Divine Scripture in Human Understanding A S Y S T E M AT I C T H E O L O G Y O F T H E C H R I S T I A N B I B L E
JOS EPH K. G ORD ON
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University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu Copyright © 2019 by the University of Notre Dame All Rights Reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data to come
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C O N T E N T S
Acknowledgments
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Abbreviations xi . Scripture at the Level of Our Times: Situation, Exigencies, and Thesis 1 . Historical Precedents: The Rule of Faith in Irenaeus, Origen, and Augustine 000 . The Location of Scripture I: The Economic Work of the Triune God 000 . The Location of Scripture II: Human Persons and Human Meaning in History 000 . Scripture in History I: The Realia of Christian Scripture 000 . Scripture in History II: The Intelligibility of Christian Scripture 000Abbreviations Conclusion 000 Notes 000 Bibliography Index 000
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C H A P T E R
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Scripture at the Level of Our Times Situation, Exigencies, and Thesis
The problem of reading the Holy Book—if you have faith that it is the Word of God—is the most difficult problem in the whole field of reading. There have been more books written about how to read Scripture than about all other aspects of the art of reading together. The Word of God is obviously the most difficult writing men can read; but it is also, if you believe it is the Word of God, the most important to read. —Mortimer Adler and Charles van Doran, How to Read a Book
Determining the function and role of Scripture in Christian life and thought and articulating the precise parameters of interpretation of the Bible have been perennial challenges for the Christian community.1 Contemporary Christians must face such challenges head-on, though, if they are to maintain the conviction that Scripture is indeed the written Word of God. The challenges are especially acute today, when there are dozens of competing approaches to Scripture in academic, ecclesial, and secular settings. As Robert Sokolowski declares, our present postmodern situation provides “an embarrassment of riches” for understanding the Bible.2 Popular and technical literature devoted to promoting the meaning and 1
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use of Christian Scripture has proliferated in recent years. Within academic or scholarly study of the Christian Bible, this literature can be divided roughly into three major families of approaches: historical-critical, contextual, and primarily theological. This tripartite typology is admittedly imprecise.3 Even given its imprecision, though, it is useful to the extent that it identifies family resemblances characteristic of contemporary scholarly interpretive approaches to the study of the Christian Bible. I discuss each of the three approaches briefly below, but it is important to first note that these approaches have emerged as scholars interested in the Christian scriptures have engaged and appropriated recent developments in philosophical reflection on textual interpretation and on the general conditions and possibilities of human understanding. The most pressing challenge of our contemporary situation is to measure up to the significance of the fact that all human understanding is tied to specific times and places and to think through how this judgment should affect Christian engagement with Scripture.4 “Historical consciousness” names this dimension of contemporary reflection; contemporary readers and hearers of texts have become acutely mindful that all human meanings are nested in historical, cultural, social, and linguistic contexts.5 The texts of Scripture bear the marks of their specific times and places. And the human readers of these texts always interpret them from somewhere and never from nowhere.6 The judgment of the need to attend to the locatedness of all human expressions and interpretations has received helpful exposition in the work of the later Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hans Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, and various postmodern philosophers such as Stanley Fish and Jacques Derrida.7 Any full account of reading and understanding a text well must attend to the insights of such seminal figures.8 Human understanding of the world and of texts that precede us is inescapably shaped, if not determined, by our cultural and linguistic formation in communities of understanding. As the product of human understanding in distinct cultural settings, “concepts have dates.”9 While early Christian interpreters were not entirely naive regarding the historical and cultural differences between their own worlds of meaning and the worlds they encountered in Scripture, the recent emphasis on historical consciousness has instigated a much more thoroughgoing investigation of the diverse ancient historical, social, and cultural worlds
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reflected in Scripture than took place in premodern engagement with Scripture. The relatively recent major discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Oxyrhnchus papyri, the Nag Hammadi texts, the Codex Sinaiticus, and countless other ancient artifacts and texts from antiquity, coupled with the fruition of such historical consciousness, have made possible the concerted and disciplined consideration of the Bible as a historical anthology of texts that reflect multiple different ancient social, cultural, and linguistic worlds of meaning.10 Focus on the original historical settings of Christian Scripture and the concern to avoid anachronism are the characteristic features of the family of contemporary hermeneutical approaches designated by the label “historical criticism.”11 Given that human beings who produced, edited, and passed on the scriptures are situated within and bear the marks of their distinct times and places, historical critics ask what we can understand and what judgments we can make about the authors of these texts and the functions of these texts in the ancient “worlds” from which such documents emerged. Practitioners of historical criticism concern themselves with the tasks of understanding the texts within their hypothetically reconstructed original settings of composition, redaction, interpretation, and use. They raise and answer questions concerning what we can know about the worlds of meaning “behind” the texts and the relationship of the texts themselves to these backgrounds. Historical-critical work has borne much fruit in helping contemporary readers understand the biblical texts in their own contexts.12 It is not, however, without its problems. Though the analysis of the historical uniqueness of the cultures attested in Scripture has its own intrinsic value, its processes and results build “an impenetrable wall” between the texts and contemporary people.13 Historical scholarship makes demands upon readers and interpreters that can only be met through the study of ancient languages and cultures; as such, it threatens to take Scripture out of the hands of everyday Christian believers. Even within the confines of the guilds of biblical scholarship, narrative criticism and the applications of structuralism and semiotics to biblical texts have emerged to remedy some atomizing tendencies common within historical criticism and to address the perceived failure of historical criticism to edify religious communities.14 Narrative approaches give direct attention not to the worlds of meaning “behind the texts” but instead to those worlds of meanings and values projected or “created by”
