Blue Cord

I wanted to comment on comments made by Chris Spinks and Steve Cook on an earlier post. I had originally written a nice response to this while sitting in the Vilnius airport. Unfortunately, our plane boarded before I could get it posted, and I have not been able to find an Internet connection for my laptop here in Kiev. I have now found a nice Internet cafe, so I will write another response. This one may not be as cogent, due to the nice glass of absinthe I had about an hour ago.

Steve wrote:

I hear you saying that part of your scholarship is to deal with these “scriptural” layers of the text, and what I am putting out is that in doing so, you of necessity are doing theological interpretation at a minimal level at least. Your are engaging a text whose existence is owed to the historical community’s valuing of it as Word/Witness to the transcendent. There is an inherent “theological” dimension to this text’s preservation until this very day and its existence in your hands.

I would agree with this, and I certainly pay attention to the theology that is in the text. But that seems to me to be a purely descriptive task. When I talk about doing theology, what I mean is the process of making statements (truth claims) about God and reality. To me, simply reading the text is not the same. The text may make such truth claims, but unless I affirm or deny them I am not actively doing theology.

Chris said:

With the biblical texts we have “theological” dimensions to contend with in the preservation and the reading. And, I would contend that as members of the same church that both preserved and continues to read these texts, these theological dimensions are closely related if not actually the same.

I agree that it is the same community, but that does not seem to be theology in the sense I am using it here. Perhaps the problem is a difference in our definition of theology.

One place I think Chris and I may agree (although I think we need to define some terms) is that the reading of the text does have an effect on us. This is one place I think reader response criticism has it right, although I would want to focus only on responses that have some actual connection to the content of the text. Just by reading a text, we are being effected in some way, and I would venture that the Bible’s nature as Scripture means that at least some of that effect is theological in nature. But I would still content that this is something different than the active doing of theology, which seems to me to be a more conscious activity.

I look forward to hearing further comments from Steve, Chris, and anyone else who wants to jump in. I doubt I will get to respond before Friday, however. This Internet cafe is several blocks from our apartment in Kiev, so this will probably be my only visit.

Next post in the series: Bracketing Theology

I wanted to respond to a question raised by Steve Cook in a comment on a previous post. Steve asked,

[W]hen you say that you tend to focus on the “historical setting” of biblical texts, do you mean the first, primitive setting—peeling back the layers to get at the onion-core? If so, why prioritize the core? How do you know you want dive down to a pre-scriptural level?

This, of course, is one of the problems of the historical critical method. It focused too much on the layers and not enough on the final form of the text. And since Steve and I both studied with Brevard Childs (Steve more than me), it is a problem we are both aware of.

When I talk about the historical setting of the text, I do mean the original historical context in which the text first arose. Obviously, this is not always something that we can discern. And when you get back to the oral stage, it becomes even more tricky. But I think the best understandings of the text come when we place it within this setting or at least acknowledge that we don’t know the setting.

This is, however, only a first step. Both as a philologist and a theologian (when I wear that hat), I am ultimately concerned with the final form of the text. This is the form that the faith community canonized and it is this form that is authoritative (whatever we decide that means). But I think our understanding of the final form is enriched by acknowledging and studying the earlier layers of the text. It provides us with a more textured — pun intended — reading of the final form.

It also provides us with a process that is analagous to how we use the text. Obviously, the original message of Hosea, for instance, was accepted as authoritative. But other material has been added to form the book of Hosea. This shows us how the text was received and used for another generation. I think this is similar to what we do when we receive the text and use it within the church (whether in theology, ethics, or perhaps most importantly preaching). This main difference, however, is that our use of the text does not become authoritative for later generations.

Next post in the series: Theology in the Layers

As I mentioned in the previous post, we have been having a debate in my department about what is the best way to teach an Intro to Bible class at a Christian liberal arts college. I thought I would share some of my thoughts and the issues surrounding this debate.

My approach to the task has been a non-theological one. I am interested in introducing the students to the content of the Bible and the critical issues surrounding its study. I focus some on the development of the text and the history of ancient Israel and surrounding cultures, but mostly I try to familiarize them with the content of the Bible. I also teach basic techniques for interpretation.

In all this, I am taking a non-theological approach. Or, more precisely, I am taking a pre-theological approach. Students here are required to take Intro to Theology the year after they take my class, and so in many ways I see my classes at least in part as being preparatory for theology. To my mind, theology is something that you do with the text after you have interpreted it. Of course, I discuss the theology in the text, but not the question of how the text relates to questions of God, truth, reality, etc.

It turns out that my colleagues had some problems with this approach. Some of them didn’t like it because they thought I wasn’t coming at the subject from a Christian perspective. Others thought that I was being hopelessly modern (as opposed to postmodern) in thinking that the text had meaning apart from its interpreter. It is this latter issue I want to address.

While I would say that I am fairly postmodern in the way I use the Bible in theology, there is a part of me that cannot get over the idea that the text has meaning. I recognize that the meaning is not there until the reader reads the text, but I don’t think it is purely the context and expectation of the reader that produces meaning. If it is, then why read a text at all? Or why prefer one text over another. To my mind, there has to be something in the text that exerts a controlling effect over the interpretation.

I know that in recent years the move has been to incorporate theology into the reading of the text. This supposedly produces “theological interpretations.” As one of my colleagues put it,

[I]f you avoid the theological claims of the text, if you do not expose yourself to the theological claims of the text, you cannot possibly find its meaning. I believe meaning is not simply in a text but is something that happens when I hear and respond to its claim.

