For those Christians who feel the tug to read great literature, know that it is not a waste of your time. These books will only deepen your appreciation for the Scriptures and will open your eyes to a fuller, more profound vision of reality and the God who loves you.
It was not until my sophomore year of college that I started thinking seriously about how to make the most of my time, especially when it came to reading. With a sudden, almost morbid clarity, I realized that I would never be able to read every book I wanted to read. Suppose I read one book every week for the rest of my life. Even if I lived to be 80, I would only finish 3000 books. Yet that estimate represents a pace I might not actually maintain, and it ignores the books I’d inevitably reread. Even if it seems like a lot, 3000 books represent an infinitesimal fraction of the roughly 165 million unique titles published over human history.
It was clear that I needed to be discerning. With the help of a few well-read mentors, I gained a good sense of which books would and would not be worthwhile given the limited time I had. However, the whole matter became complicated by a set of books that I have a great deal of respect and admiration for: the Holy Bible. Comfortable as I was (and still am) in making claims for the literary, philosophical, and theological merits of one book over another, the Word of God took (and still holds) a place of immeasurable supremacy over every other text. It seems to me that if you were to weigh the merit of the Scriptures versus all transcendentally great human works on either side of a scale, the Scriptures would crash to the table with a loud and victorious thud. What was the point in engaging with so-called secular literature when I had a pearl of immeasurable price lying on my desk every day? What other book could teach and delight me as the Word of God could? In short, the question reverberating through my mind was: Why read anything else?
There are, it turns out, very good reasons to read often, broadly, and carefully – aside from the Scriptures. Great works of literature, history, and philosophy help us understand what it means to be human, with a variety and thoroughness that the Bible alone simply does not contain. But going even a step further, there is a demonstrable relationship between reading well-written literature and reading the Bible well. The believer’s ability to uncover the rich truths of Scripture grows through the diligent study of literature. For the Christian to interpret Biblical texts skillfully, beyond the most essential meaning, it is necessary that the individual have both a strong literary imagination and strong grammatical skills.
Take, for example, the most impressive theologians of the church in all periods. Nearly every notable figure who contributed significantly to the church’s theology at an exegetical or systematic level had an education grounded in the humanities. Irenaeus received a liberal arts education steeped in philosophy and literature. Athanasius was taught Greek philosophy and literature at the Catechetical School in Alexandria. Augustine, before his conversion, was a professor of rhetoric and a great student of Latin literature. Aquinas studied at the Faculty of the Arts at the University of Paris, and was immensely well-read. Luther and Melanchthon were both students and lovers of the Greek and Roman authors, constantly referencing the literature in their writings. The list goes on with just about any important religious thinker that comes to mind. There are certain skills that are not merely acquired by a practical, fundamentalist study of scripture alone.
Aldhelm of Malmesbury, a 7th-century English abbot, described the necessity of literary and grammatical learning in the study of Scripture by saying, “the more fully you have learned beforehand the most diverse rules of that art… the more easily will you understand the deepest and holiest meanings of the same divine discourse in the course of your reading.”1 For Aldhelm, there could be no serious reading and exposition of the Scriptures without a robust understanding of language in a literary context.
Great works of literature, then, function as the training ground on which the Christian develops the important skills necessary for interpreting the Scriptures. On this turf, his literal and figurative language skills grow stronger, and he learns how to understand grammar and syntax, as well as metaphor, hyperbole, symbolism, and textual themes. Practical and imaginative literary skills that will be crucial in grasping the profundity of the Word start to fall into place. If these skills are never acquired, reading becomes one-dimensional, bound to an anemic literality that cannot plumb the infinite depths of the Word.
In an excellent essay entitled “The Exegetical Elephant in the Room,” David Maxwell argues for an interpretive return to an exegesis governed by what could be described as literary sensibilities. He explains that the church fathers, in biblical interpretation, “are involved in what you might call a game of pattern recognition.”2 For Maxwell, the patristics’ genius was in their ability to recognize recurring themes, ideas, words, and images. Their reading was not limited by the dogmatic historicism and moralism that burdens so many Christians in their reading of the Scriptures today. Instead, they enjoyed an exegetical freedom to explore the hidden patterns and motifs of God’s saving work and man’s place in the created universe, not because they were careless or any less devout than a very careful Christian reader today, but simply because they were taught to read in a way that most lay Christians and theologians today are not.
Because of Christ’s full humanity and full divinity, in order to understand Him and His work, the theologian must understand humanity’s fallen nature, which Christ came to redeem by taking it upon Himself. Scripture, divinely inspired and breathed out by the mouth of God, nonetheless took the form of human literature, with a long tradition preceding it. Christ bears the clear markers of humanity in His flesh, while Scripture bears the markers of the literary tradition from which it came. In his commentary on the Gospel of Mark, James Voelz points to parallels between Mark and The Odyssey:
Mark’s narrative appears to be proceeding in an obvious way along classic structuralist lines. There is a problem (‘the many’ in need of a ransom [10:45]); a hero (Jesus) is commissioned and sent (‘you are my beloved Son,’ 1:11); he is given power (The Holy Spirit, 1:10); he endures a ‘qualifying test’ (temptation by Satan in the desert, 1:13); and now, after passing the test, he receives helpers (disciples, 1:20) to aid him in confronting opponents (Satanic forces, e.g., 3:23-27). The story will proceed with the ‘main test,’ fought against the chief opponent, which will be followed by a ‘glorifying test,’ at which he will be acclaimed by the community, after having taken care of the initial problem.3
Certainly, no one needs to read The Odyssey in order to be saved or to understand the Scriptures at their most essential level. The stakes may appear small, and in soteriological terms, perhaps they are. Yet the Christian who is cut off from The Odyssey and other works of antiquity will never see the rich interconnectedness of the Gospel in human history: that, like Christ, the Bible is not an abstract, contextless piece of writing, but is part of a much larger story.
Similarly, John’s famous opening to his Gospel on the logos being, in the beginning, “with God and…was God” will be taken as an isolated line–beautiful, yes, but entirely independent of any other work of literature. It will be overlooked and never even considered that John is writing downstream of Heraclitus, for whom the logos was the rational, governing principle of the universe.
Not everyone will be able to pursue this course of reading as assiduously as some have and do. There are limits to the time, effort, and vocational wherewithal necessary to engage with these things. But for those Christians who feel the tug to read great literature, know that it is not a waste of your time. These books will only deepen your appreciation for the Scriptures and will open your eyes to a fuller, more profound vision of reality and the God who loves you. There is an inestimable joy in the pursuit of a knowledge like that. To quote Heraclitus: “For men who love wisdom, it is necessary to be learned in many, many things.”
Notes:
1. Quoted in Benjamin Weber, “A Brief History of Anglo-Saxon Education.” History Compass 17.2 (2019): 1-13.
2. David Maxwell, "The Exegetical Elephant in the Room," Concordia Journal 49.3 (2013): 19.
3. James Voelz, Mark 1:1–8:26 – Concordia Commentary (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2013).
