Meaning Is Use: What Wittgenstein Offers Biblical Exegesis

Ludwig Wittgenstein isn’t exactly a household name in biblical studies. A 20th-century philosopher known for long silences, he might seem an odd conversation partner for anyone studying biblical hermeneutics. Modern biblical exegesis, however, potentially has a lot to gain by sitting with Wittgenstein for a while.

 He wasn’t a theologian, but Wittgenstein thought deeply about language; how it works, how it shapes the world, and what its limits are. And language is, after all, the very substance of our Scriptures. So, let’s explore five ways Wittgenstein can refresh, and challenge our approach to interpreting the Bible.

1. Meaning Is Use

Perhaps Wittgenstein’s most famous claim is:

‘For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we employ the word “meaning” it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language (Philosophical Investigations , §43)

This is huge for exegesis. Instead of assuming that biblical words carry fixed meanings we can unlock with a dictionary, Wittgenstein reminds us to ask:

• How was this word used in its literary and historical context?

• What kind of thing is this text doing in its original setting?

• What role did it play in its community?

When reading the Bible, we’re not just translating vocabulary; we’re decoding usage, tone, and purpose within a culture very different from ours. Exegesis, then, becomes less like cracking a code and more like learning to inhabit a different culture.

2. Language Games and Forms of Life

Wittgenstein introduced the idea of ‘language games’: each type of discourse (legal, poetic, liturgical, everyday speech) has its own rules, logic, and meaning-making patterns. And every language game is rooted in a ‘form of life’ – the practices, assumptions, and habits of a community.

For biblical interpretation it means that reading a psalm isn’t the same as reading a proverb, which isn’t the same as reading Leviticus or Revelation. These aren’t just different genres, they are different language games, emerging from different forms of life. We misunderstand them if we treat them all as doctrinal propositions or modern-style narratives.

Understanding the social world behind the text isn’t optional. In Wittgensteinian terms, exegesis is not just about reading texts, but entering language-games of religion, worship, lament, law, resistance, and culture.

3. The Limits of Language

In his earlier work Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein famously concluded:

‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’ (1961, proposition 7)

 He later complicated this view, but the insight remains valuable for theology in that some realities cannot be spoken about neatly. The Bible often hints at mystery more than it defines doctrine. It uses metaphor, poetry, paradox, even silence to speak of God.

Wittgenstein helps us hold this tension. He invites us to see where the text gestures beyond itself and warns us against reducing everything to systematic clarity. A truly theological reading of Scripture might need to make peace with ambiguity and the boundaries of language.

4. Exegesis as Therapeutic

 Later in life, Wittgenstein came to see philosophy not as constructing systems but as untangling confusions. He saw his task as therapeutic; identifying where we’ve tied ourselves in knots and helping us out of them. What if exegesis could do the same?

 Instead of squeezing every passage into a theological framework or extracting a tidy moral lesson, we might ask: 

• What assumptions are we bringing to this text?

• What modern categories are distorting what it's trying to say?

• Where are we making Scripture answer questions it never intended to pose?

 This approach can be liberating. It helps us read Scripture more patiently, humbly, and faithfully.

5. Meaning Is Social

 Finally, Wittgenstein reminds us that meaning isn’t just private or intellectual — it’s social. Words work because we agree on them. Understanding happens in relationship, within a community and its shared practices.

 This has profound implications for biblical interpretation. It warns against lone-wolf readings or hyper-individualistic ‘what this means to me’ approaches. It also invites the whole church across cultures and centuries to become conversation partners.

Reading with New Eyes

 Of course, bringing Wittgenstein to the biblical table isn’t without challenges. His philosophy is deeply shaped by a 20th-century European context. He offers little about revelation, divine authority, or the theological distinctiveness of the Bible. His method isn’t a hermeneutic of faith, it’s a philosophical analysis of language. We can’t use Wittgenstein uncritically, but we also shouldn’t ignore the tools he offers.  

In the end, Wittgenstein helps us read more carefully, more contextually, and more honestly. He pushes us to honour the texture of Scripture; its poetry, its peculiarities, ad its place in a world not our own.

The task of exegesis isn’t to make the Bible sound like us, but to learn to listen to the sounds it makes independently of us. This starts by paying attention to the language games we play, and the lives they shape.