Sola Survey: “Women of the Word.”
How do we grow in our understanding of the Bible? That’s the question Jen Wilkin seeks to answer in her book, Women of the Word. This survey is not intended to provide a comprehensive summary of Wilkin’s main points. Instead, the goal is to highlight key ways Women of the Word has helped us study the Bible better by looking at principles, pitfalls, and skills for Bible study as presented in Wilkin’s excellent 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 Women of the Word.
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For Wilkin, studying the Bible is a means, not an end. Bible study is “only beneficial insofar as it increases our love for the God it proclaims.” Wilkin envisions our limited understanding of Scripture as a “mountain of ignorance,” which she wants to help us remove so that we can see what’s on the other side: ”a vision of God high and lifted up…stretching from Genesis to Revelation.” We study to know. We study to love.
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How do we obtain this glorious vision of God revealed to us his Word? By developing what Wilkin calls “Bible literacy.” Bible literacy, by Wilkin’s definition, is when “a person has access to a Bible in a language she understands and is steadily moving toward knowledge and understanding of the text.” The “knowledge” and “understanding” she’s referring to, however, are not merely facts that will help someone win Bible trivia. Instead, Bible literacy entails “stitch[ing] patchwork knowledge into a seamless garment of understanding.” We’re not looking for fragmented knowledge of Scripture, a piecemeal awareness of stories and doctrines. Instead we want a comprehensive grasp of Scripture, understanding how all the pieces relate to the whole, and vice versa.
Pitfalls of Bible Study.
Women of the Word is structured around Wilkin’s “5 P’s of Sound Study”: Purpose, Perspective, Patience, Process and Prayer. Each of these P’s represent a positive approach to Bible study. But lurking behind each one is a negative counterpart, or what we might call “The 5 Pitfalls of Unsound Study.
Let’s explore each one and how we might avoid them.
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Wilkin’s first P of Sound Study, Purpose, entails connecting every passage to the “metanarrative” or “Big Story” of the Bible. Because the Bible is a “unified story that leads to Jesus,” it is important for us to recognize each passage’s place in the unfolding narrative. Just as you can’t fully explain a scene from a movie without context from the entire film, so also we can’t understand passages in Scripture without connecting them to the whole story. Failing to do so is a classic example of missing the forest for the trees.
How to Avoid this Pitfall
Gaining a bird’s eye view of Scripture, wherein we see the whole and not just the parts, can be achieved several different ways. You can use a reading plan or One Year Bible to encounter the entirety of Scripture in twelve months. You can read a supplemental book to familiarize yourself with the Bible’s “metanarrative.” You can watch videos from The BibleProject’s extensive library. Or you can do all of the above. The point is, resources abound to help deepen your understanding of the Bible’s “big story,” so you can read any passage of Scripture with an eye towards the entire narrative. -
Studying with Perspective, the second P in Wilkin’s framework, involves “tak[ing] on the perspective of the author and his audience in their original setting.” We are not, Wilkin points out, the original audience of any passage in Scripture. And just as we would seek to understand the historical and cultural context of an era when trying to interpret a historical document, so also we must strive to understand—as best we can—the historical and cultural context in which any book of the Bible was written.
How to Avoid this Pitfall
To gain an understanding of a text’s original function, Wilkin encourages us to answer five key questions about the passage we’re studying: Who wrote it? When was it written? To whom was it written? In what style (or genre) was it written? Why was it written? Asking and answering these questions at the start of any study will provide a solid foundation for understanding the book as a whole. You can also consult the book introductions in a Study Bible or the introduction of a credible commentary to gain a better understanding of a book’s cultural-historical context. -
We live in an age of unprecedented impatience. While enjoying the benefits of Google’s instant answers and Amazon’s two-day shipping, our capacity for delayed gratification withers. And yet, Wilkin tells us, developing Bible literacy requires sustained patience. We need patience when we’re tempted, five minutes into studying a passage, to go online and find our favorite teacher’s explanation of a passage. And we need patience to continue studying the Bible even after we’ve been reading it for decades.
How to Avoid this Pitfall
Impatience can easily become reflexive. We subconsciously train our bodies to grab the nearest device when we experience boredom or confusion. This habitual impatience wreaks havoc on sound Bible study, because such study demands our concentration and attention. The “pomodoro technique” can help. Set a short timer (20 minutes) and only study for that amount of time. When the timer goes off, take a short break (5–10 minutes) and then reset the timer. Continue this pattern until you’re satisfied with your study or you’re out of time. -
Like most activities in life, we can be tempted to study the Bible in our own power, reliant upon our own intellect, education, and intuition. Understanding the Bible is not merely “natural”—it is supernatural. We’re dependent on God’s Spirit to understand God’s Word. Prayer is our way of living into that dependency. Forgetting to pray is a pitfall that positions us for failure.
