The Bible: Culture, Community, Society 9781472550842, 9780567049445

Citation preview

Acknowledgements We are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce copyright works: The estate of Norman Adams (Norman Adams, Vision on the Road to Damascus; Plate 1). The Chapter of Liverpool Cathedral (Tracey Emin, For You; Plate 2). National Theatre Wales/WildWorks/Ian Kingsnorth (for Plate 4, Michael Sheen as ‘The Teacher’ in The Passion, produced by National Theatre Wales and Wildworks in Port Talbot, Wales, April 2012). While every effort has been made to trace copyright holders, the editors and publishers will gladly rectify any errors or omissions that are brought to our attention in future editions of this work.

Abbreviations AB

Anchor Bible

AHC

Association of Hebrew Catholics

ARCIC Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission BCE

Before the Common Era

CMF

Church Missionary Fellowship

CPCE

Community of Protestant Churches in Europe

HTE

Human Tissue and Embryos (Draft) Bill

JETS

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society

KJV

King James Version

TLOT

Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament (Ernst Jenni and Claus Westermann; 3 vols; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997)

TNTC

Tyndale New Testament Commentaries

US(A)

United States (of America)

WUNT Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament

Introduction Angus Paddison and Neil Messer

The essays that follow have their genesis in a conference held in July 2011 at the University of Winchester in association with Winchester Cathedral and the Wessex Synod of the United Reformed Church, ‘The Bible: Culture, Community and Society’. Over three days a diverse group of speakers (from the USA, New Zealand, Ireland and the United Kingdom) and attendees (church ministers, charity workers and interested ‘lay’ people) wrestled with the issues presented in the essays now revised and contained within the pages of this volume. The conference was held in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the Authorized (‘King James’) Version, an apt year to trace the Bible’s historical influence on culture and thinking and to map ways in which it can continue to be a transforming presence in culture and society. As David Fergusson and Ben Quash note in their contributions, the Authorized Version has had a profound influence on our language and indeed our imaginations. Yet if the Bible, through the operation of the Spirit, is a living text, then we need to ask how what Zoë Bennett calls ‘the text of life’ and ‘the text of the Bible’ can be read together. The question, ‘how can we operate with biblical dexterity and daring for the sake of our time?’, is one that unites the essays in all three parts of this collection. The three parts, corresponding to three sections of the conference, focus on different aspects of that overarching theme; yet the boundaries between them are anything but watertight, and readers will notice many cross-currents and connections running through the whole book. Dextrous and responsible engagement with the biblical text requires us to locate where we are now. Reading the Bible as an authoritative text will not

2

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

be secured by sheltering in the imagined haven of recuperated pre-modern modes of reading the text. Whilst there is much to be gained from pre-modern modes of biblical reasoning, we have to recognize that all biblical reading is and always has been situated in and responsive to its context. As Ellen Davis points out in her essay, precisely this awareness might be one way in which we could characterize the postmodern sensibility. The essays in the first part of the volume seek to locate the context in which biblical reasoning finds itself in now. David Fergusson surveys the challenges and potential of our context, not least in relating to historical criticism, in wrestling with the ‘difficult’ texts of the Bible, in fostering a mutually enlightening relationship between church and academy, and in uniting doctrinal interests and close textual attention. With his help we begin to see the many overlapping homes which the biblical text occupies – in churches, in universities (and not just Departments of Theology and Religious Studies!), in the public square and public consciousness, in the various historical contexts in which the texts originate. As Fergusson suggests and many other contributors elucidate, we are wise to keep the relationship between these different homes fluid. Many themes and issues lighted upon in Fergusson’s essay are taken up and pursued further in the contributions that follow in this part, as well as elsewhere in the volume. Richard Bell wrestles with the question of how the biblical texts can be read in a scientific age, a time when many think that modern discoveries have fatally dislodged the Bible from the authoritative perch it was presumed to occupy. Focusing particularly on the vexed (and topical)1 relationship between biblical narratives and evolutionary accounts of human origins, Bell rejects various approaches which fail to take both scientific and biblical accounts seriously on their own terms, before proposing an approach informed by the philosophy of Schopenhauer that (he argues) succeeds in doing so. The kind of responsible hermeneutical conversation between our context and the biblical context called for by Fergusson is demonstrated in Ellen For evidence of its topicality, see Jamie Doward, ‘Richard Dawkins Celebrates a Victory over Creationists’, The Observer (15 January 2012), available online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/ education/2012/jan/15/free-schools-creationism-intelligent-design and Ruthann Robson, ‘Tennessee: Back to Anti-Evolution Teaching?’, available online at http://lawprofessors.typepad. com/conlaw/2012/04/tennessee-back-to-anti-evolution-teaching.html (Both accessed 23 April 2012.)

1

Introduction

3

Davis’ contribution, which invites us to see how the worlds of the Old Testament may not only speak, but also expand our moral vision, in a contemporary context which has dis-located itself from the created world. Historical modes of reading the Bible can bring to bear new ways of imagining, and so seeing our context. Yet, the relationship between the Bible and the text of our lives is not one-way; a dialogical understanding of the Bible’s authority sees text and context as mutually informing. The question of how some space might be cleared for historical criticism in a way which recognizes it without either valorizing or belittling it is confronted by Jacob Phillips. By means of an engagement with Martin Luther and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he offers an alternative proposal to those canvassed elsewhere in the book, in which historical criticism plays the paradoxical role of confronting us with the inability of ‘abductive’ human reason to answer the crucial questions that faith must ask of the biblical text. The Bible’s role in shaping a collective vision is the theme of the second part of the book. Here, the Bible is an imaginative resource for different cultures and communities, and not necessarily always ecclesial communities. This theme of the Bible as authoritative (where authority can be understood as a living capacity of the text to shape moral vision) outside the church is pursued by Zoë Bennett’s investigation of John Ruskin’s imaginative dwelling within a text that he knew intimately, even though for much of his adult life he was not part of any ecclesial community. Dwelling is very much to the fore of Ben Quash’s contribution in which, taking a lead from L. T. Johnson, he asks what it would mean to imagine and inhabit the biblical text as a ‘city’. Quash gives literary examples from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries of imaginative indwelling of the Bible at least as intense as Ruskin’s, but asks whether it is possible, in a more biblically illiterate twenty-first century, to inhabit the Bible as citizens. Four very different contemporary imaginative engagements with the Bible – two of which at least remind us that those who regard themselves as part of the church do not hold a monopoly on the Bible – allow him to answer in the affirmative. Matthew Prevett’s essay engages more directly with the question of what it might mean to speak of the Bible’s authority for the church. His engagement with the knotty relationship between ecclesial authority and biblical authority strikes a pneumatological tone, echoing notes sounded by Fergusson in his opening essay, but also

4

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

hinting at some quite radical and far-reaching implications for the Reformed tradition in which he writes. The third part of the collection, focusing on reading the Bible in public, plunges us into a series of questions that have been hinted at in the previous essays and are now pursued more directly. For example: to whom are we accountable in our biblical reading? From where should we expect insight when we read the biblical texts? How do we read the Bible as authoritative text in company with those who adhere to different religious convictions? How can the Bible be read as an authoritative text in the context of a public square where its authority can in no way be presumed or prioritized? As with Ellen Davis, we find surprising light on our context can be shed by historical voices, as in W. Bradford Littlejohn’s appropriation of the sixteenth century Anglican divine Richard Hooker to address twenty-first century questions about the relationship between revelation and reason in the public square. This part begins with essays by Gavin D’Costa and Peter Admirand, who both explore in contrasting ways what it means to read the Bible as Scripture in a plural world in which Christians cannot avoid encounters with religious ‘others’. D’Costa begins by focusing on the relations between Christians and Jews from within a Catholic theological tradition, asking whether and how it is possible to read the Old Testament as part of the Christian canon of Scripture while avoiding the anti-Jewishness that has too often distorted Christian readings of Scripture historically. He then explores whether there might be lessons to be drawn from this discussion, by analogy, for how the sacred texts of other religions might be approached and regarded by Christians. Admirand utilizes post-colonial, feminist and liberationist hermeneutics for a detailed reading of the story of Jesus’ encounter with the Syro-Pheonician woman in the Gospels, finding important clues in this story for the kind of listening habits that should characterize those who engage the Bible in public debates. The third part concludes with three essays exploring the place of the Bible in contemporary engagements with political life and policymaking. Andrew Bradstock discusses the neglected question of the Bible’s voice in public theology, echoing concerns raised in earlier essays such as those of Davis and Bennett, and arguing for a ‘dialogical’ or ‘conversational’ hermeneutic for biblical engagements with public debates beyond the walls of the church. Neil Messer and Angus Paddison ask how the Bible’s voice can be heard in

Introduction

5

public policy debates, critically examining the role of Scripture in two recent British ‘case studies’, and arguing that the Bible’s richly-textured contribution to public debate will be distorted and obscured by attempts to translate it into some supposedly neutral language of ‘universal public reason’. Finally W. Bradford Littlejohn surveys various contemporary American ways of setting up the relationship between Scripture and political argument, which (he argues) share problematic features already evident in the early-modern Puritans. Accordingly he turns to Richard Hooker’s treatment of natural law for a more nuanced Protestant account of the relationship between scriptural revelation and human reason in deliberations about public and political life. References to the Bible’s voice in the previous paragraph are deliberate – the Bible is a text that invites conversation and engagement, in both the church and in wider society. The Bible itself models this dialogical casting of authority and is not a stranger to the interrogation, challenge, dispute and hope that characterizes all theology that seeks to bring into relationship the worlds which we occupy and ‘the depths of Christian faith’.2 The essays in this volume seek to do justice to the depths of biblical wisdom for our time, both through reading of specific texts and through chasing the implications of holding to a bundle of Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean texts as authoritative in and for our time. The issues here are not straightforward by any means and they invite intense and agile engagements with history, art, politics, literature, science, hermeneutics, and voices that are often marginalized, ignored or silenced (and plainly still other conversation partners could be identified). Thinking through what it means to inhabit the biblical text in and for our times is beyond the capacity of any one individual. This volume of essays, with its echoes of the intense conversations out of which it was born, is a reminder of the inescapably collaborative nature of theological work. We conclude with thanks: to the Revd Canon Roland Riem, Canon Chancellor and Pastor of Winchester Cathedral, for first proposing a conference on this theme; to Roland Riem and Sophie Hacker for contributing workshops to the conference programme; to the Chapter of Winchester Cathedral for

David F. Ford, The Future of Christian Theology (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), p. 17. For the various ‘moods’ of theology to which we are indebted see ibid., pp. 67–83.

2

6

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

making available to conference delegates a fascinating tour of the Cathedral (including a chance to look closely at the twelfth-century Winchester Bible) and making it possible for us to hold the conference dinner in the Cathedral Refectory; to those in the University’s Campus and Conference Services department for their invaluable help and support; to Dominic Mattos and his colleagues at Bloomsbury T&T Clark for all their help with the production of the book; to all those who attended the conference and engaged in lively and intense discussion of the issues it raised; to those who contributed short papers that for reasons of space could not be included in the volume, but which contributed greatly to the conference; and most of all to the authors of the essays published here, for giving of their time and expertise to produce such original, stimulating and high-quality contributions to the ongoing conversation reflected in this book.

1

The Bible in Modernity David Fergusson

The centrality of Scripture in the life of the church The centrality of Scripture in the life of the church is a vital element in the account of its authority. Theology, worship, proclamation and ecclesial selfunderstanding entail repeated reference to Scripture. In seeking to describe the theological significance of Scripture, one might start by noting its functional centrality in the life of the church. Confessional traditions, whether Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican or Reformed, owe allegiance to the authority of Scripture, despite some competing accounts of the nature of that authority and its relationship to the church, or more specifically its councils and magisterial offices. Yet the Bible is revered everywhere across the ecumenical church, its presence in each act of worship being accompanied by appropriate symbolic gestures. Our liturgies too are deeply informed by the language of Scripture, especially the Psalms and the Gospels, while the reading and preaching of the Word of God are central to most diets of worship including celebration of the Eucharist. This dependence of the church upon Scripture is not an accidental or external feature of its existence. To that extent, it is not possible for the church to evade or diminish the endless task of reading, interpreting, arguing and receiving the meaning of the Bible. In part, this is an inevitable outcome of a faith that attaches significance to a sequence of historical events and understands its identity by reference to the past. The ‘scandal of particularity’ requires a canon of authoritative writings as its necessary condition. What happened once upon a time determines the meaning of the present and the future. This applies not just generically to

10

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

traditions of thought and practice but to the particular history of Israel, the life of Jesus and the birth of the church. Later I shall advance further christological reasons in support of this claim about particularity. At the outset, however, it is worth recalling the ways in which the Bible is embedded in the theology and practice of our churches. This context has remained largely constant despite the disputes that have surrounded the nature, authority and interpretation of Scripture in modernity.

Gains and losses of the Reformation The translation of the Bible into the vernacular and the appeal to Scripture over church teaching ensured from the sixteenth century onwards that Scripture became the focus of intense enquiry. However, lack of consensus about its meaning led to the fracturing of Protestantism. The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century generally appealed to the authority of Scripture over against the teaching of the church. The practice of the church was normed by Scripture, which meant that the activity of the church required constant correction in light of the teaching and preaching of the Word of God. This process was never complete but required to be undertaken in every generation – ecclesia reformata sed semper reformanda. According to this slogan, which is medieval in origin, the church is never immune from further reform but is always requiring to be reformed according to the Word of God. As a principle this seemed clear, but in practice sola Scriptura was seldom straightforward. Against the individualism and anarchy of some elements of the Reformation, Calvin insisted that the reading of Scripture was most profitably undertaken by a community of persons who collectively sought the wisdom of the Spirit.1 For this reason, the teaching of church councils, if not infallible, was nevertheless to be accorded a high respect and generally allowed to guide one’s understanding of the text. Despite this ideal, the fractured outcomes of the Reformation illustrated the Achilles’ heel of its appeal to Scripture over the church. There was no

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), IV.ix.

1



The Bible in Modernity

11

emerging consensus amongst Protestant groups on the correct interpretation of the Bible with respect to a range of issues, such as predestination, the real presence of Christ in the eucharistic elements, the validity of infant baptism, patterns of worship, Sabbath observance, the authority of the civil magistrate, forms of church government and even the doctrine of the Trinity. Ironically, it was precisely those disagreements about the interpretation of Scripture that contributed to the emergence of the ideal of religious toleration in early modern England, an ideal that was presented not so much on secular grounds but rather as one that was implicit in the New Testament itself.2 Yet this too was contested as a reading of Scripture, particularly in Scotland where appeals to the unitary religious character of biblical Israel persisted well into the eighteenth century. Unquestionably, the Reformation raised the profile of the Bible in Europe. It derived in part from late medieval and Renaissance efforts to translate the Bible into modern European languages; so it became more widely available to populations at large. Tyndale’s vision of the ploughboy reading the verses of Scripture was accomplished, at least in part, by the eighteenth century with higher literacy levels and the saturation of our culture with biblical stories, precepts and images. The quatercentenary celebrations of the King James Bible have reminded us of this, not least through recalling the number of metaphors and sayings in common currency that have their provenance in the 1611 translation. Nevertheless, the respect for and awareness of the Bible was not accompanied by agreement on its correct interpretation, and this despite the centuries-long dominance of one single translation in the English-speaking world. If anything, the circulation of the text in the vernacular contributed to greater disagreement and division than had characterized the pre-Reformation era. Perhaps this confirmed Catholic fears about too much biblical literacy. Thomas Forret, vicar at Dollar, was condemned by George Crichton, the Bishop of Dunkeld for teaching his parishioners the English Bible and preaching on it every Sunday. Forret was subsequently executed in 1538. The Bishop famously declared at the time, ‘I thanke God, that I never knew quhat the Old and New Testament was’.3 This is explored by John Coffey, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England 1558–1689 (Harlow: Longman, 2000). 3 Quoted by David F. Wright, ‘“The Common Buke of the Kirk”: The Bible in the Scottish Reformation’, in David F. Wright (ed.), The Bible in Scotland’s Life and Literature (Edinburgh: St Andrew Press, 1988), pp. 155–78 (162). 2

12

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

Problem A: the significance of historical criticism Historical criticism induced uncertainty surrounding the reliability of Scripture, as is evident from deism. However, its questions and findings have been diverse and remain a necessary though insufficient element in the interpretation of the Bible today. If the Reformation brought disparity over the right interpretation of Scripture, the early modern period began the process of historical criticism that continues unabated to the present day as a major research industry in our universities. We sometimes assume that the application of higher criticism to Scripture was a nineteenth-century phenomenon. However, while it is true that many significant advances were made at this time and there were several high profile church controversies, we should not forget that the project had commenced much earlier in the work of Spinoza, Hobbes and others in the seventeenth century. According to Jowett’s dictum, the work of higher criticism treats the books of the Bible like any other ancient text for the sake of historical investigation.4 This includes the following: study of the different contexts in which the texts were written and edited; the religious, political and ethical tendencies of the authors; likely processes of transmission and adaptation prior to the text reaching its final form; and the reconstruction of the historical events to which they refer. As higher criticism delivered its historical hypotheses, some troubling considerations presented themselves for the believing community. Moses did not write the Pentateuch. The gospel narratives contain contradictory elements that may reflect the different interests of the early Christians and the evangelists – these are to be explained by the creative function of the tradition rather than the complementary perspectives of eye witnesses. Different theologies are at work in Scripture. There are mythological elements and miraculous stories that seem more consonant with other ancient texts than with the writings of a modern historian. In part, this growing scepticism about elements of Scripture contributed to the rise of deism in Europe and North America. Deism takes different Benjamin Jowett, ‘On the Interpretation of Scripture’, in Essays and Reviews (London: John W. Parker, 3rd edn, 1860), pp. 330–433 (377). However, when it is assumes the status of a dominant methodological axiom, the dictum ‘like any other book’ becomes highly problematic. See R. W. L. Moberly, ‘“Interpret the Bible Like Any Other Book?” Requiem for an Axiom’, Journal of Theological Interpretation 4 (2010), 91–110.

4



The Bible in Modernity

13

forms and it would be a mistake to reduce it to a single monolithic system of thought. At one end of the spectrum, it represents a modification of Christian orthodoxy while at the other it shades into agnosticism, scepticism and atheism. Nevertheless, one of the unifying features of deism is that the power of natural reason tends to be privileged over the authority of Scripture. According to Matthew Tindal, at All Souls College, the most that Scripture can offer is a republication of the tenets of natural religion. These are established primarily by reason and only secondarily by reference to the Bible. Somewhat ironically, it was historical investigation also that undermined deism. Its claim that at the root of all human culture there was a simple natural religion, which was both intellectually credible and morally worthy, proved untenable. The varieties of religion could not be distilled to a single essence. They were variable, context dependent and not easily conformable to the philosophy of the early Enlightenment.5 Nevertheless, historical criticism of the Bible continued and it was conducted on an increasingly sophisticated basis. Its exponents did not hesitate to describe its methods as scientific. Its focus was on the supernatural character of events recorded in Scripture, especially miracles, and also the historical reliability of the stories of Israel, Jesus and the early church. The first of these twin foci was significant given the ways in which miracles had functioned through much of the early modern and Enlightenment periods as proof for the particular truth claims of Christianity, for example in the philosophy of John Locke. In ways that now seem quaint and misplaced, much critical effort was expended in offering natural explanations of seemingly miraculous stories. Perhaps most unsettling of all was the quest of the historical Jesus. If too much was ascribed to the creative power of the early community, the formative role of church history, and the different perspectives of the evangelists, could we be sure that Jesus said and did most of what is attested of him in the four gospels? So, for example, the investigations of David Friedrich Strauss suggested that the divine Saviour who performed miraculous work was largely a mythological construct that reflected the faith of the first Christians

See for example the account of religious diversity in David Hume, The Natural History of Religion (London: A. Millar, 1757).

5

14

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

rather than the history of Jesus of Nazareth. The dawning conviction that the Fourth Gospel represented a theological reflection upon the significance of the historical Jesus set it apart from the synoptic gospels. This almost exactly reversed the position of Schleiermacher who had been drawn to the opposite conclusion. For him, the Christ of the Fourth Gospel was authentic. The unity and force of Jesus’ depiction in John must have derived from the spiritual influence of a single historical personality. Since Strauss, however, Biblical criticism has tended to lean in the opposite direction. It would take this discussion too far afield to consider in detail the consequences of the quest of the historical Jesus. Some have declared it historically impossible and others theologically unnecessary.6 One might even hold both of these propositions together. What is clear, however, is that despite attempts to declare a moratorium, it has continued unabated into the present day with contrasting portraits of Jesus offered by Marcus Borg, Dominic Crossan and others. The field has been occupied not only by revisionists and sceptics, but also by scholars with strong faith convictions who maintain that historical investigation can confirm the reliability of the gospel witness. There is a long tradition of what has been called ‘believing criticism’ that includes scholars such as Vincent Taylor, C. H. Dodd, William Manson, and in our own day N. T. Wright. A notable recent attempt to defend the historical reliability of the gospels has been Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.7 The historical critical method has come under concerted attack in recent times, both from postmodern literary criticism and also from within Christian theology. It is criticized for being spuriously objective and value neutral, thus concealing a nest of ideological assumptions. The ‘view from nowhere’ is a delusion, we are told, for each act of interpretation inevitably reflects the interests, concerns and perspectives of the interpreting subject. Indeed, a historical survey of the application of the historical critical method itself will tend to confirm the ways in which different readings of Scripture have their own distinctive cultural and ecclesial location. I have sought to explore this more fully in David Fergusson, ‘Jesus and the Faith-History Problem Today’, in Stuart G. Hall (ed.), Jesus Christ Today: Studies of Christology in Various Contexts (Berlin: Gruyter, 2009), pp. 265–82. 7 See Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006). Bauckham extends his argument to the Fourth Gospel, hanging much on the significance of the ‘beloved disciple’ in John 21 whom he identifies with John the Elder, a Jerusalem follower of Jesus. 6



The Bible in Modernity

15

Theological critics of the method have also complained that it has a tendency to silence the text as the Word of God. It yields historical findings, yet the capacity of Scripture to address, even assail, the Church is lost by too heavy a concentration on the typical questions posed by historians. Are the interminable debates about the different source traditions embedded in the Pentateuch or the Gospels of much relevance to church or society today? Are these questions that only preoccupy an increasingly inward-looking scholarly guild? The fear of a bracketing of the important moral and religious issues raised by the canon of Holy Scripture has led to some outright hostility to historical criticism. Nevertheless, this appears to be an objection not so much to biblical criticism itself as to the privileging of some questions and methods of study to the exclusion of others. The complaint is best interpreted as one about a narrowing of the field rather than the methodological impropriety of particular types of criticism. In any case, the questions of historical criticism and the answers offered in response tend to be more heterogeneous than this line of full-frontal attack implies. The sheer diversity of findings by Biblical critics is in itself positive, for it militates against the charge that the method of historical criticism is ideologically loaded in ways that disadvantage the claims of faith. Historical criticism has more often than not been pursued by believing critics who have produced works that seek to shed light on the text for the edifying of the church. This has often been an aim of commentaries series or one-volume encyclopaedic works. They are written not merely for other scholars but also for preachers who wish to harness the best insights of Biblical criticism for their work. Biblical criticism has thus been more varied in its findings and more frequently directed towards the needs of the church than some wholesale objections permit.8 Insights into the historical context of firstcentury Palestinian Judaism and the Sitze im Leben of the early church will facilitate understanding of the New Testament texts, and these are necessary tools for their contemporary appropriation by preachers and educators. This is largely borne out by John J. Collins’ study in which he argues that the significance of postmodernism resides primarily in its providing a wider diversity of interpretive voices within Biblical criticism. See John J. Collins, The Bible After Babel: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005).

