Dan McClellan, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me, Alex. I appreciate it.

What do people get most wrong about using the Bible in order to instruct how we live today,

our ethical ideas, our practices, that kind of stuff?

There's an awful lot, but I think the thing that undergirds probably the majority of the misuse of the Bible in order to try to instruct behavior is the presupposition of univocality, the notion that it all speaks from one single unified perspective and with one single unified voice, meaning that it can't ever disagree with

itself. And I think that is distorting because if you are presupposing that there is always a single

answer to every question in the Bible and it all agrees with itself, in order to actually overcome the

pluriformity and the disagreement that's actually in the Bible, you have to impose some

kind of unifying framework on it. And that's pretty, and because a lot of that is going on

subconsciously, that overwhelmingly is going to result in you reading what you want into the Bible.

You're going to give priority to the passages that agree with your worldview and your identity

politics. And then those that don't, those that complicate or undermine your worldview or

your identity politics, you're going to reinterpret them, you're going to subordinate them

to the passages that you're centering, you're going to ignore them. And ultimately, you're going to read

into the Bible what you want to get out of the Bible. I think that's a product of that

presupposition of univocality that is so common, not only among folks who are believers in the Bible,

but even when folks who are not believers in the Bible, try to engage folks who are believers in the Bible, but even when folks who are not believers

in the Bible, try to engage folks who are believers in the Bible, there's always, there's a tendency

to kind of operate from that presupposition of univocality, which I think is problematic in a lot

of ways.

I'm confused by this, because I thought 2 Timothy 316 told us that whole scripture is

inspired by God, right?

...