How can anyone legitimately say that their interpretation is more accurate than others?

Christians really do disagree about baptism, Genesis, and the end of the world, so the objection starts from a fact. The trouble is the conclusion drawn from it: that no reading can be better than another.

1. The claim refutes itself. “No interpretation is more accurate than another” is itself an interpretation, and it is being offered to you as the more accurate one. If the claim is true, then it is false. If it is false, we are back to comparing readings — which is all the Christian ever claimed.

2. Everyone interprets, including you. You are interpreting this sentence right now: inferring what I meant from grammar, word order, and context. Interpretation is not a disease peculiar to Bible readers; it is what understanding language consists of. The only question is whether we do it carefully or carelessly.

3. Some readings are plainly better. “The cat sat on the mat” does not mean the mat sat on the cat. No one hesitates over that in ordinary conversation. The same tools — grammar, context, genre, authorial intent — settle most disputes about Scripture, and where they do not, the problem is usually missing information, not missing meaning.

4. Careful reading is a commanded discipline. Paul tells Timothy to be “a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). The word “rightly” presupposes a wrong way. The Bereans were commended for examining the Scriptures daily “to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11) — a method, not a mood.

5. Scripture interprets Scripture. Clearer passages shed light on harder ones, and the canon gives any single book its setting. This is not a license for stringing verses together; it is the opposite — the whole context governs the part. The church has used the method for centuries precisely because it constrains private fancy.

6. The Spirit guides, but not into private infallibility. Jesus promised that the Spirit would guide his followers “into all the truth” (John 16:13). Yet the New Testament records Paul opposing Peter to his face at Antioch (Galatians 2:11) and a council arguing out a doctrinal crisis in Acts 15. Guidance is real; a guarantee that every individual reader gets everything right is not.

7. The essentials were settled in public. The creeds did not appear because no one disagreed. They appeared because the Trinity, the incarnation, the resurrection, and salvation by grace were contested, and the church answered from the text, in the open, over centuries. That is what a tradition of interpretation looks like when it is doing its job.

8. Disagreement about details doesn't erase meaning. Historians dispute the date of the Battle of Hastings while agreeing it happened. Scholars dispute what Hamlet means while agreeing the play exists. Disputes about Genesis or Revelation no more disprove the gospel than those disputes disprove the events.

9. The objection assumes the standard it denies. To call one reading illegitimate because it claims accuracy, you need a notion of accuracy. And in practice the challenger usually does rank readings — judging a wooden literalism worse than a historically informed one. That ranking is the whole point being conceded.

10. Confidence should track the evidence. Where Scripture is clear and the church has consistently agreed, hold firm. Where it is not, hold loosely and say so. James 4:6 says God “gives grace to the humble,” and intellectual humility is part of that — but humility is not the same as having no view.

The real choice is never between interpretation and no interpretation. It is between careful reading and careless reading. And the fact that Christians argue about the details, with reasons and texts, only makes sense if some readings really are better than others.

Sources: D.A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies; Michael J. Kruger, Canon Revisited; Kevin Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?.

Related challenges:
• The existence of so many Christian denominations indicates the Bible to be inherently unclear. If truly God’s revelation, could we not expect that He would reveal Himself clearly?
• So you believe in a book full of contradictions, one that endorses slavery, incest, murder, drowning babies, genocide and stoning homosexuals?
• Now if Jesus is God and God cannot be tempted, does it not follow that Jesus cannot be tempted? Yet Matthew 4 clearly presents the temptation of Christ, and thus embroils us in another BIBLICAL CONTRADICTION. Doesn’t it?!