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Committing Hermeneutical Heresy
IT has been over a decade since Walter Wink claimed, hyperbolically, that "historical biblical criticism is bankrupt."1 In Wink's view, the historical critical enterprise had, among other misdeeds, become detached from the "faith speaks to faith" intentionality of the very texts it sought to interpret and fallen into a solipsistic form of technologism which deemed significant only those questions for which its methods could produce answers. Historical biblical criticism, in Wink's view, was not merely a set of procedures with widespread acceptance among the guild of professional biblical scholars. It was, rather, a "faith" of evangelical fervor. Its revival tents were the introductory Bible classes in mainstream seminaries, courses which were "not so much an introduction to the Bible, as to the biblical critical ethos."2 Like the revivalism of an earlier time, historical criticism was, for Wink, "bankrupt," that is, still in possession of valuable assets but unable to deliver in the marketplace.
Wink's exaggerated charges operated more at the level of satire than precise analysis, but his picture of historical criticism as a once regnant methodology under stress and experiencing defection was true enough. It now appears far more accurate to say that the historical-critical method, while still very much in business, has been unseated as the only merchant in the central marketplace. Some point to the emergence of literary approaches to the Bible as evidence of a "paradigm shift" away from historical and toward poetic approaches to biblical interpretation. Actually there has been a multiplication of "paradigms" for biblical interpretation. Canonical criticism, structural exegesis, feminist criticism, sociological analysis, rhetorical criticism, and a variety of other approaches present an impressive, but confusing, array of methods and vantage points presently available to the interpreter.
These new stones thrown into the hermeneutical pond have begun to ripple out toward pastoral practice, and preachers, pastors, and teachers are beginning to notice, while they are sometimes bewildered by, the changed environment. Biblical commentaries are dotted with exotic
Thomas G. Long is Associate Professor of Preaching and Worship at Princeton Theological Seminary and a member of the Editorial Council of THEOLOGY TODAY. Dr. Long was one of a small group of members of the Editorial Council who planned this symposium and here sets the stage for the essays that follow.
1Walter Wink, The Bible in Human Transformation: Toward a New Paradigm for Biblical Study (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973), p. 1.
2Ibid., p. 13.
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terms like "concentric patterns," "chiasm," "narrational technique," "reader response," and other phrases borrowed from literary criticism. Traditional interpretations of cherished texts, worn by familiarity to the smoothness of cliches, have now fallen before the searching revision of feminist biblical scholarship. Concepts like "the fusion of horizons," "authorial intentionality," "explanation versus understanding," and "textual referent," once reserved to the rarified atmosphere of philosophical hermeneutics, have made their way into more popular discourse. Even study materials designed for lay Bible teachers have developed a certain hermeneutical finesse. For example, students are encouraged to bracket their "privileged status" and to read texts "through the eyes of the poor," being warned not to overlook the social contexts and political intentions of biblical passages.
In The Heretical Imperative, Peter Berger reminded us that the term "heresy" means, at root, "to choose." In a society dominated by one, unchallenged religious viewpoint, anyone who chooses to assume another perspective, is, technically speaking, a heretic. In the modern world, however, full of theological options none of which can claim dominance, everyone is compelled, claims Berger, to choose a place to stand. Under the fragmenting force of modernity, theological heresy has become, not a perilous alternative selected by the eccentric few, but an imperative mandated for everyone.3
The same heretical imperative is now in force for biblical interpretation as well. The break-up of the consensus regarding critical method means that interpreters of biblical texts must now become both self-conscious and open about the full range of their hermeneutical investments. It is clearer than ever that what one sees in a biblical text is governed by where one stands, and the meaning one can find in a text is profoundly influenced by the methods chosen for the search. Bultmann's well-known insight that "there is no exegesis without presuppositions" has been extended to its logical conclusion. Biblical interpretation is not merely a matter of a biased interpreter operating within a neutral and universally-agreed-upon set of methods and procedures. The methods and procedures themselves must be chosen from among an array of possibilities, and these choices are the product of the hermeneutical commitments of the interpreter.
It is in the midst of this ferment in biblical interpretation that this symposium on biblical interpretation is placed. The primary aim of this collection of essays is to focus the spotlight upon one crucial and complex question in contemporary biblical interpretation: How do theological understandings, convictions, and methods affect the practice of biblical interpretation? In this issue, five theologians, reflecting diverse theological backgrounds and perspectives, interpret biblical texts and discuss the
3Peter Berger, The Heretical Imperative (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1980), esp. pp. 25-26.
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ways in which their theological commitments operated in the hermeneutical process.
The results, as seen in the five essays, are rich and varied. Taken as a set, the essays disclose how the theological understanding of the interpreter shapes the answers to at least three vital questions.
