On Scriptural Interpretation in Artwork
The Bible is a collection of books written thousands of years ago. All Christians consider it to be inspired by God & inerrant, or without error. But how Christians interpret the words inspired & inerrant varies widely among Christian denominations.
On one end of the “inspired” spectrum is the belief that God (perhaps through a messenger or angel) dictated the text of the Scriptures to the human authors. At the other end of the “inspired” spectrum is the belief that God was active in human history, especially in the person of Jesus Christ, and that the books of the Bible are a human response to God’s actions written by faithful people for faithful communities. Christians in different times & places, including Christian artists, have taken various positions along this spectrum, either intentionally or because everyone in their community understood the Bible that way. Therefore, one artwork might be based on a very different understanding of the Scripture story it depicts than another artwork that portrays the same story.
A similar spectrum of belief among Christians regards the interpretation of the term inerrant. Artists have come from all over this spectrum as well. On one end of the “inerrant” spectrum, some Christians believe that the Bible's inerrancy means that there is not a single error of fact, science, history, or theology in it. On the other end, some Christians believe that the Bible contains no errors of theology, if the theology is correctly understood. This end of the spectrum requires interpretive guidelines related to the type of literature found in any given book, the historical & cultural circumstances of the time at which the book was written, and the study of archeology & ancient languages. For example, the first chapter of the Book of Genesis (God’s creating the universe in 6 days) is understood literally by believers on one end of the spectrum; on the other end of the spectrum, it is understood as poetry about the orderliness of the universe, edited into its final form by people trying to set themselves apart from their Babylonian captors, who believed that the universe was chaotic. From the latter perspective, the current, most widely-accepted, scientific interpretation of the beginning of the universe (i.e., the Big Bang Theory) is not in conflict with the Genesis version of an orderly universe.
Users who become interested in the study of interpretation (also called hermeneutics) are encouraged to explore their denomination’s hermeneutical priorities. For example, the Roman Catholic Church’s approach is closer to the second end of both of these spectra, and the Pontifical Biblical Commission issued updated guidelines for scriptural interpretation in 1993.
