Sean the Baptist

Bonhoeffer: Beyond the two realms

I spent some time last night looking again at the opening sections of Bonhoeffer's Ethics.  What struck me with renewed force was the clarity of his attempt to re-conceptualize the dominant paradigm of Christian ethical reflection, which is rooted (so he claims) in a fundamental distinction between the reality of God and the reality of the world and which thereby creates the all too common dualisms of sacred/profane; church/world; grace/nature. Here is the passage that took hold as I thought about the ubiquity of such two realms thinking within churches:

As long as Christ and the world are conceived as two realms, bumping against and repelling each other, we are left with only the following options.  Giving up on reality as a whole,  either we place ourselves in one of the two realms, wanting Christ without the world or the world without Christ ... Or we try to stand in the two realms at the same time, thereby becoming people in eternal conflict, shaped by the post-Reformation era, who ever and again present ourselves as the only form of Christian existence that is in accord with reality....

There are not two realities, but only one reality, and that is God's reality revealed in Christ in the reality of the world.  Partaking in Christ, we stand at the same time in the reality of God and in the reality of the world.  The reality of Christ embraces the reality of the world in itself. ... There are not two competing realms standing side by side and battling over the borderline, as if the question of boundaries was always to be the decisive one.  Rather the whole reality of the world has already been drawn into and is held together in Christ.  History moves only from this center and towards this center.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics (DBWE 6; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 57-58.

The hermeneutical implications of this understanding of the one reality of God-in-Christ, which is not set against the reality of the world, but which constitutes the world's true reality, are multiple.  When giving the Whitley Lecture last year, and insisting that we take seriously the human work of interpretation, the most common objection was that I left no room for the work of the Holy Spirit, as if in so doing we could bypass the interpretive act.  This kind of thinking betrays traces of the two realms understanding that Bonhoeffer seeks to challenge, and it inevitably leads, as I noted in a previous post about debates within the Anglican communion, to what Bonhoeffer calls here a 'battle over boundaries' (your reading is the result of you imposing your own context onto the text and is therefore 'worldly', whereas my reading is the result of Spirit-led insight, and is therefore truly of God).

GAFCON: The Key Hermeneutical Point

It would be inappropriate, to say the least, for a Baptist to stand in too hasty judgment over those who have decided to renegotiate their relationship with the Anglican Communion (and Baptists that are inclined to disapprove have a consequent responsibility to 'consider their own position' in relation to such issues.)

However, in reading the 'Jerusalem Declaration' that has emerged from GAFCON which can be read in full here the following sentence struck me as lying close to the heart of the hermeneutical issues involved:

We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God written and to contain all things necessary for salvation. The Bible is to be translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading.

Note the omission of the word 'interpreted'.  By failing to mention this level of mediated engagement with the scriptural witness, those who support the concerns of GAFCON are able to (a) imply that anyone who disagrees with their conclusions is reading their own agenda into the text, while they are simply teaching and obeying the plain and canonical sense and (b) identify that plain, canonical sense with the (i) church's historic and consensual reading and further (ii) their own own interpretive conclusions.

As I continue to argue, unless we take the inevitability and responsibility of the human work of interpretation seriously when thinking about Scripture, we will never progress beyond the kind of oppositional and conflictual discourse that characterizes the GAFCON statement (and, as noted above, much of my own Baptist heritage).

Proposal for BNTC: Barth and Interpretive Pluralism

I have just heard from the Chairs of the Hermeneutics Seminar of the British New Testament Society that my paper proposal for this September's conference has been accepted.  It read as follows:

Interpretive Pluralism in Theological Perspective: The Contribution of Karl Barth

The literature that is generally gathered under the heading of philosophical hermeneutics continues to have significant influence on contemporary (hermeneutically informed) biblical scholarship.  However, in recent years a number of scholars from both the biblical and systematic fields have argued that the insights of philosophical hermeneutics must ultimately be judged by appropriately dogmatic criteria.  Thus, while those who draw on the resource of philosophical hermeneutics often affirm and even celebrate the fact of interpretive pluralism, those who insist on locating interpretation within a theological framework are often suspicious of such pluralism in the light of the prior theological conviction that in the Bible, Deus dixit.

