Book of Rules: Duane W.H. Arnold, PhD

Book of Rules

Evangelicals often approach the Bible as though it were a book of rules, a kind of divinely mandated compliance manual. The reasons for this are complex. They are rooted in the particular history of Protestantism in America, in the anxieties of a movement that has long struggled with questions of authority, and in a cultural context that prefers certainty over nuance. However, the story is not simply historical or sociological. It is profoundly theological, bound up with deeper questions about how Christians understand Scripture, the life of the Church, and the nature of discipleship.

I remember once sitting with an older evangelical pastor who had become something of a mentor to a young man in his congregation. The young man had grown increasingly anxious about discerning God’s will. He had begun treating Scripture as though each verse were a coded directive. After listening to his concerns, the pastor finally said, “You keep asking what God’s rule is for your life. Have you ever stopped to consider what God’s grace is for your life?” It was a simple question, but afterward the pastor confessed to me that he wished someone had asked him the same thing when he was twenty-five. His formation, like that of so many evangelicals, had trained him to assume the Bible spoke in commands long before it spoke in promises.

Moreover, this instinct for rule-reading reflects the collapse of other sources of Christian authority. When the Reformation challenged abuses in the medieval Church, many Protestant communities did not merely correct the excesses; they abandoned the structures—liturgical, sacramental, and ecclesial—that helped Christians discern Scripture within a living tradition. In the centuries that followed, revivalism further reduced the faith to individual experience. The Bible had to bear the weight of authority alone. A text meant to be read in the communal rhythm of the Church became the solitary arbiter of doctrine, ethics, and piety. A people deprived of a rich ecclesial culture inevitably began to demand “clear rules.” Authority, if it was to exist at all, had to be printed on the page.

This craving for certainty hardened during the Enlightenment, where evangelicals, despite their protests, absorbed the surrounding intellectual habits. Truth came to be conceived as a set of propositions. A valid claim was one that could be expressed literally, precisely, and without ambiguity. Consider how frequently one still hears the phrase “the plain meaning of Scripture,” as though Scripture came to us in the idiom of a technical manual rather than in poetry, prophecy, lament, apocalyptic vision, and the long, meandering story of a covenant people. Augustine himself warned against such reductionism: “If you think you have understood the divine Scriptures, yet do not build up possession of the twofold love of God and neighbor, you have not yet understood.” Evangelicalism has rarely taken that admonition seriously; clarity is preferred to charity.

The cost of this approach becomes most evident when Scripture is invoked to police behavior. In the absence of mature catechesis or sacramental practice, rules function as the quickest method of creating boundaries. Pastors and lay leaders alike discover that it is easier to marshal a verse to prohibit something than to form a community of genuine discernment. I recall one congregation in the Midwest where the pastoral leadership, anxious about cultural change, built an entire discipleship program around what they called “Biblical Standards.” The program included a three-page list of offenses. It had no section on prayer, none on virtue, none on the fruits of the Spirit. It was rules without formation, law without grace. The pastors were sincere. They believed they were preserving the faith. However, they had confused control for faithfulness.

Furthermore, once evangelicalism became politically mobilized, the rule-reading habit intensified. A Bible that speaks through parable and paradox cannot easily be weaponized. A Bible that commands is far more convenient. The movement’s deep entanglement with American power structures—particularly around issues of sexuality, gender, and national identity—required a Scripture that delivered univocal answers. Political projects cannot tolerate interpretive subtlety. They require slogans. They require verses that can be ripped from context and placed on billboards. They require a Bible that behaves more like a statute book than the library of inspired texts that the Church has always confessed it to be.

This politicized hermeneutic has also shaped evangelical attitudes toward difficult and contested moral questions such as sexuality and abortion. A movement that once wrestled earnestly with the complexities of Christian moral reasoning increasingly treats these matters as litmus tests of biblical fidelity. The debate over sexuality, for example, has been reframed not as a pastoral encounter with real human lives but as a stark contest between obedience and apostasy. Evangelicals often assume that only a rule can preserve the moral order, because they have never been taught a theology of discernment, embodiment, or the long tradition of Christian moral reflection. The same impulse affects the abortion debate. A witness that should be rooted in the sanctity of life, in justice, and in mercy is frequently reduced to a single legislative demand.  Yet, the biblical witness on human dignity, the body, procreation, covenant love, and the care owed to the most vulnerable is far richer and more demanding than any single rule could capture. However, when sexuality and abortion become symbols of political purity, rule-based readings become inevitable. It is not that these issues require a rule-book Bible. In fact, the opposite is the case, but they have been reshaped into rules because evangelicals already read the Bible that way.

The deeper tragedy is pastoral. Many evangelicals genuinely desire to be obedient. They want to honor God. They are trying to live faithfully in a culture that feels increasingly unstable. However, a community deprived of sacramental imagination, historical memory, and the patient disciplines of prayer will inevitably reduce obedience to rule-keeping. The Bible becomes a checklist instead of a school of wonder. The Gospel becomes a demand rather than an invitation. A faith rooted in the reconciling love of God becomes a faith anxious about whether one has checked the correct boxes.

There is an old saying: “Scripture is shallow enough for a lamb to wade and deep enough for an elephant to swim.” Evangelicals, however, have been taught to wade when the waters are deep. Scripture beckons us into the depths: into story, into mystery, into the slow, patient work of wisdom. The Bible is given not to furnish us with a list of divine instructions, but to form us as a people who know how to recognize the voice of the Shepherd. God does not want merely compliant followers. God desires a reconciled people, capable of love.

If evangelicalism is to rediscover Scripture, it will not be by doubling down on rules. It will be by recovering the Church’s ancient way of reading: a way that trusts the narrative, honors the poetry, listens for the Spirit, and understands that truth is not only a matter of correctness but of communion. The Bible is not a rulebook. It is the story of God drawing near. It is the story that redraws the boundaries of our lives until they are shaped not by rules, but by wisdom and grace.

Duane W.H. Arnold, PhD