Inductive Bible Study

Inductive Bible Study:
A formal approach to understanding God’s word.
When most Christians read and study the Bible, they apply deductive reasoning. By that I
mean, we read a given passage and then find application from that passage by taking
what we have read and run it through the filters of our doctrinal training. In other words,
we might open to Romans 9, read only Romans 9, and then try to interpret Romans 9
based on what we already know from other Church teaching. (Thus a Calvinist will look
at Romans 9 one way while a Methodist will look at it a completely different way- both
are deducing answers based on doctrines they already hold.)
Inductive Bible Study is far more systematic and requires more work. It also requires us
to lay aside pre-taught doctrine as best we can so we can read the Bible on its own terms.
This process is hard work, but it leads to the richest possible intellectual understanding of
God’s Holy Word which should, in term, lead us to a richer walk with Christ.
In essence, Inductive Bible Study involves three steps:
I. Observation:
In observation, the goal is to let the Bible speak for itself. It requires us to pay careful
attention to the wording of a given passage as well as the context of that passage in the
Book of the Bible it is found in, and then again understanding how that book of the Bible
relates to the rest of Scripture.
Thus before we begin step one, a few realities emerge. One, Inductive Bible Study works
best when we use a word-for-word translation or at least when we use a highly scholarly
thought-for-thought translation.
Secondly, Inductive Bible Study is a way to work through a whole book of the Bible. I
don’t mean that one must work through a book of the Bible in one setting. Rather, I mean
that once you start a book of the Bible, there you will be until you are done with that
book. This can take weeks or months depending on how much work you do every day.
Third, to do Inductive Bible Study well, one needs some degree of understanding of how
the individual books of the Bible fit together. You need to know when a book was
written, who wrote it, and who the original audience was. You also need to know the
genre of the book so that you will know how to understand it. (Psalms and Proverbs are
poetic in nature while Acts and 1 Kings are historical works. Poetry has a very different
way of communicating truth than historical prose.)
Forth, you need to work from an outline of the book you are studying so you may divide
it into sensible sections. This will help guide your work.
Bible Handbooks, Bible Encyclopedias, and Study Bibles can give you the tools you need
to accomplish steps three and four. Just be aware that such resources can be prone to
espousing a particular theological viewpoint. Works crafted by teams of scholars from a
diverse background avoid this. For instance, the NIV Study Bible and the ESV Study
Bible are reasonably broad and unbiased where as the Lutheran Study Bible, the
Wesleyan Study Bible and the Tim LeHaye Prophecy Study Bible are all slanted to their
respective theological viewpoints. At this stage, we want to look only at notes having to
do with grammar, word meanings, archeological and cultural issues, and possibly maps.
Once you have your book selected, the genre figured out, and an outline to guide you,
you are ready to begin.
Read through the passage at hand and write down observations and questions about what
the text says on the most basic level. Who are the main actors? What is happening? What
is the meaning of a given word or phrase?
II. Interpretation:
As you make your initial observations and research answer to your questions, now you
may go from understanding what the text says to understanding what it meant in its
original context. How would the original audience have understood this passage? How
does it fit within the context of the Book? How does it compare to other parts of the
Bible? What theological principles or doctrines are at work here?
As you work through the interpretation phase, you may find it helpful to consult
commentaries or study notes which focus on interpretation. It is less critical to avoid
theologically slanted material at this stage, though I encourage you to consider multiple
points of view. God may correct your understanding through the words of someone from
a different denomination or theological background.
III. Application:
Now that you know what the passage says, and what it meant to the original author and
audience, you are ready to ask what it means to you. Is God speaking to you? How
should you live differently in light of what you have learned? Does this change the way
you relate to God? To others around you?

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Inductive Bible Study:

A formal approach to understanding God’s word.

In essence, Inductive Bible Study involves three steps:

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