Heart-Reading: Recovering A Spiritual Approach To The Bible

By Gerald M. Bilkes

Towards the end of his magnificent “Preface to the Reader” in his translation of the Bible, Miles Coverdale, translator from Reformation times, urged readers to approach Scripture in such a way that Scripture enter their hearts. He writes:

And, above all things fashion thy life and conversation according to the doctrine of the Holy Ghost therein, that thou mayest be partaker of the good promises of God in the Bible, and be heir of his blessing in Christ; in whom if thou put thy trust, and be an unfeigned reader or hearer of his word with thy heart, thou shalt find sweetness therein, and spy wonderous things, to thy understanding, to the avoiding of all sedicious sects, to the abhorring of thy old sinful life, and to the stablishing of thy godly conversation [emphasis mine]. [1]

This phrase “reading with thy heart” is no mere cliché for Coverdale. It refers to the intentional labor while reading and interpreting God’s Word to have the Word apply to the whole person, including one’s mind, will, affections, and practice.

Coverdale expressly elaborates on what such heart-reading is. He writes: “[T]ake these words of scripture into thy heart, and be not only an outward hearer, but a doer thereafter, and practice thyself therein; that thou mayest feel in thine heart, the sweet promises thereof for thy consolation in all trouble, and for the sure stablishing of thy hope in Christ.” He continues to list another benefit of heart-reading, namely, the ability to “judge all spirits, and be free from every error.” He concludes this fine section with the observation that only through such heart-reading can Scripture “have free passage, and be had in reputation, to the worship of the author thereof, which is even God himself.” [2]

This concept of heart-reading is potent in our day. Not long ago, the term would have conjured up to many in the academy and church images of lone fanatics using the Bible as a pagan priest does his talisman. Academicians would have viewed those who engaged in “heart-reading” as irrational eccentrics, unwilling to bow to the convincing force of Enlightenment thought and mournfully wishing for the days when allegory reigned supreme. Now, however, the tide is beginning to turn. [3] As it does, there are dangers. [4] The fact that much of this interest in spirituality is coordinated with an agenda of religious pluralism certainly does not bode well. Moreover, for a true rehabilitation of spirituality to take place, the academy will have to acknowledge that the past few centuries have seen the tyranny of autonomous reason over all of life—with devastating results. This would be a radical break and a whole new reformation, and that is exactly what is needed.

We need a biblically sound, theologically robust, and practically experiential method in approaching Scripture spiritually. We need to recapture what people like Coverdale called “heart-reading,” which will avoid the pitfalls of unbiblical spirituality and rationalistic sterility.

How We Lost Heart-Reading

In order to recover a spiritual approach to Scripture, we would do well to ask how we lost it. Essentially, the blame lies at the feet of those who advocated “free” thought and biblical criticism within Protestantism. Especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this spread of rationalism at best pushed a spiritual approach to Scripture to the margin; at worst, it banished it altogether. [5] Already in his Tractatus Theologico-politicus (1670), Spinoza quipped: “For even thus does it fare with man: That which he conceives by pure intelligence, that he defends by reason and understanding; and that which he imagines by the affections of his mind, that does he justify by temper and passion.” [6] Against the backdrop of the Thirty years’ War and other religious conflicts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Descartes was keen to bend the energies of people into the mastery of nature through the exercise of reason. [7] The Cartesian revolution prized knowledge that could be empirically verified, and under this new definition of science, piety was not welcome. [8] Cast as a ghost from older times when allegories reigned, a spiritual approach to Scripture was shown the door of universities and churches and forced into homelessness. It was accorded status only by fringe groups or small unrecognized minorities that sought to bear the standard of historic Christianity. The movements of eighteenth-century Romanticism and nineteenth-century existentialism seemed as if they would change matters. Disenchanted with science’s tyrannical rule, universities did briefly bring back an emphasis on religious experience. It was always, however, on the condition that science not lose any of its Cartesian character or hegemony, and, under these conditions, there was ultimately no room for genuine heart-reading of Scripture.

