I used to be sitting in a coffee shop, books taking on an excessive amount of space on the tiny table in front of me, bemoaning the dearth of attention the academy paid to the Black church and the distinctive interpretative habits of African American church leaders and students. My time in religious higher education had signaled, in ways large and small, its belief that the tradition that shaped me had little to say to the remaining of the world.
The necessary ideas and trends arose in Europe or white North American spaces—Black Christians, then again, were historically deemed theologically simplistic or dangerous. But I longed for people to know the tradition as I experienced it: life-giving, spiritually robust, and intellectually stimulating. We had wrestled with God and located our way toward faith within the context of anti-Black racism often perpetuated by other Christians. I desired to make that story and the fruits of our labor known. I still do.
While I sipped my coffee, I used to be struck by an concept that served because the genesis for The New Testament in Color: A Multiethnic Commentary on the New Testament. I often complained about white scholars neglecting African American voices, but I knew little about Asian American biblical interpretation, its theological and historical developments, and the gifts it offered to the body of Christ. The same was true regarding Latino interpretation and the Bible-reading habits of First Nations and Indigenous peoples.
In some ways, I used to be a hypocrite. I wanted people to take care of the contributions of my community without being similarly invested in others. I needed to spend less time complaining and more time listening. The New Testament in Color thus began with that insight. It was a hope that we’d come together across ethnic differences and create something beautiful.
I wondered, What fruit might come from the varied ethnic groups sharing space in North America working together to supply a commentary? What did I would like to learn from my brothers and sisters in Christ beyond the Black-white binary that shaped my imagination within the American South?
It was natural that my lament was directed to where the ability resides within the academy. In 2019, the Society of Biblical Literature, the most important body of biblical scholars on the earth, did a study of its membership. That study showed that 86 percent (2,732 of three,159) of its members who described themselves as college or university faculty were of European or Caucasian descent.
Given the demographics of the United States (and the world), it’s greater than fair to say that we experience a disproportionate white or European dominance of biblical studies. If God gives his Spirit without measure and equips your complete body of Christ to read and interpret the Bible, then it’s a tragedy when the entire body of Christ isn’t engaged within the means of reading, interpreting, and applying these texts. No one a part of the body has the suitable to talk for the entire. We need one another.
Does a scarcity of ethnic diversity matter? Isn’t biblical interpretation simply a matter of translating verbs and nouns, linking together ideas as they arrive together into sentences, paragraphs, narratives, or letters? I used to be told that the one thing we wanted to be good interpreters was proper understanding of the historical context alongside requisite grammatical, text-critical, and linguistic expertise.
I don’t need to push any of those necessary and vital skills aside. All the contributors to The New Testament in Color labored hard to realize the aforementioned tools of the scholarly trade. It is precisely because I think that biblical texts are God’s Word to his folks that we must do our absolute best to read them well and punctiliously.
But here is the rub. It matters that we’ve diverse representation within the means of biblical interpretation since it is at all times ourselves as individuals with our experiences, biases, gifts, and liabilities that we bring to the text. We will not be disembodied spirits without histories or cultures. We will not be exegetical machines; we’re interpreting individuals.
We come from somewhere, and that somewhere has left its mark, whether we acknowledge it or not. When one culture dominates the discourse, we’re closing ourselves off from what the Holy Spirit is saying amongst other cultures. Socially situated interpretation, when rooted in a trust in God’s Word, is a present from particular cultures to the entire church. Socially situated interpretation reflects a trust that none of our experiences are wasted, that every one of who we’re is beneficial to God.
Our cultures will not be something we’re called to put aside within the Bible reading process, because our cultures and ethnicities have their origins in God (Eph. 3:14–15). Every culture and ethnicity, since it was created by people made within the image of God, comprises inside it each evidence of its divine origins (Gen. 1:28) and elements of the Fall (Gen. 3).
Stated in another way, there aren’t any perfect cultures. Every culture and folks is challenged and made into the perfect version of itself through an encounter with the living God. Our cultures are restless until they find their rest of their Creator. None of them are left unchanged. God’s word to individuals and cultures is at all times yes and no. He offers us all repentance for things which have gone astray and lauds our struggles toward the great, the true, and the attractive.
Socially situated biblical interpretation is nothing lower than the record of the Spirit’s work through scriptural engagement amongst the various ethnicities and cultures of the world. Unfortunately, too often, the sanctification of culture has been confused with the Westernization of culture. That lie has done tremendous damage to the church. God’s transfiguring work isn’t done compared with the West. Ethnicities don’t change into more holy as they approach likeness to Europe but to God.
That attempt of every culture and group to seek out themselves as they struggle to look at their lives and culture in light of the Word of God is instructive not only for them; it’s instructive to the entire body of Christ. We can, through listening to the voices of others, see the ways through which our own location has at times hindered our ability to read the text well. What we’re aiming for, then, is mutual edification.
Due to the various ways through which Scripture has been used to justify indefensible things equivalent to colonialization, slavery, and the studied disdain for non-Western cultures, much socially situated biblical interpretation has been rooted in a hermeneutics of suspicion in the hassle to withstand those evils.
We consider that it is correct to beat back on the misuse of Scripture to justify evil, but we also consider that socially situated biblical interpretation can engage in a hermeneutics of trust, wherein we recognize that the God we encounter in biblical texts is ultimately a friend, not an enemy. We wish to honor the incontrovertible fact that the ecclesial communities from which we come found liberation and spiritual transformation through reading with the text, not against it. Some might consider this naiveté. I disagree. I consider it hard-won wisdom.
We agree that Scripture is God’s word to us that functions as the ultimate guide for Christian faith and practice. Evoking Nicaea doesn’t mean that we’re privileging Western culture as defining Christianity for the world. Instead, it’s an affirmation that God was at work amongst Christians of the past to inform us things which are true and good. We hope, within the generations to come back, that despite our compromises and failures, Christians will find some lasting value in our theological contributions. There aren’t any pristine histories.
In other words, we don’t assume that our cultures stand over the texts, but through the interaction of person, text, history, and culture, truths that others might miss shine out all of the more brilliantly. The chorus can create a beauty the soloist cannot.
In the top, the fruit shall be seen within the ways we help churchgoers and Bible study leaders and students read the text more faithfully. Like any group of writers committed to serving the body of Christ, we welcome pushback given in good faith. Our goal isn’t to exchange one type of hegemony with one other or to shut the conversation around these texts across cultures. We desire a shared pursuit to find the mind of Christ and his purposes for his people.
Nonetheless, we do consider that these entries will indeed do what all good commentaries endeavor to perform: send the reader back to the text with fresh questions, answers, and a way of wonder on the ways through which the traditional word stays ever latest, difficult and galvanizing us to follow our King and Lord more faithfully.
Taken from New Testament in Color edited by Esau McCaulley, Janette H. Ok, Osvaldo Padilla, and Amy Peeler. Copyright (c) 2024 by Esau McCaulley, Amy L. Peeler, Janette H. Ok, and Osvaldo Padilla. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com
Esau McCaulley is the writer of How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival within the American South and the youngsters’s book Andy Johnson and the March for Justice. He is an associate professor of New Testament and public theology at Wheaton College.
