169 - Can Two Walk Together Without an Appointment?

Can Two Walk Together Without an Appointment?
By Patrick D. Miller

Why is it so difficult in our time to join Scripture and theology, to bring together serious attention to the Bible and systematic articulation of the Christian faith? One does not risk too much exaggeration in claiming that these two obvious partners-for much of the history of the church barely separable entities-now walk together with great difficulty, to use a bit of lingo from the prophet Amos. Indeed, much of the time, they are hardly on the same track. That state of affairs may not be the most important thing in our traumatized world, but it is a source of some dismay to the editors of a journal of theology for the church and, we venture to suggest, a dismay that is shared by others among those into whose hands the study and teaching of Scripture and of theology has been committed, whether in the life of congregations or in the schools of theology.

The separation of Bible and theology is evident in a variety of ways. Biblical scholars resist the very notion of being systematic for fear it will level out the variety and diversity and historicality of the voices of Scripture. The worst thing that can be said about a scholar's attempt to write a biblical or Old Testament theology is that he or she uses "systematic categories." It is as if the work is invalid from the start. A recent letter from a leading European Old Testament figure castigated me for being interested in Old Testament ethics because that is "an abstract concept from dogmatics or systematics," a completely foreign concept to the Old Testament.

From the other side, however, systematic or constructive theologians run from ever being identified as biblical theologians. Karl Barth's reputation will always suffer from the conviction of many that he was really a biblical theologian, which indeed he was-probably the best of this century. There is a genuine resistance on the part of many, if not most, theologians to being too closely identified with Scripture. Some leading theologians, for example Gordon Kaufman and Langdon Gilkey, who began with close attention to Scripture in their theological work, have long since abandoned that concern.

The fault, however, for the failure of theology and scriptural interpreta­tion to join in a shared enterprise is not simply that of theologians unwilling or unable to interpret and draw upon Scripture. The study of

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the Bible has become a multi-faceted discipline that goes in so many directions and is often so heavy with theoretical and methodological concerns that the actual interpretation of Scripture as a source of theology gets all too little attention. I can recall hearing a biblical exegete and a lawyer-theologian, who was not an expert in biblical studies, present papers on a passage from Paul. The first presented the Greek text, discussed textual and other matters in detail, and concluded with eight or nine lines of significance. The second paper presented the interpretive consensus on the main claims of the text much more succinctly and clearly than the first paper and then proceeded to develop these ethically and theologically. The prior work of the biblical scholar seemed quite superfluous-and one fears that is all too often the case. Much information is available in the books and essays produced by biblical scholars. But information is not theology.

The problem is now heightened in this postmodern age, where the typical attitude is, as one postmodernist biblical scholar intentionally caricatured it in a conversation, "The Bible, what a terrible book! It will stunt your growth." But even among postmodern biblical scholars who continue to read and interpret Scripture, the task is to deconstruct it and to fight its theological claims or those of its readers. One of the great and disturbing realities of our time is that the Bible has become a problem rather than a gift. It has always been a source of challenge and perplexity and trouble, but it has also been the source of faith and truth. Now it is under great question-more within the theological sphere than without.

There are exceptions to this separation of Bible and theology. Within the world of evangelical scholarship, the two are conjoined much more easily and seriously. That needs to be acknowledged. From outside that orientation, the Joining sometimes seems to be more a theological repristination of Scripture that levels its complexity and dynamic and assumes that the biblical texts can move rather straightforwardly without much digestion into comprehensive theological claims and functions. And three of evangelical scholarship's most visible spokesmen, in a recent issue of this journal, challenged the theological seriousness of much that goes on in the evangelical world today. But the assumption that theology is accountable in explicit, concrete, and detailed fashion to Scripture is clearer in the world of evangelical scholarship than elsewhere.

There are some other pockets of resistance at work seeking to pursue the theological task as accountable to Scripture and the interpretive task as a theological one. I would call attention to a recent and highly intentional effort to bring the Bible and theology into a more lively exchange, one whose participants and efforts are partially represented in this issue of THEOLOGY TODAY. For several years, Ulrich Mauser of Princeton Theological Seminary has overseen an ongoing annual meeting of biblical scholars and theologians, focusing on particular topics that have been under investigation by smaller work groups whose papers provided the primary basis for discussion by the larger gathering. The results have been admittedly spotty, and the conversation has often been

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difficult to bring off, even by people who have wanted to carry it on. That is simply a reflection of how difficult it seems to be to create a common theological enterprise in which systematic, historical, and contextual disciplines of theology are joined with biblical interpretation.