Not only had this Cartesian revolution of study expelled piety, but the doctrine and ethics of the church, still tolerated as subjects within the university, suffered immensely from its absence. The Reformation and Puritan triumvirate of doctrine, piety, and life had been broken; even doctrine and ethics were no longer what they once were. Doctrine was forced to become scientifically palatable constructions of religious thought; ethics, likewise, played the part of scientifically palatable constructions of human behavior. The Bible, “purged” of its spiritual character, was now regarded as merely either a handbook of religious conceptions, or a deposit of ethical models of the past, or both. What the Bible purported to be, namely, the Word of God given for the life of people everywhere, was only such a particular model, sufficient perhaps for the church in its infancy, but no longer suited to the days when reason reigned supreme. This is how we lost a spiritual approach to the Scripture.

What We Are Looking For

Though Reformation and post-Reformation theologians are among the best to have elaborated and practiced heart-reading, the notion is certainly biblical in origin. It is given with the whole stress on the full-orbed appropriation of the Word of God. Though we find this emphasis throughout Scripture, it is most poignantly presented in Deuteronomy, some of the Torah Psalms (1, 19, 119), and prophets like Jeremiah. Deuteronomy 6:6 is the locus classicus for this concept: “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart.” [9] According to a biblical anthropology, the heart is the seat of the will and, subordinately, the affections. Thus God’s Word must find entrance into our hearts. It must drive away all other loyalties; it must affect our wills and actions. The love which God demands will come about through His Word finding entrance into our hearts. On this basis, then, heart-reading, simply put, is the involvement of the heart along with other human capacities in the engagement with God’s Word.

This, then, is what should be the core of a spiritual approach to Scripture. Recovering this will enable believers and the church to thrive. However, it is necessary to delineate wrong spiritual approaches from a biblical one. By a spiritual approach to Scripture, I do not mean the following:

1. A spiritualizing approach. I am not advocating a spiritualizing or allegorizing reading of Scripture, which is not focused on the natural meaning of the passage in context. Such an approach does have its practitioners even today; however, it is based on a view of Scripture not taught by or within Scripture. The grammatical-historical study of Scripture remains essential to avoid reading as Scripture what is not taught in its pages.
2. A mindless approach. I am not advocating a naïve and superficial reading of Scripture, simply looking for visceral reactions of our emotions to concepts and notions in the text. Such a method is superficial at best, and even dangerous. It uses patterns of associative thinking to construct meaning considered to be edifying.
3. A nostalgic approach. I am not advocating an approach that simply regurgitates well-worn interpretations from hallowed times. Though the history of exegesis is often illuminating and well worth consulting, it is no substitute for studying the text directly. The principle ad fontes (to the sources) is worth observing and guarding today when ancient exegesis is making a comeback — not always in a way that exercises proper scrutiny regarding truth and error.
4. A pluralistic approach. I am not advocating an approach that sees all spiritual traditions as equally illuminating. Some are keen on producing what they term “a conversation of readings,” without the question of right and wrong. Though all religions have spiritual traditions, I do not believe that there is warrant for or benefit in entertaining all sorts of mutually exclusive readings simply for comparative purposes. The aim of interpreting the Bible remains arriving at the true meaning of the text. The interpreter must answer the question: “What is it saying?”

Each of these approaches undermines and displaces the authority of the Scriptures as it regards its very words. In the spiritualizing approach, the meaning of the text is amplified (at best) and replaced (at worst) with a meaning that does not inhere in the text, but is imbued into it by the reader. Likewise, the mindless approach is not concerned with what the Scriptures themselves teach, but what the reader constructs the meaning to be. Both the nostalgic and pluralistic approaches reposition the provenance of meaning to include (at least in part) human traditions, whether of a single tradition, or various competing ones. None of these approaches cohere with how Scriptures sees meaning operating. Peter’s hermeneutical caution is especially significant: “No prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Pet. 1:21). [10]

Instead, the heart-reading that has the sanction of Scripture itself accords full and final authority to the words of Scripture. It does not make the locus of meaning something outside of Scripture; the locus of meaning remains in Scripture. The heart remains the receptor of meaning, not the inventor of meaning. To use the language of the common adage: truth that comes through heart-reading is not different truth, but truth differently. Moreover, the heart does not circumvent the mind, but rather cooperates with it. Notwithstanding, heart-reading is not content with the kind of interpretation that has become sanctioned by rationalism. It cannot, for it has a biblical view of Scripture and a full-orbed view of man, and it proceeds on the premise that God reveals Himself in Scripture to the whole person.

