Virtuous Reading

To be good readers and interpreters then, we must cultivate interpretive virtues.[1] “An interpretive virtue is a disposition of the mind and heart that arises from the motivation for understanding, for cognitive contact with the meaning of the text.”[2] Although I agree with this description of interpretive virtue, I wish to add the above insight that these virtues are not necessary to just engage the meaning of a text, but rather to engage the voice of a person or community that is represented in and through the text. If texts are “an extension of one’s self into the world, through communicative action,”[3] then the ethics of interpersonal communication come into play as we seek to read and interpret faithfully. Here we are helped by Vanhoozer who notes four specific virtues that will aid our reading and interpretation.

Honesty

Vanhoozer calls attention to the interpreters prior commitments and presuppositions in reading and interpreting texts. He calls for interpreters to be clear about their own aims and interests and how these may affect our understanding as we read and engage with texts. Above all he notes that “a dishonest interpreter is less likely to be receptive to those texts that appear to challenge one’s most cherished beliefs or habits or desires. A dishonest interpreter is more likely to drown out the voice of the other.”[4]

Openness

This virtue refers to our ability to hear and appropriate the insights, questions, concerns and objections raised by other interpreters. “Readers display interpretive openness when they welcome the text as other, with courtesy and respect, and when they entertain other interpretations as well.” He also notes that openness implies a willingness to change one’s own understanding in response to the text and other readers. He then notes that “closed-mindedness is an interpretive vice; closed-minded readers are either unwilling or unable to go beyond themselves.”[5]

Attention

“Paying attention to the text is itself a form of respect and involves a number of related virtues, such as patience, thoroughness, and care.”[6] Rather than being self-absorbed or too preoccupied with our own interpretive interests and agenda’s, we should seek to carefully and attentively hear the specific nuances and details of the voice of the author which is embodied in a text. An author might be making a single statement within the context of a much larger project and thus we should look for the contours and shape of the author’s presentation in the text, seeking to understand how each part fits together within the whole narrative.

Obedience

Every text follows various conventions and conforms to various types of genre. Here the reader must seek to read with the grain of the text, seeking to understand the text on its own terms. “The obedient interpreter is the one who follows the directions of the text rather than one’s own desires.”[7] If there are conventions at play which may affect the understanding of the text, then we should seek to follow those conventions.[8]

Implementing these virtues does not guarantee success in the interpretive process, but it does set us off in the right direction as we seek to understand the communication of the other. With that in mind, Vanhoozer notes that,

Indeed, interpretation ultimately depends upon the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. Faith, that there is a real presence, a voice, a meaning in the text; hope, that the interpretive community can, in the power of the Spirit, attain an adequate, not absolute, understanding; love, a mutual relation of self-giving between text and reader.[9]

We are thus developing a relational hermeneutic which respects the voice of the other, and seeks to understand it on its own terms before we raise our issues and concerns. As noted before by Wright,

Each stage of this process becomes a conversation, in which misunderstanding is likely, perhaps even inevitable, but in which, through patient listening, real understanding (and real access to external reality) is actually possible and attainable.[10]

This position stands in strong contrast to the deconstructive and detached models of reading advocated by some postmodern theorists. In the next post we shall not engage with these voices, but merely note how their concerns and objections can be alleviated so that the miracle of understanding may continue.

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[1] Vanhoozer, Is there a Meaning in this Text?, 377.

[2] Vanhoozer, Is there a Meaning in this Text?, 376, italics original.

[3] Vanhoozer, Is there a Meaning in this Text?, 229.

[4] Vanhoozer, Is there a Meaning in this Text?, 377.

[5] Vanhoozer, Is there a Meaning in this Text?, 377.

[6] Vanhoozer, Is there a Meaning in this Text?, 377.

[7] Vanhoozer, Is there a Meaning in this Text?, 377.

[8] Vanhoozer notes that apocalyptic literature should be read with that in mind, the same for history, for poetry, and other genres.

[9] K. J. Vanhoozer, “The Spirit of Understanding: Special Revelation and General Hermeneutics” in Disciplining Hermeneutics: Interpretation in Christian Perspective. Ed. Roger Lundin. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 131-165, here 161.

[10] Wright, NTPG, 64.

Engaging the “Other” in Reading

In response to an email from our friend Joseph McAuley back in June, I began to write a post on hermeneutics and authorial intention. However, I soon realised that I was opening Pandora's Box, and that a single blog post could not adequately address all the issues at stake in this conversation. So I began to do a little reading and thinking, and Michael Frost and I have had some helpful discussions around this topic as well. So what follows is my first attempt, among many to come, to articulate my position regarding hermeneutics and authorial intentions. I realise this is a technical discussion but I'm hoping to translate most of the technical discussion so that others can join in the conversation... So please feel free to ask questions, raise issues and concerns or flat out object. This is a work in progress...

attempt 1: begin...