The theology of Karl Barth is central to this debate.  In this paper I argue that while it is correct, theologically, to locate our understanding of interpretation within the wider dogmatic context of God's communicative action, the notion that this rules out ideas such as multiple meaning or valid interpretive pluralism is mistaken.  I suggest that a reading of Barth's discussion of interpretive work in Church Dogmatics I/2 provides a way of understanding how the Word of God that the words of Scripture mediate, in so far as it is both revelation and hiddenness, divine and human, invites interpretation that is therefore marked by provisionality and plurality.  This condition is entirely appropriate to the creaturely state of the interpreter.  The reality of interpretive diversity, when seen within the perspective of a theology of covenant relations, is less a situation to be overcome and more the very condition for hearing the Word of God today.

Pope Benedict on Biblical Interpretation

I managed to get some time today to read through Pope Bendedict's (then Cardinal Ratzinger) 1988 Erasmus Lecture on 'Biblical Interpretation in Crisis'.  It makes for interesting reading and there are many aspects that I warm to.  For example:

[I]nterpretation can never be just a simple reproduction of history’s being, “as it was.” The word “interpretation” gives us a clue to the question itself: every exegesis requires an “inter,” an entering in and a being “inter” or between things; this is the involvement of the interpreter himself. Pure objectivity is an absurd abstraction. It is not the uninvolved who comes to knowledge; rather, interest itself is a requirement for the possibility of coming to know.

Here, then, is the question: how does one come to be interested, not so that the self drowns out the voice of the other, but in such a way that one develops a kind of inner understanding for things of the past, and ears to listen to the word they speak to us today?

Though I struggle to see how this reconciles with what he wants to say about feminist and liberation hermeneutics:

But today, certain forms of exegesis are appearing which can only be explained as symptoms of the disintegration of interpretation and hermeneutics. Materialist and feminist exegesis, whatever else may be said about them, do not even claim to be an understanding of the text itself in the manner in which it was originally intended. At best they may be seen as an expression of the view that the Bible’s message is in and of itself inexplicable, or else that it is meaningless for life in today’s world. In this sense, they are no longer interested in ascertaining the truth, but only in whatever will serve their own particular agendas.

With all due respect, this is a charicature based on the unwarranted assumption that feminist hermeneutics inevitably 'drowns out the voice of the other' (perhaps connected with the fact that the 'exegete' later on in this essay is explicitly constructed by Ratzinger as male).

Other quotations that struck me:

Thus the word should not be submitted to just any kind of enthusiasm. Rather, preparation is required to open us up to the inner dynamism of the word. This is possible only when there is a certain “sympathia” for understanding, a readiness to learn something new, to allow oneself to be taken along a new road. It is not the closed hand which is required, but the opened eye. . . .

Certainly texts must first of all be traced back to their historical origins and interpreted in their proper historical context. But then, in a second exegetical operation, one must look at them also in light of the total movement of history and in light of history’s central event, Jesus Christ. Only the combination of both these methods will yield understanding of the Bible.

Baptist Hermeneutics Colloquium: Update

The Colloquium that I announced here now has a live website which will be updated as news of contributors and participants develop.  I have yet to decide what my paper will be on - something around covenant probably, although I am also interested in the reception history of Matthew 28:16-20 and 18.15-20 in Baptist sources.  My head is currently crammed full of other stuff but I will get round to getting a proposal together in the next few weeks.