How We Can Recover Heart-Reading

I mentioned Coverdale’s Preface to his Bible, in which he urged heart-reading. Among Reformation Bible translations, Coverdale was not an exception. Similar passages are found in the prefaces to Tyndale’s New Testament, the Geneva Bible, and the King James Version. Far from being happenstance, this feature of these early versions shows the passion of the translators that the Word of God would reach the hearts and impact the lives of the masses, who could read the vernacular. These prefaces, especially when taken together, give us an easily discernible program whereby we can recover heart-reading. Without pretending an exhaustive study of such a worthy corpus of material, I wish to highlight some of the most theologically powerful ideas from a number of the English-speaking Bible translation prefaces. Clearly, their influence must have been pronounced in their time, and their appeals are equally relevant in our day, sorely in need of reformation.

1. Recognize The Total Claim Of The Word Of God Demanding The Allegiance Of Our Whole Being.

The first hindrance to heart-reading is that we think the Bible is aimed exclusively at our mind to the exclusion of our heart. We don’t have a full-orbed view of the Bible, which has a full-orbed view of us. Apart from our natural tendency to twist or limit the Word of God, it cannot but be the effect of rationalism in theology that many think of the Word of God as simply the deposit of information about God rather than communication from God.

The first step towards engaging in heart-reading must be that we reckon with the fact that the Bible speaks to and claims our hearts. At a human level, we understand that the best communication addresses the whole person, including his will and emotions. When God speaks to us, shouldn’t we expect the best of communication? And doesn’t Scripture itself tell us that God is addressing our whole being?

The Geneva Bible oriented its readers on such a proper view of the Word of God when in the preface it calls the Bible “the light to our paths, the key of the kingdom of heaven, our comfort in affliction, our shield and sword against Satan, the school of all wisdom, the glass wherein we behold God’s face, the testimony of his favour, and the only food and nourishment of our souls.” [11] The delightful poem affixed to the preface (accompanied with Scripture references) likewise betrays the rich view of the Word of God held forth in the Geneva Bible:

Here is the Spring where waters flow
(Isa. 12:3 and 49:10; Rom. 5:16 and 6:17),
to quench our heart of sin:

Here is the Tree where truth doth grow
(Jer. 33:15 and Ps. 119:160),
to lead our lives therein:

Here is the Judge that stints the strife
(Rev. 2:7 and 22:2; Ps. 119:142, 144),
when men’s devices fail:

Here is the Bread that feeds the life ( John 6:35),
that death cannot assail.

The tidings of Salvation dear (Luke 2:10),
comes to our ears from hence:

The fortress of our Faith is here (Eph. 6:16),
and shield of our defense. [12]

The editors of the Geneva Bible clearly realized that one’s view of the Word of God would impact his approach to it as well as the benefit drawn from it. Such a soul-enriching view of the Word of God cannot help but orient believers as we approach the Word of God in a way that fosters heart-reading.

The question remains how exactly we are to do that. In the Epilogue to his second New Testament, William Tyndale outlines this work very practically, using the law-Gospel coordinates: “Apply alway the law to thy deeds, whether thou find lust in the bottom of thine heart to the law-ward, and so shalt thou no doubt repent, and feel in thyself a certain sorrow, pain, and grief to thine heart, because thou canst not with full lust do the deeds of the law.” [13] This is the first part of the work of heart-reading, according to Tyndale: an application of the law to the heart. Next comes the application of the gospel to the heart. Tyndale counseled his readers: “Apply the gospel, that is to say the promises, unto the deserving of Christ, and to the mercy of God and his truth, and so shalt thou not despair, but shall feel God as a kind and a merciful father.” As a consequence, Tyndale continues, “His spirit shall dwell in thee, and shall be strong in thee, and the promises shall be given thee at the last.” [14]

This is the first and vital aspect of heart-reading: recognizing the claim of the Word to be over our complete being, with all its capacities, and demanding our total allegiance.