The topic at the most recent meeting of this group was "Power, Powerlessness, and the Divine." Two of the papers presented there are appearing in print first in these pages, the essays by Catherine Keller and William Schweiker. One of the other members of the small group of biblical scholars and theologians working on this topic, Michael Welker, is represented in this issue by an essay presented in another context. The publication of these articles, whose genesis was in the concern to overcome the divide I am talking about, together with the formal conclusion of the project headed by Mauser, prompt some reflections on what we have learned as a result of that venture.

(1)  Theology and Scripture effect a lively and creative engagement when specific texts are in view. When the biblical text is a central part of the argument, it often functions in a transformative way, reshaping our thought and action on familiar topics. That is part of the strange effect of Scripture on the mind and heart, that what is so familiar can surprise and transform, can cause one to think in a different way. But this does not happen simply by quoting or alluding to Scripture. When Schweiker takes up the story of the Tower of Babel it is in the context of a complex analysis of "the moral ontology of posttheistic, technological societies," and the interpretation of the story is part of a wider analysis of "dominant features of the biblical construal of reality." So also Welker's focus on the Priestly account of creation in Genesis 1 is set in relation to the scientific view of reality embodied in Stephen Hawking's famous book A Brief History of Time. The result in both cases is not simply a matter of theology learning something from paying attention to Scripture. The texts gain a fresh life as they interact with the ethical and theological issues discussed by the writers so that any biblical scholar will find new light on two of the most familiar texts in Genesis. Large matters, such as creation, power, and divine agency, are taken up in greater complexity through the text, and the text is perceived in greater depth through the theological enterprise that has called it up. It is not always necessary to have a single text in view for this dynamic between Scripture and theology to take effect-witness the essays by Seitz and Keller that work from a broader scriptural base-but the textuality of their essays confirms the possibility of that dynamic.

(2) The conjoining of Bible and theology is made more difficult by the complex and pluralistic world of theological scholarship. Susan Thistlethwaite's essay uncovers once again the impossibility of the universal claims that we have so often made, even as she sees the possibilities and dangers in "the rhetorical dance of postmodernism." If the postmodern move is freeing for some, it is resistant in various ways to the constructive task that assumes agreed-upon presuppositions and methodologies can lead us into a common understanding of the faith that is rooted in

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Scripture. Our pluralism, whether as inescapable reality or intentional strategy-and it is both-makes the possibility of constructive theology that is not either ad hoc or idiosyncratic more difficult than when there was a shared ground about the nature of the Bible and the theological issues as well as a shared indifference, if not unawareness, of the silent voices that were not contributing to the theological enterprise. The silent voices of the past are now at the center of the stage. It is worth noting that one of the most difficult tasks for the group of theologians and Scripture scholars who produced the papers on power, powerlessness, and the divine referred to above was the building of trust and foundations for conversation across large differences of experience, approach, and conviction.

(3)  A new hermeneutical circle has appeared on the scene. It was present in the discussions of the Bible and theology project and has been signalled in earlier works of theology and biblical theology, for example, in J. Christiaan Beker's Paul the Apostle. That hermeneutical circle is found in the interaction of complexity and coherence, the dynamic that is attentive to both the contingencies and complexities that human beings experience and perceive and the possibilities of finding in those a task as the comprehensive expression of the Christian faith is hardly possible without some holistic perspective, but it is just those efforts at claiming a unity or a system that have come under attack as being reductionistic and self-deceiving. Can the interaction between the complex, often competing, realities evident in life and history and the press for a sense of interrelationship and meaning that enables these complexities to cohere provide an avenue out of the despond of chaotic fragmentation and the hubris of unitary systems? Both Scripture and theology are in need of such a pathway. The articles that follow in this issue are only probes searching for that direction, but the enterprise is one to which this journal is more committed than it is to any particular outcome.