Alan Jacobs in his book, A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love, argues that genuine reading and interpretation of someone’s writing, is an act of love or it is an act of abuse.[1] What this means is that either we, (intentionally or not), treat the author as a person who has given voice to his or her inner heart that we can then trust, listen to, and respond to. Or, we treat that person as a treacherous voice that we can’t trust and that we can strip in order to use for our own power. Tom Wright has elaborated a similar view with regards to an epistemology/hermeneutic of love which is a helpful aid to the act of reading.

In love, at least in the idea of agape as we find it in some parts of the New Testament, the lover affirms the reality and the otherness of the beloved. Love does not seek to collapse the beloved into terms of itself… When applied to reading texts, this means that the text can be listened to on its own terms, without being reduced to the scale of what the reader can or cannot understand at the moment. If it is puzzling, the good reader will pay it the compliment of struggling to understanding it, of living with it and continuing to listen… Each stage of this process becomes a conversation, in which misunderstanding is likely, perhaps even inevitable, but in which, through patient listening, real understanding (and real access to external reality) is actually possible and attainable.[2]

Texts must thus be viewed as “an extension of one’s self into the world, through communicative action.”[3] Therefore, through textual interpretation we are engaging with the voice of another, and that voice must be respected in the interpretive process. As Wolterstorff has noted, reading is therefore an act of “engagement with a person that is mediated by the artefact.”[4] Because we are engaging with the voice of another through a text, there is an ethical dimension to our reading and interpretation.[5]

This ethic of interpretation is necessary “to guard the otherness of the text: to preserve its ability to say something to and affect the reader, thus creating the possibility of self-transcendence.”[6] We must be aware that interpretation does not become “a hostile act in which [the] interpreter victimises [a] text.”[7] Reading therefore requires a careful and patient listening and discerning process as we grapple to understand the voice of another. This requires that we pay attention to the concerns and convictions in the voice and message of another, and not dominate their offering and contribution with our own concerns and convictions, however valid those may be. “The interpreter has an ethical responsibility to allow the communicative aim of the text to guide the reader to its intended meaning.”[8] This provides the necessary foundation for a responsible hermeneutic that seeks to understand and represent faithfully the communication of the other, in various texts.[9]

Does that make sense? Clear as mud?

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[1] Alan Jacobs, A Theology Of Reading: The Hermeneutics Of Love. (Boulder: Westview Press, 2001).

[2] N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God. (London: SPCK, 1992), 64. This theory of reading is set within the context of Wright’s critical realist epistemology which provides the necessary framework for such a view.

[3] K. J. Vanhoozer, Is there a Meaning in this Text?: The Bible, the reader and the morality of literary knowledge. (Leicester: Apollos, 1998), 229.

[4] See Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Resuscitating the Author” in Hermeneutics at the Crossroads. Edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer, James K. A. Smith, and Bruce Ellis Benson. (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2006), 35-50. This point is also well made by Theologians such as Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2, 465.

[5] Vanhoozer, 376, notes that only a realist hermeneutic can “respect” the voice of the other, because the “non-realist does not believe that there is anything to be respected.” K. J. Vanhoozer, “A Lamp in the Labyrinth: The Hermeneutics of ‘Aesthetic’ Theology,” Trinity Journal 88 (1987): 25-56, introduces Speech-Act Theory to show how we engage with authors through texts. See John Searle, Speech Acts. An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. (London: Cambridge University, 1969) and how this is developed in Vanhoozer, Is there a Meaning in this Text? In telling section, Vanhoozer, 55, notes that “If the text is a speech act, it seems as far-fetched to separate an author from his language and literature as it does an agent from his action. The author “belongs” to his text. He is responsible for his illocutionary acts… [T]o misinterpret a text is akin to attributing an action to the author that he did not commit.”

[6] Vanhoozer, Is there a Meaning in this Text?, 383.

[7] Mark C. Taylor, “Text as Victim,” in Thomas Altizer and Carl Raschke, Deconstruction and Theology. (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 65. Vanhoozer, “A Lamp in the Labyrinth,” 53 uses stronger language to note that, “wilful misunderstanding of texts is somehow guilty of doing violence to the author. Purposely to misinterpret an author seems akin to disrespect, a kind of semantic rape.”

[8] G. R. Osborne, “Hermeneutics,” in Dictionary of the Later New Testament & Its Developments. eds. Ralph P. Martin, Peter H. Davids, (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press) 2000, c1998, [Online] Available: Logos Library System.

[9] Vanhoozer, “A Lamp in the Labyrinth,” 55, “In combining intention and convention, speaker meaning and sentence meaning, speech act theory is able to preserve the emphasis on the present form of a text while at the same time preserving a normative role for the author and his author-ity. With speech act theory, the author has begun to rediscover his voice.”

