How can I lead an inductive Bible study without leading my group into prestructuralist (or antipoststructuralist) naivete?

The philosophy of the "Inductive" Bible study method is to decomplicate the activity of reading the Bible. It's designed for a group of ordinary people (usually Christians, but also those interested and inquiring into Christianity), in the context of a broader church, with these assumptions:

• The Bible is the word of God, not just inspired by him, but also the means by which he speaks today. So reading the Bible is not merely a human activity, but one where God in turns communicates to his people, as the Spirit helps the readers of the Bible understand it.

• The Bible has been carefully and accurately translated into the heart language of the readers. While our translations are not perfect they are effective at communicating, and while there are details that get missed in translations those issues very rarely warrant going to the Hebrew or Greek. Indeed a leader or teacher who regularly says we need to go to the original languages in order to correct a translation will do more harm to their group's trust of the Bibles than someone who lets an occasional mistranslation slide. (If it even was a mistranslation in the first place - there are far more people with enough rudimentary Greek or Hebrew to cause trouble than there are experts, but it's the experts that produce our Bible translations. Even spending 4 years studying the Biblical languages in an MDiv isn't enough to answer most questions from the original language texts; what it does is enable you to ask deeper questions.) But it can be helpful to consult multiple translations in a Bible study session, as their different translation choices can bring a different perspective on the text.

• The Bible is in general understandable by regular people using their regular reading comprehension skills. An inductive Bible study can be facilitated by someone without any formal tertiary education in the Bible, and the group members do not need a lot of Biblical knowledge or literacy. You can use the inductive method with someone who has never read any of the Bible before.

• A Bible study group is not the entirety of their members' Biblical input. It is intended as a counterpart to Church services with sermons, prayers, songs, etc. The members will receive explicit, purposeful, and systematic Biblical and theological teaching at other times which will both support and be supported by their Bible studies.

• You can (and should) use the inductive method in personal Bible reading, but there are advantages to reading the Bible study together. We can hear the Spirit best when we are listening together.

• Reading the Bible is valuable and helpful without needing a purpose beyond simply dwelling in God's word and hearing him speak to us. At other times we will want to dig into the Bible to learn about a topic, to answer a question, or to prepare for a sermon etc, but in most Bible study sessions we do not come to the Bible with these additional goals.

The Inductive method has three main steps:

1. Read the text and observe it. A facilitator can help by asking questions like these: what stands out to you? What was surprising? What is different from what you expected, or different from other parts of the Bible? What do you think is the main point or purpose of this passage? What questions do you have? What would you be interested in spending more time digging into?

   Life long Christians may be in their 5th time going through a church or Bible study series on Romans, and might feel like nothing stands out to them anymore. This is when written study guides can be helpful, as they can both pose questions we've never considered before, or they might prompt us to read the text in a new way, leading to us thinking of our own new questions. Likewise a facilitator who has training in the Bible, rhetoric, literature, etc can help prompt questions (though remember the goal is to dig into the text more, not to get off-text by digging into the Biblical languages, cultures, theology, sociology, etc.) But if you have a group who aren't very familiar with the book you're studying they might have plenty of questions all by themselves, and no study guide or extra prompting would be needed!

   If a group has a lot of questions then you may need to help them narrow down on the ones they think are the most central questions of the passage. What purposes did the author have? What questions did they seem to pose or anticipate the readers asking?

2. Investigate the text: read the text again, dig in, to see how it helps answer these questions we have. The facilitator will direct the group back to the text if their initial answers are "the pastor said...", "my Study Bible says...", or even "we know from other parts of the Bible that..." We want to harvest whatever we can from the details of this specific text to answer our questions first before going to other sources. Even jumping to a parallel Gospel is going off-text! Leave parallels for later. (This means that selecting the right sized Bible passage is important. You can't use the inductive method to study one verse. Use the natural sections of a text.)

   When the group has questions they can't find answers to, that's when the facilitator can lead them to other sources. Written study guides will often suggest parallel passages to read, or even quote a Christian author who says something relevant or thought provoking. Likewise you can use your own knowledge to fill in gaps, or read short sections from commentaries, or even very occasionally to go to the original languages.

   Even with that not all questions will get answered. Sometimes you can suggest that the members forward their questions to the church staff team, or ideally tell them to keep their questions in mind as they come to the following chapters in the weeks that follow.

   You can do a few cycles of observe and investigate. Study guides will often break the passage up into 2-3 subsections.

3. Apply what we've learnt. Because we believe God is speaking to us, studying the scriptures should lead to some outcome in our lives. Sometimes it might be a very practical ethical issue we can directly apply right away. Sometimes it might be to reassure us in our faith, to reinforce our theology, or to encourage us to keep reading and meditating on the Bible. Often our application will be to pray as a group for something we otherwise wouldn't have thought to pray about.