8

16

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

John Barton has pointed to the variety of questions pursued by Biblical critics and to the kinds of skills required for this task. This tends to undermine the notion that there is one single method that is applied with relentless ideological force by historical critics. He claims that the work of critics is typically characterized by three central features. These are a) attention to semantics, to the meaning of words, phrases, sentences, chapters and books; b) awareness of genre; and c) bracketing out of questions of truth, these belonging to the domain of theology rather than biblical criticism.9 We will return to this last point in due course, but for the moment it is sufficient to note the range of questions and the typical approaches adopted by modern critics. These often yield valuable insights and, as an approach to the text, historical criticism is a necessary accompaniment of any act of interpretation. So, for example, theological efforts to understand and appropriate the notion of the imago Dei in Genesis 1.26–7, will need some account of the significance of the Hebrew words tselem and demuth in the Old Testament, what range of meanings these might have had for ancient Israel, how the (Greek) New Testament advances a more christological reading of the imago Dei, and how all these notions have been interpreted (or misinterpreted) in the history of the church. The task may not be exhausted by biblical criticism, but it cannot be undertaken without it. Furthermore, there is a sense in which the enterprise of higher criticism, whatever its outcomes, must inevitably adjust one’s understanding of the content of Scripture. We cannot return to a pre-critical phase of interpretation and assume with earlier commentators that the stories happened much as they are narrated or that the different accounts of the same events can readily be harmonized. None of this is to say that pre-critical readings have nothing to teach us – far from it – but there is no escaping the issues that have been raised for modern theology by the work of biblical historians or the enrichment that they offer for contemporary readings of Scripture. If one allows for the possibility of creativity, editorial redaction, adjustments in the process of transmission and so on, then pre-critical understandings of Scripture will need to be adapted. This has been part of the staple diet of theological

John Barton, The Nature of Biblical Criticism (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox, 2007), p. 58.

9



The Bible in Modernity

17

education for several generations now, although whether it has reached the wider Christian community, let alone the general public, is questionable.10

Problem B: the moral ambiguity of Scripture The ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ should be acknowledged and accommodated in the task of appropriating Scripture today. A related set of anxieties to those generated by historical criticism surrounds the moral ambiguity of portions of Scripture and their use in the church. Historians have applied a hermeneutic of suspicion to the interpretation of the Bible in the church. There are some uncomfortable findings about its role in legitimizing the treatment of heretics, witches and slaves. It has been used at times to authorize oppressive forms of government, the subordination of women and the waging of war. Adrian Thatcher’s The Savage Text chronicles the abuses of Scripture in ways that are unnerving, at least at first sight, whether these be with reference to homophobia, racism, slavery, anti-Semitism or misogyny.11 Of course, the narrative of suspicion needs to be balanced by other stories of how the Bible has functioned positively in restraining, liberating, and reforming attitudes. It can equally well be characterized as an agent of change in promoting religious tolerance, the abolition of slavery, the freedom of the oppressed and advocacy of civil rights, peace and social justice. But the way in which Christian expositors can be lined up on both sides of these debates again illustrates the point about the contestation of meanings as integral to the church’s life.12 It also raises major problems for a flat inerrancy theory which views each statement of Scripture as divinely inspired in the same way and by the same means of delivery through the Holy Spirit. Readings of the Bible from other parts of the world have also drawn attention to the somewhat provincial nature of those historical questions Some of the recent writings of the ‘new atheists’ mistakenly assume that most Christians and Muslims must be naively literalist in their approach to their sacred texts. 11 Adrian Thatcher, The Savage Text: The Use and Abuse of the Bible (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008). 12 A fine example is Mark Noll’s handling of the Bible and slavery in The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). 10

18

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

that have preoccupied western scholars for two centuries. This is a repeated complaint of some scholars from Asia, Africa and Latin America, even if it not a majority position amongst Christians in the global South. R. S. Sugirtharajah points to ways in which postcolonial exegetes have become sensitized to the multiple oppressions depicted in Scripture.13 Unlike the more binary approach of liberation theology which sees the Exodus as its paradigm, a postcolonial reading of the text will be alert to the situation of the Canaanite peoples who are conquered at the culmination of that historical sequence. Perhaps there are ways to handle the conquest narratives of Joshua more subtly, but the need to depart from earlier treatments of these texts has been raised by the perspective of Palestinian Christians and others today.14 Nevertheless, the hermeneutics of suspicion, if not accompanied by a strong confidence in the capacity of the Word of God to illumine, instruct and inspire, can readily undermine confidence in Scripture, especially the Old Testament, which remains deeply problematic to many people in our congregations. Its seemingly violent episodes, demands for retribution and vituperative language make it difficult to appropriate for devotion, instruction and constructive Christian living. It requires critical and trained interpretation, subject to a plurality of critical voices within the church and sensitized to harmful constructions of the text. This is probably a greater difficulty for the laity, especially at a time of shrill secular criticism of sacred writings. By contrast with the moral problems of Scripture, historical challenges may be less unsettling.

Problem C: the plurality of sacred texts The plurality of sacred texts in the religions of the world has generated an argument against any single authority. This works against some constructions of the authority of Scripture, while also confirming the need for a clearer understanding of the relationship of Scripture and church. R. S. Sugirtharajah, The Bible and the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). For a reading of Josh. 22 that points to the ways in which the text itself invites deconstruction see Graeme Auld, ‘Pluralism Where Least Expected: Josh. 22 in Biblical Context’, Expository Times 122 (2011), 374–9.

13 14



The Bible in Modernity

19

A greater awareness of the different Scriptures of the world religions has raised questions about their absolute or relative authority. David Hume once argued that reports of miracles in the different religions of the world tend to cancel out one another and thus to elicit a universal scepticism surrounding such stories.15 A similar sceptical induction is rehearsed by critics of religion today. Each faith asserts that its own sacred writings are uniquely inspired and authoritative. These claims clash and compete with one another in ways that compel us to the conclusion that probably they are all wrong in some measure, each single claim requiring extensive revision in light of the others. Nevertheless, despite its prima facie appeal, this argument is less formidable upon closer inspection largely because sacred texts function in different ways for different faiths. The Qur’an, for example, has a different character and authority for Muslims than the Bible does for Christians. The authority of Torah has been differently related to oral tradition within Judaism than in Christianity.16 The role of a sacred body of literature in the religious community will determine the kind of authority that it assumes for practitioners. An understanding of the status assigned to a set of texts cannot be given, except by reference to its function for the faith community, judgements about its content, and accounts of its origin. In addressing these questions, we come to realise that the distinctiveness of another faith is closely aligned to its sacred scriptures and the ways these are read and understood by practitioners. This topic is still significantly underdeveloped in the scholarly literature but it includes the following three issues. First, what does the Bible itself have to say about other faiths and their sacred texts? Here we are faced with a multiplicity of approaches ranging from ‘neighbourly pluralism’ to ‘cosmic conflict’. These provide rich material for reflection, although they tug in different directions.17 There is awareness of other gods and faiths, and an acceptance of the loyalty of foreign peoples to these in ways that do not compromise the sovereignty of Yahweh or the covenant with Israel. After the healing of Naaman, David Hume, ‘Miracles’, in Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (London: A. Millar, 1748), Part X. 16 See for example Edward Kessler, ‘Judaism’, in John Sawyer (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to the Bible and Culture (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006), pp. 119–34. 17 See, for example, Wesley Ariarajah, The Bible and People of Other Faiths (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1989), Robert Goldenberg, The Nations that Know Thee Not: Ancient Jewish Attitudes Towards Other Religions (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), and Gerald R. McDermott, ‘Review Essay’, Pro Ecclesia 14, (2005), pp. 487–93. 15

20

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

the Syrian commander, Elisha, accepts his need to return to the worship of a foreign god (2 Kgs 5.19). Jonah’s mission to Nineveh results in repentance and a renewed faithfulness, but this is a foreign city where people are not required to convert to Judaism. However, there are also contests in which Yahweh must prevail and other gods who must be defeated. In the story of Elijah and the prophets of the Baal (1 Kgs 18), the false prophets are routed. Their gods are silent, inactive and powerless by contrast with Elijah’s. In Paul’s more eschatological remarks about the triumphal procession of Christ (Col. 2.15), we encounter claims about the decisive defeat of other forces and powers in the cosmos. Nevertheless, the record of Paul’s preaching in Acts 14.15–17 and 17.23–31 also suggests a general revelation of God in other faiths and philosophies; this offers a point of contact for the preaching of Christ. These views were held together with the conviction, decisively confirmed in the struggle with Marcionism, that the Hebrew Bible remained canonical for the church, albeit in a different ordering of its books. Second, a related conviction, found already in Justin Martyr and other writers of the early church, is that the ancient texts of other traditions may contain much wisdom that can usefully be appropriated by the church without compromizing its commitment to the distinctiveness and authority of the Bible. We find this view adopted with respect to pagan philosophy but, in principle, there is no reason why it cannot be extended to the most revered texts of other religions. Different metaphors have been employed to express a relationship that is positive but asymmetrical, such as spoiling the Egyptians, Christians before Christ, sparks of the Logos, or the handmaid of theology. Third, there is a recognized commonality amongst the Abrahamic faiths, as ‘people of the book’ united by the commands to love God and one’s neighbour. Particularly since the publication of Common Word, this has resulted in a greater willingness amongst Jews, Christians and Muslims to explore the similarities and differences between the content, function and status of their sacred Scriptures.18 This requires a theological space which can recognize the authority that texts have in the life of a faith community but without either privileging one to the extent of excluding the contribution of others or of

See Miroslav Volf and G. Talal (eds), A Common Word: Muslims and Christians on Loving God and Neighbour (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010).

18



The Bible in Modernity

21

establishing a parity between all texts that effectively flattens the particular understanding that each has for its adherents. This theological space requires much work – its excavation is mostly quite recent – but it does suggest a way ahead which avoids the siren prospects of either absolutizing one or relativizing all Scriptures. Establishing a theological view of other sacred scriptures that itself is informed by the Bible is a pressing challenge for Christian theology today.

How to discern the meaning of Scripture Argumentation about the meaning of Scripture is an integral activity of the church. This process is already underway in the Bible itself and is not negated by the contested notion of ‘perspicuity’. In surveying the history of the interpretation of Scripture, one becomes increasingly conscious of the way in which the reading of the text has always been a contested matter. This may already be the case within the Hebrew Bible with its different estimates of kingship and readings of the history of Israel. Its rendering in the Greek Septuagint may reflect the concerns of Jews living in the Diaspora – even the translation itself is an interpretation of sorts. The new and dramatically divergent readings of that same text in the early church reflected the christological convictions of the new faith and the emergence of a Gentile Christianity. In contending with Marcionism, the church determined in part the delineation of the canon of the Christian Bible, while in succeeding centuries the most intense theological and ethical debates raged around the correct interpretation of the text. Fidelity to the Word of God, it seems, requires commitment to an intense process of interpretation in each generation rather than a simple adherence to a creed, code of conduct or set of immobile theological propositions. Although we take it almost for granted, the presence of a fourfold gospel at the centre of the Bible represents a view about the necessity of different renditions of the story of Jesus. A decision in favour of one of those, to the exclusion of the others, was never taken. Four were preferred to reflect a plurality of perspectives and interpretations, although this was a constrained plurality determined by notions of apostolicity. Describing Irenaeus’ defence of four gospels, Francis Watson has written,

22

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society Irenaeus finds himself advocating a form of relativism or perspectivism in which the reality transcends the individual text and yet is truly if partially and provisionally attested in it. In their fourfold canonical form, the Gospels relativize each other and at the same time affirm each other in their relativity.19

Bauckham points out that this pattern of structured plurality is also present elsewhere in Scripture, for example in readings of the history of Israel in the Old Testament.20 The Reformed tradition has of course stressed the perspicuity of Scripture as one of its marks. This has been invoked recently in the context of debates about gay clergy. Opponents of their ordination state that the Word of God is quite clear and unequivocal on this matter. As such, it is claimed that this provides us with an illustration of the perspicuity and sufficiency of divine revelation. However, the history of the interpretation of Scripture suggests that such constructions of clarity are problematic. Historically, the notion of perspicuity attempts to wrest the Bible from the control of elitist groups or a cadre of professionals whose task it is to determine the meaning of the text for everyone else. To that extent, it permits and indeed requires a listening to the readings of a diversity of people and groups within the ecclesia. Yet the assertion of the clarity of Scripture was never intended to relieve the people of God from the burden of a careful reading of the whole text, done within the church, in conversing with others who read differently, and in utilizing the best insights of scholarship. Above all, clarity is not an intrinsic property of each verse, but resides in the self-revealing capacity of God’s Spirit as we encounter it through the Word. The theory of perspicuity was thus historically combined with the recognition that parts of Scripture were obscure and their interpretation contested (which could also generate disagreement about which parts were clear and in what ways). In studying the clarity of Scripture, G. C. Berkouwer examines some of the problems around the concept of perspicuity, pointing out that it was a notion historically designed to express the accessibility of Scripture. It is not a concept about simplicity and still Francis Watson, ‘Are There Still Four Gospels? A Study in Theological Hermeneutics’, in A. K. M. Adam, Stephen E. Fowl, Kevin J. Vanhoozer and Francis Watson, Reading Scripture with the Church: Towards a Hermeneutic for Theological Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), pp. 95–116 (108–9). 20 Richard Bauckham, ‘Reading Scripture as a Coherent Story’, in Ellen F. Davis and Richard B. Hays (eds), The Art of Reading Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), pp. 38–53 (42–3). 19



The Bible in Modernity

23

less does it negate the importance of study, interpretation and discussion. In conclusion, he notes that the discovery of Scriptural clarity is generally accompanied by gratitude and amazement in the church.21 This raises a further question, however, of the extent to which the fruits of biblical scholarship inform the hearing and reading of the text in our churches. How many people in our congregations would know that Mark was the earliest of the gospels and functioned as the primary source for Matthew and Luke, or that the Fourth Gospel has be to handled rather differently from a historical perspective? The part of the Bible that is probably best known to our society is the Christmas story as recounted by Matthew and Luke – the annunciation, the virginal conception, the census, the birth at Bethlehem, shepherds and wise men. Some of the details of these stories are amongst the least historically secure in the gospels. This of course does not empty them of meaning – they may be replete with evangelical significance when read in light of the subsequent gospel story – but we still tend to preach and teach them as if they offer the kind of account that one might read in a newspaper. Much of this is borne of a desire to avoid controversy and unnecessary anxiety on the part of the faithful, especially at a time of year when celebration, goodwill and children are much to the fore. But it does attest something of the gap between church and academy that has not yet been successfully bridged in most quarters. Only a concerted programme of adult Christian education can successfully address this issue.

Theology and exegesis – the need for dual practice A dual practice of theology and exegesis is required to overcome the division of academic labour that has emerged in modernity. There are some signs that such practice is emerging in recent projects. In an important though neglected sense, theology is needed for the reading of the Bible. We might have figured this out from the necessary role played See G. C. Berkouwer, Holy Scripture, trans. Jack B. Rogers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), pp. 267–98. John Webster offers a similarly holistic account of perspicuity. ‘Scripture is clear because of the Spirit’s work in which creaturely acts of reading are so ordered towards faithful attention to the divine Word that through Scripture the light of the gospel shines in its own inherent splendour’, in Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 94.

21

24

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

by the regula fidei (rule of faith) in the early church. The interpretation of Scripture always takes place out of some preconception of the relationship between its parts and whole, a judgement about the function and content of the Bible for the faith community. The discernment of how an individual passage coheres with and extends a story line – the way in which a portion of the text contributes to an understanding the world in relation to God; the reading of a verse or chapter as an aspect of a wider account of a process of divine self-revelation – these are typical of the ways in which theologians have handled the text. Of course, the characterization of the whole can be challenged and adjusted according to fresh readings of the text – there is a hermeneutical circularity here – but the need for some prior theological understanding of what the text means remains unavoidable. The necessity of a theological pre-understanding demands some reappraisal of the practices of Biblical criticism and systematic theology. Too often commentaries have suffered from a reluctance to enter into wider questions of meaning and truth with a view to hazarding some theological judgement about the text. At the same time, theologians have frequently used the text merely as a point of departure, paying token or scant attention to the work of biblical critics. No doubt most of us have fallen into this trap in our teaching and writing – the academic division of labour, our separate scholarly guilds and our curriculum have all contributed to a disjunction of agenda. However, one recent development in the academy has been the emergence of attempts from both sides to achieve greater integration and also the appearance of several commentary series in German and English which seek to combine historical criticism, theological interpretation and homiletic appropriation of the books of the Bible. Barton’s aforementioned bracketing out of questions of truth in favour of meaning alone seems to have been abandoned in some quarters.22 A notable attempt at integration is the posthumously published commentary on Mark by Bill Placher.23 This commentary, however, could only have been written by a theologian who took his time to read the work In any case, if knowledge of the meaning of a statement is determined by awareness of what would make it true (as in Frege’s truth conditions theory of meaning), then it is not clear how an interpreter can successfully divorce questions of meaning from judgements about truth, as if meaning could be established in advance of any considerations about truthfulness. 23 William Placher, Mark (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010). 22



The Bible in Modernity

25

of historical critics and also to understand the reception of the text in the history of the church. Miroslav Volf has remarked that this integration of Bible and theology should be viewed as the most important turn in contemporary theology. It might just succeed at overcoming some of the divisions in the curriculum – only time will tell. In my judgment, the return of biblical scholars to the theological reading of the Scripture, and the return of systematic theologians to sustained engagement with the scriptural texts is the most significant development in the last two decades. Even if it is merely formal, it is comparable in importance to the post-World War One rediscovery of the trinitarian nature of God and to the resurgence of theological concern for the suffering and the poor in the late sixties of the past century.24

Revisiting theories of the authority of Scripture Questions surrounding the authority of Scripture require to be revisited. An account that understands Biblical authority in terms of its function of witness is required, although this needs qualification by reference to the multiplicity of texts and voices, and the ongoing role of the Bible in the life of the church. The integration of Bible and theology will also require further attention to older and divisive questions about the theological status of the text. Why does the Bible merit such a status in the church? What sort of authority attaches to it? We might even want to ask whether it should be accorded the status traditionally ascribed to it in the church’s theology. Has the Bible become an unwelcome burden to sections of the church that have grown weary of having ancient texts cited in support of positions from which they have long departed? It may be as well to admit that this is where many Christians now find themselves. Indeed, in the aforementioned study, Adrian Thatcher has called for a diminution of scriptural authority and a deliberate eschewal of the claim amongst Christians to be a people of the book. This is equally an issue for Biblical scholars who need to justify the professional attention that they

Miroslav Volf, Captive to the Word of God: Engaging the Scriptures for Contemporary Theological Reflections (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), p. 14.

24

26

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

devote to the text of Scripture which is far in excess of the study of any other set of ancient documents. At the time of the Reformation, an alternative account of the authority of Scripture emerged somewhat polemically in the writings of Luther. His appeal to the doctrine of justification, to gospel over law, to Christ over the church, had the effect of establishing a canon within the canon. One indirect consequence of this was of course his negative estimate of the Epistle of James. However, as Brian Gerrish has shown, the wider theological significance of this move was to establish the authority of Scripture not in terms of the medieval theory of verbal dictation by the Holy Spirit but in terms of its capacity to bear witness to the primary object of faith, namely Jesus Christ.25 While both of these approaches can be conjoined, the possibility was now created of providing an alternative account of authority in circumstances where a theory of verbal dictation had collapsed. This move was made by a number of Biblical critics in the nineteenth century seeking to offer a theological defence of their practice. The text derives its authority primarily from its witness to Christ and his gospel. This leaves the historical critic free to ply his or her trade without compromising the theological character of Scripture. In the twentieth century, this Lutheran approach was most closely associated with Karl Barth and his stratified account of the threefold form of the Word of God. Its preached form reposes upon its written form, which in turn derives from its attestation of the one Word of God incarnate, Jesus Christ. The move towards a more functional theory has the virtue of combining an account of the authority of Scripture with a claim about its distinctive content. It is by virtue of its capacity to refer to Christ that the Bible is authoritative. This capacity, however, requires also some account of the activity of the Spirit here and now upon the reader of the text. God continues to speak to the church in and through the words of the Bible.26 The christological character of Scripture, moreover, provides a criterion of interpretation. The centrepiece of the canon is the four gospels for it is the person and work of Christ which constitute a standard by which the various parts of Scripture are to be read and understood. Thus, authority, content and interpretation can be integrated in Brian Gerrish, The Old Protestantism and the New (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1982), pp. 51–68. This is a dominant theme of Nicholas Wolterstorff ’s Divine Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

25 26



The Bible in Modernity

27

ways that tend to elude other theories; for example, B. B. Warfield’s doctrine of plenary inspiration. A commitment to a position something like this can be found not only amongst the followers of Karl Barth but in much church life today. However, while it is broadly correct, indeed almost unavoidable in my opinion, it may have to be nuanced and developed in important ways. (i) To speak only about the Bible and Jesus Christ is to risk neglecting the place of the church. The story of Israel and Jesus leads to the story of the church, and the church’s relation to its Scriptures is therefore an internal one. The Bible gives us an account of the church, including how it is constituted by virtue of its relationship to Christ, and the faith that is exclusively delivered to it. In this respect, the church makes no sense without that Bible, its very character requiring a constant return to those books that it set apart as canonical for its subsequent existence. The interpretation of Scripture is therefore a necessary task, both liberating and burdensome, that is placed upon the church. Without it, the church would cease to be itself. At the same time, while the church reposes upon Scripture, there is also a sense in which the Bible is the work of the people of God. In the case of the New Testament, the books that are acknowledged as canonical are the writings of the first generations of Christians. Hence any providentialist account of the formation and preservation of Scripture will also require a providentialist account of the church. (ii) The model of the Bible as a historical witness may also obscure the ways in which it is through the text that God continues to address the church. Scripture bears witness to the past, but its role in the liturgy implies that it also speaks here and now. Hence the doctrines of Word and Spirit belong together. (iii) In assigning a Christological authority and content to Scripture, there is a risk that one may also overlook the diversity of its materials, particularly within the Old Testament. This is not to say that everything in the Bible should not be placed in some positive relation to the gospel of Jesus – again that is a requirement of ecclesial existence – but we should not forget the polyvalent character of that witness. Bonhoeffer once remarked that it is not Christian to attempt to get too soon and too directly to the New Testament.27 It may be necessary to dwell longer upon the stories of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers From Prison, Collected Works, Vol. 8, ed. John W. de Gruchy, trans. Christian Gremmels et al. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010), p. 213, ‘Only when one knows that the name of God may not be uttered may one sometimes speak the name of Jesus Christ.

