I’ve been in academia for almost thirty years, both as a graduate student and a professor. I’ve spent time in both Christian and secular institutions. My Christian experience taught me the fundamentally important lesson of having a high view of Scripture. Treat it as God’s Word. My secular years taught me a lesson just as valuable, and one that I didn’t find consistently in a Christian context: be a slave to the text.
In my secular experience, being a slave to the text meant that you shouldn’t bring prior commitments to the biblical text you’re studying. Theological ideas about how the text came about or how it might be understood to achieve a theological outcome should be left behind. The text is all that matters. Theological commitments are irrelevant and, in fact, impediments to understanding.
This is, of course, what one would expect in a secular institution. They aren’t seminaries. However, there’s a bit of a flaw in this understanding. Objectivity is a myth. No one can jettison all preconceptions about something, no matter what the context. The secular scholar has presupposition of his or her own that crouch in the mind, ready to influence interpretation. I knew that, so I took that part with a grain of salt. But the lesson wasn’t lost. The text is all that matters, so we must let the text take us wherever it leads.
Ironically, despite the pervading belief in inspiration, I didn’t see this principle consistently practiced in Christian academia. True, any given seminary has, and needs to have, certain theological commitments, but those theological commitments should not be the basis of judging scholarship or handing out grades. Rather, professors should be forthright. They should have well-informed exegetical arguments for their positions (presumably those of the school) but should be honest with the text. They should admit that, given other interpretations about the Hebrew or Greek grammar and word usage here and there, the conclusions drawn from a passage could be different. To hide those possibilities or manipulate the text to your “obvious” conclusions is dishonest.
So it should be with personal Bible study. The text is what is inspired, and nothing else. Loyalty to God’s Word means letting it be your master. By definition, your interpretation or belief cannot be biblical if it does not derive from the text.