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the texts of Scripture themselves. Such literary approaches have frequently emphasized the usefulness of the texts as they stand for challenging readers to ascend to new and fuller horizons of understanding and acting in the world. In recent years a number of so-called contextual approaches to the study of Scripture have emerged and gained influence in academic biblical scholarship. Though all reading, as I have noted above, is necessarily contextual, the aforementioned “contextual” approaches attend not primarily to the worlds in which ancient texts were produced or to the worlds that they depict but instead focus on “the worlds in front of the texts.” Such reading strategies focus on the concerns that culturally and socially located readers—especially those who have suffered from disenfranchisement and marginalization—bring to the texts from their own horizons of experience and meaning. As noted above, the commitments, values, beliefs, and practices of readers themselves inevitably affect reading and interpretation.15 Practitioners of contextual reading approaches have also challenged the hegemony of historical criticism within the guild of academic biblical scholarship by drawing attention to the fact that practitioners of the latter approach have frequently been insufficiently attentive to their own social and cultural locations and the effects of their situatedness upon their interpretive work. Because they have not been sufficiently attentive to their own social and cultural locations, historical critics have often unreflectively endorsed androcentric and narrowly Western perspectives. The pretension of historical criticism to total neutrality has revealed itself as a farce. The claim that neutral, bias-free study of Scripture is possible and that historical criticism is its embodiment dissemblingly masks the commitments necessarily involved in historical-critical engagement with Scripture.16 In addition to the development of historical criticism and contextual approaches, a rapidly growing number of historical and constructive studies on the explicitly theological nature of the task of Christian interpretation of Christian Scripture have appeared during the past twenty years.17 These efforts stem, in part, from an ecumenical groundswell of interest in both academic and ecclesial contexts in drawing on the riches of the Christian past in order to aid the task of reuniting scriptural exegesis and theology. These new theological approaches promote an emphasis on the need for Christians to identify the constitutively Christian dimensions of
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Christian scriptural interpretation. In Engaging Scripture, Stephen Fowl captures the emphases of these new theological approaches well. Christian interpretation of Scripture, he writes, at least in order to be distinctively Christian, “needs to involve a complex interaction in which Christian convictions, practices, and concerns are brought to bear on scriptural interpretation in ways that both shape that interpretation and are shaped by it.”18 Many of these theologically focused studies have attempted to recover aspects of premodern approaches to the function and role of Scripture in the day-to-day lives of Christian communities.19 Other recent studies have laudably sought to recover and present the achievements of premodern figures and movements in order to address contemporary questions about the nature and interpretation of Scripture.20 The relationship of these three families of approaches to one another is unclear, even to those who affirm the relative legitimacy of each. A multifaceted question arises: How should these various approaches—historical critical, contextual, and theological—be related to one another, and how should they inform contemporary engagement with and use of Scripture in Christian communities today?21 The problem of knowing precisely what to do with Scripture and how to interpret it is not restricted, of course, to the academy. The various approaches that have recently emerged in the academic study of Scripture have trickled down to various ecclesial communities with varying effects.22 A significant number of studies have appeared in recent years that examine the ecclesial dimensions of Christian reading and the place of Christian Scripture in Christian community. This literature includes constructive studies, works that attempt to retrieve and employ aspects of premodern understandings of the relationship between Scripture and church, congresses of specific ecclesial traditions, and ecumenically inclined dialogues between different ecclesial communities.23 New interfaith initiatives, such as Scriptural Reasoning groups, have also brought individuals and groups from different religious traditions together—particularly from the three Abrahamic traditions—to read the respective holy books of represented participants.24 While the Bible is perhaps not as “strange[ly] silent” in many mainline Protestant churches as it was forty years ago, there is often still confusion about how to integrate the ongoing, and so changeable, achievements of historical approaches to Scripture with traditional practices of