27

28

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

the Old Testament and not to become over anxious about finding the quickest possible route from there to the gospels. Many sermons move too swiftly from the interpretation of one portion of Scripture to stock claims about the person and work of Jesus. The witness of much of Scripture to Jesus may be of a more indirect character than the Lutheran-Barthian model suggests.28 If, following Col. 2.2–3, we view Christ as the one in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, then we might find a rich diversity of material throughout Scripture that is characterized by this more indirect or concealed relation. Alternatively, one might describe Scripture as authoritative by virtue of its witness to God’s wisdom, provided we can think of this wisdom as disclosed not only in nature but in history and the incarnation. This wisdomfocussed model also has the advantage of showing the practical character of Scripture for life in the church and the world today.

The use of the Bible in the Church today The use of the Bible in the church today presents challenges for the cultivation of widespread Biblical literacy. These have been highlighted by the celebration of the 1611 King James Bible. In a digital age of soundbites, texting and short attention spans, what are the prospects for sustained and widespread Biblical literacy? The anniversary celebrations of the King James Bible have revealed a surprising resurgence of interest in the most durable English translation that we are ever likely to see. Oxford University Press reported that the King James Bible was its best-selling book in 2011. Nevertheless, the study of the history of this translation reveals that previous generations were immersed in the stories, teaching and language of Scripture to Only when one loves life and the earth so much that with it everything seems to be lost and at its end may one belief in the resurrection of the dead and a new world. Only when one accepts the law of God as binding for oneself may one perhaps sometimes speak of grace. And only when the wrath and vengeance of God against God’s enemies are allowed to stand can something of forgiveness and the love of enemies touch our hearts. Whoever wishes to be and perceive things too quickly in a New Testament ways is to my mind no Christian’. 28 See also Ellen F. Davis, ‘Teaching the Bible Confessionally in the Church’, in Ellen F. Davis and Richard B. Hays (eds), The Art of Reading Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), pp. 9–26. For an account of Barth’s understanding of the authority of Scripture see Bruce L. McCormack, ‘The Being of Holy Scripture is in Becoming: Karl Barth in Conversation with American Evangelical Criticism’, in V. Bacote, Lauran C. Miguelez and Dennis L. Okholm (eds), Evangelicals and Scripture: Tradition, Authority and Hermeneutics (Downer’s Grove: IVP, 2004), pp. 55–75.



The Bible in Modernity

29

an extent that is nowhere matched in Western society today. While there is a hunger for learning more about the Bible amongst many of the younger churches, its recovery for a generation that has gradually forgotten it seems an even bigger challenge for programmes of adult Christian education today. It may perhaps take some of the external pressures of a sceptical and secular modernity to achieve a counter-reaction within the church, or maybe we will have to await a more complete erasure of the memory of Scripture before a fresh curiosity emerges amongst a new generation. At a minimum, it will require theologians and biblical scholars together to prepare commentaries and theological handbooks that are generally more accessible than most of what is currently available. One consequence of the demise of the King James Bible in the Englishspeaking world is that its stories, idioms and sayings are no longer as resonant to contemporary audiences. It has gradually disappeared from our common consciousness. This is often lamented, not least in the teaching of English literature where the allusions tend to be missed, thus requiring new critical editions of texts that make explicit for the contemporary reader the connection to a passage of Scripture.29 C. S. Lewis once forecast that the Bible would be read only by Christians.30 In a post-Christendom setting, this prediction has largely been fulfilled. We can no longer expect our educational system (at least in the UK, but surely elsewhere too) to equip pupils with a general Biblical knowledge. While it will remain a resource in all forms of education, an informed understanding of the text is likely to arise only through Christian nurture. As a practical problem, this may be an indirect consequence of modernity, but it is at least as significant as any of the others raised in this chapter. Throughout modernity, the use of the Bible in the church has been faced with challenges surrounding its interpretation, validity and authority. However we choose to characterize our social and intellectual world in relation to modernity, these problems will require to be faced, if the Bible is to maintain its position at the centre of worship and witness. As a prerequisite for this task, it will have to be read and learned with renewed commitment by Christian people together. A good example of this is Peter Garside’s edition of James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002), in which the footnotes draw attention to the frequent quotation and misquotation of Scripture. 30 Quoted by Gordon Campbell, The Bible: The Story of the King James Version (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 257. 29

2

Science and the Bible: Adam and his ‘Fall’ as a Case Study Richard H. Bell

I Although some writers with an atheist agenda have exaggerated the ways ‘science’ and the ‘Bible’ are in conflict, it is clear that over the last 500 years, starting with Copernicus’ helio-centric view of the solar system, many advances in science have been acutely uncomfortable for those who base their Christian beliefs on the witness of the Holy Scriptures. In my case study I consider Adam and his ‘fall’ as portrayed in Genesis 1–3 and as further interpreted by Paul in Romans, and ask how this can possibly relate to our current understanding of human origins and human mortality. It is perhaps the most difficult case study regarding science and the Bible and I am going to begin by looking at three different approaches before moving on to my own. The first approach is that of ‘fundamentalism’ and the particular type of fundamentalism I consider is that which believes the Bible conveys infallible or inerrant information not only of doctrine but also of fact and history.1 So what does Genesis and the interpretation of Genesis as found in the New Testament tell us about creation and about Adam and how, according to this approach, is one to view modern science? The narrative of Genesis 1 is quite clear: God This is actually a fairly narrow view of ‘inerrancy’ to which few evangelicals I know actually subscribe. Note that even the conservative Chicago Statement, Article XI leaves room for debate: ‘We affirm that Scripture, having been given by divine inspiration, is infallible, so that, far from misleading us, it is true and reliable in all the matters it addresses’. This leaves open the question as to what the Bible addresses. A more sophisticated view of inerrancy is put forward by Kevin J. Vanhoozer, ‘Lost in Interpretation? Truth, Scripture, and Hermeneutics’, JETS 48 (2005), pp. 89–114. Yet another version of ‘inerrancy’ is that scripture is exactly as God intends it to be. But one could say the same of the Koran!

1

32

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

created the universe in six days, each day consisting of 24 hours. It has to be such a ‘day’ and not a long period of time since the Hebrew term ‘‫ ’יוֹם‬here clearly means a period of 24 hours. So the refrain we find in Genesis 1 ‘and there was the evening and the morning, the first day’ (1.5b); ‘the second day’ (1.8b), ‘the third day’ (1.13) etc. suggests that this standard meaning of ‘day’ was the one intended.2 That this is the natural way to take the text is confirmed by the fourth commandment as found in Exod. 20.8–12: ‘Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. 9 For six days you shall labour and do all your work. 10 But the seventh is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work … 11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day’. I am unsure whether Jesus and the New Testament witnesses assumed a creation in six days (but I suspect they did), but of one thing I am fairly sure. Both Jesus and Paul believed that Adam was the first human being and that he was especially created by God and that Eve was the second especially created human.3 Further it is fairly clear that Paul believed in the story of the ‘fall’ and that this fall brought sin and death into the world; and we all live in the shadow of Adam.4 In view of this interpretation, which in its own terms appears reasonable, one can understand why a group of conservative evangelicals in a volume of essays entitled Should Christians Embrace Evolution? wish to come to the firm conclusion that they should not.5 In the foreword to this volume Wayne Grudem says the following issues are at stake: … the truthfulness of the three foundation chapters for the entire Bible (Genesis 1–3), belief in the unity of the human race, belief in the ontological uniqueness of human beings among all God’s creatures, belief in the special creation of Adam and Eve in the image of God, belief in the parallel between condemnation through representation by Adam and salvation through representation by Christ, belief in the goodness of God’s original creation, belief that suffering and death today are the result of sin and not part of God’s original creation, and belief that natural disasters today are the result of the fall and not part of God’s original creation. Belief in evolution erodes the foundations.6 See Ernst Jenni, ‘‫ יוֹם‬Yôm Day’, TLOT 2: 528. See Mk 10.6–9 par.; Rom. 5.12–21; 7.7–13. Again see Rom. 5.12–21; 7.7–13. Norman C. Nevin (ed.), Should Christians Embrace Evolution? Biblical and Scientific Responses (Nottingham: IVP, 2009). 6 Wayne Grudem, ‘Foreword’, in Nevin (ed.), Should Christians Embrace Evolution?, pp. 9–10 (10). 4 5 2 3



Science and the Bible: Adam and his ‘Fall’ as a Case Study

33

There is some force to this argument and it is not to be lightly dismissed since it represents the essential logic of Genesis 1–3 and the logic of Romans 5 and 7. However, there are a number of problems in this approach. First of all, it assumes a literal interpretation of Gen. 1.1–2.4a and it ignores the complexities of the Old Testament texts generally. The fact that there is a second creation account given in Gen. 2.4b-25 which, according to a literal interpretation, conflicts with that of Gen. 1.1–2.4a, suggests that we are not simply dealing here with ‘what actually happened’.7 Rather, the rich and varied imagery of the Old Testament suggests that a literal interpretation is not the right way forward. Secondly, if one is to work on the assumption that Genesis is giving us some sort of information along a ‘time line’ one is led to a certain intellectual obscurantism. A literal interpretation is going to lead one to believe in talking serpents, fruit which imparts immortality, and, of course, a young earth theory. The third problem is that this approach has to try to discount evolution; and the view of serious biologists is that the arguments advanced against evolution are poor. The vast majority of Christians working in the field of biology realize that this first approach is not viable. This brings me to the second, one adopted by many scientists of a conservative evangelical persuasion. One such figure is the geneticist R. J. Berry, who happened to write a damning review of the book I have just mentioned, Should Christians Embrace Evolution? Berry wishes both to hold to evolution and at the same time to see Adam as the first true human being made in God’s image (homo divinus).8 In his review he appeals to Derek Kidner’s commentary on Genesis in the Tyndale Commentary Series. Kidner suggests that ‘[i]f … God initially shaped man by a process of evolution, it would follow that a considerable stock of near-humans preceded the first true man, and it would be arbitrary to picture these as mindless brutes… . On And to this we can add various other biblical creation accounts which conflict with Gen. 1–2 (e.g. Job 38–41, which, in contrast to Genesis 1–2, is remarkably non-anthropocentric). Note that there were some non-literal interpretations of Genesis 1–3 in pre-critical times. Alexandrian exegesis (see Philo and Origen) here stands out (Conor Cunningham, Darwin’s Pious Idea: Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get It Wrong [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010],  pp. 381–2). Although Augustine often included a literal reading of the early chapters of Genesis (e.g. City of God, 15, where he discusses Cain and Abel) he rebuked those Christians who suggested that Genesis was teaching science (The Literal Meaning of Genesis 1.19.39; Edmund Hill [ed.], On Genesis [The Works of Saint Augustine 1.13; Hyde Park, NY: New City, 2002], pp. 186–7). 8 See R. J. Berry, ‘This Cursed Earth: Is the “Fall” Credible?’, Science and Christian Belief 11 (1999),  29–49. 7

34

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

this view, Adam, the first true man, will have had as contemporaries many creatures of comparable intelligence’.9 Kidner’s view is that there was a special creation of Adam (and of Eve) in the image of God; but this image was then conferred on his collaterals ‘to bring them into the same realm of being’. Such a theory then accounts for the fact that Cain builds a city (4.14) and that he fears those who may slay him (4.17).10 It appears that Genesis is here being interpreted in the light of Darwin. Kidner offers an ingenious way of holding to a conservative evangelical view of scripture and accepting some form of evolution. But I find his treatment of Genesis highly fanciful.11 Genesis, I believe, should stand on its own two feet and to bring in Darwinism in this way both rationalizes the text and does violence to the text. I give just one example as to how texts are violated in this approach. Scientists like Berry know that evolutionary biology suggests there was always death and decay in the world. This I suspect pushes him to understand ‘death’ with respect to humans in Genesis as ‘spiritual death’.12 But, as we will see, the text is almost certainly speaking of physical death (and the anticipation of such death through the dangers of childbirth and exertions of work). Genesis is to be interpreted in terms of itself and for the Christian theologian it has to be interpreted in a second stage by the New Testament witnesses. Likewise, the scientist studies particular aspects of the world and employs methodologies appropriate to that discipline. So the evolutionary biologist (including those who are Christian) puts Genesis on one side when researching into human origins. At some point the scientist who values Genesis will wish to relate it to their particular discipline but this should be done at a much later stage; and shortly I will suggest a possible way. Having looked at two evangelical approaches, I turn briefly to a more liberal approach, that of Arthur Peacocke. Peacocke speaks in terms of emerging beasts, not fallen angels.13 He rightly perceives the mythological Derek Kidner, Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary (TNTC; repr., Leicester: IVP, 1976), pp. 28–9. Kidner, Genesis, p. 29. 11 It is therefore no surprise to me that some evangelicals have found this approach perplexing (see, e.g., Dermot O’Callaghan, ‘Theistic Evolution and the Fall’, Science and Christian Belief 23 (2011), 67–8). 12 R. J. Berry, ‘A Response to Dermot O’Callahan’, Science and Christian Belief 23 (2011), pp. 69–72 (70–1). 13 See Arthur Peacocke, ‘Evolutionary Biology – A Positive Biological Appraisal’, in Robert John Russell, William R. Stoeger, and Francisco J. Ayala (eds), Evolutionary and Molecular Biology: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action (Berkeley: CTNS/Vatican City: Vatican Observatory, 1998), pp. 357–76 (373). 9

10



Science and the Bible: Adam and his ‘Fall’ as a Case Study

35

nature of texts like Genesis 1–3, but in his book Theology for a Scientific Age there seems to be little serious engagement with questions of ‘Adam’ and his ‘fall’. ‘The traditional interpretation of the third chapter of Genesis that there was a historical “Fall”, an action by our human progenitors that is the explanation of biological death, has to be rejected. This means that those classical formulations of the theology of the “redemptive” work of Christ that assume a causal connection between biological death and sin must also be recast’.14 His approach seems to give priority to modern science and judge the biblical witnesses in the light of this. So he writes: ‘there is no sense in which we can talk of a “Fall” from a past perfection. There was no golden age, no perfect past, no individuals, “Adam” or “Eve” … who were perfect in their relationships and behaviour’.15 There is certainly a fearless theological endeavour at work here but it is one where science has the upper hand and the Bible just has to fit in as best it can.16

II And so I come to my own approach. It is guided by seven principles: 1. Science, like theology, should operate as an autonomous discipline. 2. Science is one of humankind’s greatest endeavours and its rigour often puts other disciplines to shame. But it deals with the phenomena, what one could call ‘surface reality’. 3. Theology, by contrast, can deal with the depths of reality and is able to speak of the person of God himself. 4. Theology is dealing with such questions in the early chapters of Genesis which are not concerned with ‘history’ but with ultimate realities. 5. Through texts such as Genesis 1–3 and Romans 1, 5 and 7, which draw on those chapters, God can speak to us. 6. He does this by accommodating himself to finite human knowledge. Arthur Peacocke, Theology for a Scientific Age: Being and Becoming-Natural, Divine, and Human (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), p. 222. 15 Peacocke, Theology for a Scientific Age, pp. 222–3. 16 In a European Society for the Study of Science and Theology conference discussion in Krakow (1995) Peacocke was clearly unhappy with my speaking of being ‘in Adam’. 14

36

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

7. The human authors use a special language to speak of God and of ultimate realities and that is the language of myth. The first two points relate to the nature of the scientific enterprise. The first, that science is an autonomous discipline, has already been briefly mentioned. It is true, of course, that science operates with various assumptions which lie outside its remit and this has perhaps not been sufficiently appreciated (including by those actually working in the field of science). One of the most important of these assumptions is that the world is intelligible. Some theologians then jump to the view that this intelligibility of the world is rooted in God’s rationality.17 But one does not have to take this position; the majority of scientists do not, and simply assume that the intelligibility of the world is a ‘brute fact’.18 This then brings me to the second point. Science deals with the ‘phenomena’, the world of ‘representation’. By contrast, theology is often dealing with the depths of the world, the noumena, and can speak of God himself. And it achieves this remarkable feat using human language and in particular using myth. And the issue of myth underlines points 3–7 above. I now turn to the theme of Adam and his fall in the light of myth. Most Old Testament scholars recognize that Genesis 1–3 functions as myth or at least has mythical elements. I could spend some time defining myth.19 But very briefly, myth has its own ontology, its own logic, its own sense of space and time. So Adam and Eve are placed in a garden with access to the ‘Tree of Life’ (2.9; 3.22). Eating of the fruit of this tree imparts to them immortality. In ordinary existence this, of course, makes no sense. But as myth it has its own logic and of course has parallels with other mythologies.20 An alternative position is to say that the intelligibility of the world is related to the human mind. I have some sympathy with this position (see below). The human mind can be seen as imposing order and rationality on the world (and as a Christian theologian I would then go a step further and say that the human mind in turn reflects the rationality of God). 18 I do not think they can be criticized for this by theologians since they also have to assume a ‘brute fact’, a creator God. 19 I have done this elsewhere; see Richard H. Bell, Deliver Us from Evil. Interpreting the Redemption from the Power of Satan in New Testament Theology (WUNT, 216; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 2007), pp. 23–65. 20 So the Epic of Gilgamesh tells of a plant that imparts youth (Andrew George [ed.], The Epic of Gilgamesh: A New Translation [repr., London: Penguin, 2000],  pp. 98–9 [Tablet XI]). For Wagnerians, the parallel to Genesis is the golden apples of Freia which, if eaten by the gods, keeps them youthful; and when Freia is abducted by the giants and she can no longer tend the apples, the gods lose their strength (Das Rheingold, Scene 2). 17



Science and the Bible: Adam and his ‘Fall’ as a Case Study

37

One of the common mistakes is to interpret Genesis 2 such that Adam and Eve were created immortal. They were not naturally created immortal;21 rather God gave them the possibility of immortality which they could gain by eating of the fruit of the ‘Tree of Life’. However, they disobeyed God by eating the forbidden fruit, the fruit from the ‘Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil’. As a punishment they were cast out of the garden and hence lost this possibility for immortality.22 Gen. 3.22–4: Then the LORD God said, ‘See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever’ – 23 therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard to the tree of life.

Jesus and Paul may well have interpreted these texts fairly literally. They may have imagined Adam and Eve in a Garden in what is now Iraq, the cradle of many civilizations.23 But I think they would also recognize that the texts have a special flavour. It is significant that commentators describe Genesis 1–11 as ‘primaeval history’; these chapters look to the ‘universal’ and it is striking that parallels between ancient Near Eastern texts and Genesis are found precisely in Genesis 1–11.24 Once we enter Genesis 12–50, the patriarchal narratives, we are in a different world of ‘history’.25 Theologically one can therefore say that through the text of Genesis 1–3 God is accommodating himself to finite human categories; and if we take this principle of accommodation seriously it means that Jesus and Paul in reflecting on Genesis are also ‘cooperating’ with God in engaging in accommodation even if, as seems likely, this was done ‘unconsciously’.26 Although relatively little is made of Genesis 1–3 in the Old Testament itself, it became absolutely central for Christian theology, and one reason for this But note Wis. 2.23–4 discussed below and the possible views Paul held. See the very helpful discussion of James Barr, The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality (London: SCM, 1992), pp. 1–20, although I do not agree with all the points he makes. 23 They would also hold to a geo-centric view of the universe! 24 Claus Westermann, Genesis 1–11: A Commentary (ET; London: SPCK, 1984), p. 4. 25 Note, however, that the transition to Chapter 12 is not abrupt. After the ‘myth’ of the tower of Babel there is a genealogy of Shem (vv. 10–26) and then details are given of the descendents of Terah (vv. 27–32). 26 i.e. it is unlikely that Jesus was pretending to believe Genesis fairly literally even though he did not really believe it to be literal. 21 22

38

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

is Paul’s argument in Romans 1, 5 and 7. Christ’s work is understood as the undoing of the destructive work of Adam in Genesis 3. One central aspect is the overcoming of death, and this cannot be neatly restricted to ‘spiritual death’ (in an attempt to harmonize Paul and Darwin). It is true that Paul does sometimes speak in terms of what one could call ‘spiritual death’; we find this when Paul speaks of the condemning function of the Mosaic law.27 But Paul’s allusions to Genesis 2–3 always include physical death. This comes as no surprise since Genesis 3 is fundamentally concerned with how death and suffering ‘come into’ the world. However, it is true that Paul has introduced an element of spiritual death in his interpretation of Genesis 3.28 Some of the details of Paul’s interpretation of Genesis 1–3 are not entirely clear. For example, although Genesis 1–3 concerns losing the opportunity for immortality, Paul may have assumed that Adam and Eve were created immortal. One reason for believing this is that we know he was heavily influenced by the Wisdom of Solomon, and this book seems to assume that human beings were in fact created immortal. Wis. 2.23–24: ‘for God created us for incorruption (ἐπ’ ἀφθαρσίᾳ), and made us in the image of his own eternity, 24 but through the devil’s envy death entered the world (θάνατος εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὸν κόσμον), and those who belong to his company experience it’.29 Assuming that the reference here is to Genesis 3 (which seems highly likely), then this is one of the earliest extant Jewish texts to equate the serpent of Genesis 3 with the devil.30 Wis. 2.24 may well form the bridge between Genesis 3 and Romans31 in that Paul may have picked up from the book of Wisdom the idea of Adam and Eve being created immortal and that the ‘fall’ was a catastrophic event.32 If this is the case then the commandment not to eat of the forbidden fruit would enable Adam to remain immortal in the Garden of Eden. But if, like Genesis, he believed that Adam was created with the possibility for

See 2 Cor. 3.6: ‘the letter (i.e. the written thing, the law) kills’. See Rom. 5.12 (‘just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin’); Rom. 5.18 (‘just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all’). In Rom. 7.10 sin is identified with the serpent (‘sin sprang up and I died’; ἡ ἁμαρτία ἀνέζησεν, ἐγὼ δὲ ἀπεθανον). 29 Note that Paul’s language in Rom. 5.12 (ἡ ἁμαρτία εἰς τὸν κοσμὸν εἰσῆλθεν) reflects Wis. 2.24 (θάνατος εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὸν κόσμον). 30 David Winston, The Wisdom of Solomon (AB, 43; New York: Doubleday, 1979), p. 121. 31 Note that in Romans Paul does not equate the serpent and the devil; rather sin is equated with the devil (2 Cor. 11.3 simply speaks of the serpent and Eve). 32 According to Barr, Garden of Eden, pp. 6–14, this is not so in the Old Testament itself. 27 28