Furtwangler, Beethoven and Hermeneutics

The comparison between the act of interpreting a text and the act of performing a musical score has often been made.  I will probably use it in my own writing this summer.  However the potency of the analogy struck me this morning as I was listen to a new transfer of Wilhelm Furtwangler's legendary 1951 performance of Beethoven's 9th at the re-opening of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus.  Now, the other recording I have in my collection is John Eliot Gardiner's, which is a period instrument performance.  Both are dealing with the same notes on the page, both are convincing but the contrast is utterly extraordinary, so that one feels that you are listening to two different pieces of music, which in a sense, you are.  Gardiner is the exegete, Furtwangler the preacher.

I can't find a clip of Gardiner's version, so if you have a moment, then take a look/listen to these 2 clips of the final bars.  The first is Toscanini in 1948: for the comparison to work, you may want to start listening at about 3:30 in.

The second is Furtwangler in 1942 Berlin in a concert celebrating Hitler's birthday!  There is huge debate about this performance, and to watch it is to be disturbed, but it seems to me that Furtwangler is actually pressing the score to the point where actually the music begins to break down (deconstruct).  Is this someone who knows that the music being played, and the context in which that happens, are inimical to each other, so much so that the music collapses?  The fury of the final bars suggest someone who is struggling to keep control  We will never know (but note if you stick to the end how he shakes Goebbel's hand and then wipes his hand with a hankerchief).

For an insight into Furtwangler's art, see here.

The point is that the notes on the page are the same - but in music, as in biblical studies, interpretation does indeed go all the way down.

Hans Urs von Balthasar: Blog Conference

If you want something to stretch the mind and the heart over the next few days, then I suggest you keep in touch with the von Balthasar blog conference running over at Fire and the Rose.  The introductory post is here.  Then go out and buy Mysterium Paschale and read it over the Easter weekend.

Rowan Williams on Reading Scripture

This from an excellent lecture given in April 2007 in Toronto on 'The Bible Today: Reading & Hearing'

'...a written text requires re-reading; it is never read for the last time, and it continually generates new events of interpretation.  It is fruitful of renewed communication in a way that the spoken word alone cannot be.  So to identify a written text as sacred is to claim that the continuous possibility of re-reading, the impossibility of reading for a last time, is a continuous openness to the intention of God to communicate.  Just as thet text itself contains re-reading, is almost constituted by re-reading, so that it repeatedly recreates a movement towards conversion ... so the eternal possibility of 'reading again' stands as a warning against ignoring the active restlessness of the text in summoning the reader to change.'

Forthcoming from Ashgate

Browsing this morning through the latest catalogue from Ashgate, the following titles and abstracts struck me as interesting and relevant to  my ongoing work on covenantal hermeneutics:

Barth's Theology of Interpretation
Donald Wood
Series: Barth Studies

Through his single-minded insistence on the priority of the Bible in the life of the church, Karl Barth (1886-1968) decisively shaped the course of twentieth-century Christian theology. Drawing on both familiar texts and recently published archival material, Barth's Theology of Interpretation sheds new light on Barth's account of just what it is that scripture gives and requires. In tracing the movement of Barth’s earlier thinking about scriptural reading, the book also raises important questions about the ways in which Barth can continue to influence contemporary discussions about the theological interpretation of scripture.

Revelation, Scripture and Church
Theological Hermeneutic Thought of James Barr, Paul Ricoeur and Hans Frei
Richard R. Topping
Series: Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies

How does God's involvement with the generation of Holy Scripture and its use in the life of the Christian church figure into the human work of Scripture interpretation? This is the central question that this book seeks to address. In critical conversation with the influential hermeneutic programs of James Barr, Paul Ricoeur and Hans Frei, Topping demonstrates how God's agency has been marginalized in the task of Scripture interpretation. Divine involvement with the Bible is bracketed out (Barr), rendered in generic terms (Ricoeur) or left implicit (Frei) in these depictions of the hermeneutic field. The result is that each of these hermeneutic programs is less than a ‘realist’ interpretative proposal. Talk of God is eclipsed by the terminal consideration of human realities. Topping argues for the centrality of doctrinal description in a lively theological understanding of Scripture interpretation for the life of the church.

