Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.
1 Corinthians 8:1-3
One of the growing “hot buttons” in interpreting the Bible is the role of culture. Understanding a biblical truth in the context of the culture it was written in is an important element in properly understanding truth. The problem, however, is that understanding a culture that is significantly different than our own compounds the problem exponentially.
Culture is built on values and behaviors. Conduct is shaped by those cultural expectations. Hospitality, for example, carries immense weight in Middle Eastern countries and looks much different than what hospitality means in western culture. The better we understand that culture the clearer we will be on what is being communicated. The obvious complication in interpretation is that we risk imposing our own ideas on the text based on our own culture, not the one it was written. In other words we read into a text our own meaning based simply on our own experience in our own culture, not based on their culture.
The current danger in biblical interpretation is that culture is now given so much weight in interpretation that it has virtually superseded the authority of the Bible itself. Now that will sound like a ridiculous statement since the argument is that we can never really understand the meaning of the Bible unless we really understand the culture. But the discussion is that Middle Eastern culture is SO different from our own (and we have progressed so far beyond it) that much of what the Scripture says is not “relevant” today because it is so different. Since we do not have any of those same issues to deal with then this is no longer relevant to us.
There are few times Paul actually creates very clear cultural arguments. 1 Corinthians 8 is one of them. In fact I believe this text is Paul’s magnum opus on culture. This is the prototype for understanding cultural issues; this is the blueprint to work from at least from the New Testament. The problem of personal freedom stumbling another believer was a real, cultural issue. There are, of course, other passages that have “culture” wired into the DNA of the text but many times it is clouded or veiled because it is not explicitly delineated as it is by Paul here in 1 Corinthians 8. The clear principle of Paul here is: when my personal freedom causes another brother to stumble, then I will abstain from exercising my freedom for the sake of my brother or sister in Christ. I believe 1 Corinthians 8 is a magnificent template to listening to how Paul talks about culture.
However, it is impossible to separate culture from any text of Scripture since the human authors wrote to real people living in a real world, dealing with real issues. The better we understand culture, the clearer we will know the true intent of any biblical author when he wrote any of his letters to any particular church or person. But now culture seems to be overriding even the traditional principle of “analogy of faith.” This principle simply means that the Scriptures are a unified whole and the Bible does not contradict itself. In other words, the best interpreter of Scripture is the Scriptures. The Old Testament is still the best interpreter of the New Testament (no matter how much we struggle with understanding it in whole or in part) because of the divine author being the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 10-13; 2 Tim. 3:16-17; 2 Peter 2:20-21). When we lose a high view of the inerrancy and sufficiency of the Scriptures, then culture will begin to supersede truth, not help clarify it.
In His grace, Pastor Brad.