But while I agree that the text makes claims, to my mind the first task it to understand the claim that is being made, then decide how to respond to it. They are two separate tasks. To say that if I do not respond to the claim then I don’t understand makes no sense to me. What if I ignore the claim? Is that not a response? It also raises the question of how there can be so many good biblical scholars out there who profess no religion.

I agree that we should go on and do something with the text after we have interpreted it, but I fail to see why interpretation should not precede the decision of what to do with the text. As I commented to my colleague who made the statement above, he seems to mean something more than I do when we talk about meaning.

I am sure there are those out there in the biblioblogosphere who can champion the other side of this. I am thinking in particular of Steve Cook and Chris Spinks, but this is no doubt an issue that others have thought about. I would love to get some feed back and critiques of my position. I am happy to be shown that I am wrong, and my colleagues in the department here would be grateful to you if you could help me see the error of my ways.

Next post in the series: Pre-Scriptural Levels

We have been having a debate in my department about how to teach introductory Bible courses. The question centers on whether students should be taught to do theology in those classes or whether theology is something that should be done in other classes after they have a good introduction to the Bible.

My approach is to focus on the content and historical setting of the Bible, without any (or at least not much) mention of how the Bible is used in theology. Despite working with Brevard Childs, I am still not convinced that theology is something that is done at the level of interpretation (I think I just heard Steve Cook’s head explode). Theology, to me, is still something that is done with the text. Now, we can always interpret the text while planning to do something theological with it afterwards, but I don’t see how this changes the process of interpretation.

I may post some on this topic in the next few days before I head to Ukraine on Sunday. For now, however, I wanted to point to a blog I just came across that deals with theological interpretation. It is called Karagrapho and is written Chris Spinks, who just completed a Ph.D. at Fuller Theological Seminary. I found it interesting that on his About page, when he is discussing his dissertation, he says that his dissertation had more to do with readings of the NT than actually reading the NT. That is my point about how I teach my intro classes. I want the students to focus more on the text at this stage and worry later about theology. It is not that I take a non-theological approach, but more a pre-theological approach. Anyway, I encourage people to check out Dr. Spinks’s blog.

We are in the process of rewriting our theology department mission statement here at LCC. I am advocating that the term “authority” when applied to Scripture be removed. This is not because I reject the authority of Scripture. It is instead based on several practical and theological problems I have with the term. I sent the following points to my colleagues in the department as part of the debate. Since they are relevant to the academic study of the Bible, I thought I would post them here as well.

Here are my reasons for not wanting the term “authority of Scripture” in the mission statement:

• The term is often used as a code word for a certain approach to the Bible. Often in debates, one side will say, “We accept the authority of the Bible, while you don’t.” What they mean by this is that the other side does not interpret the Bible in the same way. Take the issue of women’s ordination. Quite often, people who accept it are accused of not accepting the authority of the Bible, when in fact they do accept its authority but interpret it differently. Admittedly, this comes out of my experiences as a victim of the Bible wars in the Southern Baptist Church during the 80s and 90s, but I think it is something to consider.
• The term is ambiguous. If you ask different denominations whether they accepts the authority of the Scripture, they will say yes. But Anglicans, Mennonites, Baptists, Pentecostals, Catholics, Orthodox, and others will each have a different meaning of how that authority operates. Now, we could argue that because it is a term accepted by everyone we should go ahead and use it. But can such a general term communicate?
• Following on the last point, the term Scripture automatically implies authority. Referring to the authority of Scripture is somewhat redundant.
• The statement that the Bible is authoritative is a theological (but not confessional!) statement. I have no problem with theological statements. But theoretically, our theology comes from the Bible, so the Bible should precede theological judgments. Now obviously, this rarely happens in practice. We are all working in a hermeneutic circle that moves back and forth from theology to text. But when students approach the Bible, I would like them to do so at the beginning with as little theology as possible or at least putting those ideas on hold for a while. This is somewhat problematic and is never completely achieved, but it is helpful as a beginning exercise for students. Since our theology flows from the Bible, let’s not burden our students with a preconceived theology before they get to the Bible. This is especially important, it seems, in a context like LCC, where the majority of our students are not Christian.
• Picking up on [a point made by another colleague] about Christ as the word of God, I think it is important, as N.T. Wright has argued, that the expression “authority of Scripture” is in reality a shorthand for “the authority of God as exercised through Scripture.”¹Â  Traditions that place a great emphasis on the authority of Scripture frequently overlook that distinction. Ultimately, all authority on heaven and earth has been given to Christ Jesus (Matt.28:18). I would think we would want to point students more to the authority of Jesus than the Bible.
• Finally, I think the term authority can be off-putting for some students. They could accept or reject the Bible merely based on how they react to the term authority of Scripture. In my opinion, however, the Bible is powerful enough to have an impact on them even if they do not recognize the authority of the Scriptures. I would rather have them come to my class with an open mind and be surprised when they hear God speaking to them through the Bible than to have them shut down early because the idea of authority was put forward so strongly. Some of this comes from reactions to authority in a post-Soviet context, while some of it comes from standard student reactions to authority. Since this has the potential to scare them away from biblical studies, I think it should be avoided.

Any comments and feedback is appreciated.

1. N.T. Wright, The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2005), 23-25. [back]