Science and the Bible: Adam and his ‘Fall’ as a Case Study

39

immortality, then he could remain in the Garden and eat the fruit from the tree of life and gain the possibility for immortality.33 Whatever the precise details are of Paul’s understanding of Genesis 1–3, one thing is absolutely clear. He understood the sin of Adam and Eve to affect all subsequent generations because they sinned with Adam and thereby find themselves ‘in Adam’. If Genesis 1–3 is understood simply as ‘history’ this makes little sense; but if it is understood as mythology or having mythological elements then it makes perfect sense. Genesis 1–3 as myth is so fundamental for Christian theology because it brings its own reality. Myth does not depict reality (that is what models and metaphors achieve); rather it brings to us its own reality, and it is a reality into which we are embedded (or rather can be embedded). So if we speak of Jesus as ‘Son of God’ we are dealing not with a simple metaphor but rather with an abbreviated myth: God the Father sends his Son into the world to die as a sacrifice for our sins (cf. Rom. 8.3). Of course his death can be located in space and time. He died in Jerusalem around ad 30. But when we speak of his sacrifice, we are using mythical language; and when we speak of Christ’s sacrificial death, it is a sacrifice into which we are enveloped. Myth has the power to change our very being provided it is received positively as holy narrative. Hence evangelism can only be effective if the preacher is able and willing to employ the language of myth (God sending his son into the world to die as a sacrifice for sin) and if the hearer receives this myth positively. If such myth is received critically there can be no ‘conversion’ to faith in Christ. Likewise, the myth of human beings in the power of ‘Satan’ or of ‘sin’34 and hence needing redemption should be taken seriously. And just as the myth of Satan is to be taken seriously, so must also the myth of Adam. So to return to Genesis 2–3, we have a narrative which can draw us into itself. The text addresses a number of key existential issues: loneliness, sex, sin, guilt and death.35 To some extent a positive reception of Genesis 2–3 can There are therefore two ways to take Rom. 7.10, where Paul writes that the very commandment which promised him life became to him death. Following Genesis the logic is that the commandment given to him in paradise would enable him to remain in the Garden, eat of the fruit of the tree of life and gain immortality; but he lost his possibility because he was cast out of the Garden. According to Wisdom, the logic is that keeping the command would mean that he could stay in the Garden and retain his immortality, but lost this because he sinned. 34 Satan is certainly a mythological entity as is ‘sin’ in the letters of Paul. 35 Many of these points are either denied or downplayed by Barr, Garden of Eden, pp. 1–20. 33

40

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

help us come to terms with some of these issues. But if we restrict ourselves to Genesis we only come to terms with these issues on a psychological level. The fundamental answer can only come through the gospel, the centre of which is Christ’s sacrificial death. The proclamation of the gospel draws us into a new reality, that of Christ himself. And this occurs not only when one comes to Christ for the first time through the ‘word’ but also every time the word is proclaimed and every time his death is celebrated in the eucharist.36 Therefore myth has the power to affect our very existence. When we hear the gospel we are taken out of ourselves and into a new realm. I come now to a fundamental point: myth is not invented; it is discovered. So myth making is not a free literary activity; it is not producing a narrative like Middlemarch or Pride and Prejudice. The mythmaker is actually discovering something which is already there in the world. And this is one reason why myth, unlike metaphor, is something inexchangeable. So if we take the case of Adam, the writer of Genesis 2–3 is discovering something which is in the world and one can say that the reality of Adam has an effect on us whether we know Genesis 2–3 or not. In some sense therefore there is something about Adam, fallen and unfallen, written into the very fabric of the universe. I now explore two ways in which this is to be understood. The first is through a study of how myth relates to the world; the second is by looking at what is often called the ‘anthropic principle’. How then does myth relate to the world? My claim is that through myth we discover something about the deepest levels of reality. To explain how this is possible I need to introduce a philosophical framework, one which can somehow relate the world of narrative to the world of flesh and blood; I need a framework which can relate a myth, the eating of forbidden fruit, to the empirical world of disease and death. And my choice of philosopher is Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), a disciple of Kant.37 Schopenhauer took over from Kant the distinction between the phenomenal world and the noumenal world. Essentially Kant and Schopenhauer viewed the world as two-tiered. Such a two-tiered view is most likely a simplification As Paul expresses it in 1 Cor. 10.16, the cup of blessing and the bread that is broken is a participation in the blood and the body of Christ. 37 Note that Schopenhauer did not believe in God; but neither did he deny his ‘existence’. He would appear to deny the possibility of knowing (hence should be called an agnostic). 36



Science and the Bible: Adam and his ‘Fall’ as a Case Study

41

of what is actually the case; the world is probably more like an onion where you can keep peeling off layers of ‘reality’ to discover deeper layers.38 But I consider the simple two-tiered world, that of the phenomena and noumena. We form ‘representations’ of the world: as now I look around my study I am forming my own representations of chairs, walls, windows, etc. I am removed from ultimate reality in that I form these representations according to space, time and causation. Further, when interacting with the world around us we use English, French, German or whatever. We cannot therefore get to the thing-in-itself, what Kant called the noumena. One could say that only God can perceive the thing-in-itself since he can be acquainted with things without spatial or temporal categories and without using English, German or French. The only level in which we can become acquainted with things is on the level of the phenomena. And it is on this level that science operates. So if someone is speaking of the evolution of primates they are speaking only of the phenomena, wonderful though this is. Scientific discourse is not discourse about the most fundamental things. We as subjects form representations (objects) through our senses and understanding; and if scientists we do it also through experiments. But are we just stuck with this surface level of reality, the phemonena? Is there no way of approaching the noumenal realm? Schopenhauer claimed that we can approach the thing-in-itself in two ways, first through self-knowledge and secondly through art. I will leave self-knowledge to one side and consider his view of art. Schopenhauer claims that through great art we can perceive the Platonic universal. To avoid confusion simply bear in mind that for Schopenhauer these universals are not in the noumenal realm but rather are on the boundary between the phenomenal and noumenal realms. So in viewing Michelangelo’s statue David, there is the possibility to perceive not just that particular man, King David, but also the universal human being.39 For Schopenhauer the greatest art form was drama since it involved the living human person and text (often poetry), and of all drama he considered tragedy to be the greatest. He admired Shakespeare as a tragedian over everyone

There are also other respects in which Kant and Schopenhauer need modifying in the light of advances in science. See Bell, Deliver Us from Evil, pp. 122–5. Cf. the examples given by Julian Young, Schopenhauer (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 134–5.

38

39

42

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

else;40 and Shakespeare’s tragedies do have the capacity to present to us the universal. I stress they have the capacity to do so. Schopenhauer developed a theory of subject and object which can be correlated in different ways. In normal experience they are correlated such that time, space and causation are in accordance with what he called the ‘principle of sufficient reason’. But in the ‘aesthetic state’ the subject-object correlation changes. When confronted by a great work of art we can be ‘taken out of ourselves’: we encounter the world as though time stands still and as though spatial categories are disintegrating. In such a state we are acquainted with the world in a deeper sense; we are almost playing God in that we are approaching the noumenal world. Schopenhauer did not discuss myth at great length but we can apply his theory of art in this way. Through myth we can also approach the noumenon. The myth of Adam, if received positively, gives us the opportunity to access deeper levels of reality. But if the narrative is seen as just a silly story there is no chance whatsoever to make any progress in approaching the noumenal realm. Myth therefore has this incredible power to delve into the depths of reality; and the myth of Adam is central to Christian theology. But why should this myth be taken any more seriously than say that of Oedipus? First of all the myth of Oedipus is worth taking seriously. It does have a truth claim and it is no mere accident that this myth has had such a grip on both ancient and modern thinkers who have tried to plumb the depths of the human person. But the myth of Adam is even more fundamental; and the reason for this is that Christ reverses the effects of his sin (Rom. 5.12–21). So the myth of Adam as found in Genesis 2–3 is one of the most profound of all myths which takes us into the deeper levels of reality. Further, and this is a rather bold claim, the myth of Adam is not only a way of accessing these deeper levels of reality; Adam is somehow localized in these deeper levels.41 Hence the myth maker of Genesis 1–3 was discovering something about the depths of the universe; he was not simply inventing a story. So through

This is quite striking since nineteenth-century Germans tended to look to ancient Greece for the highest forms of tragedy. On his love of England and English culture see David Cartwright, Schopenhauer: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 61. 41 Bell, Deliver Us from Evil, pp. 214–23. 40



Science and the Bible: Adam and his ‘Fall’ as a Case Study

43

a positive reception of the myth of Genesis 1–3 we find Adam, fallen and unfallen, written into the deepest fabric of the universe. The second way in which we can understand Adam to be written into the fabric of the universe (albeit on a more superficial level) is through the ‘anthropic principle’. The ‘anthropic principle’ is often expressed in this way: the constants of the universe, the properties of elementary particles (e.g. mass of the proton) and the strengths of the fundamental interactions (e.g. strong and electromagnetic) are finely tuned so as to give rise to human life. If they were changed just slightly there would be no chance at all of human life evolving. Some have taken this principle to be a modern version of the argument from design, the teleological argument. I myself would not use this as an argument for the existence of God; but if one is a Christian it is nevertheless something worth pondering. The interesting thing about this new teleological argument is that it assumes the validity of some form of evolution. I conclude by asking some questions about evolution and how this relates to my understanding of Adam, myth and mind.

III Despite the wide acceptance of evolution through natural selection,42 some think that problems do remain, in particular the question of information and organization. The basic problem is how by a mixture of random processes and natural selection is it possible for highly complex organisms to evolve.43 To elucidate this Richard Dawkins contrasts ‘single step selection’ and ‘cumulative selection’ and applies it to producing the line of Hamlet: ‘Methinks it is like a weasel’. If we include the spaces this is a series of 28 characters. In single See Peacocke, ‘Evolutionary Biology’, p. 360: ‘There appear to be no serious biologists who doubt that natural selection is a factor operative in biological evolution – and most would say it is by far the most significant one’. 43 Some see an additional problem: how does ‘life’ actually began in the first place? This actually lies outside the remit of evolutionary biologists. The research on this is young but despite the challenges Denis Alexander, Creation or Evolution: Do we Have to Choose? (Oxford: Monarch, 2008), p. 334, believes ‘the problem is not insoluble in principle’. He also notes that those working in the field do not believe that life started with complex molecules like proteins or DNA. This puts a big question mark against the arguments about ‘irreducible complexity’ used by John Lennox, God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? (Abingdon: Lion, 2nd edn, 2009), pp. 135–47, and others. 42

44

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

step selection one could consider a monkey typing out random letters on a keyboard with 26 letters and a space bar. The probability of the monkey getting M, the first character, is 1 in 27; the chance of getting ME, the first and second characters, is 1/27 x 1/27 = 1/729; the chance of getting the whole line is about 1 in 10,000 million million million million million million! But cumulative selection is much more effective; and this is precisely what we are concerned with in natural selection: randomness but within a system of natural selection. To illustrate this Dawkins develops a computer program which generates a random sequence of 28 characters. The program duplicates this but with random mutations in the copying process. But now we come to possible problems with his approach. Dawkins writes: ‘The computer examines the mutant nonsense phrases, the “progeny” of the original phrase, and choses the one which, however slightly, most resembles the target phrase, METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL’.44 By this process Dawkins gets the computer to produce the phrase METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL in relatively few ‘generations’ (43, 64 and 41 respectively, in successive runs of the program). There are two possible problems which are related to each other. First, a form of teleology is assumed in that the phrase produced is compared with the target phrase. Secondly, the computer is thereby deciding which one, among a number of phrases, is the one to adopt for the next stage.45 The question of ‘information’ is considered by some to be the Achilles heel of current neo-Darwinism. But it is perhaps worth stressing that those who consider it to be a serious problem tend to be those working outside the field.46 But assuming there is a problem, where does the necessary information come from? The first approach is to say that we must wait until science advances. This is wise counsel especially in view of the Intelligent Design movement which jumps to posit a ‘designer’ who is no more worthy than a ‘god-of-the-gaps’.47 Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (repr., London: Penguin, 1988), p. 47. See Lennox, God’s Undertaker, p. 167. 46 See the work of the mathematician Lennox, God’s Undertaker, pp. 167–9, whose approach one could term ‘Intelligent Design’. See also Andy McIntosh, ‘Information and Thermodynamics’, in Nevin (ed.), Should Christians Embrace Evolution?, pp. 158–65, professor of thermodynamics and combustion theory (and a young earth creationist). Note that those giving recommendations for Should Christians Embrace Evolution? either have little scientific background or are not working in the field of biological sciences. 47 Cunningham, Darwin’s Pious Idea, p. 277, writes this about Intelligent Design: ‘if I-D is correct about neo-Darwinism – that its accounts are not sufficient to explain the natural world – then so what? Surely that just means that current science is inadequate. Current science is always inadequate … Intelligent Design … should be asking not for an inference to design, but simply for more scientific work’. Later he adds: ‘Intelligent Design is scientifically wrong because it’s not science’ (p. 278). 44 45



Science and the Bible: Adam and his ‘Fall’ as a Case Study

45

But although I am critical of Intelligent Design approaches, I would hold in the back of my mind certain basic philosophical issues. One is that there are always going to be aspects of the ‘natural world’ which point beyond itself. The natural world cannot be simply explained in terms of the natural world.48 Further, the very ‘natural world’ according to my Kantian-Schopenhauerian approach is a representation of the human mind. This then leads to the second approach: perhaps the information needed in evolution is provided by our human mind. The processes considered in evolutionary biology are at the level of the phenomena and it is the human mind which forms the phenomena. The human mind forms the world of representation. One could argue further that ultimately the information comes from God himself since he is the creator of the human mind. God is indirectly the ‘lawgiver’ of nature.49 Perhaps it is simply no accident that if the phenomenal world is a representation of the human mind then the universe bears the imprint of the human mind.50 The mind is imprinted into the universe at two levels: it is imprinted at the phenomenal level since, according to Kant and Schopenhauer, we impose space, time and causality on our experience. But further, it may even be imprinted on a deeper level of reality, the noumenal level.51 At this deeper level we find a fundamental relationship between the mystery of the human mind and the mystery of two fundamental persons, Adam and Christ. But if the human mind provides the ‘information’, what about the universe before the emergence of human minds? And were there not representations of the world by other animal species? This brings us to one of the profound On this issue compare Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem (an accessible introduction is given by Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid [New York: Vintage Books, 1980], pp. 15–24). 49 One can add that such an approach accounts for the fact that nature is intelligible and that it can be described (or even constituted!) using mathematics. 50 Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life? (London: Penguin, 2nd edn, 2007), pp. 295–303, considers a number of options for understanding the fine tuning of the universe. I mention two: first that God fine-tuned the universe; second, the human mind is somehow written into the universe (Davies rejects the first but accepts the second). My neo-Kantian approach can bring these two together. God has designed the universe but he has designed it indirectly: the mediating entity is the human mind which organizes the stuff of the universe. Genesis 1, which places the human being at the pinnacle of creation, expresses the key role of the human mind in the very structures of our universe. 51 In Schopenhauer’s scheme the world will manifests itself in the phenomena. Perhaps one could say that the information required for ‘evolution’ comes from an interaction of the human mind with the ‘world will’. This scheme could possibly account for ‘teleology’ in the evolutionary process. Note that the essence of his metaphysics of Book II of the World as Will and Representation is teleology. On Schopenhauer and Darwin see Young, Schopenhauer,  pp. 85–7, although I cannot agree that Darwin makes Schopenhauer’s teleology redundant. 48

46

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

mysteries of the universe. What is a world going to be like with no subjects in it, human or non-human? I suggest that in such a world there can be no phenomena, only noumena. But once a subject is introduced the world of phenomena suddenly appears. As Schopenhauer wrote: ‘… the existence of the whole world remains for ever dependent on that first eye that opened, were it even that of an insect’.52 Likewise when human beings use radio telescopes, perceiving the universe as it was before the emergence of human life, they are precipitating a world of phenomena. If this sounds like science fiction it is worth considering an implication of Quantum Theory whereby a ‘retroactive causation’ is conceivable.53 The case of Adam and his fall does raise some fundamental problems for how science and the Bible relate. It also brings into sharp focus the ‘problem of evil’, an issue which is beyond the scope of my contribution. But I think we can relate evolution and Genesis by suggesting that the former deals with the phenomena, and deals with it in a quite remarkable way. Although it cannot be dismissed as ‘just a theory’, it can be said to deal with surface reality. But Genesis, together with Romans, answers the most fundamental questions. It tells us who we essentially are (sinners ‘in Adam’) and above all tells us how Jesus Christ has reversed the catastrophe of Gen. 3; and does this through the medium of human words put together in the form of a myth.54

Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Volume I (ET; repr., New York: Dover, 1966), p. 30. See Paul Davies, God and the New Physics (repr., London/Melbourne: J. M. Dent, 1984), pp. 110–11. He describes John Wheeler’s idea that in the two slit experiment ‘it is possible to delay the choice of measurement strategy until after the photon has passed through the screen’. The mind ‘can be made responsible for the retroactive creation of reality – even a reality that existed before there were people’. See also Davies, God and the New Physics, p. 39 and his reference to John Archibald Wheeler, ‘Genesis and Observership’, in Roberts E. Butts and Jaakko Hintikka (eds) Foundational Problems in the Special Sciences: Part Two of the Proceedings of the Fifth International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, London, Ontario, Canada – 1975 (Dordrecht/Boston: D. Riedel, 1977), pp. 3–33. 54 I would like to thank Denis Alexander, David Armitage, Geoff Bagley, Matthew Deane and Melvin Tinker for their helpful and critical comments on earlier versions of the paper. I also thank those who attended the presentation of the paper first at the Winchester conference (July 2011) and then at the Nottingham New Testament Seminar (December 2011). 52

53

3

Prophecy and the Power of Life: Reading the Elijah Story Historically Ellen F. Davis

Reading our place in the material world and reading the Bible Now that the Authorized Version has commenced its fifth century, it is apt to note the coincidence between two massive cultural shifts that occurred in the West, between the seventeenth century and the modern period: one, a shift in the regnant view of the material world, and two, a shift in widespread understandings of the Bible. The first of these might be briefly characterized thus: gradually, between the latter half of the seventeenth century (a key marker might be the founding of the Royal Society – officially in 1660, although by then an ‘invisible college’ of natural philosophers had been meeting unofficially for some 15 years)1 and the latter half of the nineteenth century, we in the West (or the global North) relinquished the view of humanity that had been endorsed by the biblical writers and subsequently by virtually all Christian and Jewish traditions. Instead of seeing ourselves as part of a comprehensive created order, we came to imagine ourselves as separate from ‘nature’ (a concept and word that does not belong to the biblical lexicon) and increasingly, through science and mechanization, in control of it. Also in England in the latter half of the seventeenth century, there occurred the second shift, in how the Bible was viewed. The evidence from preaching within the most influential segments of church and society – where preachers were publishing their sermons – suggests that the biblical story was no longer being publically treated as ‘our story’, that is, as a detailed and accurate repre The Royal Society, ‘History’, available at http://royalsociety.org/about-us/history/ (Accessed 13 October 2011.)

1

48

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

sentation of our core human experience, for better and for worse. To adapt the well known phrase of Hans Frei, the biblical narrative was ‘eclipsed’. 2 In short, the biblical story was eclipsed at the same time as a biblically endorsed view of the human place in the material world was eclipsed. This would appear to be a significant coincidence. A second and related observation is that by the end of the nineteenth century, the changed view of the material world had reached a kind of logical (though not necessarily sensible or wise) extension, with the full development of industrialization in Western Europe and North America. At the same time and in the same places, the changed view of the Bible reached its own logical extension in the full development of historical criticism. Again, this seems a meaningful coincidence. Industrialization fundamentally changed our experience of the stuff we use and wear; somewhat more slowly, but inexorably and now nearly completely, industrialization has changed our experience of the stuff we eat. All these things once had a personal, traceable history in our households and local or regional communities. Most people used and wore things that they had made, or someone they knew had made; they ate food that they or someone they knew had raised, slaughtered, and cooked. All these things were once recognizably the products of human skill; in a word, they were crafted. With the advent of industrialization, production was ‘rationalized;’ handicraft was replaced by the reduction of objects to an assemblage of interchangeable parts. Now it is worth asking whether something similar happened to the biblical story with the advent of historical criticism. Its uniquely crafted yet realistic shape came to be ignored or denied as a source of meaning. The question ‘What does this (believable) story mean for us?’ was replaced by two very different questions: first, ‘What really happened?’ and second, ‘Who wrote it?’. Thus the text was ‘rationalized’, broken down into what were supposed to be its component parts. And then the disassembled parts were utilized Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermenutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974). Frei dates the ‘eclipse’ of that inclusive view of the Bible to the beginning of the eighteenth century. However, I might put it a generation or so earlier. Starting about the middle of the seventeenth century, with the so-called ‘triumph of [Archbishop John] Tillotson’, the Protestant preacher’s practice of deep diving into the biblical text was superseded by rationalistic discourse on the reasonableness of faith, with only passing reference to the scriptural story itself. See Ellen F. Davis, Imagination Shaped: Old Testament Preaching in the Anglican Tradition (Valley Forge, PA.: Trinity Press International, 1995), pp. 2–5.

2



Prophecy and the Power of Life: Reading the Elijah Story Historically

49

for scholarly reconstructions of an imagined past, which might or might not resemble the biblical story. What I am suggesting is that our cultural habits of viewing, handling and responding to the material world have a bearing on our ways of viewing, handling and responding to the Bible. Indeed, our disposition toward the material world is likely the aspect of our historically-shaped consciousness that most profoundly shapes our disposition toward the Bible. That is the central notion I wish to explore in this essay, concentrating on one biblical story that points in trenchant ways to how humans interact with the material world. The story of the prophet Elijah (1 Kings 17–2 Kings 2)3 is one whose key points, in my judgment, touch our contemporary culture at its heart.

The Bible and history: an overview Because ‘the Bible and history’ – the topic I was invited to address for this volume – is itself an historical notion, I shall begin by considering how that idea has changed over time, from 1611 to the present. I offer an overview of how the biblical story in general, and the Elijah narrative in particular, has spoken to the historical imagination of scholars over these four centuries. Then in the second part of the essay I offer an extended reading of that narrative, from the perspective of modern historical research. In a brief conclusion, I make some suggestions for a twenty-first century appropriation of the story, proposing a point of correlation between Israel in the ninth century B.C.E. and our own historical moment, with a view to showing how the Elijah story might speak to us in ways that are ethically significant. In my overview I highlight three historical moments: 1611, the twentieth century (broadly speaking, ‘the modern period’) and 2013. For each of these moments I try to identify two things: first, a central question that good

It is appropriate to focus on this story from 1 Kings for a project that has its origins in Winchester, the cathedral city where Lancelot Andrewes once served as bishop (1618–26), for he was the chair of the translation team and probably himself the chief translator for the Authorized Version of Genesis through Kings. As the person chiefly responsible for rendering most of the prose of the Old Testament into English, Andrewes profoundly affected the ways virtually all subsequent English speakers read and hear the Bible, even to this day. In acknowledgment of his contribution, most of the biblical citations in this essay are drawn from the Authorised Version.