Devotional Exegesis

For the first part of this, see: Devotional Scholarship.

Stephen Fowl in his theological commentary on Philippians notes several elements of a consciously theologically reflective exegesis. I have numbered the points which I will then discuss.

[1] Commenting on Scripture is a theological discipline in that one expects that by attention to the words of Scripture one will hear the voice of God. Of course, listening to God’s voice is the primary activity of prayer, too. [2] Thus, commenting on Scripture can be a form of prayer. At their best, the disciplines of attention which lead to deep and faithful praying also apply to commentary writing as well. Studying… has certainly enhanced my praying. [3] The challenge to me as a writer is to seek to open those benefits up to others. [4] More generally, then, one of the aims of theological commentary must be to allow others to hear God’s voice… [5] At the end of the day, all theological interpretation of Scripture is always directed toward more faithful worship and practice so that we Christians might move toward ever deeper friendship or communion with God and each other.

Stephen Fowl, Philippians, 5-6.

1. Theological interpretation has as its goal hearing the voice of God. It is thus part and parcel of the relationship between the reader and the GOD who has brought about the existence of this text. We may pay careful attention to the peculiarities of the human author, but through this human agent, GOD has spoken, and the reader is to attend to His voice.

2. What the commentator produces comes from the act of hearing, and thus forms a response of writing which comes from a place of prayer. Prayer is the origin of writing. As the reader listens carefully and attentively to the voice of God, he may begin to unpack and declare what he hears in response to GOD. If one is distracted by technical details and neglects or forgets God as the communicator, then the art of reading scripture theologically has failed. At any one time a reader may be engaged in technical details, but this is not where we must remain. Rather, a reader must return to a posture of reverence in the presence of the GOD who speaks.

3. From this communication between reader and GOD, others should benefit. This speaks directly to the reader being affected and directed by hearing the voice of God, but also to the production of the commentary. How will what the commentator has written benefit the people of GOD? If the church is not helped, compelled and challenged by the readers reflections and meditations from his hearing of the voice of GOD, then we must question if the reader has really heard the voice of GOD, or whether he has articulated this helpfully for God’s people. Reading and listening to God’s voice is therefore not an isolated and individual event. God speaks so that others may hear and benefit from his wisdom and love.

4. The community of God’s people must specifically benefit from the readers apprehension and attention to the voice of GOD in such a way so as to clarify and explicate what GOD has said. Thus, the commentator must not hinder others from hearing God’s voice by offering distracting and unnecessary comments or discussions. Commentating on Scripture should be an act of communal prayer, as through the commentators offerings people should still hear “the voice of GOD.”

5. If theological commentary on the event of hearing God’s voice does not affect our worship of God, does not help our practice of fellowship or does not aid our work in God’s mission, then we have failed to adequately comment on hearing God’s voice. Although Fowl does not make explicit the mission of God, I see this as an imperative upon which we must focus. The Scriptures are about worship, fellowship and mission. Failure to appropriately address at least one of these topics, is often a misunderstanding.

What I am advocating here is consciously informed devotional scholarship. This is not something about which we should be ashamed or hide, but rather we should openly and boldly declare that we are those who love GOD and claim to have heard his voice. And thus our comments should reflect such allegiance and reverence to the One who’s voice we have heard. For the benefit of not only ourselves, but also for others, this is the way I trust we should proceed.

Scripture and theological reflection must be a guide to discipleship, a testimony to the actions of the Triune God and his people, and it should be a catalyst to Christian practice. Therefore, practices of biblical interpretation and theological reflection must have as their goal greater knowledge and love of God in devotion to his community and cause. What we need more than ever is God-focused exegesis and reflection that works out implications for how the church is called to live and to read its Bible as we engage in the mission of God, proclaiming the gospel of God, awaiting the final redemption of God, to the glory of God. This is the goal of theological interpretation.

Is Reading the Bible Overrated?

I think Christians have largely missed the boat on the necessity of reading Scripture. I recently chatted to someone who felt almost as if they had sinned for not reading the Bible enough. Strange, as for the first 1400 years of the Church (perhaps longer), only the leaders and the elite few who could read had access to “bibles”. The rest of the Church had no Bible to read, and most could not read. Rather, Christians either waited until Sunday to hear the Scriptures read publicly (1 Tim. 4:13), or they memorised portions of Scripture. If a failure to read the Bible is tantamount to sinning, the early Christians up until the 15th century were doomed by necessity. So what’s up with our modern day drive to read the Bible?

Go back in time for a moment, to when Christianity had no collection of Scripture. Imagine we are one of the Christians who live in Philippi and all we have is Paul’s letter to the Philippians to tell us what being a Christian is all about. What kind of Christianity would that shape? (1:27-30) What vision and values would shape the community we inhabit? (2:1-4) What emphases would there be? (2:5-11) Now fast-forward to the present day and perhaps contemporary Christians are distracted by so many letters and books within the bible, that this has complicated matters. Imagine if we focussed, as must have been the case with the first Christians, on one or two letters, and shaped our Christian lives on the vision and ethos presented within those letters. What character and profile of Christianity would emerge from a concerted effort to live out the message of Philippians?