(1) Where is meaning "located?" One of the charges leveled at the historical critical method is that it seeks meaning not in the biblical text but somewhere "behind" it. Sometimes this area "behind the text" was seen as the mind of the author ("What Paul meant to say here is...."), or the interaction of the text with its original social setting, or even an earlier and more pure version of the text itself. We can glimpse an example of this latter reaching "behind the text" in the parables interpretation of Joachim Jeremias. Jeremias sought to move through and finally behind the synoptic parables to the original parables as spoken by Jesus. It was in these historically-reconstructed protoparables that the reliable message of Jesus was to be sought. In short, the text at hand was seen to be a corruption of the original, which must be restored by the historian before meaning could be determined.
Each of the five essays in the symposium represents, in its own way, the tendency in contemporary biblical interpretation to focus more fully upon the text in its present form. Most of the writers employ some of the methods and insights of historical criticism, but always in service of establishing the text as given. Moreover, to employ the spatial metaphor, meaning is not sought "behind" the text, but rather "in" it, or even "in front" of the text in its interaction with each new set of readers. Though all of the writers value the given text as the locus of meaning, they do so for different theological reasons. For some the received text is valued primarily because of its status as Scripture, as a portion of the writings which the faith community regards as normative (Wood, Jewett), while for others the emphasis upon the given text grows mainly out of respect for the literary integrity of the text as a medium for encountering the reader (Thiemann, Schneiders, Edgerton).
(2) What features of the text are to be explored? Biblical texts are full of information, and every act of interpretation involves choices about which aspects of a text are to be emphasized and mined for meaning, and which are not. Here the theological differences among the symposium writers are clearly seen. Thiemann seeks to describe the "broad theological themes" in the narrative text he has chosen, and therefore attends to the literary elements of plot, character, and narrative techniques by which the author of the text presents those themes. Schneiders also adopts a literary stance, but she rejects a doctrinal approach (that is, one concerned with specific theological content which can be extracted from the text) in favor of an emphasis upon those features of the text, such as irony and metaphor, which can provoke in the reader a more immediate encounter with God. Edgerton is persuaded that meaning erupts through the complex process of reading a text, and so shines the interpretive light on those features of
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the text which evoke tension and resolution and otherwise guide the activity of reading. Jewett seeks to discover the theological "eventfulness" of the text, the way in which the text itself preaches, and seeks to be preaching again, by making the action of God present to the reader/hearer. Wood searches for the central theological claim of the text, which, in turn, can be activated, or brought to life, and "made useful" in a new context.
(3) What effect does the "posture'' of the interpreter have? The question here is how the capacities, values, commitments, and allegiances of the interpreter affect the process of interpretation. This is a major issue for Wood, who pictures the interpreter as standing between the text and a set of potential hearers. These hearers have what Wood calls "wants," a term he uses in several senses to describe the full range of interests, needs, and questions to which the text may respond and which shape the activity of interpretation. When those hearers are an intrinsic part of the Christian community (rather than, say, the Society of Biblical Literature), interpretation becomes an explicitly theological activity providing "critical and constructive reflection upon Christian life and witness as such."
Thiemann also underscores the importance of the Christian community as a placement for biblical interpretation. Thiemann's interpreter moves with discernment and imagination in the context of a Christian community struggling to evaluate rival readings of biblical texts and searching for those readings which best disclose the character of their experience.
Jewett draws the lines between interpreter and Christian community even more firmly by portraying the interpreter as the preacher, or at least the one who works in the service of proclamation. For Jewett, it is not enough to say that there is much in Scripture that is worthy of being preached, as if the act of interpretation and the task of proclamation could be divided. The Scripture has simply not been adequately interpreted until it has been preached, until the eventfulness of God's action expressed in and through the text has been actualized in the present through public proclamation. The interpreter neither pretends to have objectivity nor desires to have neutrality toward the text. The confessional willingness to give consent to the text is not a barrier to be overcome in interpretation. It is the only true way into the text.
For Edgerton and Schneiders, the interpreter's commitment to the community of faith, broadly conceived, is certainly present and active in the hermeneutical process, but the ecclesiastical factor is drawn more into the background than in the other three writers. One would not go to these texts were it not for their status as Scripture, but, once the interpreter is standing before a particular text, other aspects of the interpreter's life come into play. For Edgerton, the capacity of the interpreter to read, to attend to the "instructions" for reading which are implicit in the text, to be open to the mutual, dialogical, and intimate relationship which the text desires-these are the attitudes which are
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the vital element in interpretation. In other words, our particular theological journeys (Lutheran, Barthian, and so on) lead us to the text. At the text, however, the pathways merge into the common and mysterious moment of experiencing the Word through the act of careful reading.
Schneiders, on the other hand, places emphasis, not upon the interpreter's generalized allegiance to the larger faith community, but upon the interpreter's political position within that community. In her case, this means a feminist "suspicion" of the masculinizing of the tradition and an alertness to those aspects of the text which have been suppressed by that controlling impulse.
These five essays illumine both the importance of theological dynamics in the task of biblical interpretation and the diversity of ways in which those dynamics are expressed in interpretive methods. What is perhaps most impressive about them is that each of them contains a fresh and compelling treatment of a familiar biblical text. Together they hold out the promise that the current ferment in biblical hermeneutics will lead not to perplexity and confusion but rather to a renewal of the place of the Bible in the life of the faithful community.