3

50

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

interpreters bring to the biblical text, and second, the understanding of the relationship between Bible and history that underlies that question.

The First Moment: 1611 In 1611 in England, the central question about the Elijah saga might be put thus: What does this story reveal about human nature and also about the operation of sin in social and political systems? This question – which leads to a theological anthropology as well as a theological analysis of politics – has underlying it the presupposition that the biblical story is an incisive and reliable account of the ways of the world and God’s people in every age. In the words of Hans Frei, the biblical narrative was viewed ‘as the inclusive world whose depiction allowed the reader … to locate himself and his era’ within it.4 The Bible tells our relevant history, at the same time as it tells the history of King Ahab and his prophetic gadfly Elijah, of Queen Jezebel and the hapless farmer Naboth (1 Kings 21), of the poor widow of Zarephath and her son (1 Kings 17), and so on. In his much-read Contemplations on the Historical Passages of the Old and New Testaments, the Anglican Puritan Joseph Hall devoted about 70 pages to the Elijah story; it is almost certainly the fullest reading extant from the seventeenth century. Note that what we now call biblical narrative, Hall called ‘historical passages’. He did not make the distinction so central to modern critical biblical studies, between a verifiable historical account and a historylike story. Doubtless Hall and most of his contemporaries believed most or all biblical narratives to be accounts of actual events.5 Yet even so, demonstrating their historical accuracy was not an important concern for the translators, biblical theologians and preachers of the seventeenth century. (At that time, of course, translators, biblical theologians and preachers were not three separate groups of people, as they might be among us – especially if we hold academic posts.) Rather, for all of them the chief matter was to render the story with Frei, Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, p. 50. Some seventeenth century critics, such as Hobbes and Spinoza, who doubted the historicity of Genesis, nonetheless regarded Samuel and Kings as reliable historical accounts. See Baruch Halpern and André Lemaire, ‘The Composition of Kings’, in Baruch Halpern and André Lemaire (eds), The Books of Kings: Sources, Composition, Historiography and Reception (Supplements to Vetus Testamentum, 129; Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 123–54 (123).

4 5



Prophecy and the Power of Life: Reading the Elijah Story Historically

51

care and precision, so that hearers and readers could recognize its moral truth and its aptness to their own lives. That Elijah is seen as belonging to Hall’s own fevered historical moment no less than to the time of King Ahab is implied by these few lines from Hall’s first Contemplation on the prophet: These times were fit for an Elijah; an Elijah was fit for them: the eminentest prophet is reserved for the corruptest age… . A grave and holy Samuel was for the quiet confidence of Israel; a fiery-spirited Elijah was for the desperatest declination of Israel. And if, in the late times of the depraved condition of his church, God have raised up some spirits, that have been more warm and stirring than those of common mould, we cannot censure the choice, when we see the service.6

If Hall hears the fiery prophet addressing a depraved church in the ‘late times’ of the seventeenth century, likely that reflects his zeal for both ecclesiastical reform and social justice, since Elijah is the first social-justice preacher among the biblical prophets. As a resident of the Suffolk countryside (Hawstead), Hall would have seen the vagrant homeless walking and camping along the roads;7 therefore, it is not surprising that, as the rise of a free-enterprise economy and enclosure of the commons brought unemployment and land loss to countless villagers, Hall’s own preaching regularly pointed to the suffering of the poor in Elizabethan and Jacobean England.

The Second Moment: the twentieth century I would identify thus the main historical question of the period in which I was trained: What historical events and movements, social and political systems underlie the biblical text? In contrast to the ‘inclusive’ view characteristic of seventeenth-century interpreters, a presupposition shared widely among modern scholars is that there is a vast gap between the historical and social background of the text and our own situations. Assuming that the social world informing the text does not include us in any way, twentieth-century biblical studies for the most part observed a thoroughgoing separation between Joseph Hall, Contemplations on the Historical Passages of the Old and New Testaments, Book XVIII, Contemplation vi (3 vols; Edinburgh: Willison & Darling, 1770), vol. 2, pp. 179–80. See Davis, Imagination Shaped, p. 117.

6

7

52

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

historical inquiry on the one hand and theological or ethical reflection on the other. Historians and theologians still frequently view each other with a polite lack of interest, and sometimes a measure of mutual disdain: historians might be seen as too abstract, never getting around to the ‘So what?’ question; while theologians might be seen as ‘soft’ in their methods, or even (God forbid) as ‘homiletical’. I admit that I have spent most of my scholarly powers in the theological and homiletical camp. Until recent years I probably paid too little heed to the great advances in knowledge of social and political conditions in the biblical period. But it may also be that the conversation about history and the Bible has become broader and more interesting in the last couple of decades, as well as more directly useful to people whose primary concern is how the Bible might engender moral vision in those who view it as Scripture. In this regard, perhaps the most significant development in historical and archaeological studies has been the shift away from the ‘great-men-and-great-battles’ view of Israelite history, toward a focus on the culture and experience of ordinary people. For instance, Israel’s agricultural economy has received more attention in the last 20 years, and what we have learned bears on the Elijah story. It seems that there was a major (and for all practical purposes irreversible) shift that began in earnest during Ahab’s 20-year reign, with local subsistence yielding progressively to crown-controlled agriculture. The new agricultural economy was designed to generate commodities to support the standing army and the international trade streams that enriched the tiny elite class.8 The story of Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kings 21) suggests what happened to peasant farmers who resisted that profound economic and cultural shift, which was also fraught with religious implications. The second part of the essay will spell that out, but my point here is that by focusing on material culture and the experience of ordinary women, men and children, historians are increasingly directing our attention to some fundamental things about what it was to be human, from an Israelite perspective. See Tamis Renteria, ‘The Elijah/Elisha Stories: A Socio-cultural Analysis of Prophets and People in Ninth-Century b.c.e. Israel’, in Robert B. Coote (ed.), Elijah and Elisha in Socioliterary Perspective (Society of Biblical Literature Semeia Studies; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), pp. 75–126 and also Ellen F. Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 112–14.

8



Prophecy and the Power of Life: Reading the Elijah Story Historically

53

The Third Moment: 2013 In marking the present moment as distinctive, I am wagering that a change is just now becoming visible on the horizon – a third way of seeing the relationship between Bible and history, which capitalizes on the strengths of twentieth-century biblical studies and yet avoids drawing a sharp divide between historical investigation and moral-theological inquiry. The central questions informing this third model might be framed thus: What correlation might there be – positive and negative – between the social conditions underlying the biblical text and those of our society? Does such a correlation provide the basis for articulating a moral vision for our society, and a critique of it? In sum, Can we and should we reclaim the biblical story as a part of our relevant history, looking to it for warning and guidance? I think the answer is yes, but we must reclaim it in a different way than did seventeenth-century interpreters. We are obligated to be different because modern scholarship has engrained in us all the distinction between historical data, found inside the Bible and also outside it (largely by archaeologists and social scientists), and the historically informed stories that constitute biblical narrative. That is a distinction we cannot collapse, if we are to remain credible interpreters. This question presupposes two understandings of the relationship between Bible and history. The first of them we saw already in the seventeenth century with Joseph Hall: the Bible calls us to recognize fundamental aspects of our humanity, which remain constant through every historical period. But a second presupposition is distinctly postmodern: no good comes of reading the Bible whilst ignoring the large dimensions of our particular historical situations, and especially our own cultural biases. The great hermeneutical insight of postmodernity is that we need to read our own moment and place in history as critically as we read the text itself, for the two readings are inextricably intertwined. If we fail to do that, then we may in fact do harm through the reading of texts that we regard as Scripture, texts that are powerful for us and exert power through us. To sum up: I have suggested three ways of seeing the relationship between Bible and history. First, in the seventeenth century the Bible recounted its readers’ relevant history. Second, in the twentieth century, the Bible prompted scholars to reconstruct the history of ancient Israel. Third, in the twenty-first century we may be witnessing the emergence of a new mode of interpretation

54

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

that draws upon the strengths and methods of the two earlier modes: it combines probing historical and social scientific inquiry with an expanded moral vision generated by the text.9 Thus it offers hope for the intellectual and spiritual vitality of scriptural reading and interpretation in this century and (God willing) for generations to come.

The prophetic word and the means of life It is this third model that I hope to advance in this section through a reading of the Elijah narrative, but in order to establish the historical context for my reading, I shall begin with a few comments on one feature of our moment and culture that seems to be genuinely (if unhappily) unique. Our way of relating to the physical world, and particularly to the essential means of life, is virtually without precedent in human history. By ‘the essential means of life’ I mean the several things that as terrestrial creatures we cannot do without for more than a few days, namely fertile soil, clean water and healthy water systems, and the food that is the immediate product of those things. Our way of relating to the means of life is unprecedented in that, through the millennia, no mass culture has been so ignorant of the physical means of life as are those embedded in the industrialized ‘lifestyle’. I hesitate to call it a ‘culture’, since that term might seem to imply at least potential social permanency, a quality which this lifestyle lacks, even as it is now rapidly excluding all other modes of living – traditional cultures – around the globe. (There are of course a few small-scale precedents for our ignorance about what keeps a society alive over the long term, such as the Easter Islanders. Jared Diamond chronicles the fall of some of them in his aptly titled book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.10) Our widespread and willful ignorance of what keeps us alive is One might see this new way of thinking evidenced in an academic programme such as ‘Tend and Sustain It Forever’, within the Jewish Studies Program at Penn State University, which focuses on ‘moral and ethical traditions about food in the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud and rabbinic sources, and in modern Jewish food movements’, available online at http://jewishstudies.psu.edu/ tendandsustain/ (Accessed 13 October 2011.) Among recent publications, Anathea Portier-Young’s Apocalypse against Empire: Theologies of Resistance in Early Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011) stands out as a work in which there are discernible (and intentional) ethical implications for contemporary religious thought. 10 Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (New York: Viking, 2005). 9



Prophecy and the Power of Life: Reading the Elijah Story Historically

55

a disease, of mind and spirit – one that will, if unchecked, prove deadly on a large scale. I submit that our disconnection from the physical means of life marks the most radical divide between our perspective on reality, on the one hand, and that of the biblical writers, on the other. As we celebrate more than 400 years of the Authorized Version, it is appropriate to note that it likewise marks a divide between us and most or all seventeenth-century readers of the Bible. Recall C. S. Lewis’ remark, made now some 60 years ago, that ‘the birth of the machines’ means that Jane Austen (d. 1817) is closer in her sensibilities to Homer and the Pharaohs than she is to us.11 It requires a huge effort of the historically-informed imagination for me to immerse myself in the thought world of the Bible – certainly a much greater effort than it required of the translators of the Authorized Version – although I have access to incalculably more historical information (in the academic sense) about ancient Israel. Similarly, because I am practically ignorant of the physical means of life, my students in South Sudan can often explain to me, or model for me, something about the thought of the Bible that I might not otherwise comprehend at all. Were we all to be miraculously transported back into ancient Israel, I would bet everything I have that most of the authors and readers of this volume would find the world of the Bible much stranger than would Sudanese Christians in the twenty-first century or Europeans in the seventeenth. And what would flummox us would not be ancient political institutions or family values, animal sacrifice and other quaint religious practices. No, it would be a completely different way of relating to the material sources, shapers, and mainstays of our existence. Because we lack both a direct connection to the physical means of life and also a strong sense of responsibility for maintaining them, we are disposed to overlook the pervasive materiality of the Bible – or if we do see it, to undervalue it as a source of ethical and theological meaning. I suggest that the Elijah narrative might challenge and correct this unhealthy tendency, because it repeatedly draws attention to the question of who controls the means of life, and how they are valued. This is my thesis: At the heart of the Elijah story, a Lewis made the comment in 1954, in his inaugural lecture from the chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge. See C. S. Lewis, ‘De Descriptione Temporum’, in They Asked for a Paper (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1962), pp. 9–25 (20).

11

56

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

story which is a large – possibly the single largest – constitutive element of the whole biblical understanding of prophecy (see Mk 8.28, 9.4, and parallels), there is a call to claim a realistic relationship to the basic means of life. And further, answering that call is the first step toward a biblically responsible critique of cultural practices and social systems in every time and place, our own included. With that preface, I shall now run through the Elijah story, tracing the theme of the essential means of life under four categories on which the story focuses our attention: water, food, fertile land and nephesh, the embodied power-of-life. As we shall see, the principle that emerges from their treatment in the story is that the means of life are not at the disposal of the powerful in any human culture. Rather, they are the gifts and trust of God; we humans are entrusted with them so that we may share them generously with others and freely with those in acute need. If we recognize that principle and live by it, then we may be privileged to work on the side of God’s power-for-life. 1. Water. Elijah’s recorded proclamations begin with water – or rather, with the terrible, divinely decreed dearth of it: ‘And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the LORD God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word’ (1 Kgs 17.1). In the semi-arid land of Israel, where on average four years out of ten are drought years, water is the tenderest point of human vulnerability; it is the essential that most obviously is not subject to human control. Dew and rain are withheld at God’s sovereign will – in this case, until the third year (1 Kgs 18.1; cf. Lk. 4.25, ‘three years and six months’). Then the drought ends with the dramatic confrontation between Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Carmel. Elijah soaked the sacrifice that was meant to burn, soaked it with twelve great jars of water (1 Kgs 18.33–34) – as though they had a drop to waste, as though water would feed the flames. It is a sovereign gesture underscoring the fact that rain and the other means of life are controlled solely by Elijah’s God, and not by Baal, the Canaanite deity worshipped as ‘Rider on the Stormclouds’. 2. Food. The God who withholds rain provides food in the midst of famine, albeit through unlikely agents. So when Elijah flees from Ahab to the Wadi Cherith by the Jordan (1 Kgs 17.3), the ravens are his ‘strange caterers’, as Joseph Hall terms them.12 Meanwhile, Queen Jezebel caters to the 450 Hall, Contemplations, vol. 2: p. 182.

12



Prophecy and the Power of Life: Reading the Elijah Story Historically

57

prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah who dine at her table (1 Kgs 18.19). Yet someone in the palace is also catering to the prophets of Israel’s God, although on a less lavish scale. Obadiah, the chief palace administrator, ‘feared the Lord greatly’ (1 Kgs 18.3), so when Jezebel starts hunting down Yhwh’s prophets, Obadiah hides one hundred of them in caves, maintaining them with food and water, doubtless from the dwindling royal supplies. Nonetheless this principle, that God provides food for and through those who fear Israel’s God alone, is most movingly exhibited in the person of the widow of Zarephath in the region of Sidon. She is a Phoenician, like Queen Jezebel, and presumably a Baal-worshipper; Zarephath (modern Sarafand in Lebanon) is about eight miles south of Sidon, the seat of the kingdom over which Jezebel’s father Ethbaal rules. As a widow, she is socially and economically one of the most vulnerable members of the community, and by all rights she should turn the importunate stranger Elijah from her door. Nonetheless, she becomes a ‘heathenish hostess’, as Joseph Hall puts it,13 to the prophet of Israel’s God. The woman and her young son are down to the last handful of meal and bit of oil – ‘Behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die’ (1 Kgs 17.12) – but Elijah gives her the divine promise – ‘Fear not … For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth’ (1 Kgs 17.13–14). Believing the prophetic word, she gives Elijah her last food, and it proves true: they all ‘did eat many days’ from the inexhaustible barrel (17.15–16) – further proof that the God of Israel commands not just rain but all the basic elements of life. 3. Nephesh, the power of life, and Elijah as God’s agent to maintain it. No sooner has the food supply been pronounced secure for the mother and her son, than in the very next verse the boy is again at the point of death, or maybe past it, seized by illness so severe ‘that there was no breath left in him’ (1 Kgs 17.17). And now the desperate woman turns fiercely on Elijah, who turns fiercely to God: ‘O LORD my God, hast thou also brought evil upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by slaying her son?’ (1 Kgs 17.20). The prophet

Hall, Contemplations, vol. 2: p. 183.

13

58

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

stretches himself out upon the still child and calls on God to let the power of life, nephesh, return to his body (1 Kgs 17.21), and it does. Elijah stands before the God (1 Kgs 17.1, 18.15) who exercises and indeed is an inexhaustible Power-for-life,14 and in most parts of his story Elijah serves as a clear channel for that divine Power. Thus the prophet contrasts completely with Israel’s king, who misdirects the means of life to his own selfaggrandizement. It is telling that after the brief introductory notices about Ahab – he was the worst of all the bad kings, he married the Sidonian princess and became a proponent of Baal-worship (1 Kgs 16.29–32) – the first real story of his rule is about Ahab’s misuse of food and water. At the nadir of the killing drought, ‘Ahab said unto Obadiah, Go into the land, unto all fountains of water, and unto all brooks: peradventure we may find grass to save the horses and mules alive, that we lose not all the beasts’ (1 Kgs 18.5). People are dying, but the king’s pressing concern is that the animals should survive – and to what end? The inscriptional record yields the crucial information. Ahab, the earliest Israelite king mentioned in the cuneiform sources, was regionally famed for the size of his chariot force. An Assyrian inscription, the Kurkh Monolith, records that in 853 bce, he joined a coalition of Western rulers battling against the mighty ruler of the neo-Assyrian Empire, Shalmaneser III, at Qarqar on the Orontes. In his purported victory monument (in fact the battle was likely a standoff, since the Assyrians did not press further west at that time), Shalmaneser claims that Ahab brought 2,000 chariots to the field.15 Even if that number is a royal exaggeration, it indicates that Ahab was a warrior to be reckoned with, and (directly to the point of our story) his success on the field of battle depended on keeping alive war horses and pack mules. Yet from his first appearance in the biblical story, Ahab is subtly mocked. Even as the king charges the chief administrator of the royal estates with this crucial security task,16 we already know what he does not know: that Obadiah See Marvin Sweeney, I & II Kings: A Commentary (Old Testament Library; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2007), pp. 209–16. 15 James B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 278–9. 16 In the Assyrian royal bureaucracy, the chief administrator of the royal estates, the counterpart to Obadiah, had as a top priority maintenance of the animals that the army and the state required. See Izabela Eph‘al-Jaruzelska, ‘Officialdom and Society in the Book of Kings: The Social Relevance of the State’, in Halpern and Lemaire (eds), Books of Kings, pp. 467–500 (481–2). 14



Prophecy and the Power of Life: Reading the Elijah Story Historically

59

is secretly providing food and water to keep alive those 100 hidden prophets, whose God is the Power that will bring down the royal house, the Omride dynasty. 4. Arable land (specifically the vineyard belonging to the peasant farmer Naboth [1 Kings 21]). Ahab’s and Jezebel’s murderous appropriation of Naboth’s ancestral land drives the nail into the coffin of the Omrides, since it is precisely Ahab’s job to protect the God-given land rights of his subjects. From a biblical perspective, that is what distinguishes Israel’s king from any other Ancient Near Eastern potentate. The unbreakable bond between a family and its inherited land signals the life-giving bond between God and the people Israel. Like every wise farmer in every age, Naboth understands that arable land is not really a commodity; it is worth precisely what human life is worth, what the covenant is worth. Accordingly, Naboth dies for a religious principle, which he articulates in precise theological terms. His answer to Ahab may be literally rendered thus: ‘It is a desecration (ḩālîlâ) to me before Yhwh for me to give my ancestral land-inheritance (naḩalat ʾăbōtay) to you!’ (1 Kgs 21.3). After Naboth’s judicial murder, when Elijah pronounces God’s judgement on the king for this fundamental breach of covenant (1 Kgs 21. 19–22), he assumes the prophet’s emblematic role of demanding social justice, crying out for those whom the powerful deprive of the means of life. When Ahab tries to buy the land, he claims that he wants to convert the vineyard to a palace vegetable garden (1 Kgs 21.2). However, when we examine that claim under an historical lens, it looks like a scam, and not only because vegetarian cuisine seems to have had a low rating among Israelites, and especially their royals.17 Much more likely, Ahab wants the vineyard’s valuable yield for himself. The dynasty founded by Ahab’s father Omri focused its attention on expanding international commerce, especially fine wine and olive oil, two of the three crops that constitute the so-called Mediterranean triad: grain, wine and oil. Commodity agriculture was not confined to the

The book of Kings begins with a description of Solomon’s lavish table, including high meat consumption (Heb. 1 Kgs 5.2–3, Eng. 1 Kgs 4.22–3). Nathan MacDonald points to the redistribution of prestigious foods such as meat on a national scale during the period of the monarchy, and especially during the Assyrian period in What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat? Diet in Biblical Times (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), pp. 77–9. On the role of feasting in the rise of the monarchy, see Nathan MacDonald, Not Bread Alone: The Uses of Food in the Old Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 134–65.

17

60

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

Northern Kingdom; industrial-scale wine production is attested at Ashkelon and Gibeon in Judah in the eighth and seventh centuries b.c.e., the period in which the Elijah narrative likely assumed its present form.18 Over the several centuries that left historical traces in our story, the Mesopotamian and Egyptian powers valued Israel and Judah principally for the precious commodity their own lands could not produce, namely wine for feasting by the few who could afford it.19 The story provides enough hints to support the surmise that Ahab was more interested in wine trade than cucumber cultivation (cf. Isa. 1.8). Ahab’s marriage alliance with the Phoenician royal house gave him crucial access to maritime trade; and success in battle against the Arameans (Syrians) gained him the chance to establish a bazaar in Damascus (1 Kgs 20.34), a lucrative market for Israelite trade, and perhaps a source of additional tax revenues.20 The monarch who knew how to exploit opportunities such as these would be a major international player – and at the same time a tyrant who succeeded by depriving his own people of life and land. Long ago Samuel had warned the Israelites that making themselves a king would cost them a tenth of their seed and their vineyards, for the king’s officials and other servants (1 Sam. 8.15). The story of Naboth’s vineyard shows the pseudo-legal means by which the king could expand his land holdings and thus his power base. ‘Wickedness never spake out of a throne’, observes Joseph Hall in his Contemplations, ‘and complained of the defect of instruments’.21 To sum up my reading of the text: scarce water, given only at God’s word; arable land capable of producing wine; meal made from grain; and olive oil – all these basic elements of the Elijah story constituted the essential means of life for the ordinary Israelite. Grain, wine, and oil made life in the Levant possible and sometimes pleasant; the biblical writers knew these as the gifts I follow the common view that the primary formation of the book of Kings likely took place under Josiah, with written antecedents and subsequent adjustments. One of its antecedents would have been, according to Baruch Halpern and André Lemaire, an extensive account of prophetic activity that in effect provided an apology for the coup of Jehu and the subsequent Nimshide Dynasty as a (worthy) successor to Ahab’s house; they view the story of Naboth and Jezebel as ‘truly a centerpiece of the apology’ (‘The Composition of Kings’, p. 137). The written account of Elijah and Elisha they suppose to have originated in the reign of Joash, at the beginning of the ninth century, and to include historically accurate data. 19 See MacDonald, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat?, p. 23. 20 See Daniel M. Master, ‘Institutions of Trade in 1 and 2 Kings’, in Halpern and Lemaire (eds), The Books of Kings, pp. 501–16 (509–16). 21 Hall, Contemplations, vol. 2, p. 229. 18



Prophecy and the Power of Life: Reading the Elijah Story Historically

61

of God (Heb. Hos. 2.10, Eng. 2.8; Neh. 13.12; cf. Heb. Ps. 4.8, Eng. 4.7). The story evokes a shift in the agrarian economy of Israel, a shift which began with the monarchy and advanced with the incorporation of Israel and later Judah into the Assyrian Empire. Local and regional subsistence gradually yielded to centralized agriculture and royal control of the land and its produce; as a result of this large-scale redistribution of food and land, Israelite society became increasingly differentiated. ‘A relatively small elite enjoyed a proportionately larger share of the food resources, especially those that were more prestigious’.22 The Elijah narrative offers a theological critique of that economic shift, showing that it strikes at the very heart of Israel’s covenanted existence.

