Sola Survey: “Seven Arrows.”
Do you often rely on sermons and devotionals to understand the Bible? Are the Bible study methods you’ve learned too complex or difficult to remember? Matt Rogers, pastor of Christ Fellowship Cherrydale in Greenville, SC, developed the seven arrows framework to solve these all-too-common problems. Hoping to provide his friend a “tool…to study the Bible on his own for the rest of his life,” Matt wrote seven questions, each accompanied by an arrow pointing in a different direction. These seven questions, when we seek to answer them, can become a simple (though not simplistic) process for studying Scripture.
The seven arrows are:
What does this passage say?
What did this passage mean to its original audience?
What does this passage tell us about God?
What does this passage tell us about man?
What does this passage demand of me?
How does this passage change the way I relate to people?
How does this passage prompt me to pray to God?
This survey is not intended to provide a comprehensive summary of the authors’ main points. Instead, the goal is to highlight principles, pitfalls, and skills for Bible study presented in the book.
Principles of Bible Study.
Underlying any method of studying the Bible are fundamental beliefs that, when adopted, will guide a student’s study of Scripture. Here are two key principles we found in Seven Arrows.
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“God is not concerned with simply fixing our problems,” the Rogers and his co-author, Donny Mathis, write. “He is concerned with seeing us transformed by the work of his Spirit so that we worship him rightly and give our lives to see others do the same.” When we open our Bibles, then, our aim is “not to gain knowledge about the Bible but to be transformed by it.” We read, not just to know, but to experience change.
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Why is Bible reading so important? Because it is the God-ordained means given to transform us by the Spirit. Rogers and Mathis argue there is a “direct correlation…between a person’s intake of the scripture and his conformity to the image of Christ.” In other words, more meaningful contact with the Bible results in greater conformity to Christ. Likewise, less meaningful contact means less conformity. This is the way God ordains to transform us: “there are no shortcuts nor alternative methods for transformation.”
Pitfalls of Bible Study.
Throughout Seven Arrows, Rogers and Mathis issue warnings and identify faulty approaches to reading Scripture. While they do not list these dangers the way they’re categorized below, we believe our list accurately reflects some of the pitfalls they warn against.
Let’s explore each one and how we might avoid them.
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Rogers developed the seven arrows framework to help a friend read the Bible without “depend[ing] on someone else to do the work for him.” Such over-reliance can take on numerous forms: listening to sermons, reading commentaries, talking with friends, or watching videos online. These resources usually feel harmless, even beneficial. But when they replace personal engagement with Scripture, whereby we open the Bible for ourselves, they become perilous rather than productive.
How to Avoid this Pitfall.
Avoiding this pitfall is, in essence, the very reason Seven Arrows exists. The arrows, Rogers believes, can serve us in a way that a “devotional guide” can’t—leading us away from “depend[ing] on a middleman to help [us] read the Bible.” Read the book or watch the videos to learn Rogers’ method. The arrows, which are questions that direct our reading of and response to Scripture, are a good place to begin weaning yourself off secondhand knowledge and gaining firsthand experience instead. -
Rogers and Mathis want us to know that nothing in Seven Arrows “should cause you to study the Bible in isolation.” At a glance, this second pitfall may seem in conflict with the first—do Rogers and Mathis want us to seek help from others or not? While they tell us to read the Bible for ourselves they also don’t want us to read the Bible alone. How can we reconcile these seemingly inconsistent prescriptions? The answer relates to our sequence of study: first alone, then with others. The authors want us to read the Bible for ourselves before reading it with others.
How to Avoid this Pitfall
The seven arrows framework provides a helpful guide to determine when you should seek the help of others while studying a passage. The answer is somewhat simple—consult outside opinions after you walk through the seven arrows yourself. Once you’ve sufficiently answered each of the seven arrow questions to the best of your ability, turn to others—whether in books and videos or in-person—for help. -
Many people, the authors believe, struggle to read the Bible because they mistakenly think “the key to the story is me,” when in fact the story is all about God. Unlocking the Bible’s riches will not happen by looking, first and foremost, for ourselves in Scripture. Instead, we understand the transformative message of the Bible when we look, primarily, for God.
How to Avoid this Pitfall
This pitfall should serve as a litmus test for the legitimacy of our interpretation. “If your answers [to the first two arrows] do not include something about the triune God,” Rogers and Mathis write, “[then] you probably need to aim again.” When reading the Bible, we should never walk away without trying to identify the character of God presented in the pages. -
For those of us who attended Sunday School as children, we may have inherited a counter-productive way to read Bible stories. We should not, Rogers and Matthis warn, “fall into the trap of making the characters of the Bible stories the focus of the text.” The men and women featured in the Bible are not primarily examples to follow (or avoid). They are not like the characters in Aesop’s fables, created to teach a moral lesson. They are, instead, featured to teach us about the human condition—wherein people are “made in God’s image…sinners in rebellion…[and] new creations in Christ.”