How to Avoid this Pitfall
Wilkin provides prayers for us to use before, during, and after we study the Bible. We’ve printed out the prayers from this chapter in Women of the Word and tucked them into our Bibles, so they can help us pray whenever we open God’s Word. You can also write prayers of your own to use whenever you open or close God’s Word. -
Building Bible literacy is a group project. Studying Scripture alone is limiting and dangerous. Studying without others confines us to our own understanding of the passage. At Scriptura, we gather as a team for weekly Bible Study because we believe that better understanding comes through group conversation. As we wrestle through a passage together, sharing our perspectives—which come from from our unique backgrounds—we deepen our collective understanding of the passage we’re studying.
How to Avoid this Pitfall
Join a Bible study in your local church. Partner with others in your community and commit to a reading plan together. Read the Bible and discuss it with your spouse or children. These are just some of the ways that we can avoid isolated Bible reading. The point is: don’t read alone. The Bible is communal literature, designed to be read with others.
Skills of Bible Study.
Alongside the principles and pitfalls of Bible Study explored in Women of the Word, Jen Wilkin also provides several skills we can develop to increase our Bible literacy. This goal of this list is not to be comprehensive but to identify the skills in the book we found most helpful.
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This first skill is another way to combat the pitfall of “missing biblical context.” Whenever you study a single passage of Scripture you risk not seeing the forest for the trees. It’s easy to lose sight of the big picture and miss the biblical author’s main thrust. When you begin studying any book of the Bible, read and re-read the book in its entirety several times before diving into particular passages. Such repetitive reading will help you interpret the parts in light of the whole.
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Marking up a copy of the passage you’re studying is an effective practice for gaining a deeper comprehension of the text. Wilkin suggests printing out a copy you’re going to study, so that you can highlight, underline, and write notes in the margins. Several members of our team enjoy using Scripture Journals for this exercise. Some of the features Wilkin suggests marking are: repeated words or ideas; series of ideas; key transition words; words you don’t understand; and questions you have about certain words or phrases.
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Open any commentary and you’ll find an outline of the entire biblical book. This diagram is the author’s attempt to divide the book into sections and synthesize how the many sections work together, forming main-points and sub-points. Wilkin suggests we do the same whenever we’re studying a biblical book. By trying to organize a book’s content into an outline you force yourself to look for “the overall structure and purpose of the text.” The point of this exercise is not to create a definitive representation of the biblical author’s undisclosed structure. Rather the goal is to wrestle with the book’s main ideas and transitions, fitting them together as best we can so we can understand the book a little more.
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Paraphrasing is “the skill of writing someone else’s thoughts in your own words.” Within Wilkin’s framework, paraphrasing is one of the final skills to employ when studying a passage. Once you’ve achieved some level of comprehension, meaning you see what’s being said, you can try to say what’s being said in your own words. Doing so will force you to make sense of the verse and often reveals lingering questions you may still have about the passage.
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The Bible transforms us. Understanding a passage isn’t simply intellectual—it is also moral and emotional. God’s Word challenges our natural human rebellion, reforming us into the image of God’s Son. To that end, Wilkin suggests we ask three questions when applying any passage to our lives:
1. What does this passage teach me about God?2. How does this aspect of God’s character change my view of self?
3. What should I do in response?
These three questions reveal an important point about Wilkin’s view of the Bible—it is a Book about God, not us. This doesn’t mean the Bible doesn’t address us or apply to us, for it certainly does. But we are not the main characters,God is. Our actions are not primary, God’s are. That’s why the first application question isn’t “What should I do?” but “What does this teach me about God?” By beginning our application of Scripture focused on God we respect the God-centeredness of Scripture.
Not just for Women.
Don’t let the title fool you—this book is not for women. Rather, it’s for anyone who wants to develop Bible literacy so they can see God more clearly as he’s revealed himself in his Word. If you’re someone who wants to remove the mountain of ignorance that stands in the way of you seeing Scripture’s grand vision of God presented from Genesis to Revelation, then you will benefit greatly from reading Women of the Word—even if you’re not a woman.