Conclusion: a twenty-first-century appropriation of the story I have traced a major theme of the Elijah story, namely that it is the God of Israel who controls all the essential means of life: water, land, food and nephesh, the embodied power-of-life. Along with that goes the secondary theme of how people may use these things rightly, as do Elijah and the woman of Zarephath, and thus serve as channels for God’s own power-for-life. Conversely, they may misuse the means of life, as do Ahab and Jezebel, who act as agents of death and thus are doomed themselves. I have also suggested social and historical conditions in Israel between the ninth and seventh centuries that would seem to underlie this story and give it cogency for Iron Age hearers. Further, I have suggested that that this twofold theme – the Divine Source of the means of life and human use or abuse of them – has particular cogency for our time because of industrialized society’s widespread and deadly disconnection from the things on which our life, indeed terrestrial life altogether, directly depends. I end by amplifying this last suggestion, pointing briefly to ways in which the historically-informed account of Elijah might exert some moral pressure on twenty-first-century readers, if we be conscious of the situation in which we are reading it. Along the lines that I suggested for the third kind of historical reading, I note some possible correlations between the Iron Age social situation and our own. We are at a point in history when agriculture MacDonald, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat?, p. 79.

22

62

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

around the globe is increasingly consolidated both vertically and horizontally, to an extent that has never before been possible. In contrast to Iron Age Israel, the ‘relatively small elite’ that enjoys ‘a proportionately larger share of the food resources’ is not a royal circle but an industrial one, a small number of transnational corporations that control production and distribution of all major food crops, from seed to market, and also the relatively wealthy in countries such as my own. While alleviating world hunger is often the ostensible justification for this consolidation, the situation on the ground is moving in the opposite direction. World hunger is again on the rise, despite the sufficiency of food in absolute terms, because increasing numbers of the poor lack access to affordable food, and small farmers lack access to local markets. In the last year we have seen bread riots in Mozambique, even as Cargill and Gates launched an US$8 million project for soy production that will be used for livestock feed and biofuels for meat-eaters and automobile drivers overseas. The arable land rush is accelerating on this continent, and also in many parts of Africa, as well as in Cambodia, Korea and Brazil, as hundreds of millions of acres are transferred to investors, especially in countries that are cash-rich but land-poor. The rural poor lose their land, or work on it as tenants to the corporate owners. Many of them are driven into abject poverty because they cannot afford to purchase corporation-controlled seed and the chemical inputs it requires; at the same time, subsidized food imports have made it impossible for small indigenous farmers to compete. Rural violence and suicides are epidemic in India, for instance, a country once vaunted as the stunning success of the Green Revolution. For the narrators of the Elijah story, drought is God’s answer to Israel’s sin, and especially to the sins of the royal house. While probably none of us would draw the line of causality quite that way, the biblical story might well caution us not to interpret the effects of sin too narrowly, since human (mis)behavior profoundly affects natural systems, the physical means of life that the biblical writers call ‘the works of God’s hands’. So when the Bible speaks of killing drought as a mark of alienation from God, we might think of our own experiences of humanly induced water scarcity: growing desertification due to global warming, underground aquifers and rivers pumped far beyond replacement rates because of the agriculture industry’s thirst, which consumes some 70 per cent of the fresh water on the planet. Water is overused, increasingly scarce,



Prophecy and the Power of Life: Reading the Elijah Story Historically

63

and therefore it is commodified; ominously enough, a recent Goldman Sachs report has called water the petroleum of this new century. In anticipation of more severe drought due to climate change, water offers ‘huge rewards for investors who know how to play the infrastructure boom’.23 The key terms of the Elijah story – acute water shortage; the commodification of land and its products, resulting in appropriation of water and land by the powerful and death for the powerless; the sufficiency of the means of life when they are wisely shared by the powerful and powerless alike – all these are the same terms by which we must reckon with our situation in the twentyfirst century. So I suggest that this story is one apt place to begin a biblically and historically informed reading of our dominant cultural practices. Joseph Blenkinsopp has shrewdly observed: ‘The presence of prophecy as an essential part of the canon means that it will always be possible and necessary to remold the tradition as a source of life-giving power’.24 Is it possible that scholars, teachers, and students of the Bible might have a small role to play in identifying the need for and genuine possibility of a paradigm shift in the way people around the world grow, distribute, and buy food – along the lines now widely called for, and demonstrated as achievable and effective in relieving hunger, by organizations such as the United Nations Environmental Programme, the Rodale Institute, the US Food Sovereignty Alliance and the promising new Faith in Food initiative in Britain? I wonder how many of them know that the biblical tradition is a source of life-giving power that could encourage and guide us all in this work.

See Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, ‘Water crisis to be biggest world risk’, The Telegraph, 5 June, 2008, available online at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/utilities/2791116/Watercrisis-to-be-biggest-world-risk.html (Accessed 13 October 2011.) 24 Joseph Blenkinsopp, Prophecy and Canon: A Contribution to the Study of Jewish Origins (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977), p. 152. 23

4

Pierced-Side Hermeneutics: Reading the Scriptures in the Spirit of Luther Jacob Phillips

In The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies, J. W. Rogerson states that, ‘[f]ifty years ago hardly anyone in academic circles doubted that the historicalcritical method was the principal, if not all-sufficient, way of studying the Bible responsibly’.1 Since then, as is well known, the situation has changed significantly. Recent decades have seen the growth of more theologically orientated Bible scholarship, often referred to as the theological interpretation of Scripture. The contrast between the two approaches can be stated broadly in terms of authority. The various approaches of the historical-critical method involve attributing authority to abductive inference, that is, inference to best explanation. So, historical critics tend to infer the most likely explanation for textual assertions.2 In contrast, a theologically orientated mode of interpretation will draw conclusions by attributing authority differently, perhaps to the creeds, or the normative practices of Christian communities.3 For some scholars, including Rogerson, these two sources of authority are not mutually exclusive. He considers that although historical-criticism has been used ‘to advocate positions’ that deny a theologically authoritative

J. W. Rogerson, ‘Historical Criticism and the Authority of the Bible’ in J. W. Rogerson and Judith M. Lieu (eds), The Oxford Handbook to Biblical Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 841–59 (841). 2 ‘Reasoning by ‘abduction’ is inference to the best explanation. In biblical scholarship, for example, the way that conclusions are drawn from evidence … will be derived largely on the basis of a ‘best explanation’, or abductively’. See Paul D. Janz, ‘Revelation and Divine Causality’, in Oliver Davies, Paul D. Janz and Clemens Sedmak, Transformation Theology: Church in the World (London: T&T Clark International, 2007), pp. 63–88. 3 Theological interpretation is described as being ‘shaped by the concerns of Christian communities seeking to live faithfully before the triune God’: Stephen E. Fowl, ‘Introduction’ in Stephen E. Fowl (ed.), The Theological Interpretation of Scripture (Maldon, MA: Blackwell, 1997), pp. xii–xxx (xvi). 1

66

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

reading of the Bible, ‘this is not a characteristic of historical criticism per se, but of its particular uses’.4 He does not see the historical-critical scholar and the theological interpreter in a necessarily antithetical relationship, and so draws our attention to early advocates of historical-criticism who embraced the discipline ‘precisely because its methods promised a way of enabling the Bible to assert its authority’.5 Some scholars, however, see things differently. One example here is Stephen E. Fowl, who has argued that the historicalcritical method is ‘systematically unable to generate serious theological interpretation of scripture’,6 because it requires that scholars ‘bracket-out constructive theological convictions’.7 Fowl does not completely dismiss the findings of historical-critical scholarship, but envisages an approach whereby they are given an ‘ad hoc usefulness’.8 This approach brings the findings of historical-critical scholarship under theological authority. In so far as these findings can (in an ad hoc fashion) serve the purposes of distinctly theological concerns, Fowl sees them as useful, but this does not entail a commitment to the criteria under which they are encountered, because to commit to certain stable criteria is to bring in another form of authority.9 The difference between Rogerson and Fowl centres on adopting an appropriate post-critical stance to historical-criticism in theological interpretation. There are many other examples, besides Rogerson and Fowl, of adopting a stance on this matter. My purpose here is to ask whether a further approach can be delineated, drawn from a reading of the Scriptures in the spirit of Luther, particularly from his commentary on Galatians of 1535, and also from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christology lectures of 1933. This approach does not, like Rogerson, see historical-critical scholarship as valid, by virtue of bolstering theological authority with the abductive inferences of historical-criticism. Nor does it see historical-critical scholarship as relatively invalid, like Fowl, by dismissing the criteria under which historical-critical scholarship operates. Historical criticism ‘has been used, to advocate positions that deny to the Bible any credibility as a… text regarded as scripture’ (Rogerson, ‘Historical Criticism and the Authority of the Bible’, p. 846). 5 Rogerson, ‘Historical Criticism and the Authority of the Bible’, pp. 846, 850–1. 6 Stephen E. Fowl, Engaging Scripture: A Model for Theological Interpretation (Issues in Contemporary Theology; Maldon, MA: Blackwell, 1998), p. 1 (Fowl uses the term ‘Biblical theology’, which I have substituted for the historical-critical method). 7 Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 1. 8 Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 21. 9 Cf. Hans Frei, Types of Christian Theology (George Hunsinger and William C. Placher (eds); London: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 38–9. 4



Pierced-Side Hermeneutics: Reading the Scriptures in the Spirit of Luther

67

The approach I wish to draw our attention to here involves adopting a stance whereby the findings of historical-critical scholarship are seen as exhibiting a ‘negative validity’, a term I will define shortly. I wish to suggest that the vulnerability of the Scriptures exposed to inferential analysis, in the manner of historical-criticism, can actually serve to foster an interpretative posture in which the Scriptures are understood as an authoritative text. This post-critical stance to historical-criticism I am calling a ‘pierced-side hermeneutic’.

Martin Luther Obviously, Luther was writing at a time before the historical-critical method had been conceived as we understand it today. Nonetheless, it is permissible to bring him into this discussion on interpretative authority, insofar as historicalcritical methodology is seen as grounded on the authority of its particular use of abductive inference. This is because one of Luther’s key concerns in his Galatians commentary is the use of reason to make inferences about matters he considers that reason cannot understand unaided. In this commentary, the word ratio is used well over 230 times.10 This is because Luther considers the thrust of the Epistle to be about what he calls the ‘doctrine of justification by faith’,11 and this doctrine is thought to stand in a particular relationship to human rationality. For Luther, the notion that we are justified through faith, and can in no way merit our salvation by works, is something that ratio finds particularly unpalatable. He states that ‘human reason cannot refrain from looking at active righteousness’,12 that is, the performance of works to achieve justification. He sees the Law, therefore, as closely related to reason, indeed, he says that the Law is the ‘object’ of reason, because reason says to itself, ‘this I have done; this I have not done’.13 The inference that performing good works wins favour in God’s sight and a place in the heavenly kingdom is seen by

Brian Gerrish, Grace and Reason: A Study in the Theology of Luther (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), p. 62. 11 Gerrish, Grace and Reason, p. 62. 12 Martin Luther, Lectures on Galatians 1535 Chapters 1–4 (ed. Jaroslav Pelikan; trans. Jaroslav Pelikan and Richard Jungkuntz; Luther’s Works, 26; 55 vols; Saint Louis: Concordia, 1964), p. 5. 13 Luther, Lectures on Galatians 1535, Chapters 1–4, p. 88. 10

68

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

Luther as something which shows how deeply embedded in our thinking the tendency to self-justification is.14 Human rationality, for Luther, in exhibiting this tendency, cannot be relied upon to rightly understand certain key theological matters. For Luther, ‘our capacity to make inferences is brought into disgrace by [the] particular false inference that we habitually make’.15 The issue here seems to be one of trespass. For Luther, human reason is perfectly appropriate for drawing conclusions in what he calls the ‘earthly kingdom’ (regnum mundi), but it is not appropriate for drawing conclusions unaided in what he calls the ‘spiritual kingdom’ or the ‘regnum Christi’. Holy Scripture, of course, belongs to the latter. He argues from Galatians 1.9 that Scripture is ‘the queen which must rule over all’, and that Christ himself is ‘lord and king of scripture’.16 So returning to the task at hand – discerning what Luther’s attitude to historical-critical scholarship might be from the Galatians commentary, we are perhaps given some clues here. Human rationality is seen by Luther as exhibiting a tendency to seek to arrive at self-justification, and this same rationality is the intrinsic authority of historical-critical methodology. The point here is that the manner by which conclusions are drawn, in each activity, are markedly similar. In historical-criticism, inferences, that is ‘reasoning to conclusions which can be shown … to follow from certain premises or items of empirical evidence’,17 are usually arguments to best explanation, and so they are grounded in the human knower. The authority of human rationality demands that certain interpretations are the correct way to explain assertions made in the text, because the items of evidence point toward such interpretations as the most likely. With Luther’s understanding of self-justification, human rationality arrives at the conclusion that we must perform good works to win favour in God’s sight, which he sees as an inference following from premises based on our experience of the ‘earthly kingdom’, where acting in accordance with another’s will brings favour in their sight. Luther’s attitude to ratio is, of Luther, Lectures on Galatians 1535, Chapters 1–4, pp. 5, 11, 26, 30, 34, 73, 88–9, 113–14, and Martin Luther, Lectures on Galatians 1535, Chapters 5–6 (ed. Jaroslav Pelikan; trans. Jaroslav Pelikan and Richard Jungkuntz; Luther’s Works, 27; 55 vols; Saint Louis: Concordia, 1964), pp. 6–7, 27–8, 47–50, 53–7. 15 Gerrish, Grace and Reason, p. 67. 16 Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther (trans. Robert C. Schultz; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966), pp. 75, 79, n. 25. 17 Janz, ‘Revelation as Divine Causality’, p. 71 [emphasis original]. 14



Pierced-Side Hermeneutics: Reading the Scriptures in the Spirit of Luther

69

course, complex and multifaceted.18 What is being stated here applies only to the ‘habitual’ inference that good works merit salvation, in that this is the key example of rational inference grounding a work of God in the human knower, and not Luther’s ratio in its entirety. Historical-criticism and self-justification can be seen as sharing a distinct similarity in the human groundedness of their conclusions. Luther’s attitude to the human groundedness of self-justification, therefore, allows us to try and describe what a reading in the spirit of Luther might mean for historical-criticism.19 An example of this similarity regarding the manner in which self-justification occurs, and the reasoning of historicalcriticism, can be seen by looking at a locus classicus of historical-criticism, Markan priority. This is the well-known view that Mark’s Gospel was the first to be written following the death of Jesus.20 This position, arrived at through abductive inference, immediately posits a certain authenticity to Mark’s Gospel, over and above the other three. The point here is not that Markan priority itself is necessarily wrong, but that to ground theological reflection on such findings mediates the encounter with Scripture through a humanly grounded basis. This can be seen quite acutely with regard to Markan priority, because this position has tended to carry the corollary that the most authentic Gospel was originally without a resurrection narrative, which places the accounts of Christ’s resurrection we read in Matthew, Luke and John onto a human foundation, which can be seen to inhibit a thoroughgoing encounter with Christ risen. If human groundedness allows us to draw an analogy between historicalcriticism and self-justification, it seems that reading the Scriptures in the spirit of Luther would lead toward a delimitation of the historical-critical with respect to the theological. Historical-critical inferences may be seen as valuable in certain areas, but ultimately this would be rather limited, because human reason would be unable to draw right inferences when it comes to the Cf. Gerrish, Grace and Reason, pp. 10–27 and 69–83 (Luther’s less ambivalent writings on ratio, do not refer to unaided reason, but reason in the service of faith, but the habitual inference I seek to discuss here is the prime example of what Luther would see as unaided reason). 19 There are, of course, theological interpreters for whom the relationship between faith and reason is not nearly as antagonistic as I describe it here, such as J. Todd Billings, The Word of God for the People of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010). Such interpreters often adopt a ‘participatory’ model between faith and reason, which does not strictly delimit ‘unaided reason’ from reason in the service of faith, as this paper does. 20 Rogerson, ‘Historical Criticism and the Authority of the Bible’, p. 842. 18

70

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

regnum Christi. On issues of human salvation, and Christ’s saving role, Luther states repeatedly that we cannot rely on human reason. He states that it must ‘not exceed its limits’, and must not ‘ascend…and exert its rule’.21 So to read in the spirit of Luther would perhaps involve allowing rational inferences their place, but only on the basis of that acknowledged by faith.22 The result, I suggest, would be a situation not dissimilar to that advocated by Fowl, which I touched upon earlier, in which the findings of historical-critical scholarship are permitted a certain place, but only in service of an interpretation with theological commitment. However, I wish to suggest that leaving a reading of the Scriptures in the spirit of Luther here would give only a part of the picture. For although the findings of historical-critical scholarship, according to Luther’s reasoning, would seem to be invalid in and of themselves, when applied to theological matters, there is a way in which Luther’s commentary suggests they may have a certain validity. But this is not the validity I touched-upon with reference to Rogerson, where the findings of historical-critical scholarship can be used to bolster biblical authority, by undergirding scriptural assertions with historical-critical evidence. It would be, in contrast, a negative validity. In order to draw-out precisely what I mean by this, and therefore why I suggest that a reading in the spirit of Luther might provide a distinct post-critical stance toward historical-critical scholarship and the Bible as authoritative text, I wish to turn to Luther’s notion of the Law being the ‘alien work of God’ (opus alienum Dei). Brian Gerrish suggests that the ‘heart of the assault on ratio’ in the Galatians commentary is its ‘association with the Law’.23 But the attitude taken by Luther toward the Law in this text is not straightforward. Although we are left in no doubt whatsoever that the deeds of the Law cannot lead to salvation, there is a way in which the Law can, in a negative sense, prepare one for the Gospel. Luther says of ‘stubborn’ and ‘hard hearted’ people, that we should set nothing before their eyes but the Law, ‘in order that they may be terrified and humbled’.24 He gives a pastoral example, where he speaks of Luther, Lectures on Galatians 1535, Chapters 1–4, p. 11, cf. pp. 30, 113–14. Gerrish, Grace and Reason, p. 20. 23 Gerrish, Grace and Reason, p. 92, and Luther, Lectures on Galatians 1535, Chapters 1–4, p. 6. 24 The Law, we read, was given to ‘exercise the old man’, upon whom a ‘burden must be put that will oppress him’: Luther, Lectures on Galatians 1535, Chapters 1–4, p. 7. 21 22



Pierced-Side Hermeneutics: Reading the Scriptures in the Spirit of Luther

71

waiting until someone is ‘sufficiently contrite, oppressed by the Law, terrified by sin, and thirsty for comfort’ at which point the way is prepared to set before them the righteousness of the Gospel.25 The manner in which the Law is seen as preparing the way for the Gospel, allows Luther to see the Law as the work of God. But he draws a distinction here and refers to the Gospel as the proper work of God, and the Law as the alien work of God, a term he draws from Isa. 28.21 (‘strange is his deed! And … alien is his work!’). So the Law, in bringing someone to their knees with the grim realization that they cannot fulfil its precepts and perform good deeds, is performing God’s work in preparing the way for the Gospel, making room in the prideful heart of the human being by bringing them to contrition and repentance. Remembering that ‘the heart of [Luther’s] assault on ratio’ is its association with the Law, we can find some examples in Luther’s commentary where, as the Law exhibits a negative validity by being the ‘alien work of God’, so does the thinking that goes with it. That is, just as the attempt to fulfil the Law brings someone to their knees in giving them the knowledge that they cannot be autonomously obedient, the inferences of self-justification equally lead one into a position of helplessness, or powerlessness, whereby one is unable to ground an understanding of one’s own salvation through one’s own rationality. For example, he says that in ‘deep anxieties’,26 ‘your consciousness of sin…is so great and strong that it penetrates and occupies all the corners of your heart’ but you must not ‘follow your own consciousness’.27 The mode of authority of historical-criticism, rational inference, I suggest, could also be seen as having a negative validity. Historical criticism cannot bring someone to a verification of certain matters associated with theological interpretation, like the Lordship of Christ, or knowledge of his saving work. But precisely this inability, understood as exhibiting a negative validity, could actually serve to bring them closer to these things by confidently destroying the possibility of grounding them in the thought of the human being. I wish to suggest here that an understanding of historical-criticism exhibiting a negative validity for theological interpretation offers a stance different Luther, Lectures on Galatians 1535, Chapters 1–4, p. 7. ‘Deep anxieties’ is a translation of ‘Anfechtung’, often translated as ‘temptation’ but ‘dereliction’ may be better: see Rowan Williams, The Wound of Knowledge: Christian Spirituality from the New Testament to St John of the Cross (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1990), p. 152. 27 Martin Luther, Lectures on Galatians 1535, Chapters 5–6, pp. 25–6. 25 26

72

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

to the examples given at the outset of this paper. Rather than dismiss historical criticism, and draw it into moments of ad hoc usefulness, there is a sense in which the criteria of those methodologies are given a certain stability, but this stability is inverted: they are stable by virtue of what they cannot do. This idea is strengthened further by Luther’s consideration that an encounter with the Law as the alien work of God is actually necessary for us to encounter the proper work of God. For Luther we must be brought to our knees, we have to experience dereliction and hopelessness regarding the merit of our salvation, in order to be opened up to the righteousness of Christ. This promises a particular post-critical stance to historical-critical scholarship, suggesting that we must have our firm grasp on theological matters undone at the hands of human rationality. This way of thinking suggests that theological interpreters should not dismiss historical-criticism outright, as unable to arrive at an understanding of, say, the saving work of Christ, nor seek to pick and choose those findings which seem to bolster their theological commitments. Instead, a theological interpretation would be necessarily vulnerable to the historicalcritical use of abductive inference. In this way we could understand the apparent evacuation of Christ’s saving work from the Scriptures we have seen in much historical-critical scholarship as a manner of Christ’s coming closer for the theological interpreter. So to return to my earlier example from historical-criticism, Markan priority, and the apparent authenticity of a gospel without a resurrection narrative, rather than this leading to doubtfulness regarding faith in Christ risen, it can be seen to radically disrupt our ability to ground that faith humanly, through abductive inference. In this way, the empty tomb of Mark which historicalcriticism presents us with can be seen as a mode of Christ risen coming to meet us. This strange logic of closeness in absence seems to be very much a reading in the spirit of Luther. In the Galatians commentary there is a plentiful use of such paradoxical-type language. For example, he states that ‘God is present most closely when he seems to be farthest away’.28 Up until now my argument has been rather conjectural – because Luther did not write about historical-criticism. Now I wish to bring in a certain passage from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christology lectures, where he seems to adopt a position similar Luther, Lectures on Galatians 1535, Chapters 1–4, p. 27.