My advice to you would be that you're probably overthinking all of this. You don't need to give someone a guide on Inductive Bible studies, unless you're training them to facilitate their own groups. The main thing is to be clear about what inductive studies are and what they aren't. There is a place for critically evaluating commentaries, but that isn't inductive study. Inductive study is about trying to clear things away to let us approach a text of the Bible with fresh eyes, to let the text itself provoke questions and direct our study of it. Even as a facilitator your job is to get out of the way! In that way there are no shortcomings of the inductive method, because the goal is not to uncover the original meaning of the text, or to correct our misunderstandings, or to critically engage with scholarship, or to systematise our theology, or whatever else can distract us from spending time simply relishing in the weirdness and mystery of the Bible. All of those things are valuable and have their place in our spiritual lives and the church. But the goal of the inductive method is to structure a study to reduce all the barriers we put up in front of ourselves, to let us simply read the scriptures and hear God speak to us. (Without implying that God doesn't speak to his people through those other means too.)

This answer is less about technique and more about spirit.

There is all the difference in the world between a teaching environment and a small group Bible study. Both are fine but you must decide what it is that you are facilitating beforehand. It has been my experience over 25 years of Bible study, both corporate and private, that various passages have spoken to me both theologically and in application in different ways depending upon my maturity level and where I currently am in the process of sanctification.

I suggest that this same is true of each member attending a small group Bible study. The truth of the Word does not change but each person is bringing to it a whole lifetime of baggage; a large amount of dross that needs to be purged from the gold of their faith. The extent of this purification process is beyond the ability of any facilitator, no matter how highly educated, for they cannot read the human heart.

Ultimately it is not the facilitator who imparts clarity or understanding. The Word itself, interpreted to the human heart by the Holy Spirit, is the teacher and this Teacher knows exactly what each person needs at any given moment; what barriers need to come down, what truth needs to be received, and what current belief needs to be rejected or modified.

Bring all of your education, spiritual knowledge, personal testimony (including difficulty and failure) with you and make them available to the Holy Spirit and, as @curiousdanii has said, "get out of the way". Don't be afraid for others to offer whatever their current 'take' is on any particular passage. It is incredibly encouraging, in such a personal setting, for everyone to see everyone else still 'in process'. If some one is going off the edge of the map you, as facilitator (and without interruption), may reserve the right to point to an especially clear passage of Scripture as correction: I understand what you are saying but it must be reconciled with this.

You will be surprised and encouraged at how often a personal application of a passage that you have never even considered will come to light. God is able to speak a myriad of things to each individual person through the very same Word.

Any Bible study has to start with an inductive method. What does it say? What does it appear to mean in its natural context? This is all part of a natural reading hermeneutic. It's the intuitive, subjective phase characterized by the prestructuralist dynamic. By its very nature, the necessary first step is unavoidably naive, because we are not, today, immersed in the culture of the Bible. Unless you've already studied the topics, you don't know the places, the social norms, etc. So, a person's natural impression and interpretation is always going to be intrinsically naive.

What you're describing takes it to the next level. As soon as you start looking into the deeper meanings of the text, you are going beyond an inductive study.

If that's your goal, then you need to next evaluate the points of view that are offered in discussion. As the study leader, you have to lead them to the deeper points of view or historical complexities you know exist. Introduce them through reputable secondary sources, and then discuss further. This exposes the group to poststructuralist thought, demonstrating that the text does not exist in a vacuum. The tiniest nuance can greatly alter the meaning of a sentence. By introducing evidence that the group is not yet aware of, you force objective thought by requiring them to account for alternative considerations.

I agree that anti-poststructuralism is itself most often naive of its own unacknowledged bias. Some of the best commentaries I've read over the years, despite their linguistic and historical depth, nevertheless evaluate the text according to base presumptions that careful study reveals as incorrect. There isn't a commentary, article, or even a Bible translation I've ever read that doesn't operate on some sort of base doctrinal, dogmatic, or presumptive bias. But, that doesn't invalidate the works. It just means that such works, however reputable, have to be taken with an appropriate grain of salt.

As I have often told people, trust nothing, trust no one, look everything up, never assume. I find citations that are wrong or misleading. I find opinions stated as fact. I find conclusions directed by bias. Good scholarship is good scholarship, but scholars still make mistakes.

To accomplish what you are trying to accomplish, you have to lead them down the rabbit hole yourself. And you have to do it with the outline of poststructuralist works (to provide a base for expansion) while challenging anything you know to challenge (which is not always so obvious) and forcing the deeper dive into primary source material. The only way to engage truly objective thought is to provide the evidence.

This, in a manner of speaking, is the Socratic method. Raise the base principle and understanding. Question it. Break it down. Expose the weaknesses. Add context and fact. Ask for reevaluation. Force interaction. Impose objectivity through systematic questioning. Add more context where possible. Ask for reevaluation. The truth eventually emerges.

I like to look at it as a legal analysis. State the problem. State the known solutions. Confirm or discredit the solutions. State the correct solution, new or existing. Prove the solution with fact. Allow interaction throughout.

What you're asking for is honestly a tall order. It's ambitious, but difficult. But not difficult because of its complexity. Frankly, I deal with that in my own studies daily. Difficult because it will take a very dedicated, like-minded, intellectual group to commit to the level you're aiming for. You're asking for people at a base, assumption level understanding to step into the world of academic scholarship. And if you do it right, they'll learn in the process how to do it themselves, which is the pinnacle of the accomplishment.