Why do Christians read the same verse differently?

Hermeneutics is the study of how we read

Hermeneutics is the name for the principles a reader uses to move from the words on a page to their meaning. Every reader has such principles, whether or not they can name them. When two sincere Christians open the same verse and come away with different conclusions, the difference often lies less in the verse than in these principles, along with questions of language, manuscripts, and history: whether a text can mean more than one thing, and whose reading carries weight when readers disagree.

Christian traditions have thought about these questions since the early centuries. Their answers are written down in catechisms, confessions, and council documents, so a reader can compare them directly rather than guess at what another church believes. The rest of this article looks at the main approaches and then follows one verse through five traditions.

Early readers looked for more than one sense

From the early centuries, Christian interpreters asked whether a passage could speak on several levels at once. Two schools came to stand for different emphases. The School of Alexandria in Egypt favored allegorical reading, in which events and images point beyond themselves to spiritual truths [2]. The School of Antioch in Syria, which flourished from the fourth to the sixth century, is known for its "literal interpretation of the Bible" and for stressing the full humanity of Christ [2]. Its teachers included Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, John Chrysostom, and Theodoret of Cyrrhus [2].

Over time these instincts were gathered into the teaching of four senses of Scripture, still set out in the Catechism of the Catholic Church [1]. The literal sense is the meaning of the words themselves, and every other sense rests on it [1]. The spiritual sense divides into three. The allegorical sense sees how events point to Christ, as when the crossing of the Red Sea is read as a sign of his victory and of baptism [1]. The moral sense draws out how to act justly, and the anagogical sense points to final things, as when the Church on earth is read as a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem [1]. The Catechism preserves a medieval rhyme that sums up all four senses, beginning "The Letter speaks of deeds; Allegory to faith" [1]. The contrast between the two schools is often drawn too sharply, since Antiochene teachers also read many passages as pointing to Christ.

Traditions differ on where interpretive authority lies

The sharpest differences concern who settles disputed readings. The churches of the Reformation taught that Scripture alone is the final authority, a principle known as sola scriptura. The Westminster Confession, a Reformed statement, puts its method plainly: "The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself" [3]. When a passage is unclear, the Confession says, its sense is to be found by comparing other passages that speak more clearly, and every council, ancient writer, and human teaching is to be tested against the Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture [3].

Catholic teaching, set out in the Second Vatican Council's constitution Dei Verbum, proclaimed on 18 November 1965, holds that Scripture and Tradition flow from the same divine source and form one sacred deposit of the word of God committed to the Church [4]. The task of authentic interpretation, it says, has been "entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church" [4]. The same document adds that this teaching office, the Magisterium, is not above the word of God but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on [4]. Dei Verbum also asks interpreters to look for what the human authors intended and to attend to literary forms, since history, prophecy, and poetry express truth in different ways [4].

Orthodox Christians speak of Holy Tradition as the living life of the Church, passed down from the apostles and guided by the Holy Spirit [5]. The Orthodox Church in America describes this Tradition as "the very life of the Church itself" and places the Bible first among its elements, alongside the writings of the church fathers, the liturgy, the councils, and the lives of the saints [5]. In this view Scripture is read from inside the worshiping Church, with the fathers as its trusted guides, and not as a text standing apart from it.

Modern scholarship asks how the texts came to be

A further approach, the historical-critical method, studies biblical books as ancient texts with their own history of composition. It includes textual criticism, which reconstructs the earliest recoverable wording from manuscripts, along with study of sources, literary forms, and the editing that shaped the final text [6]. The Pontifical Biblical Commission, in a document presented to Pope John Paul II on 23 April 1993, called it "the indispensable method for the scientific study of the meaning of ancient texts" [6]. The Commission also said the method cannot be sufficient on its own [6].

Churches differ in how far they rely on these methods. Some use them freely to hear the human authors more clearly, while others are cautious about conclusions they see as resting on assumptions foreign to faith. Either way, the method adds another set of questions to bring to a verse.

One verse, five readings: "This is my body"

The words of Jesus at the Last Supper show how these principles play out. In Matthew 26:26 Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and said, "Take, eat; this is my body" (KJV). Each tradition below reads the same sentence in its own terms.

The Catholic Church teaches transubstantiation. The Council of Trent, in its session of 11 October 1551, taught that consecration changes the whole substance of the bread into the substance of Christ's body, and the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood [7]. The council rejected the view that Christ is present only as in a sign or figure [7].

The Orthodox Church also holds that the bread and wine truly become Christ's body and blood, consecrated by the Holy Spirit [8]. The Orthodox Church in America presents this as a mystery and declines to explain the change through philosophical categories [8]. It adds that, in Orthodox usage, the real and the symbolic are not opposites [8].

Lutherans confess in the Augsburg Confession that "the Body and Blood of Christ are truly present" and are distributed to those who eat the Supper [9].

The Reformed tradition, in the Westminster Confession, rejects transubstantiation and teaches that believers who receive worthily truly feed on the crucified Christ by faith, spiritually rather than in a bodily way [3]. Christ's body and blood are present to the faith of believers, much as the bread and wine are present to their senses [3].

Many Baptist churches hold a memorial view. The Baptist Faith and Message, the Southern Baptist confession, calls the Supper a "symbolic act of obedience" in which the church remembers the death of Christ and looks ahead to his return [10]. In this reading the bread and cup are signs that call Christ's death to mind, received in obedience to his command.

All five read the same verse with care. They differ on the sense of one small word, and on the wider teaching about sacraments and authority that each tradition brings to it. Oriental Orthodox and Church of the East teaching, which also holds that the bread and wine truly become Christ's body and blood, is not set out separately here.

What this means for the reader

When Christians read a verse differently, the cause is often a different set of reading principles more than a different level of devotion. Setting the readings side by side, each in the words of the tradition that holds it, lets you see exactly where they part and why. That makes it easier to understand a neighbor's church and to know your own convictions more clearly.