Curious Christian

One of the recurring issues in contemporary Christianity is not simply whether the Bible should be read literally or non-literally, but how Scripture relates to other sources of authority when Christians disagree about what it means and how it should be applied. Many of the most contested debates in the church today ultimately surface a deeper question about whether Scripture still functions as a governing authority in shaping Christian belief and practice.

Christians across different traditions may affirm that Christ is the ultimate revelation of God. But that immediately raises another question: how do we know Christ? Scripture is not identical with Christ, but it is our primary and normative witness to him. If our understanding of Christ is no longer primarily shaped by Scripture, then we need to ask where it is coming from instead. It may be shaped by historical reconstructions, personal spiritual experience, moral intuitions, or the assumptions of contemporary churches or surrounding cultures. These may all contribute something, but none of them provides a more stable or reliable witness to Christ than Scripture itself.

This is why I think the issue is not only about interpretation but also about authority. Every Christian interprets Scripture. Every Christian brings assumptions, experiences, and questions to the text. Interpretation is therefore always part of the picture. But alongside that is the question of what happens when interpretations conflict. What serves as the final point of appeal? Tradition, reason, experience, scholarship, and moral reflection can all help us understand Scripture more faithfully. The problem arises when they cease to function as aids to interpretation and begin to function as authorities that determine in advance what Scripture is allowed to say. At that point, authority has not disappeared; it has simply been relocated.

It is also worth recognising that this kind of relocation can happen in more than one direction. While much attention is given to modern pressures that shift authority toward moral intuition or cultural plausibility, conservative traditions can also risk relocating authority in practice into inherited interpretations or denominational identity, where certain readings are assumed rather than continually tested against Scripture itself. The issue, in either direction, is not sincerity, but the subtle movement of authority away from the text that is meant to remain central.

This matters because many people assume that moral progress has required Christians to move beyond Scripture. Slavery, racism, sexism, and violence are often cited as examples. Yet history is more complicated than that. Some of the most powerful critiques of slavery and racial oppression came from Christians arguing from Scripture rather than against it. The question is not whether Christians have sometimes used the Bible to justify injustice—they clearly have. The question is whether the problem lay with Scripture itself or with the way it was interpreted. I am convinced that the answer to many moral failures is not less biblical authority but better biblical interpretation. Far from being an obstacle to justice, Scripture often contains resources that challenge both conservative and progressive assumptions in surprising ways.

For that reason, I am comfortable speaking about a moral trajectory within Scripture, but trajectories only make sense if they have a destination. The crucial question is: toward what? For Christians, the answer must ultimately be Christ. Scripture tells a story that moves toward him and finds its fulfilment in him. The danger comes when the destination quietly shifts from Christ to whatever contemporary culture happens to regard as moral progress. Our moral intuitions may sometimes reveal that we have misunderstood Scripture, and they may expose blind spots in our traditions. But they do not automatically overrule Scripture. The task is to allow our intuitions to drive us back to the text and to Christ rather than allowing them to become an independent authority alongside or above them.

The same principle applies to scholarship. Historical-critical study has enriched the church’s understanding of Scripture in countless ways. It has helped us recognise genre, recover historical context, and avoid anachronistic readings. At its best, scholarship helps us understand what Scripture is saying. But scholarship has limits. Historical reconstructions are often provisional and contested. Scholars are no less shaped by their own assumptions than anyone else. Scholarship is at its strongest when it serves the text. It becomes far more problematic when it begins deciding which parts of Scripture deserve authority and which do not. Understanding Scripture and judging Scripture are not the same thing.

Experience matters as well. Christians should pay attention to the fruit produced by their beliefs and interpretations. If a particular reading consistently leads to oppression, cruelty, or dehumanisation, that should provoke serious reflection. But the appropriate response is not necessarily to abandon biblical authority. Rather, it is to return to Scripture and ask whether we have understood it rightly. Bad fruit may expose bad interpretation. It does not automatically prove that Scripture itself is at fault. Experience and moral concern should therefore function as prompts for deeper engagement with Scripture, not as replacements for it.

In the end, every Christian appeals to authorities beyond themselves. The question is not whether we use reason, experience, scholarship, tradition, or moral intuition. We all do. The question is whether these things help us hear Scripture more clearly or whether they become higher authorities that determine what Scripture is allowed to mean. If Christ is the ultimate authority and Scripture is the normative witness to Christ, then the task of theology is not to find ways around Scripture whenever it challenges us. It is to read Scripture more faithfully so that we may know Christ more truly. Authority never disappears. The real question is whether we are willing to recognise where we have placed it.