The Ethics of Interpreting the Bible: Points of Interest

September 28, 2003

Points of Interest

Here are some points that may bear on our discussion as we try to work among the complexities of our topic:

Childs observes that the Biblical Theology Movement held, more or less, to several broadly-shared premises. They assented to some sort of salvation-historical perspective (God working through history to bring humanity closer and closer to Christ), to the uniqueness of the Bible as a religious text and of its outlook as a &ldqu;;mentality,” and a sort of intrinsic unity to the Bible. These premises, according to Childs, just didn’t hold up to scrutiny.

Much of Scripture expresses no particular interest in salvation history; wisdom literature, for instance, and the novelistic narratives of the Old Testament and (ina certain way) Acts don’t really contribute much to a salvation-historical theme. All the New Testament looks forward to Christ’s coming at the end, but some texts place relatively little emphasis on that. And what sort of &ldqu;;history” is meant? Can we honestly look around ourselves and suggest that the world is advancing spiritually from its condition a hundred years ago?

The claim that the Bible is unique likewise derives most of its power from people who are already convinced; dubious readers can usually find strong points of comparison between the Bible and other religious (and non-religious) literature. The supposition of special qualities inherent to Greek and Hebrew “mentalities” yields under careful linguistic and philosophical analysis.

And the unity of the Bible seems to amount to what an expositor wants. Any unity that satisfactorily subsumes equally such varied texts as Genesis, Leviticus, Esther, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Isaiah, Jonah, Matthew, John, Romans, Hebrews, 3 John and Revelation will always? almost always? reflect a good portion of the interpreter’s determination to find unity.

The specific characteristics of Biblical Theology as a “movement” matter less than they do as symptoms. Once biblical interpretation became firmly defined in relation to history, as an academic discipline, little time passed before interpreters sensed that historical interpretations of the Bible might be academically correct without being spiritually edifying. They intuited a lack, and set about various ways of remedying that lack. Childs notes that their preferred means of replacing what was lacking ran aground, often by means of the very academic historiography that engendered that sense of lack in the first place.

Childs proposed interpreting Scripture as canon, as a theologically-bounded totality whose proper (in this context, we may stretch to say “ethical”) interpretation lies in an ecclesiastical context. This helps bolster the theological flavor of biblical interpretations, but their version of proper biblical interpretation entails certain problems, too.

Posted by AKMA at September 28, 2003 04:19 PM

Comments

Forgive my completely naive approach to this subject matter, I have no formal training in any of the relevant topics (with the possible exception of textual criticism of the literary sort).

It seems to me that some of the challenges inherent in deriving a coherent ethics of Biblical interpretation stem from two historical (? or cultural?) "givens:"

1) The notion of "God's chosen people" and

2) The idea that the Hebrews, and therefore those who see themselves as ultimately rooted in the Hebrew tradition, as "people of the book."

While I can think of other religious traditions that emphasize their adherents' special relationship with the divine, or who have elaborate and sophisticated relationships with canonical texts, I'm not sure that I can identify any non-Abrahamic tradition that combines the two so very closely.

In a way, this seems to lead to a conflation of identity with one's interpretation of or relationship with the text. For Christianity, this reached its first widespread crisis with the Reformation, when reading the Bible became both possible and essential for a wide segment of the population.

Even today, please correct me if I'm mistaken, the way a person reads the Bible is probably a key indicator of the kind of theology or, more grossly even, the denomination to which they belong.

Am I barking totally and completely up the wrong tree here?

Posted by: Pascale Soleil at September 29, 2003 04:28 PM

Wow, Pascale! There’s a lot here for a comment. Let me see how best to answer this.

“[T]his seems to lead to a conflation of identity with one's interpretation of or relationship with the text.” This sounds plausible enough to me, in certain ways, for many followers in these traditions. I think Jaroslav Pelikan once suggested that church history might fruitfully be re-imagined as the history of the interpretation of the Bible. I don’t want to go too far out on a limb, here, but I suppose that the texture of one’s interpretive relationship to the BIble goes a great distance in situating one among the different flavors of Judaism and Christianity.

Now, I’m not sure where the “chosen people” part enters here, so I won’t say anything particular about it.

While the people-of-the-book characterization fits Judaism and Christianity and Islam, I haven’t been struck by vast differences between Christians’ relation ot the BIble, or Jews’ relation to Torah (or Tanakh), or Muslim’s relation to the Qu’ran, and other traditions’ relation to their sacred texts. Differences there surely are, and some traditions are less “scriptural” than others; but I haven’t seen a sharp division (could just be my ignorance).

Now, how does all this play into an ethics of interpreting the BIble?

Posted by: AKMA at September 29, 2003 09:50 PM

Obviously, I need to think more before I blurt.

But the reason for the mention of the "chosen people" angle is where I think the ethics of interpretation start to really come into play. If your identity is tied up in your textual interpretation practice, AND you feel you have some primary or pre-eminent relationship with the divine, then your interpretive practice becomes freighted with the moral obligation to explain/justify/live out the legitimacy of your version. In other words, the pressure to GET IT RIGHT is even greater, and people become even more attached to the notion that theirs is, indeed, the right way. In fact, getting it right is yet one more way to demonstrate that you are in fact the chosen (or elect, or what have you).

It no longer is a matter of having an opinion; interpretation of the Bible becomes, unavoidably, a morally charged act. And if, as most Christians do, you believe that part of your identity carries an obligation to evangelize... well, that just ups the ante even more.

Maybe.

Posted by: Pascale Soleil at September 30, 2003 12:45 AM

I have written a new post called "Initial Reactions" it has a status of "Publish" but has not appeared in the weblog.

Have I done something wrong or is there an approval stage or a configuration error or some other reason?

BTW it is not the most exciting or erudite posting ever, so don't hold your breath waiting ;-)

Dave

Posted by: Dave W at October 1, 2003 02:36 AM

Oh, it has just appeared.

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