. Sound doctrine isn’t an information archive that serves only to present facts. Rather, it’s a road map for our pilgrimage from this world to the world to come.

5. Sound doctrine nourishes holiness.

Every biblical doctrine, embraced by the mind and applied to the heart, conforms us to the character of Christ. Sound doctrine drives us to devote ourselves more completely to God in our thoughts, desires, attitudes, words, and actions—which is what the Bible calls “holiness.” As Jesus prayed, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17).

6. Sound doctrine is the ground and pattern of love.

The apostle John once told a church that he loved them “in the truth,” and that all those who know the truth love them too, “because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever” (2 John 1–2). Truth is the basis of the special bond of love that ties Christians’ hearts together. And truth is the pattern of our love: we are to love one another in deed and truth, since that is how Jesus loved us (1 John 3:16–18).

7. Sound doctrine is the foundation of unity in the church.

When the Corinthian church was torn by divisions over favored leaders, Paul shot back, “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul” (1 Cor. 1:13). The unity of the church is grounded in the unity of the faith.

8. Sound doctrine is fuel for the fire of worship.

Over and over again the Bible not only tells us to worship; it tells us why to worship (Psalm 95:1–7). Sound doctrine reminds us that God has rescued us from our sin, reconciled us to himself, and pledged himself to provide for all of our needs, now and forever. All of these are reasons to praise him, adore him, make a joyful noise to him, and bow down before him in submission and obedience.

9. Sound doctrine equips and emboldens evangelism.

The better you know the gospel, the better you’ll share the gospel. And the better you remember that God is the one who gives life to the dead and sight to the blind (Eph. 2:1–10, 2 Cor. 4:3–6), the more you’ll boldly preach the gospel, pray for conversions, and trust God to save sinners.

10. Sound doctrine fills up our joy.

Referring to all the teaching he gave his disciples on his last night with them—including some of the Bible’s richest teaching on the Trinity—Jesus says, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full (John 15:11). Because it unfolds the riches of God’s grace to us, sound doctrine brings light and hope and joy. It fills our hearts with satisfaction in Christ because of what he has done for us.

Interpreting Your Biography

Don't let your biography shape your theology. Instead. let good Biblical theology interpret your biography.

Don't form your ideas about God, morals, or truth based on your personal life experiences, good or bad. Instead, interpret, evaluate and understand your identity and experiences through the lens of the Bible, through what God says about you, about us, about humanity. Most of all, understand who you are through the lens of Jesus Christ, your Savior and Lord, and what he said and did, and does for us.

Therein is freedom from being defined by your past. Therein is freedom to live joyously in the present. Therein is freedom to face the future unafraid.

Want to Transform Your Bible Reading?

The excerpts below are from a piece at The Resurgence by Dane Ortlund on how to Transform Your Bible Reading:

A biblical theology lens trains us to place any given passage in the sweep of the single story. This way of reading the Bible gladly acknowledges the various genres in Scripture—narrative, poetry, prophecy, letters. Yet while the Bible is not uniform, it is unified.

Biblical theology reads the Bible as an unfolding drama, taking place in real-world time and space, that culminates in a man named Jesus—who himself said that “everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms”—shorthand for the whole Old Testament—“must be fulfilled” (Luke 24:44)....

....A biblical theology approach takes the Bible on its own terms—namely, that “all the promises of God find their ‘Yes’ in Jesus” (2 Corinthians 1:20). Result: transforming reading.

Biblical theology invites you to read the Bible by plotting any passage in the overarching narrative that culminates in Christ. The Bible is not mainly commands with stories of grace sprinkled in. It is mainly a story of grace with commands sprinkled in....

...Imagine jumping into the middle of a novel, reading a sentence, and trying to understand all that the sentence means without placing it in the sweep of the novel as a whole. That would confuse the reader, obscure the meaning, and insult the author.

The Bible is God’s autobiographical account of his personal rescue mission to restore a lost world through his Son. Every verse contributes to that message.

The Bible is not a pep talk. It is good news.

You can read it all at the link above. Good Stuff!

Correction:  In the first draft of this post I had attributed the article to Mark Driscoll instead of Dane Ortlund. I have corrected that error above. Both good guys, but want to give proper attribution and credit where credit is due!

Best Reference Book on Pauline Pneumatology

Ha- I scared you with a big word!  Please don't be afraid - The word pneumatology simply means teaching or doctrine about the Holy Spirit.

I am an appreciative reader and fan of Dr. Gordon Fee.  Although I do not agree with him on everything, I have always found both his scholarly and popular writings enlightening. Therefore, I was interested to see this review at the "To Be Continued..." website of Dr. Fee's massive work on the Holy Spirit in the Theology of the Apostle Paul - God’s Empowering Presence – Resource | To Be Continued…

I believe very much that, for any true student of theology wanting to grow in their pnuematological understanding, especially for all continuationists, then an extremely solid resource to own is Gordon Fee’s work, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul. Fee, himself is a New Testament scholar and professor emeritus from Regents College in Vancouver, Canada. He is also an ordained minister in the Assembly of God church. You can read more of his credentials here.

Nevertheless, this book is a treatise unlike many others, standing in at just over 900 pages long. So I would say this is more a study resource, rather than a bed-time read.

What is truly unique about the book is that it analyses every single mention of the Holy Spirit and his work within the letters of Paul. Fee doesn’t start with Romans (as that is the first Pauline letter in our NT canon), but rather with 1 Thessalonians, which is considered one of Paul’s early letters. He then moves on to 2 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Romans, Philemon, Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, 1 Timothy, Titus and, finally, 2 Timothy.

The last 100 pages or so deal with important theological topics on the Holy Spirit including such themes as the Spirit as eschatological fulfilment, the Spirit as God’s personal presence, the soteriological Spirit, the Spirit and the people of God, and then answering what all of this Pauline pneumatology means (which includes touching on Old Testament and intertestamental pneumatology). And, of course, there is an extended bibliography.

You can see that some of this work implements his writings from other works, like his commentary on 1 Corinthians or his work, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God.

It's a great reference book and I am very pleased to own a copy.  However, if you want to read his conclusions and summations without wading through all the exegesis, try the above mentioned Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God.