You see, for the first Christians reading the bible was not essential. Knowing the resurrected Lord Jesus, encountering the Spirit of God, obeying and implementing the teachings of Jesus and the first apostles, now that’s what was important. Christians confuse priorities when we spend more time trying to read the bible than obeying what we already know. The Scriptures are a means to an end, and that end is devotion to the triune God and faithfulness to His cause. Now of course, reading the Scriptures is an important part of equipping ourselves to engage in the Mission of God. But gaining information will not help us, we must actually understand what we’re reading and then begin to wrestle with the task of appropriating what we have learnt into our lives, communities and world.

For example: What was Paul trying to do in his letter to the Philippians? What’s it all about? How does he deal with the problems in Philippi? An inability to answer these basic questions suggests that our aim has usually been reading, instead of understanding. Reading the bible is useless if we don’t understand what we’ve read. And I’m not talking about a superficial understanding either, I’m talking about grappling with the theological and ethical vision that Paul is casting, not just knowing what happens chronologically through the letter of Philippians. Reading with understanding takes patience and perseverance. It takes attentiveness to the contours of Paul’s thoughts and arguments. It takes time, effort and help (Acts 8:30-31).

So should we stop reading our Bible’s? If the aim is to gain information, then yes. However, if the aim is to wrestle with God’s word until we hear God’s voice and understand what the true author is trying to say, then by all means, read, understand and most importantly, obey! As Origen, one of the early Church leaders has said:

If anyone ponders over [the scriptures] with all the attention and reverence they deserve, it is certain that in the very act of reading and diligently studying them their mind and feelings will be touched by a divine breath and they will recognise that the words they are reading are not utterances of people but the language of God.[1]

I have used Paul’s letter to the Philippians as an example, but this would equally apply to almost any letter, gospel or writing in the New Testament. These communities did not have access to all the writings of the New Testament, or even all the writings of the Old Testament. What they did have, they studied repeatedly until they could understand and obey. And when they didn’t understand and obey, they sought help by asking key people questions. And this is what led to the writings of the New Testament.

We are so privileged to have the entire canon. But we must not let that overwhelm us or make us lazy in wrestling with each contribution to the Scriptures. If more time was spent seeking to understand and appropriate one letter within the New Testament, rather than just reading the whole Bible, our devotion to the GOD of the Scriptures would be transformed. Faithfulness must take precedence over reading. Reading the Bible is merely a means to an end, to Know God and make Him Known.

Te totum applica ad textum. Rem totam applica ad te.
Apply yourself wholly to the text. Then apply it wholly to yourself.
Johann Albrecht Bengel

Devotional Scholarship

The title may sound like an oxy-moron, or even an unsolvable paradox, but that need not be the case. In fact, I am increasingly becoming agitated with Christian scholarship and it’s apparent embracing of a secular style of writing that talks about “God” but does not acknowledge God’s presence in the interpretive process. Listen to the wisdom of an early Christian, labouring in the vocation of teaching and preaching:

If anyone ponders over [the scriptures] with all the attention and reverence they deserve, it is certain that in the very act of reading and diligently studying them their mind and feelings will be touched by a divine breath and they will recognise that the words they are reading are not utterances of people but the language of God.[1]

For Origen, studying Scripture is a devotional act. It attends with all due respect to the voice of GOD. It consciously and purposely seeks to apprehend what God seeks to reveal in his words. It is an act inspired and directed by the revelation of God. It is a holistic experience as it seeks not just an intellectual stimulus, but also the transformation and edification of feelings which would then necessarily affect one’s actions. Note the words of John of Damascus when he writes,

To search the sacred Scripture is very good and most profitable for the soul. For “like a tree which is planted near the running waters,” so does the soul watered by sacred Scripture also grow hearty and bear fruit in due season. This is the orthodox faith. It is adorned with its evergreen leaves, with actions pleasing to God.[2]

This act of reading and studying is an act of reverence towards God’s voice through the medium of Scripture. And we understand that this is primarily the work of the Spirit breathing upon us as we labour among God’s witnesses and prophets. The Spirit whispers through attentive exegesis and theological reflection to the heart that listens, to the ears that hear, that we might know Him and make Him known.

The biblical theologian who writes [and teaches] in the service of the church does so to elucidate the biblical worldview, not merely so that it can be studied but so that it can be adopted.[3]

[1] Origen, First Principles, 4.1.6.
[2] John of Damascus, Orthodox Faith, 4.17.
[3] James Hamilton, God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgement, 45.