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reverence for Scripture as the written Word of God.25 As the New Testament scholar Dale Martin has recently argued, the historical-critical training that many clerical leaders received in seminary has proven impotent as an aid for effective preaching.26 Contemporary evangelical groups in America, particularly communities that hold to “high views” of the authority of Scripture, are aptly characterized by what Christian Smith has called “pervasive interpretive pluralism.”27 Despite the fact that these Christian groups universally agree that Scripture should be authoritative, they exhibit a great deal of diversity in their understandings of its content and application.28 The problem of interpretive plurality, of course, is not restricted to evangelical groups.29 Nor is it the only problem that contemporary Christian communities face regarding the use and interpretation of Scripture. Stephen Prothero’s Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—And Doesn’t draws attention to the widespread phenomenon of biblical illiteracy characteristic of American Christianity.30 Despite the fact that significant percentages of Americans—whether evangelical, mainline Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, or other—affirm the authority and centrality of Scripture for their faith, knowledge of its contents is low and is decreasing across the ecclesial spectrum.31 When contemporary readers, whether scholars, laypeople, exegetes, or theologians, do engage Scripture, they are frequently perplexed by the “strange new world[s]” that they encounter depicted within it.32 The historical, moral, and even religious distance that has opened up between the worlds of meaning mediated by the texts of Scripture—to the extent that we can understand them and make correct judgments about them—and the worlds of meaning that most contemporary readers inhabit have proven stupefying to countless Christian believers.33 The most pressing concerns are moral in nature. What are Christians to do with an authoritative Scripture that seems to depict God as not only condoning, but even sanctioning slavery, wanton violence, genocide, patriarchy, and racism?34 That such difficult “texts of terror” have been invoked to justify atrocities in history requires attention and a response from anyone who would seek to understand and articulate the authority of Christian Scripture in the contemporary world.35 Given not only the distance and strangeness of the worlds of the Bible, but its witness to and ostensible approval of moral atrocities, one historical critic has suggested that the discipline of historical
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criticism should have the task of completely dismantling the cultural cachet of the Christian Bible as its only end.36 To accept such a proposal is not an option for contemporary Christians committed to Scripture and its authority. But how are they to understand it? What are they to do with it? The sheer plurality of approaches to the interpretation of the Bible and the speed at which they have emerged and developed in recent years are dizzying. At this time there is nothing even remotely close to consensus on the relationship between these extremely different approaches to the Christian Bible. They pose unique theological problems for Christians committed to the authority of Scripture and its central place in Christian faith. Recognizing the moral difficulties involved in reading Scripture today muddles the problem even more. Given the cacophony of competing approaches to Scripture, and the seemingly irreconcilable claims the different groups are making of it, is it still possible for contemporary Christians to believe in the inspiration, unity, and authority of the Christian Bible? If so, how? What should Christians expect of the Bible? How should they read it? The situation of Christian Scripture in our own times calls for a response. The starting point for reading Scripture well, whether one’s focus is explicitly theological or religious in nature, is an adequate understanding of what the Bible actually is. As Martin has written, “The first step in learning how to interpret the Bible . . . is to make explicit what one thinks Scripture is. How one interprets Scripture depends a great deal on what one thinks the Bible is.”37 “What it is,” Scott Swain writes, “must determine how we approach and use it.”38 But Scripture is not separable from its contexts of use and meaning. Besides clearly identifying what Scripture is, we must also “locate” Scripture relative to the other realities, divine and human, that surround it. Context, as contemporary philosophers of interpretation from various backgrounds regularly note, determines meaning. Anthony Thiselton argues that “only the context (and perhaps agreed training) will limit pluralism against unmeant or irrelevant possibilities.”39 A number of scholars have recognized and responded to the problems that our contemporary situation presents for understanding the nature and purpose of Scripture and have suggested fruitful ways to move forward. This project appropriates aspects of some of these suggestions but ultimately proposes a unique way of addressing the difficulties. The present work proposes a systematic theology of the Christian Bible at the
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level of our own times as a means of addressing the present challenges and opportunities.40 Such a systematic theology will provide a resource for both responsibly locating Scripture in its divine and human contexts and identifying Scripture in those surroundings. The only way to responsibly evaluate the various approaches to Scripture explained above is through having a responsible understanding of what Scripture has been and is and through situating Scripture responsibly and faithfully in its natural and supernatural contexts. What follows, then, provides a constructive systematic account of the nature and purpose of Christian Scripture that articulates the intelligibility of Scripture and locates it within the work of the Triune God in history and within human cultural history.41 I assume that the purpose and function of systematic theology is the articulation of the intelligibility of Christian doctrines affirmed in the present at the level of one’s own time.42 Because I have taken a systematic approach in the present work, what follows is not structured through an exegetical appropriation of insights from premodern or contemporary figures.43 Instead, specific questions and judgments about the Triune God, about the economy of God’s creative and redemptive work, about the intelligibility of human persons in history, about the material history of Scripture, and finally about traditional Christian beliefs concerning Scripture itself organize the work.44 The remainder of this introduction therefore introduces the primary figures whose work I utilize, provides an explanation of the notion of systematic theology adopted here, and gives a justification for the rationale behind the structural organization of the following chapters. It is important for me to draw attention to and comment on the subtitle of this project, A Systematic Theology of the Christian Bible. The presence of the indefinite article A is significant. While the scope of this work is ambitious, it cannot provide an exhaustive treatment of the objects of its inquiry and investigation. Such an account would require more research and reflection than any one person could perform over a lifetime. The present work does aspire to provide one relatively adequate account of divine Scripture in human understanding as an answer to the following questions: What is the nature and purpose of the Christian Bible, and what is its location in the contexts of the economic work of the Triune God and the cultural history of humanity?