How to Avoid this Pitfall
When interpreting a passage, especially a narrative, look for God’s activity as the primary action. He’s the main character, the main actor, the center of the story. Understanding God’s character and the way he relates to humans should precede our anaylsis of the characters we encounter in Scripture. -
As we’ve already seen, sequence matters. This principle especially applies to the fifth arrow: What does this passage demand of me? Too often, the authors note, we open our Bibles and ask this question first. The problem, once again, is the order not the question. We can and should ask this question but it should never precede some of the other questions presented in the seven arrows framework. If the Bible, as we’ve already established, is God-centered, then our first question should never be “what does this passage say about me?”
How to Avoid this Pitfall
We naturally insert ourselves into everything we read. Such a tendency makes avoiding this pitfall more difficult. Because this trap involves sequence, avoiding it requires a clear sense of order and progression. When you’re tempted to start applying a passage to your own life and circumstances, ask yourself: Do I know what this passage says about God and the nature of man? If you’re unable to answer these two questions, return to the previous arrows before you begin applying the text to yourself.
Skills of Bible Study.
Alongside the principles and pitfalls of Bible study explored in Seven Arrows, Rogers and Mathis also provide several skills we can develop to increase our Bible literacy. According to them: “Your pastor is not necessarily a genius. He has just developed skills for reading the Bible well.” We need to develop these same skills in order to properly answer the prompts provided by the seven arrows. Four specific skills stood out from the ones presented in the book:
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The first arrow asks: What does this passage say? Answering this question reveals whether or not we comprehend the author’s words. In order to gain this comprehension, Rogers and Mathis provide a set of “tools” we can use to observe any passage. These tools represent features of the text that demand special attention. They are: genre; repetition of words and themes; comparisons; figures of speech; action; phrases and clauses; conversations; lists; and an author’s tone.
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While the Bible was written for us, it wasn’t written to us—at least, not as its original readers. Thousands of years and a major cultural gap exist between us and those who first read (or heard) Scripture. This distance of time and custom means we often need help understanding the finer details of a passage we’re studying. Thankfully, there are men and women who have committed their lives to helping us understand these features. Rogers and Mathis point to five important resources we should use to help us grasp the background of any biblical book: cross-references; maps; Bible dictionaries; New and Old Testament surveys; and commentaries. Cross-references connect any passage “to other texts in the biblical story.” Maps help us trace “the historical narratives of the Bible.” And dictionaries, surveys, and commentaries show “how historcial-cultural information might impact our understanding” of a passage.
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We connect our lives to the Bible’s message by applying it correctly, completely, and consistently. Applying the Bible correctly, the authors suggest, requires an “if-then” logical response to the meaning of a passage: if the passage means X, then I must Y. Applying the Bible completely means we identify the ways a passage impacts the whole person, leading to knowledge-based applications (e.g., “I should know God provides”), heart-based applications (e.g., ”I should trust God”), and behavior-based applications (e.g., ”I should not worry”). Applying the Bible consistently, finally, demands we open our Bibles every day and meet with God’s people in worship every week.
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The final arrow asks, What does this passage prompt me to pray? This last question often goes overlooked, as we close our Bibles and hurry into the day, content with some new knowledge or point of application. But if Scripture is revelation, God revealing himself to us, then it is communication—and we must respond. Rogers and Mathis give us two ways to pray Scripture: repetition and composition. Repetition refers to praying a passage back to God. We can pray in this way by repeating a Psalm or statement about God’s character or by turning exhortations and commands into prayers, asking God to sanctify us in the ways the passage sets forth. Composition, on the other hand, refers to prayers we write from the truths discovered when studying Scripture. Following the progression of the seven arrows, you can: “start by praying something that is true (Arrow 1 and 2)…move to adoration of God’s character and worth (Arrow 3)…acknowledge your own brokenness and neediness (Arrow 4)…ask God to change your heart so that you can obey the command found in the passage (Arrow 5)…[and] conclude with a missional prayer—asking God to use you to communicate his glory to others (Arrow 6).” When you pray a composed pray, shaped by the other six arrows, you will “declare things to be true, affirm the worth of God, admit your need for his grace, and shape your heart for missionary living.”
Teach a Man to Aim.
“Imagine what would happen if every local church was filled with people who were meaningfully reading God’s Word and seeking to help one another apply it to their lives each week.” This is the movement Rogers and Mathis hope the seven arrows can spark in our communities. The arrows, they imagine, will serve our everyday engagement with Scripture more than sermons and devotionals. A fish is to fishing lessons what a sermon is to the seven arrows—one feeds for a day, the other feeds for life. By teaching us how to “aim our arrows” more accurately, Rogers and Mathis have better equipped us for a lifetime of feasting on God’s Word.