2. Depend Absolutely On Grace So That Your Heart May Profit From the Word Of God.

Not only should we have a proper view of the full claim of Scripture, but also of our absolute need of grace to profit from God’s Word. Our capacities have been so impacted by sin that we cannot approach God’s Word assuming we will automatically profit as we would if we had not fallen. The above-mentioned poem in the Geneva Bible, a few lines later, continues by making this point.

Read not this book in any case (Matt. 6:22),
but with a single eye.

Read not, but first desire God’s grace (Ps. 119:27, 73),
to understand thereby.

Pray still in faith, with this respect (Jude 20),
to fructify therein,

That knowledge may bring this effect (Ps. 119:1),
to mortify thy sin.

Then happy thou, in all thy life ( Josh. 1:8),
whatso to thee befalls:

yea, double happy shalt thou be (Ps. 1:1,2; 94:12,13),
when God by death thee calls. [15]

The editors of the Geneva Bible clearly realized that, without grace, the reading of Scripture will neither be understood nor instrumental in bringing about the intended growth and fruits. These lines highlight at least three related aspects of our need for grace. First, we need grace to understand the Word of God. Second, we need grace in order to bear fruits in knowledge. Third, we need grace in order through this knowledge to be happy both in this life and the next.

These three aspects cannot be separated. The second flows from the first, and the third from the second.

The phrase “Read not, but first desire” is also very telling. Clearly, this word “desire” emphasizes the subjective readiness for receiving the truth of God. This desire should take the form of prayer. The Scripture references noted on that line are Psalm 119:27, 73, both verses being prayers for understanding in order that our lives would be impacted by the Word.

Without this critical dependency on grace through prayer, the heart will not be involved, and the Word of God will address only part of us, and arguably none at all.

3. Look To The Triune God To Transcribe The Word Of God On Your Heart.

We do not simply need grace to understand; we also need God’s Spirit to apply Scripture effectually to our hearts. This is stressed in the prayer that follows this poem in the front matter of the Geneva Bible:

O Gracious God and most merciful Father, which hast vouchsafed us the rich and precious jewel of thy holy Word, assist us with thy Spirit, that it may be written in our hearts to our everlasting comfort, to reform us, to renew us according to thine own image, to build us up, and edify us into the perfect building of thy Christ, sanctifying and increasing in us all heavenly virtues. Grant this, O heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.

In fact, this prayer not only stresses the need for the Spirit, but shows the Trinitarian character of all true heart-reading of the Scriptures. The prayer appeals to the character and promise of the Father. It pleads for the aid of the Spirit in conjunction with the Word of God in order that the Word would reach its proper end in our lives, specifically as it relates to the restoration of the image of God in us (“to renew us according to thine own image”). It also finds ground in the person of Christ, albeit tersely, concluding as it does with an appeal to His merit (“for Jesus Christ’s sake”). However, it also alludes to the glory of Christ as it is magnified in the building of the church through the Word and Spirit (“into the perfect building of thy Christ”).

True heart-reading, thus, does not simply affect us through emotional reactions or moral persuasion, but through the mighty operation of the Triune God. Then heart-reading will have its true end, namely, the consecration of the whole person to the one God who speaks in His Word. That is also where we can and should test whether ours is a genuine heart-reading. As Francis Roberts put it in his Clavis Biblorum [1675]: “The mightiest man in practice, will in the end prove the mightiest man in Scripture. Theory is the guide of Practice, Practice the Life of Theory. Where Scripture contemplation and experience meet both in the same person, true Scripture understanding must needs be heightened and doubled.” [16]

Conclusion

Paul spoke of a veil lying over the hearts of Israel (2 Cor. 3:15), and yet, he expressed the hope that it would one day be taken away. So, too, rationalism has drawn a veil over many hearts. What a glorious thing it would be if the veil of rationalism would be drawn away. By nature, our hearts are closed to the influence of the Word of God, which brings life. Rationalism has proven to be one of those strongholds that need to be torn down as it exalts itself against the knowledge of God (2 Cor. 10:5). It needs to come down through spiritual means, including the discovery and promotion of heart-reading. The arduous and at times even dangerous work of Reformation translators of the Bible was motivated in part by exactly this—their prefaces attest to it. And their hopes were not put to shame: such heart-reading reformed churches and countries. The preface to the King James Version (1611) gives a very fitting description of what God does when Scripture is read in such a way: “God removeth the scales from our eyes, the veil from our hearts, opening our wits that we may understand his word, enlarging our hearts, yea correcting our affections, that we may love it above gold and silver, yea that we may love it to the end.” [17] This is exactly our need today.

