the seemingly straightforward assertion, "The Bible says..." Christians of the conservative evangelical persuasion agree, as they agree on little else, that what the Bible says is of the utmost importance. Yet an examination of the principles of hermeneutics reveals that the act of biblical interpretation is not always a simple or easy task. Understanding scripture involves proper interpretation, and proper interpretation involves the hard work of research and study. In order to carry on the authoritative tradition of the apostles, the church must therefore take on the dutiful challenge of rightly interpreting the apostles' message. (And if the church meets this challenge, perhaps those of us within it will find more on which to agree.) Jesus wrote no autobiography. He left the task of interpreting his own life and sayings to his apostles. In turn, our primary responsibility as preachers, teachers, and expositors of the Christian message is to discover the meaning of the apostles' writings - i.e., the truth of the NT - ourselves before sharing it with others.
Interpretation has everything to do with contexts. For example, the apostle John in his Gospel makes an appeal to belief, one of many in the NT: "And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you may believe" (John 19:35). While most Christians will concur that it's important to have faith in God, or to believe, there is substantial disagreement in the church over what it really means to believe. Perhaps "believe" has some different meanings in different contexts. John gives a few indications in this verse as to what it means to him, beginning with the immediate context of the statement. The word "believe" appears as an expected response on the part of the reader - "that you may believe" - to John's own credibility as firsthand witness to events: "he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth..." (It should be further noted that when John refers to "he" who has seen and testified to events, he is making reference to himself as the author, and not some mysterious third party. This is indicated clearly by the same language used in John 21:24 at the close of his Gospel: "This is the disciple who testifies of these things, and wrote these things; and we know that his testimony is true.")
So John argues that because he is a witness, it's reasonable to believe what he says. But what, exactly, is it that John says and wants us to believe? An answer may be found in the paragraphic context of verse 35, a description of the piercing of Jesus' side after his crucifixion. Verses 33-34 record the fact that just after Jesus died on the cross the soldiers attending to his crucifixion decided it was unnecessary to break his legs (as a means to hasten death) since Jesus was alreadly dead. Instead they pierced his side with a spear, "and immediately blood and water came out." In verses 36 and 37 this event is interpreted as a specific fulfillment of OT prophecies. Through the use of these and other such OT testimonia, John (like the Synoptic Gospel writers) depicts Christ as the physical embodiment of the OT message (John 1:23; 2:16-17; 12:14-15; 12:37-41). In the process he presents a distinctly NT approach to biblical interpretation, in which Jesus is the "alpha and omega" - both the starting point of OT interpretation and the ultimate messianic fulfillment of OT scripture in the progressive revelation of God's truth to man. It may be fairly stated, then, that John is urging belief in Jesus as the prophetic incarnation of all biblical truth and thus the proper object of faith.
This understanding of faith as belief in the embodiment of truth in Christ is consistent with the Johannine corpus. From the opening chapter of his Gospel and through his letters, John's message features a conspicuous, consistent appeal not only to the deity but the physical humanity of Christ, "the word made flesh" (John 1:14; 2:19-22; 6:51; 8:57; 1 John 1:1-3; 4:2-3; 2 John 7). This emphasis is partly due to the fact that John was sensitive to the spread of various Docetist and Gnostic heresies denying the physical incarnation of Christ, but mainly because, all heresies aside, Jesus really did die as a real man on a real cross for the sins of the world. Jesus wasn't a phantasm because phantasms don't suffer, bleed and die. That is, in consistently demonstrating the historical facts of the incarnation and crucifixion John emphasizes another of his driving themes: truth. It's not so much that John's personal religious beliefs somehow required Jesus to be the divine Son of God in the flesh, but that he really saw Jesus, heard his teachings about himself, watched him die, and then saw him again after his resurrection from the dead.
However, it would be a stretch to categorize John as an historian proper. He has been labelled a consummate theologian by various commentators for good reason. Unlike the Synoptic evangelists (especially Luke), John is clearly more interested in the spiritual truths of Christian theology than the particular facts of Christian history. Having seen more than enough in the way of facts to convince him of what's important, he leaves aside incidentals and trivialities and seeks to convince others of the essentials. His concerns are the central truths of Christianity - that Jesus alone is "the way, the truth, and the life," and "the Christ, the Son of God," and "that believing you may have life in his name" (John 14:6; 20:31). Even the inclusion of Pontius Pilate in John's Gospel narrative serves a primarily theological purpose - not to demonstrate the facticity or historicity of the gospel story, but to lend a bit of reluctant but significant secular support to the thesis that Jesus was indeed "King of the Jews" (John 19:19-22). John's purpose therefore underscores the overriding purpose and essence of all scripture, to glorify God as its focus and center. Using similar, straightforward language as that employed in chapter 19, John makes it clear elsewhere that his message, moreover the entire purpose of God, is undeniably Christ-centered (John 8:24; 20:31; 1 John 2:2). On this last point he is joined by the rest of the apostles as well as the contemporary Christian evangelical community.
If John was the most theologically minded of the apostles, Paul was the most theologically equipped. A student of Gamaliel, himself a student of Hillel, a renowned OT exegete, Paul was thoroughly trained in the scribal practice of biblical interpretation. His revelatory encounter with Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus and conversion to Christianity, however, served to turn his OT theology literally on its head. For example, Paul's understanding of what it means to be "justified," as used in Romans 3:24, indicates something quite different from what would be expected of a mind steeped in OT Judaism. Again, a consideration of contexts will reveal much about Paul's teachings. Two other words taken from the immediate context of Rom. 3:24 used to describe being justified - "freely" and by "grace" - offer the first textual clues indicating a