 

Rendering the Word in Theological Hermeneutics
Mapping Divine and Human Agency
Mark Alan Bowald

This book proposes an original typology for grasping the differences between diverse types of biblical interpretation, fashioned in a triangle around a major theological and philosophical lacuna: the relation between divine and human action. Despite their purported concern for reading God's word, most modern and postmodern approaches to biblical interpretation do not seriously consider the role of divine agency as having a real influence in and on the process of reading Scripture. Mark Bowald seeks to correct and clarify this deficiency by demonstrating the inevitable role that divine agency plays in contemporary proposals in relation to human agency enacted in the composition of the biblical text and the reader. This book presents an important contribution to the emerging field of theological hermeneutics.

Bowald discusses in depth the hermeneutics of George Lindbeck, Hans Frei, Kevin Vanhoozer, Francis Watson, Stephen Fowl, David Kelsey, Werner Jeanrond, Karl Barth, James K.A. Smith, and Nicholas Wolterstorff.

My only puzzle is over how the books by Topping and Bowald might be different from each other.  Both authors are Canadian, both seem to be arguing the same thesis - were both students of John Webster perchance?

The Plurality Preceding Babel

In my Whitley Lecture (summary here and responses from fellow bloggers here, here, here and here) I picked up James K. A. Smith's idea that the Tower of Babel narrative in Genesis 11 should not be understood as a story of human diversity as the result of divine punishment for human pride.  In the lecture I only allude to this point, but am now delighted to see in a recent issue of JBL an article which adds significant exegetical weight to this argument.  In 'The Tower of Babel and the Origin of the World's Culture' (JBL 126 (2007), 29-58, Theodore Hiebert makes the following exegetical arguments in favour of the view that Christian interpreters of the story have 'outdone the story's own characters in the quest for ethnic uniformity ... and devalued difference, seeing it as an obstacle, a source of confusion and chaos, a catastrophe and a curse upon the human race and ultimately, a judgment of God' (p.58).

1.  The use of repetition in the story emphasizes its main theme: that of there being one language and the same words: שָׂפָה אֶחָת וּדְבָרִים אֲחָדִים (note the repetition of אֶחָד and the repeat of the motif in 11.1 and 11.5)

2.  Thus the focus of the narrative is the whole human race.  The interpretation that understands the building to be the work of one culture (usually the Babylonians - most artistic portrayals understand the tower to have been a ziggurat of some sort and this cultural reading underlies most post-colonial readings of the text).

3.  The tower is pretty much an irrelevance on the story.  What is built is a 'city with a tower': עִיר וּמִגְדָּל .The tower drops out of the 2nd part of the story altogether (see 11.6-9).  Thus the story is actually poorly-named.

4.  The motif of the tower with 'its top in the sky': וְרֹאשׁוֹ בַשָּׁמַיִם is misconstrued by those who think the narrative focus is on human pride and hubris.  The phrase is idiomatic and means 'a very tall tower' - nothing more.  Likewise the people's desire to 'make a name for ourselves'  וְנַעֲשֶׂה־לָּנוּ שֵׁם is not an expression of a desire for human self-aggrandizement, but the quest for a stable, common identity.

5.  In the second part of the drama, God ignores the city and the tower, but instead addresses the fact that human beings look like they will probably succeed in their enterprise or bing one people with one language in one place.  English translations read ideas of condemnation into 11.6 - they are not there in the Hebrew which is a basically neutral statement of fact.

6.  God's action is therefore not to be understood as punishment, but the creation of a multilingual world and human dispersion.

These points only begin to touch on the arguments in this important article (Hiebert also attends to the setting of the Babel story within Genesis 1-11 and biblical theology more generally).  What is clear is that difference, particularity, heterogeneity are all understood as God's intention for the world.  Difference must be understood, therefore, as 'God's aspiration for the new world after the flood' (p.58).