28



Pierced-Side Hermeneutics: Reading the Scriptures in the Spirit of Luther

73

to the post-critical stance which I suggest may be of value in theological interpretation.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer In making this suggestion, I am drawing on a particular current in Bonhoeffer scholarship, which seeks to re-evaluate the relationship between two streams of influence in his work. These are, on the one hand, liberal theology – in which Bonhoeffer trained, and which is closely linked to the historical-critical scholarship of the nineteenth century, and on the other hand, the revelationorientated theology of the Word of dialectical theology, with its locus classicus in the second edition of Barth’s Epistle to the Romans. Bonhoeffer scholar Clifford Green has pointed out that when Bonhoeffer gave his Christology lectures in Berlin he felt rather isolated as a lone Barthian in the very nerve centre of liberal theological thinking, but, nonetheless, these lectures are not just the work of ‘a Barthian in Berlin’, but also very much the work of a ‘Berliner’.29 That is, despite Bonhoeffer’s undoubted and explicit commitment to the orientation given by Barth’s Romans, he remained in certain ways indebted to his liberal heritage. This idea has been fleshed-out in the German Afterword to the critical edition of the lectures, where it is suggested that certain elements of liberal theological thinking were ‘pressed’ by Bonhoeffer, to the point of ‘shattering’, which itself ‘only served to attest the mystery of the God-human’.30 In this way, it is suggested, Bonhoeffer was able to combine a ‘loyalty to the kind of historical theology represented by [Adolf von] Harnack’ with the concerns of Karl Barth, and could even be seen as making a move which can be described as ‘an incorporation of liberal theology into dialectical theology’.31 It is against the background of this approach to Bonhoeffer’s lectures that I wish to situate my use of his ideas here. One of Bonhoeffer’s aims is to discuss the asking of the question ‘who’ is the present Christ? For Bonhoeffer the Clifford Green, A Theology of Sociality (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), p. 239. Ernst-Albert Scharffenorth, ‘Editor’s Afterword to the German Edition’, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Berlin: 1932–1933 (ed. Larry L. Rasmussen; trans. Douglas W. Stott, Isabel Best, and David Higgins; Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, 12; 16 Vols; Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2009), pp. 483–508 (489). 31 Scharffenorth, ‘Editor’s Afterword’, pp. 489–90. 29 30

74

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

present Christ is with us by virtue of his resurrection and ‘the Christ who is present today is the historical Christ’. Were this not so he states, quoting 1 Cor. 15.17, then ‘our faith is in vain’. Now, Bonhoeffer considers this approach to be a particular affront to liberal theology. He does not spell out exactly why, but reading from other parts of the lectures I would suggest that this was seen as an affront to liberal theology in Bonhoeffer’s view, because he saw liberal theologians as seeking to ground our knowledge of Christ in asking the question ‘how’. That is, in fitting an understanding of Christ into a human classification scheme which is at the hands of the human-logos, and as such, incapable of rightly comprehending the God-human. Bonhoeffer states that, in being affronted by the resurrection, liberal theology seeks to make a distinction between the Jesus of history in the Synoptic Gospels, and the Christ of faith of the Pauline Epistles. That is, the historical Jesus of Nazareth is separated from the ascended Christ of Paul’s letters, and therefore the resurrection from the dead is ruled out of consideration. Bonhoeffer states, ‘liberal theology stands and falls…by its distinction between Jesus and Christ’.32 By establishing a historical Jesus from the Synoptics, liberal theologians could then contrast this with the Christ of Paul’s Epistles. This is because the risen Christ can, in Bonhoeffer’s view, be assimilated to human understanding much more easily if the Pauline literature is seen to be based, not on Jesus being raised bodily from the dead, but on a religious experience of Christ as somehow present to the community, that is an assertion of faith-experience. So, faced with the risen Christ, Bonhoeffer sees human rationality seeking to separate the Pauline ‘Christ of faith’ from the Synoptic ‘Jesus of history’, which requires establishing a historical Jesus, grounded by abductive inference, with which to contrast the Pauline Christ of faith. What is of key importance here for Bonhoeffer’s lectures, and provides a parallel with my own suggestion regarding historical-criticism having a negative validity, is that the distinction in question proved unsustainable for liberal theology. Bonhoeffer draws attention to Albert Schweitzer, who famously concluded that the historical Jesus would never be reached by historical scholarship, and then Wilhelm Wrede, who argued that even the Bonhoeffer, Berlin, p. 328.

32



Pierced-Side Hermeneutics: Reading the Scriptures in the Spirit of Luther

75

Jesus of history in the Synoptics was itself a product of the declaration of the Christ of faith. In this ‘undermining of its own presuppositions’, says Bonhoeffer, liberal theology offered an ‘indirect, unintended and therefore even more emphatic confirmation’ of the dogmatically necessary statement that ‘the [risen] Christ who is present today is the historical Christ’, because the only access to the historical Jesus (in the Synoptics) is then through those who assert that he is risen. He seems to envisage that the bankruptcy of historical-criticism on this point leads to what he calls a ‘transition from the historical level to dogmatic studies’.33 At precisely this point, I suggest, we have a juncture like that where the thinking associated with the justification by works in Luther’s Galatians commentary indirectly brings one closer to the doctrine of justification by faith, by undoing its own presuppositions. By extension, then, we see the point of negative validity. As Bonhoeffer says, the ‘cardinal assertion that Jesus is the Christ is confirmed by history against its own will’, and ‘through the Bible in its fragility, Jesus comes to meet us as the Risen One’.34 Bonhoeffer’s statements about the bankruptcy of historical-criticism, and Luther’s statements about the dereliction of human ratio, are similar in that they share a moment of the undoing of the human groundedness of their respective conclusions. For Bonhoeffer, liberal theology is indicative of the human logos asking the question ‘how’ Jesus Christ fits into the classification scheme that I have ‘at hand’.35 But the trajectory of liberal theology in the decades immediately prior to 1933, in the crisis of the search for a Synoptic Jesus of history, led scholars to the conclusion that even the Synoptics themselves are based on a community witness of faith. In this bankruptcy, humanly grounded rationality is undone; it cannot find the firm ground it needs (an historical Jesus), and it is again faced with the ‘dogmatically necessary’ risen Christ. This undoing of the human groundedness of certain conclusions is seen also in Luther’s writing on the dereliction of human ratio when faced with justificatio. Human rationality seeks to make the notion of human justification understandable on its own terms, by drawing an inference from the earthly kingdom, and deciding that the performance of good works brings Bonhoeffer, Berlin, p. 328–9. Bonhoeffer, Berlin, p. 329. Bonhoeffer, Berlin, p. 301.

33 34 35

76

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

favour in God’s sight. When human beings find themselves unable to perform good works, this inference drags them deeper into despair. But in this state of dereliction, says Luther, comes true recognition of Christ’s saving work, because the human groundedness itself proves unsustainable. Just as seeking to ground the warrants for justification in human rationality is seen in Luther’s Galatians Commentary as being undone, thus bringing the utter dependence on Christ’s righteousness closer, in Bonhoeffer’s Christology lectures the findings of historical scholarship are equally undone, negatively bringing the pursuit of Christology closer to the recognition of the fact that ‘the [risen] Christ who is present today is the historical Christ’.36 This approach does not seek to maintain the validity of historical-critical scholarship by using it to ground theological assertions – it does not seek to strengthen the Bible through human rationality. An example of such procedure with regard to the resurrection accounts would involve weighing-up various items of historical critical evidence to convince people that Christ’s having risen from the dead is the best explanation for the assertions in the text. We see such reasoning in some of the work of N. T. Wright.37 Alternatively, others might be led to dismiss historical-critical findings tout court, and firmly adhere to dogmatic stipulations, and make use of historical-criticism only when it serves their purposes, with no commitment to the criteria in question. One example of this is the ad hoc usefulness as advocated by Stephen E. Fowl.38 The problem with this approach, arguably, is that the integrity of the criteria of historical-criticism is undermined, in that findings are dismissed when they conflict with items of doctrine, yet theological interpreters still feel able to pick those findings which sit easily with their prior commitments.

Conclusion As an alternative stance, a pierced-side hermeneutic would require that those addressed by Scripture enter into the text, and experience the undoing of their attempts to render the text meaningful on their own terms, and experience Bonhoeffer, Berlin, p. 328. N. T. Wright, ‘Jesus’ Resurrection and Christian Origins’, Gregorianum 83 (2002), pp. 615–35. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, p. 21.

36 37 38



Pierced-Side Hermeneutics: Reading the Scriptures in the Spirit of Luther

77

confrontation by the exteriority of that which is being described – which appears unable to be grounded in human rationality. This is something very like Bonhoeffer’s asking of the question ‘who?’, a question which, by definition, he says, can only be asked after a confrontation coming ‘from outside’. This is the question asked in acknowledgement that the answer cannot be provided according to the means at the disposal of the questioner. In Christology, says Bonhoeffer, the human logos must ask only the question ‘who’, but this cannot really be asked, because we have no grounds upon which to comprehend the answer. We are in a situation where we ‘must ask who’ but we ‘can not’. This asking of ‘who’ occurs only because the questioner is confronted with the claim ‘to be the Word of God’.39 So what would this reading of the Scriptures in the spirit of Luther, then, which I call a pierced-side hermeneutic, offer for current discussions? The key contribution, I suggest, would be an ability to avoid dismissing historicalcriticism too quickly on theological grounds, coupled with an ability to avoid relying on the findings of historical-criticism to bolster theological assertions. Instead, the vulnerability of the Bible analysed by abductive inference in the manner of the historical-critic, actually serves to make room for faith – that is, for a properly theological apprehension of the text as authoritative Word of God. In this connection one of Bonhoeffer’s letters comes to mind, in which he discusses the growth of the sciences, by which he sees God ‘being pushed more and more out of life’. Rather than seek to deny or avoid this in a reactionary fashion, or to capitulate to it and buckle under its weight, he suggests that such developments be seen as making room for Christ at ‘the centre of life’.40 In this manner, I suggest, a pierced-side hermeneutic – acutely vulnerable to the disciplinary integrity of historical-criticism – could provide an interesting alternative stance in the current search for a post-critical stance to historical-criticism in theological interpretation.

Bonhoeffer, Berlin, p. 303. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (ed. Larry L. Rasmussen; trans. Isabel Best et al.; Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, 8; 16 Vols; Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2010), pp. 403 and 424.

39 40

5

‘There is no other light than this by which they can see each other’s faces and live’: John Ruskin and the Bible Zoë Bennett

Introduction: John Ruskin, the Bible and the power of sight John Ruskin (1819–1900) was brought up to know the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible virtually off by heart; his moral, religious and aesthetic sensibilities, not to mention his prose, were shaped by the KJV, by his mother’s deep evangelical faith and the preaching of the chapels of Victorian South London which nourished and sustained it, and by his adult rebellion against that faith, during which he nevertheless clung to and indwelt a biblical religion of just vision and practical obedience. This ‘Victorian sage’, catapulted to fame as the greatest British art critic at the age of 24 with the first of five volumes of Modern Painters (1843–60), turned in later life to a political-economic and social critique of nineteenth-century industrialized Britain. For this he was vilified in his lifetime but his work has had profound ongoing effects. My work in teaching practical theology and in supervising practical theological research brings me into constant realization of the need for sound and imaginative use of the Bible in pastoral, practical and public theology. It is not common for practical theologians to use a historical figure such as Ruskin as a paradigm for their work, particularly one who himself made no claims to being a theologian. Ruskin, however, has much to offer to the work of practical theology.1 First, he was an acute reader of multiple texts – aesthetic For further elaboration of this claim see Z. Bennett, ‘“To see fearlessly, pitifully”: what does John Ruskin have to offer to Practical Theology?’, International Journal of Practical Theology 14 (2011), 189–203.

1

82

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

texts, social texts (the world around him) and the biblical text. Second, he regularly made connections between these texts. Then he was a sophisticated producer of texts which do work in the public realm. And finally he was a man who was not content just to see, to read, to connect and to tell, but crucially he also acted on his beliefs. Ruskin’s interpretation and use of the Bible changed throughout his life; it was characterized always by serious and regular engagement, by personal investment and by deep conviction of its public relevance. As Ruskin grew older and religiously more independent and open, his wrestling with the Bible grew all the more lively and imaginative, and his attitude more playfully and lovingly critical. It is this quality of imagination, together with his commitment to a vision of an organic community under God, living according to God’s just laws, which make Ruskin an eminently suitable subject for a book on The Bible: Culture, Community and Society. The child Ruskin learned the Bible at his mother’s knee – literally – each day reciting to her, moving through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and starting back at Gen. 1 after Rev. 22. Margaret Ruskin was Scottish and evangelical. As a boy, her only and much-loved son attended the chapels of South London where they lived. He copied out and wrote his own sermons. ‘People be good’, his short first sermon as a small boy, prefigured his later concern with practical Christianity. The sermons he wrote on the Pentateuch as a young teenager – ‘I wish to fol-/low up the shadow of sacrifice to its / substance, Christ’2 – were mired in typological exegesis, such as he would have heard in church. I recall the long morning hours of toil, as regular as sunrise … by which, year after year, my mother forced me to learn these paraphrases, and chapters, allowing not so much as a syllable to be missed or misplaced … . [Thus] she established my soul in life… gave me secure ground for all future life, practical or spiritual … . [T]his maternal installation in my mind of that property of chapters, I count very confidently the most precious, and, on the whole, the one essential part of all my education.3 From Ruskin’s Sermon Notes, held in The Ruskin Museum, Coniston and transcribed by Margaret Clunan. 3 Works, 35.41–3. Quotations from Ruskin’s published works are taken from the Library Edition of 1903–12, referred to by volume and page number: The Works of John Ruskin (ed. E. T. Cook and A. Wedderburn; 39 vols; London: George Allen, 1903–12). 2



John Ruskin and the Bible

83

The adult Ruskin read the Bible daily throughout his life. What had begun when his mother so gifted him, and by this process ‘established my soul in life’, and ‘gave me secure ground for all future life, practical or spiritual’, continued through his childhood and adolescence, issued as detailed notes of wrestling with the Bible in personal diaries at his time of spiritual crisis in the 1850s, and appears in annotations on medieval biblical manuscripts which he used for his daily reading as late as the 1870s. It finds public voice in lectures, letters, books and essays. It persists through all phases of faith, the evangelical until about 1858, followed by the troubled ‘religion of humanity’ until about 1875, and finally through the open and ecumenical, if somewhat unorthodox, faith of Ruskin’s old age. In 1898, on the basis of what had then been published of his work, Mary and Ellen Gibbs were able to produce a 300-page volume of Ruskin’s biblical quotations, and H. J. Brunhes’ Ruskin et la Bible was in 1901 one of the first books published after his death.4 If the Bible through his mother constituted one influence on Ruskin, another was the art of J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851). It was rising to the defence of Turner that launched Ruskin on Modern Painters. Crucially he believed Turner saw truly. For an artist to see truly meant two things to Ruskin – two things which can be easily translated into what seeing truly might mean for anyone. First, the artist should be able correctly to represent what was before his eyes. Drawing and copying accurately were to Ruskin essential; and he constantly set copying tasks to his own drawing pupils, and engaged in the practice himself. He used exemplary drawings in his school of art in Oxford and in his lectures as Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University there, and a large collection of these may be viewed at the Ashmolean Museum.5 He drew natural objects with precision; leaves, flowers and birds, stones and rocks and also buildings. He copied statues and paintings. In his book Elements of Drawing Ruskin gives several reasons for doing such work. If the ultimate purpose of drawing is to enhance the facility for sight, it also has some secondary purposes: that you may be able to set down clearly, and usefully, records of such things as cannot be described in words, either to assist your own memory of them, or to M. Gibbs and E. Gibbs, The Bible References in the Works of John Ruskin (London: George Allen, 1898); H. J. Brunhes, Ruskin et la Bible (Paris: Perrin et Cie, 1901). They are also available online at http://ruskin.ashmolean.org/ (Accessed 22 April 2012).

4

5

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

84

convey distinct ideas of them to other people; … to obtain quicker perceptions of the natural world, and to preserve something like a true image of beautiful things that pass away or which you must leave[.]6

This quotation adumbrates the second and deeper kind of seeing which Ruskin believes is the work of the true artist. It is that power of ‘penetrative imagination’ which sees into the truth of things and is able to represent them in ways which open them up to the imaginative engagement of the viewer, reader or listener. [T]he greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion – all in one.7

Good seeing and good representation of what is seen are crucially important in practical theology, and in any attempt to connect the text of the Bible with the text of life. Seeing is the first element in theological reflection and its presentation: ‘see, judge, act’. Seeing is a religious and prophetic act, and Ruskin appreciated it as such. The way Turner was a ‘prophet’ was in his understanding and portrayal, a kind of proclamation, of God’s creation through his painting. Ruskin was aware that painting was not his own forte; words were his prophetic medium, and he used them tirelessly and magnificently in the service of prophesying – telling forth the beauty of creation, and later in life, telling forth the human misery he so accurately saw, and calling his fellow citizens to create a more just and humane society. A somewhat lengthy quotation, entirely justified by its compelling beauty, gives a flavour of his prose, here in relation to creation: the Rhone at Geneva. It is a heady mix of observation (aquamarine, ultramarine, violet-blue, gentian-blue …) and penetrative imagination (the witch of the Alps), which invites the reader to attend to the precise details of what Ruskin saw, but also flings wide the gates of the mind to delight and to the discovery of meaning. But here was one mighty wave that was always itself, and every fluted swirl of it, constant as the wreathing of a shell. No wasting away of the fallen foam, no pause for gathering of power, no helpless ebb of discouraged recoil; but alike through Works, 15.25. Works, 5.333.

6 7



John Ruskin and the Bible

85

bright day and lulling night, the never-pausing plunge, and never-fading flash, and never-hushing whisper, and, while the sun was up, the ever-answering glow of unearthly aquamarine, ultramarine, violet-blue, gentian-blue, peacock-blue, river-of-paradise blue, glass of a painted window melted in the sun, and the witch of the Alps flinging the spun tresses of it for ever from her snow.8

Ruskin, the Bible and society In the case of Martin Luther King’s personal effects in the King Center in Atlanta, Georgia, is a copy of Ruskin’s great work of social criticism, Unto This Last. It is a particularly interesting copy because it is a paraphrase produced in India under the auspices of Mahatma Gandhi. ‘A heavenly book, written by our largely forgotten national archangel’, is how Jonathan Glancey characterized Unto this Last in The Guardian, which ‘deserves to be read anew, by all of us, but mostly by expense-sullied politicians in search of a moral compass with practical, humane and honest bearings’.9 In his introduction to a recent edition of Unto this Last Andrew Hill, Associate Editor and City Editor of the Financial Times, makes a similar point: ‘Ruskin’s savage attack on the complacency and sterility of market economics, seems overdue for rehabilitation’.10 Such contemporary commentators echo in today’s circumstances the admiration for Unto this Last held by the first 29 elected Labour MPs who in 1906 declared it was the book which had most affected them. Gandhi claimed that reading the book had changed his life and converted him to the importance of home industry and craft work; it would seem that through the work of the Gandhians, whom he visited in the late 1950s, Martin Luther King was also deeply affected by Ruskin’s work. The book consists of four essays, originally (1860) published in Cornhill Magazine, ‘reprobated in a violent manner’ (as Ruskin notes in his preface to the book version), and published as a book in 1862. The essays take issue with the dominant political economy of the day (the political economy of Adam Smith, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill), arguing that it is narrow-minded, Works, 35.327. The Guardian, Friday 19 June 2009. 10 A. Hill, ‘Introduction’ to ‘Unto This Last’: Four Essays on the First Principles of Political Economy by John Ruskin (London: Pallas Athene, 2010), p. 9. 8 9

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

86

unjust and takes no account of ‘social affection’. It ignores human relationships and community, and treats a human being as if he or she were just an economic unit. Above all it has no idea of what true wealth is. Ruskin’s counterproposals draw deeply from his formation through the Bible – so much so that his critics said they would not be ‘preached to death by a mad governess’.11 Note here not only the disparaging reference to preaching, but also the gendered implication – Ruskin was allowed to be an art critic; his daring to enter the ‘hard’ man’s world of political economy was deeply resented. Unto this Last is passionately informed by biblical values, as can be seen in the following quotation, from which the title of this chapter comes: And which of these it shall be, depends on both rich and poor knowing that God is their light; that in the mystery of human life, there is no other light than this by which they can see each other’s faces, and live; – light which is called in another of the books among which the merchant’s maxims have been preserved, the “sun of justice,” of which it is promised that it shall rise at last with “healing” (health-giving or helping, making whole or setting at one) in its wings.12

Ruskin’s interest in good and true seeing has been translated from his earlier aesthetic concerns to a social and humane orientation – giving priority to human beings in their mutual social relationships; his vision is of good human community under the fatherly providence of God. The capacity for seeing is derived from God and is related to justice in human affairs. The ‘merchant’s maxims’ refers to a long section in the opening of the third essay of the book on the proverbs of Solomon, whom he calls ‘a Jew merchant … reported to have made one of the largest fortunes of his time (held also in repute for much practical sagacity)’. His discussion of Solomon is specifically in relation to economics; he firmly believes the Bible has a great deal to say about money. His central concern for justice is also revealed here. He has a long footnote to his text on the translation ‘sun of justice’. Ruskin is always very interested in way translation goes. He says if you translate this verse (Mal. 4.2) as ‘righteousness’ not ‘justice’ it breaks force of the original injunction to just action. The same concern can be noted in his wrestling with the text of chapters 1–5

Works, 17.xxviii. Works, 17.59–60.

