Spiritual Guidance through Bible Reading - Lectio Divina and Bible Tongdok

Abstract

This paper explored the way to guide the spiritual growth through the Bible reading. Apostle Paul taught that faith comes from hearing by the Word of God. Christian faith starts from believing in God in the Bible and grows by acting according to the Words in the Bible. Thus, faith shall ground from the Gospel of the Bible. It starts from the Gospel of the Bible and continuously grows in the Bible. The early church leaders explored a way of spiritual growth which is called Lectio Divina. ‘Lectio Divina,’ is a reading that is fundamentally distinguished from philosophical-theological studies, annotation, and secular readings. The practical meaning of Lectio Divina is a way of reading and meditating the Bible, which could lead to prayers. The meditation becomes prayer and allows the reader to connect to the Word in concrete ways. It is an effective method for deep meditation and prayers. Nevertheless, there are still limitations to read and understand the Bible as a whole. To address such limitations, this paper reviews ‘Tong Bible Reading’ by Byoungho Zho. Tong Bible reading allows quick and right understanding of the Bible as one reads the Bible as a whole. Also, as one reads through the Bible as one story from chronological order, one becomes able to recover the instinct to understand the heart of God behind the stories of the Bible. Thus, in this paper, the weaknesses and strengths of the Lectio Divina and Tong Bible reading will be explored in parallel. Further, the alternative way of reading the Bible will be studied by complementing the weaknesses of each reading method.