Reformed Hermeneutics: A Christ-Centered Approach to Biblical Interpretation

Why do sincere, Bible-believing Christians often arrive at different interpretations of the same passage of Scripture? The answer does not lie first in a lack of reverence for the Bible, but in how the Bible is read. Over time, I have found that most disagreements arise not from indifference to Scripture, but from differing assumptions about how it should be read. Every theological disagreement is downstream from interpretive presuppositions.

Hermeneutics is the science of biblical interpretation.¹ It’s the lens through which the Word of God is received and confessed by the church.

Reformed hermeneutics refers to the historic, confessional method of biblical interpretation practiced by the Reformers and codified in the Reformed confessions. It begins with the conviction that Scripture is not a neutral object awaiting human mastery, but inerrant divine speech.

The Reformed view of Scripture is that God has spoken and His Word carries its own authority and clarity. Interpretation, therefore, is not an act of control but of attentive listening. We seek to hear what God has said instead of imposing our own ideas upon the text.

Scripture as the Speech of God

Reformed hermeneutics begins not with a method, but with a confession: what Scripture says, God says (Romans 9:17). Before we ask how to interpret the Bible, we confess what the Bible is.

Scripture is divine truth (John 17:17). Its authority does not arise from the church, the interpreter, or religious experience, but from God Himself. Because Scripture is God’s Word, it possesses an inherent authority and clarity that obligates belief and obedience.

Scripture is not a collection of religious reflections awaiting human approval, but divine speech given for the salvation and instruction of God’s people (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

From Confession to Method

If Scripture is truly the Word of God, it cannot be read as a collection of disconnected texts. God does not contradict Himself, nor does He speak in fragments that require external authorities to supply coherence (Numbers 23:19). The unity of divine authorship therefore demands a unified manner of interpretation (2 Peter 1:20-21).

At the same time, this unity never negates the reality that every biblical text possesses a real and determinate meaning, rooted in its historical, grammatical, and literary context. Reformed hermeneutics insists upon honoring the genuine intent of the human authors, even as their words participate in a fuller divine intention that unfolds across redemptive history (1 Peter 1:10-12).

The Grammatical-Historical Method

Reformed hermeneutics affirms the grammatical-historical method is an essential component of faithful biblical exegesis. Because Scripture is the inspired Word of God given through human authors writing in real situations, words, genre (apocalyptic, poetic, narrative), and context matter.

Yet Reformed theology has never treated the grammatical-historical method as sufficient in itself. By itself it risks narrowing interpretation to the horizon of the human writers alone, forgetting that God is the ultimate Author who superintends all of Scripture. For this reason, the Reformed hermeneutic cannot be equated with the dispensational hermeneutic, for the two proceed from fundamentally different theological commitments.

For this reason, passages must be read in light of the whole of Scripture. Later revelation clarifies earlier revelation, promises grow clearer as God’s plan unfolds, and every text fits within the larger story of redemption (Hebrews 1:1-2). The grammatical-historical method is indispensable, but it is not the end-all and be-all that determines the final meaning of Scripture.

Scripture Interprets Scripture

The governing principle of Reformed hermeneutics is that Scripture interprets Scripture.

The Westminster Confession of Faith (1.9) summarizes this principle:

The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself: and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly.2

Not everything in Scripture is equally plain, nor is every passage equally central (2 Peter 3:16). Yet obscurity does not imply contradiction. More difficult passages must be interpreted in light of clearer ones, and individual texts must be read within the context of the whole canon.

By literal interpretation, Reformed theology does not mean a wooden or isolated literalism, but interpretation according to authorial intent as expressed through grammar, genre, and historical context. The question is not whether Scripture should be read literally, but whether literal interpretation can be isolated from Scripture’s own canonical context and self-interpreting unity.

Michael Horton captures this principle well when he writes:

Scripture interprets Scripture, and we learn the meaning of the whole canon of Scripture by studying its parts and the meaning of its parts by studying the whole. We have to interpret the more difficult passages in the light of clearer ones.3

This principle that Scripture interprets Scripture guards against the argument that theological disagreements proves Scripture’s incoherence. The problem is not that Scripture contains contradictions, but that readers sometimes isolate texts from the broader witness of Scripture.

Divine and Human Authorship

The authority of Scripture does not negate its humanity (Luke 1:1-4). God, the primary Author, chose to reveal His Word through human writers, employing their personalities, vocabularies, and historical circumstances (2 Peter 1:21).

In causing His Word to be written, God used human authors as true secondary authors, fully engaging the range of their abilities while preserving them from error (2 Timothy 3:16).

Because Scripture is both divine and human, faithful interpretation must attend carefully to grammar, genre, history, and context. But Reformed hermeneutics refuses to sever the human author from the divine Author and to confine meaning to the limits of immediate historical perspective.

