Sola Survey: “Reading the Gospels Wisely.”
Most of us first meet Jesus, whether as children or adults, within the pages of a Gospel. This introduction most often occurs in John’s retelling, the stories of Jesus and his disciples becoming familiar fare as we become acquainted with the Messiah. But too often we begin treating these narratives as “historical background” for the other New Testament writings, data from which Paul and others draw from, diminishing the transformative nature of the stories themselves. We view the Gospel episodes as shells, casting aside the stories for the meat inside—theological or personal lessons. Through his book Reading the Gospels Wisely, Dr. Jonathan Pennington hopes to change this all-to-common sequence. By both exposing misguided ways of reading and charting a clear path forward, Pennington provides the help we need to not only read the Gospels wisely, but also fall in love with them along the way.
Pennington defines the Gospels as: “theological, historical, and aretological biographical narratives that retell the story and proclaim the significance of Jesus Christ, who through the power of the Spirit is the restorer of God’s reign.” They are theological, meaning they tell us something about God; historical, meaning they recount actual events; and aretological, meaning they’re intended to form certain virtues within us. From this foundation, we identified a handful of principles and practices within Pennington’s book that have helped us read the Gospels more wisely.
Principles of Bible Study.
Pennington weaves several comparisons throughout Reading the Gospels Wisely, showing how one thing (e.g., our posture) trumps another (e.g., our methodology). We’ve taken the lessons from these reoccurring comparisons as guiding principles, helping us study the Gospels—and Scripture in general—more effectively.
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The Gospels, unlike any other New Testament writing, present Jesus in action. Here we encounter the Son of God as we see him nowhere else. Many of us, however, want the “point” more than Christ’s person when we read the Gospels. We’re looking for a theological or moral lesson, something to believe or emulate. And while the Gospel writers certainly crafted their narratives to make claims about the character of Jesus, these “points” are embedded within the stories themselves—to remove them from their original context is counter-productive. “A good story,” Pennington writes, “resists our impulse to merely reduce the story to abstract propositions, while inviting us to relive and enter the experiences presented.” The Gospel writers intentionally chose this form of communication, narrative functioning in ways other literary forms cannot. We need these stories as stories—not summary statements.
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“The Gospels,” Pennington writes, “are not just bald, objective video recordings of the life and teachings of Jesus,” but are instead “inspired, theological retellings/interpretations” of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. As testimonies, the theologically-charged accounts of witnesses, the Gospels marry event and meaning, action and significance. While historically accurate, these four authors give us more than “historical data”—they articulate specific moments in intentional ways, presenting Jesus as God’s Son, fulfillment of Israel’s long-awaited Redeemer. The principle, then, is that we shouldn’t prioritize the New Testament letters over the Gospels, as if propositional writing explains theology better than narrative. The epistles, in other words, aren’t the only place where Jesus’ life and death are interpreted—we get that in the Gospels as well.
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The Gospels should be read, Pennington argues, as testimony, a “blend of fact and interpretation,” a “conscious, intentional re-telling of history with a purpose.” Each Gospel writer composed and structured his narrative with specific intent, aiming to communicate not just a random collection of facts, but a holistic story developed over a series of episodes. Based on this conclusion, Pennington asks us to put less emphasis on our four-columned “Harmonies of the Gospels,” where related stories from each Gospel are put alongside one another (producing a ”horizontal reading”), and instead prioritize reading each Gospel as a self-contained literary unit (a ”vertical reading”). We do this, Pennington says, because the horizontal approach devalues the specific intent of each Gospel writer, focusing instead on “a reconstructed history behind the text.” If the authors crafted their narratives with purpose, seeking to communicate both by their story’s content and structure, then we should honor their intent by reading them primarily with reference to themselves, not their fellow authors.
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The method we use to read the Bible is important—but not as important, Pennington believes, as the posture with which we approach Scripture. “The most important and determinative aspect of reading Holy Scripture well,” he writes, “is not our method or theory but our posture and our goal.” We come to the Bible, not as disinterested, “objective” scientists, but as humble recipients, reading with “personal spiritual devotion.” Pennington doesn’t make this an either/or choice, skilled reading or receptive posture. “But,” he does say, “the priority is the posture.” Understanding the Gospels, and the Bible in general, demands we read it as Holy Scripture, reading by which we “approach the triune God with humility and with a willingness to be read by the text, to stand under it, not simply to seek to understand it.” We come to the Bible for transformation, not just information. No other posture, regardless of method, will do.
Practices of Bible Study.
The bulk of Pennington’s book focuses on principles, with only the final four chapters covering specific practices—specifically the practice of narrative analysis. Pennington provides a 10-step process for analyzing stories, which we’ll explore in some depth.
But before we unpack Pennington’s method we should once again note his emphasis on posture. Method, while essential, is insufficient. Even the most accurate analysis, when divorced from right posture, fails to honor Scripture as God’s Word. As we develop a process for analyzing the Gospel episodes, then, we must remain attentive, not only to the text but also to our hearts, cultivating a receptive posture to the ways God will change us.