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THE PRIMARY INTERLO CUTORS OF THE PROJECT
Though this is a constructive project, it depends upon engagement with and appropriation of the contributions of a number of theologians and exegetes of the present day, the recent past, and the distant past. Prior to outlining the intelligibility of the structure of the work, then, I want to introduce my two primary interlocutors, Bernard Lonergan and Henri de Lubac, to clarify precisely how I appropriate their insights. On any account Bernard Lonergan is among the giants of philosophy and theology of the twentieth century.45 At first glance, however, he would appear to be a strange interlocutor for a study on the nature and purpose of Christian Scripture. What help can Lonergan offer for the task at hand? While Lonergan was not himself a biblical scholar, he did have an extensive knowledge of the contents of the Christian Bible. He was also well read in the historical-critical scholarship of his day.46 A significant number of biblical scholars have explicitly employed insights from Lonergan’s work to address difficulties in the current situation of Scripture in our time.47 In addition, a number of other theologians have utilized Lonergan’s work to clarify the place of Scripture in contemporary theological reflection.48 This work builds on much of their previous work but attempts to go further by providing a wide-ranging heuristic account of the location of Scripture within history and the work of the Triune God, the location of Scripture relative to human nature and human cultural history, and, finally, the history, nature, and purpose of Christian Scripture itself. The first key contribution that Lonergan provides is his articulation of the functions and goals of systematic theology.49 I provide an overview of his position on systematics below. But his work offers other key insights for the present systematic theology of Christian Scripture. Lonergan’s most salient observation for the present work, to which I regularly return, is insistence on the need to pay attention to “the fact that theologies are produced by theologians, that theologians have minds and use them, that their doing so should not be ignored or passed over but explicitly acknowledged in itself and in its implications.”50 The same thing must be said about biblical scholarship, whether it is historical critical, literary, contextual, or explicitly theological; it is produced by human persons, and those human persons have minds and use them, and this fact
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should be acknowledged in itself and in its implications. It can, and must, also be said about all humans, whether scholars or not, who engage Scripture. In his monumental work, Insight, Lonergan explains the subjective involvement intrinsic to the human quest for truth and clearly distinguishes its components. By exploring and interrogating the achievements of the philosophical traditions of rationalism and empiricism, modern scientific method, and the development and functioning of common sense, Lonergan is able to provide a relatively comprehensive and compelling account of the constants of consciousness in human nature that undergird all human understanding. Through his investigation of the dynamics of human consciousness, Lonergan demonstrates that objectivity, or the correspondence of one’s judgments with the way things are, results from the cultivation and practice of authentic subjectivity.51 This is true in every distinct field of human inquiry. We are successful as human knowers when we are attentive in our experiencing; intelligent in our questioning, conceptualizing, and imagining; rational in our judging; and responsible in our deciding.52 Lonergan’s phenomenological explanation of the invariant structure of human cognition is an account of the bedrock of human knowledge. It helpfully articulates the very means through which all advances in understanding and judgment are possible.53 Lonergan’s achievement embraces the legitimate emphases on the linguistic nestedness, historicity, and fallibility of human knowing and yet rightly shows how the relativity and subjectivity of human knowledge does not entail a vicious relativism or subjectivism.54 The present project can be fruitfully understood as an attempt to think through the implications of Lonergan’s axiom with reference to the nature and purpose of Christian Scripture. Readers who are familiar with Lonergan’s work will likely more easily get the import of what I am trying to do here and elsewhere. To those who are not, I must offer an apology, in both senses of the word, for my dependence upon and use of Lonergan. Lonergan is not without his critics.55 His work is admittedly prohibitively dense and idiosyncratic. His later work, especially Method in Theology, is extremely terse.56 It also bears witness to Lonergan’s own intellectual development from the beginning to the end of his career.57 His mind was a mind in motion and his manner of expression moved from what could be considered a scholastic idiom to an existential idiom.