The Analogy of Faith

Reformed hermeneutics insists that no passage of Scripture may be interpreted in a way that contradicts the overall teaching of Scripture (Psalm 119:160). This is known as the analogy of faith.

Herman Bavinck defines it succinctly:

Scripture interprets itself; the obscure texts are explained by the plain ones, and the fundamental ideas of Scripture as a whole serve to clarify the parts.4

Every verse and passage of Scripture stands within a wider biblical context. No text yields its full and proper meaning when severed from the book in which it appears or from the testimony of Scripture as a whole.

For this reason, historical and cultural context does not threaten faithful interpretation but deepens it, enabling the reader to hear the text as God intended it to be heard.

Redemptive-Historical Awareness

Scripture is not a collection of detached propositions, but an organic whole unfolding through history according to God’s redemptive purpose (Ephesians 1:9-10).

Geerhardus Vos describes this beautifully when he writes:

The genuine believer takes the whole of Scripture as a living organism produced by the Holy Spirit to present Christ to him. On every page of Scripture, he finds traits and traces of the Mediator.5

This organic unity means that Scripture is rightly understood only when each part is read in relation to the whole, with Christ Himself as its living center (Luke 24:44).

Christ at the Center of All Scripture

Christ-centered interpretation doesn’t place Jesus as one topic amongst many other biblical themes. He is the interpretive center. The whole of Scripture bears witness to Him (John 5:39).

Martin Luther memorably described the Scriptures as “the swaddling clothes and the manger in which Christ lies.”⁶

Christ-centered reading neither denies the integrity of individual texts nor rests on allegory or spiritualization. Rather, it confesses that the fullest coherence of Scripture emerges within the redemptive whole to which Christ Himself bears witness. Christ is not read into Scripture arbitrarily. He is revealed as the goal toward which Scripture itself moves.

Iain Duguid writes:

When we interpret the Old Testament correctly, without allegory or artificial manipulation but in accordance with Jesus’s own teaching, the central message on every page is Christ.7

Jesus Himself authorizes this hermeneutic when He interprets Moses and the Prophets as speaking of Him (Luke 24:27).

Covenant as Architecture

In contrast to the dispensational hermeneutic, Reformed theology is covenant theology. God’s saving purposes unfold through covenantal administrations that together constitute the one covenant of grace (Galatians 3:17).

This covenantal framework must be drawn from Scripture rather than imposed upon it, and it must never replace careful attention to individual texts.

Many Bible commentators rightly emphasize careful attention to historical context and textual restraint, that is, a refusal to press a passage beyond what its words and context warrant. Reformed covenant theology affirms these concerns while also insisting that Scripture itself reveals an organic unity that cannot be reduced to disconnected economies or isolated promises (Romans 3:21-22). There is no canon within the canon. All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable.

Typology as Covenant Fulfillment

Because God unfolds His covenant purposes through real historical acts, Scripture itself teaches us to read earlier redemptive events as divinely intended patterns that move toward fulfillment in Christ (Romans 5:14; Colossians 2:16-17; 1 Corinthians 10:6).

Reformed hermeneutics therefore understands typology not as imaginative symbolism or retrospective creativity, but as a mode of interpretation grounded in God’s sovereign ordering of redemptive history. Biblical types are real persons, institutions, and events, established by God to foreshadow greater realities revealed in Christ.

Typology honors the historical integrity of these earlier realities while recognizing that their fullest meaning is disclosed only as God’s redemptive purposes unfold across the canon. The exodus from Egypt, for example, was a real act of deliverance for Israel, and also a pattern of redemption that finds its ultimate fulfillment in Christ’s saving work (1 Corinthians 10:1-4). Typology is not allegory or abstraction, but history read according to God’s own design.

The Priority of the New Testament

Later revelation does not contradict earlier revelation, but clarifies and fulfills it (Matthew 5:17). The priority of the New Testament is therefore not a priority of authority over the Old Testament, but a priority of clarity within the progress of revelation.

As G. K. Beale rightly observes, the interpretive presuppositions employed by the New Testament writers to understand the Old Testament serve as a guide for Christians interpreting the Old Testament.⁸ This does not mean that the New Testament overrides or corrects the Old Testament, but that it models how God intended the Old Testament to be read all along.

Jesus Himself establishes this hermeneutical priority when He teaches that the Scriptures bear witness about Him (John 5:39).

Conclusion: Hermeneutics in Service of Christ

Reformed hermeneutics is, at the end of the day, an act of attentive obedience — listening for what God has said.

Herman Bavinck captures the heart of this task with characteristic clarity when he writes:

It is the knowledge of him alone that dogmatics must put on display.9

To read Scripture rightly is to read it as the living speech of God, always pointing to His Son who saves.

Footnotes