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Studying any passage begins by determining which passage we’re studying. Defining the beginning and end of a Gospel “episode” is our starting place. Most Bibles feature section divisions, indicated by headings, that can help us determine the scope of any given story. While we may disagree with where the publisher starts or ends an episode, this can serve as a helpful starting place.
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Many books about Bible study will encourage repetitive reading, whereby we read and re-read a passage several times before conducting any formal analysis. But this step bears additional weight within Pennington’s method due to the emphasis he places on a narrative’s formative power as narrative. We want to enter the story and let the story enter us, which only happens if we read and re-read it again and again.
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Every story has a setting (where the action takes place) and characters (who’re involved in the action). Pennington encourages us to identify these two features before burrowing into further analysis, so that we have a clear picture of “who is here and where is this story happening.” At first, simply writing down the place (e.g. “Gethsemane”) and the characters present (e.g., “Jesus, his disciples, Judas, Roman soldiers) will suffice. From there we can go deeper, noticing other instances when the author refers to a setting or character.
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Every piece of literature contains numerous features. Metaphors, illustrations, comparisons, if-then statements, dialogue, action, and much more. It’s helpful to note and label these features, carefully identifying what’s taking place in the scene unfolding before us. Such analysis increases our comprehension of the text, equipping us to answer the question: “What does this passage say?”
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Within a given episode, there will be multiple “scenes,” shifts in the action or dialogue. Pennington encourages us to note these movements in order to better understand the incident’s progression.
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Using Pennington’s “Storyline Development” model (adapted from Freytag’s pyramid), we can divide the story into several sections, guided by the following features: setting, rising tension, climax, resolution, following action/lessons. Dividing the story into these scenes helps us trace the general “arc” of the plot, giving us a clearer picture of the narrative’s most important moment (the climax and resolution). Identifying the story’s peak clues us in on the most important details of the narrative itself.
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Every Gospel story exists within a broader context beyond the individual story. Pennington pictures these contexts as concentric circles, beginning with the immediate story and moving out to: acts, cycles, literary structures, all four Gospels, and the entire canon. This article won’t explore the additional five contexts in any depth, but the point here is simple—every Gospel story must be read in light of a larger Story. Jesus cursing the barren fig tree, for example, will be misunderstood (or ignored as unintelligible) if not read within the surrounding plot of the Gospel according to Mark and, in addition, the entire biblical story. While we prioritize the immediate context of an author’s account when interpreting a Gospel episode, we must also eventually zoom out to see this event within the Bible’s larger context, rightly situating it inside the canon. This ability to pan out and see the forest and the trees will develop the more time we spend reading the entirety of Scripture.
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Pennington believes that the previous seven steps will “help us make judgments about the most important things to take away from the text.” To identify these “most important things” we must locate “aspects of the story that are emphasized via the plot,” like the climax and resolution, “and that correspond with the larger context of the story itself.“ Writing a summary paragraph, where we express the event and significance in our own words, will help us grasp the multifaceted dimensions of any Gospel episode. It’s important, however, that we don’t paste our summary statements over the story itself, content with our condensed version and no longer interested in the narrative. We read stories not merely to “get the point,” but rather to immerse ourselves in another world (or way of seeing the world). Reading about Jesus washing his disciples feet will have a far greater sensory impact on us than the summary statement: “be humble like Jesus.”
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The goal of reading the Gospels, Pennington claims, “must be more than informational; it must be transformational.” To that end, he proposes two categories for approaching the text in a personal way: revelation and identification. By ‘revelation’ Pennington means the ways in which a narrative “reveals who God is for us in Christ.” Before Jesus is our example, he is our gift, sent to reveal God and redeem his people. We first must locate how Jesus reveals God. ‘Identification,’ on the other hand, are the ways in which the Gospel stories function as “virtue-forming” narratives. Under this category we identify how Jesus is an example for us, as well as how other characters teach us the proper (or improper) way to respond to Jesus. A Gospel, along with the entire Bible, is not a manual for behavior modification, but it does demand changes in our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Identifying these appropriate changes is the goal of ‘identification.’
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Borrowing from Bryan Chapell and Keith Johnson, Pennington rounds out his method with a set of three questions that point us to our Fallen Condition (FC), God’s Redemptive Solution (RS), and the Virtue Forming (VF) aspects of any Gospel story.
These questions are: (1) What fallen condition does this Gospel text reveal? (2) How does God in Christ provide a redemptive solution to this condition of brokenness? and (3) What virtue does this text exhort me to pursue as a result? If we’ve taken time to think through revelation and identification, this final step should proceed somewhat naturally.
Learning to Love Stories.
Dr. Pennington doesn’t just want us to become students of the Gospels. He wants us to become lovers of the them. “My desire for this book,” he writes, “is that readers will be invited into the joy of studying the Gospels more deeply and more often.” His careful guidance invites us into a lifelong journey immersed in the stories of Jesus, learning to walk wisely beside our Master. We return to these narratives again and again, year after year, encountering our King as he lives, suffers, dies, and rises. Our imaginations, guided by the Gospels, take us into a foreign-yet-familiar time and place, where we find God’s transformative kingdom taking root. And as we enter these stories, they begin entering us, transforming our lives from the inside-out, God forming us by his Spirit, slowly but surely, into the image of his Son.