Notes

1. Miles Coverdale, et. al, Remains of Myles Coverdale, Bishop of Exeter (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 1846), 16 –17. Just prior to the section quoted, Coverdale writes: “Go to now, most dear reader, and sit thee down at the Lord’s feet, and read his words, and, as Moses teacheth the Jews, take them into thine heart, and let thy talking and communication be of them, when thou sittest in thine house, or goest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” [emphasis mine].
2. Ibid., 21– 22. For a good introduction into the history of the Bible in English, and specifically Reformation Bibles, see David Daniell, The Bible in English: Its History and Influence (New Haven: Yale university Press, 2003).
3. Thankfully, of late there has been an overdue reevaluation of so-called premodern hermeneutics, such as we find in the Reformation of the sixteenth century. See David Curtis Steinmetz, ed., The Bible in the Sixteenth Century (Durham: Duke university Press, 1990); Richard A. Muller and John lee Thompson, eds., Biblical Interpretation in the Era of the Reformation: Essays Presented to David C. Steinmetz in Honor of His Sixtieth Birthday (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996); Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics (vol. 2; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003); Jens Zimmermann, Recovering Theological Hermeneutics: An Incarnational-Trinitarian Theory of Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004).
4. David F. Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 154-75.
5. Zimmermann makes the following important caveat: “Protestant theology itself has aided the secularization of hermeneutics by reducing earlier hermeneutics to the very caricature of naive biblicism that secular accounts of hermeneutic history invoke to establish their claims of superiority and uniqueness” (Zimmermann, Recovering Theological Hermeneutics, 22).
6. Benedictus de Spinoza, and Robert Willis, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (London: Trubner, 1862), 143.
7. Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago: university of Chicago Press, 2008), 205-206. In Hiram Caton’s words: “By bringing reason to consciousness of its inner nature…the Cogito emancipates reason from all restraints of piety” (The Origin of Subjectivity; An Essay on Descartes [New Haven: Yale university Press, 1973], 246).
8. This is not to credit Descartes alone with the revolution in academic inquiry. Alongside Descartes were Bacon, Locke, Newton, Voltaire, and a host of others.
9. See also Deuteronomy 30:10.
10. Wilhelmus à Brakel helpfully comments: “Private interpretation is to assign a meaning to a text which is foreign to Scripture, is not extracted from Scripture, and is the product and conclusion of a person’s own intellect” (Wilhelmus à Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service [Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 1999], 1:48).
11. Alfred W. Pollard, Records of the English Bible, The Documents Relating to the Translation and Publication of the Bible in English, 1525-1611 (London: H. Frowde, 1911), 279– 80 [spelling updated].
12. “Of the Incomparable Treasure of the Holy Scriptures, with a Prayer for the True use of the Same,” in The Bible: translated according to the Hebrew and Greeke, and conferred with the best translations in diuers languages; with most profitable annotations vpon all the hard places, and other things of great importance.... (London: Christopher Barker, 1583), front matter [spelling updated].
13. Pollard, Records of the English Bible, 115-16 [spelling updated].
14. Pollard, Records of the English Bible, 115-16 [spelling updated].
15. “Incomparable Treasure,” in The Bible, front matter [spelling updated].
16. Francis Roberts, Clavis Bibliorum: The Key of the Bible, Unlocking the Richest Treasury of the Holy Scriptures.... Wherein the Scripture-Songs Dispersed Here and There in the Old and New Testament, Are Metrically Translated Out of the Hebrew, and Analytically Explained (London: Printed by J.R. for Peter Parker, 1675), 11.
17. Pollard, Records of the English Bible, 376 [spelling updated].