11 12



John Ruskin and the Bible

87

of Paul’s letter to the Romans in his private diaries a year earlier, discussed further below. ‘THERE IS NO WEALTH BUT LIFE’ is Ruskin’s own most well known maxim from Unto This Last (the capitals are his); Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others.13

This demonstrates the heart of his concerns in human flourishing. He has drawn this priority consistently throughout the book from his rootedness in the Bible, making biblical allusions throughout, and using in his title the parable of the labourers in the vineyard in Matthew’s Gospel Chapter 20, where human relationships and flourishing take priority over strictly fiscal dealings. Note the importance both of the human being taken as a whole and of community and relationships. The passionate desire of this man is for justice and for human flourishing. He protests against the treatment of a human being as ‘homo economicus’ without taking account of human relationships, community, justice, the organic view of society and the holistic view of what it is to be human – material, spiritual and emotional. This passion and vision are a crucial element in what makes Ruskin an excellent practical theologian. He possesses a critical subjectivity – he himself is passionately involved – which seeks to integrate rather than to divide up: ‘all true science begins in the love, not the dissection, of your fellow creatures’; he says, ‘and it ends in the love, not the analysis, of God’.14 In the remainder of this chapter I propose to look at Ruskin’s methods of interpreting the Bible, at the biblical content of his contribution to making human community and at how he actually uses the Bible in his public work. It is important to say why I think this is worth doing as a practical theologian – what is the value to practical theology of using an historical figure in this way? Taking such an historical approach allows us to do two things. First, it allows us to see how someone in another time and another place brought into Works, 17.105. Works, 26.265–6.

13 14

88

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

dialogue his contemporary context and experience and the text of the Bible. This is a task which is central to work as a practical theologian. The fresh perspective which is offered by seeing this diachronically as well as synchronically, from a place and a point of view very different from our own, brings new insight and jolts us out of well-trammeled grooves. The historical analogy awakes the imagination and the critical faculties and increases our range of possibilities for understanding the dialectic between the text of life and the text of the Bible. Second, while there are limitations in what can be appropriated from another time and another place in this way, that very process of working with a different historical horizon (in this case nineteenth-century) can illuminate for us the issues involved in working between the two horizons of contemporary life and biblical text. My hope is that the historical method may take its place alongside the methods of the social sciences and biblical criticism in the discipline of practical theology.

Ruskin’s biblical hermeneutic In his fascinating book, After Ruskin, Stuart Eagles traces the influence which Ruskin’s social and political views had on English public life, and specifically on a generation of British social activists between 1870 and 1920. He attends also to what influences affected Ruskin’s own thinking and action. Interestingly – while naming fairly comprehensively Plato and Xenophon, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Gothic architecture and medieval Venice, his own Scottish heritage and Walter Scott’s Toryism and romantic version of medieval society, his intellectual rootedness in art history and criticism – Eagles does not name the Bible.15 Even a cursory reading of Unto this Last makes the debt to Ruskin’s biblical upbringing and daily attention to the text of the Bible absolutely plain. As I have already noted, Ruskin was brought up in a strongly evangelical faith. As an adult he went through deep internal conflict over his faith, which needs to be understood both in the context of the Victorian ‘crisis of faith’ in which geological and biological science asked new questions about

S. Eagles, After Ruskin The Social and Political Legacies of a Victorian Prophet 1870–1920 (Oxford Historical Monographs; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 30–1.

15



John Ruskin and the Bible

89

Christianity, and in which historical perspectives and the ‘higher’ criticism raised new questions about the Bible; and also in the specific context of Ruskin’s appreciation of art and the antipathy of typical evangelical attitudes to what he called the ‘gorgeousness of life’. The consistent influence of the Bible on Ruskin’s published works is illuminated by examination of his private wrestlings with the biblical text, which he read daily throughout his life in all phases of his faith. I will consider two significant instances. The first dates from 1858–9 and consists of as yet unpublished excerpts from Ruskin’s private diaries. For Ruskin the private/public dialectic is very interesting – he was a supreme introvert who wrote his heart out. I am convinced that looking at his private interpretative moves gives us clues to his public use of the Bible. These diary passages are headed ‘The content of faith’, and are interspersed among travel details of the current European journeys he was making with his parents and also with comments and drawings relating, for example, to botany and to art.16 The years 1858–9 were critical for Ruskin’s ‘turn to the human’ – his move from aesthetic to social criticism. The final volume of the five-volume Modern Painters was published in 1860 and Unto This Last appeared in the Cornhill Magazine in the same year. Two years earlier in 1858 is when Ruskin dates his ‘unconversion’, not from Christianity in total but from the narrowness of his former evangelical faith. These diary notes from this period show him wrestling with the text of Romans 1–5, in detail and in the Greek version. They are the private notes of a man seeking to come to terms with the heartlands of the faith he has inherited and with which he is no longer satisfied, indeed which causes him pain. He is most particularly interested in the meaning of the word dikaiosune and its cognates – the set of words translated into English as righteousness, justice, justification and their various adjectival and verbal forms. He is utterly convinced that the primary reference is to just relationships among people and under God: injustice is the ‘great comprehensive Crime of crimes’.17 For him the ‘true use of faith is not to do away with deeds, but with fear’; there is no opposition between deeds and faith, but between both of these and fear.18 RF MS 11, Ruskin Foundation (Ruskin Library, Lancaster), Folios 284–301. RF MS 11, Folio 287. RF MS 11, Folio 125.

16 17 18

90

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

An interest in his own personal reading history is a remarkable characteristic of Ruskin’s interpretation of the Bible, as is an ability to live with doubt and uncertainty. He talks about never having understood what something means and still not knowing, about how he looked at that passage yesterday and he is now lost again but at least knows where he got lost, about how true understanding is related to the ability to tolerate not knowing. In one of his ‘Sunday letters’ to the girls of Winnington School in 1859 he writes that they should be ‘quite clear in all your reading – & especially in Bible reading, whether you really understand or not. Few people have the good sense to be vitally and thoroughly puzzled. They read all in a mist; and never come to a positive stop’.19 Not only does Ruskin have a capacity to tolerate high levels of uncertainty, he also has a remarkable ability to live with complexities of emotional response. This can be observed by comparing two passages by Ruskin, written in the same year, 1867. In the first he brilliantly sums up in a public piece of writing the spectrum of contemporary Victorian attitudes to the Bible: Ruskin claims to quote the Bible because the British public takes it seriously; that is to say he uses it strategically in his writings. Of the four theories on the Bible he says are held by the British public – that it was dictated by God (inerrancy in our contemporary terms); that it can be trusted for all that is needed for human salvation (infallibility); that it is a true record of God’s dealings with the human race; and that it represents ‘the best efforts which we hitherto know’ and the ‘best wisdom’, but has no special authoritative claim beyond that of other religions – he appears to prefer the fourth, as he says: ‘This has been, for the last half-century, the theory of the soundest scholars and thinkers of Europe’ … He does add a fifth position – ‘incredulity … of any help given by any Divine power to the thoughts of men’ but dismisses people in this position as ‘insentient’.20

This is a piece of personally detached analysis. It is both moving and interesting in terms of the public/private dialectic to read something written by Ruskin in 1867 in a quite different register – this time not in a public but in a private letter to his cousin Joan Severn: V. A. Burd, The Winnington Letters of John Ruskin (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969), p. 194. 20 Z. Bennett, ‘Ruskin, the Bible, and the Death of Rose La Touch: a “torn manuscript of the human soul”’, in M. Lieb, E. Mason and J. Roberts (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Reception History of the Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 576–89 (578–9), quoting Works, 17.349–50. 19



John Ruskin and the Bible

91

I notice in one of your late letters some notion that I am coming to think the Bible ‘the word of God’ – because I use it – out of Rosie’s book – for daily teaching, … – But I never was farther from thinking – and never can be nearer to, thinking, any thing of the sort. Nothing could ever persuade me that God writes vulgar Greek … If there is any divine truth at all in the mixed collection of books which we call a Bible, that truth is, that the Word of God comes directly to different people in different ways; … [t]hat crofs (sic) in the sky … in the clouds … and the calm sky … by and through the words of any book … the Word of God may come to us: and because I love Rosie so, I think God does teach me, every morning, by her lips, through her book.21

Ruskin’s personal story in relation to the Bible includes not only the effect which the teachings, injunctions and daily practices of his mother must have had on him, hugely influential on the psyche of a boy growing up, an only child who was obsessively the centre of his parents’ attention; but also the history of his relationship with Rose La Touche, a young woman some 30 years younger than himself, with whom he fell in love while she was still not much older than twelve years, and who died when she was in her 20s, having never said ‘yes’ to Ruskin’s proposal of marriage. Rose’s parents were unhappy, among other things, with Ruskin’s religious doubts – her father was a convert of Charles Haddon Spurgeon – and Rose at times bombarded her lover with Bible verses and pleas to return to the orthodox fold. That he maintained a robust, affectionate, independent and respectful relationship with the Bible in the face of all this personal pressure and history is unusual and admirable. The second incidence of Ruskin’s private musings on the Bible comes from annotations which he made, in ink, on a mediaeval Greek Lectionary manuscript which he owned. In the words of his secretary, W. G. Collingwood, ‘[H]e got into the habit of thinking with his pen … all the blank spaces are scribbled over with the thoughts that came as he read’.22 Study of these annotations reveals personal responses which may act as a key to understanding his public use of the Bible. These may be summarized as follows, and include much which has already appeared in the diary notes:

R. Dickinson (ed.), John Ruskin’s Correspondence with Joan Severn: Sense and Nonsense Letters (London: Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney Publishing, 2009), pp. 88–9. W. G. Collingwood, Ruskin’s Relics (London: Isbister & Co., 1903), p. 198.

21

22

92 MM

MM

MM

MM

MM

MM

MM

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

a partiality for justice and servanthood as the heart of the gospel a preference for practical obedience as the form of faith a dislike of religious exclusivity and arrogance a suspicion of the obscure, otherworldly, eschatological and ‘mystic’ an interrogative approach an interest in his own personal reading history an ability to live with doubt and uncertainty.

The first four of these have to do with content, and centre around Ruskin’s vision of a just society under God, in which an inclusive approach to practical manifestations of faith in the here and now predominate. His vision, centred on deeds of faith, is spelled out in the following passage, again from Winnington letters: You have – in the beginning of the New Testament – and at the end of it: – two great teachings about the Kingdom, Both by Christ. … The first words are Matt. 5th.3 – the last, Rev.22nd 14–17, – giving (taken together:) – the full blessing – first the subduing of the heart to obedience – then the fulfillment of obedience – then the Reward of obedience … obedience by action. … When first however you begin to see how throughout the Bible Deeds are the test, and not words nor Creeds, – there comes a terrible feeling over some minds as if they could never do enough … . [But] … [a]s soon as people begin to work for Christ really – they find it just like working for their father in his garden. They never need to be afraid of not doing enough to please him – sometimes they may not do quite as much as they should – but all that He’ll say will be, ‘Well – my dear, I think you might have dug a little further this morning – but never mind – go & get your dinner – and I’ll do this bit for you’.23

The resemblance to Karl Barth’s conception of Christian ethics: ‘the quiet and gentle and intimate awakening of children in the Father’s house to life in that house’ is perhaps rather surprising. 24 What is deeply striking about the annotations on this text, and characteristic of Ruskin’s attitude to the Bible more widely, is his playful and yet critical attitude. It is as if the Bible has been an old familiar friend from childhood, which it indeed has; he is not averse to writing comments like ‘What utterly Burd, Winnington Letters, pp. 133–5. K. Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1, The Doctrine of Reconciliation (trans. G. W. Bromiley; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1956), p. 100.

23 24



John Ruskin and the Bible

93

useless passages all these’,25 yet he preserves a deep, even jealous, respect: ‘My good wiseacre readers, I know as many flaws in the book of Genesis as the best of you, but I knew the book before I knew its flaws, while you know the flaws, and never have known the book, nor can know it’.26 This playfulness is also demonstrated in Ruskin’s most characteristic hermeneutical move. Here is an example: the chief priests say of the money Judas returns that it is not lawful to put blood money into the treasury (Mt. 27.6) – ‘Our priests don’t even warn our Chancellor of the Exchequer of such unlawfulness’ notes Ruskin.27 What Ruskin is doing combines immediacy and an element of comparison. It is metaphorical and engages the imagination. The basic move is to set the biblical element directly overlaying the contemporary element, in a metaphorical move which invites us to see contemporary life differently and also to see the Bible differently. It is a hermeneutic of analogy. The same move can be seen visually in, for example, the work of Stanley Spencer. Take his ‘Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem’ (1921).28 Here Spencer superimposes the biblical story onto Cookham High Street, thus inviting through the imagination a fresh perspective on both. It is important to note that this is not proof-texting. Ruskin is not making a prescriptive point but is inviting the analogical imagination into play. He is absolutely clear he is not proof-texting: ‘It is not, therefore, because I am endeavouring to lay down a foundation of religious concrete, on which to build piers of policy, that you so often find me quoting Bible texts in defence of this or that principle or assertion’.29 He is drawing on what has formed him, knowing that it has some resonance with the public in different ways. It is an interesting issue how much this resonance would still be the case in public theology today.30 Nor is Ruskin working with the kind of typological move which was normal for evangelicals at the time, and which he himself used in his younger days both in childhood sermons and as an underlying theoretical concept in his

Egerton 3046, Evangelistarium, British Library, p. 43V. Works, 28.85, quoted in the course of a useful discussion of Ruskin’s early faith by Michael Wheeler: M. Wheeler, Ruskin’s God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 23. 27 Egerton 3046, p. 65R. 28 Available online at: http://en.wahooart.com/A55A04/w.nsf/Opra/BRUE-8LT7L8 (Accessed 22 April 2012.) 29 Works, 17.348. 30 See Andrew Bradstock’s chapter in this volume. 25 26

94

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

aesthetic theory.31 Such typological thinking was widespread, even in secular forms, but in his hermeneutic of analogy Ruskin is envisaging something much more fluid and which works on the moral imagination rather than opening up an independently existent historical or ontological link.32 Interestingly it is a way of bringing the Bible into dialogue with contemporary life which grows in Ruskin after 1858; and supersedes the more typological exegesis of his youth, of which there are still some hints in the diary entries of that year. It would seem that, as Ruskin moved out from a concern with aesthetics to include an interest in the human and the social, he increasingly developed the use of this hermeneutic of analogy – consistent with the typological, and also with the practical application to contemporary life characteristic of evangelical biblical faith, and perhaps growing out of it, but freer and more playful.

The reflective text: how Ruskin uses the Bible in his writing Good and true seeing was the starting point for this essay and is the centre of the interest which practical theology might have in John Ruskin. In the work of theology there are two core texts – the text of life and the text of the Bible. Ruskin read both. He saw much in both – with precision, with the heart, and with prophetic passion. He tells us, however, that the greatest thing a human soul ever does is not only to see something but to tell what it saw in a plain way. Theological reflection has a third text, the reflective text, be it written, spoken, scored, played, filmed or painted. There is much which can be learned from how Ruskin uses the Bible in his telling of what he sees. His style is preacherly – exhortatory. The short sermonic and epistolary style of Unto This Last and Fors Clavigera contrasts with the florid and sometimes grandiloquent prose of Modern Painters. Dinah Birch has identified this sermonic style as an inheritance of his evangelical background, long after the specific evangelical Christian content had changed.33 His use of the Bible For the connection of typology with Ruskin’s aesthetic theory see R. Hewison, John Ruskin: the Argument of the Eye (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976). 32 For an excellent exposition of the prevalence of typological thinking in the period see G. P. Landow, Victorian Types, Victorian Shadows (Boston, London and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980). 33 D. Birch, ‘John Ruskin’ in R. Lemon, E. Mason, J. Roberts and C. Rowland (eds), The Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 525–35. 31



John Ruskin and the Bible

95

is pervasive, and his choice is eclectic, though he uses the Gospels and the Psalms a great deal. His whole work is suffused with biblical ideas. Ruskin’s invocation of the Bible is at its best when it is allusive. While he does often quote directly, even more does he make passing reference and suggest. Two examples will illustrate the power of this allusive rhetoric. The first, written in 1871, is from Letter 12 of Fors Clavigera – letters to the ‘working men of Great Britain’ in which over a period of years he poured forth his views and his wisdom, and some very wild thoughts: … that is to say, Lord of all creatures, as much of the men of St Catherine’s Docks as of St Catherine herself, though they only live under Tower-Hill, and she lived close under Sinai… so you set to work to make yourself manifold claws, – farscratching; – and this smoke, which hides the sun and chokes the sky – this Egyptian darkness that may be felt – manufactured by you, singular modern children of Israel, that you may have no light in your dwellings, is none the fairer, because cast forth by the furnaces in which you forge your weapons of war.34

He has conflated the sparrows and robins of his garden image of God’s fatherly providence, the pulpit eagles representing St John, Giotto’s ‘Injustice’ with its long thumb nail which he set as the frontispiece to Letter 10, smoke and darkness of biblical apocalyptic, the garden of Eden, industrial pollution, the plagues and judgement of Eygpt, the rescue of the chosen people, the children of Israel and contemporary militarism. In the second example, below, from Unto This Last, Ruskin evokes all the passages in the scriptures about sheep and shepherds from Isaiah and Ezekiel to John 11 and 1 Peter, the Shekinah and the Holy of Holies, the feeding of the children of Israel in the desert, the gospel story of the Syrophoenician woman, Dives and Lazarus, and the myriad biblical injunctions to holiness, perfection and purity along with the eschatological promises that one day these will be ours. He weaves them into a rhetoric of exhortation which is at the same time a rhetoric of promise. Ye sheep without shepherd, it is not the pasture that has been shut from you, but the Presence. Meat! Perhaps your right to that may be pleadable; but other rights have to be pleaded first. Claim your crumbs from the table if you will; but claim Works, 27. 206–7.

34

96

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society them as children, not as dogs; claim your right to be fed, but claim more loudly your right to be holy, perfect, and pure!35

Informed by a clear vision of God’s dealings with humanity, the texts which Ruskin produces are designed to persuade; they are rhetorical and they are meant to move the hearers and readers to action. They are performative; but they are also performed. Ruskin was not a hearer or a speaker of the word only, but a doer also.

In practice: the Bible as an inspiration for the building of human community Wealth is life and God is light. Riches consist in love and joy, in justice, in seeing and helping the neighbour. Each flourish when all flourish. This is the vision of human community which John Ruskin tirelessly propounded in his public speeches and writings from 1860 onwards until crippling mental illness forced him into his long, final ten-year silence in the 1890s. The vision was derived from the Bible and expounded by constant reference to it; underpinned by a conception of God’s fatherly providence and good laws – the Psalms are a crucial resource for Ruskin – and by a firm conviction that faith must be fearless in good work.36 Ruskin’s conception of human community was inclusive; he had no interest in narrow ecclesial perspectives or the restriction of salvation to the few. This is the beginning of the Code of St George’s Guild, the society Ruskin founded in the 1870s to take forward his practical ideals and which is still in existence: I trust in the Living God, Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things and creatures visible and invisible. I trust in the kindness of His law, and the goodness of His work. And I will strive to love Him, and keep His law, and see His work, while I live.37

Works, 17.107. For Ruskin’s nourishment by the Psalms see A. Tate, ‘“Sweeter also than Honey”: John Ruskin and the Psalms’, The Yearbook of English Studies 39 (2009), pp. 114–25. 37 Works, 28.419. Further information about the contemporary work of the Guild may be found online at http://www.guildofstgeorge.co.uk/ (Accessed 22 April 2012.) 35 36



John Ruskin and the Bible

97

Ruskin was not a ‘practical’ man, but he cared that his ideas were applied and lived out, and much of great practical good has come later from those who have been inspired by him, by his commitments and his methods. The Guild was conceived as a utopian social mission whose plan, though never fully realized, was to put into practice Ruskin’s commitment to just economic and social relations. It was an institutional expression of faith in moral reform. It was both an attempt to ameliorate the worst effects of modern capitalism, and to return to a pre-capitalist model of society that Ruskin believed was free of exploitation, just as it was free of mechanized industry.38

It was, however, as much if not more through those who were inspired by Ruskinian ideals and ways, rather than directly through the Guild, that his influence has been strongest. Already mentioned has been his effect on Gandhi, on Martin Luther King, and on the foundation of the Labour Party and the Welfare State in the UK. To this we could add the Arts and Crafts Movement, The National Trust, the University Settlements, the Workers Educational Association and sundry contemporary twenty-first century experiments in artistic, educational and environmental work.

Coda – four texts I have proposed four ‘texts’ in my reading of Ruskin. These are four texts which I believe to be at the heart of the enterprise of practical theology, and also exemplified clearly and strongly in John Ruskin’s life and work. They are: MM

MM

MM

MM

the text of life – seeing the text of the Bible – seeing the reflective text – telling the performed text – into which the ongoing activity of others is invited.

Good seeing, attentive and precise, is at the basis of understanding and interpretation of both the contemporary situation and the biblical text. Good and plain telling is at the root of the capacity to produce a reflective text which Eagles, After Ruskin, p. 52.

38

98

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

does persuasive work in the public realm. All of this is worth nothing without performance. Performance is undertaken by the seer, and the forth-teller, but also performance has a life of its own, into which others are invited and may join, even long after the original text is written, for ‘[t]o see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, – all in one’.39

Works, 5.333.

39

6

Community, Imagination and the Bible Ben Quash1

When appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams emphasized his wish to see Christianity recapture ‘the imagination of our culture’. What part might the Bible play in this? What ways of reading and relating to the Bible might rejuvenate its place in our collective imagination, if there can still be such a shared possession? I am going to begin by looking at Luke Timothy Johnson’s highly suggestive notion of the Bible as a city which we are to inhabit (rather than simply visit or excavate). I will touch on some historical examples of how the Bible has lent itself to an imaginative ‘inhabitation’ very much in line with what Johnson describes: an abiding in the Bible that flourished in the seventeenth century (for example), but that often today seems somewhat attenuated. Finally, I want to ask whether one can envisage anything comparable to such imaginative dwelling in the Bible now. I believe there are interesting possibilities here, and to support this claim I will look at four modern examples of what might to various degrees be called ‘Bible habitation’, which will include (i) a drama, (ii) a painting, (iii) a liturgy, and (iv) a recent art work commissioned for a cathedral setting. I will suggest that – to varying degrees – these four examples demonstrate the Bible’s continuing adaptedness to the welcome of new ‘citizens’.

Parts of this essay were published in earlier form in Ben Quash, ‘Theology on the Road to Damascus’, Journal of Scriptural Reasoning 7.1 (2008), n. p., available online at http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ journals/ssr/issues/ (Accessed 29 October 2012.), and parts were delivered as the 2011 Warburton Lecture at Lincoln’s Inn, London. Some of the discussion of Henry Vaughan also appears in Ben Quash, Abiding: The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent Book 2013 (London: Bloomsbury, 2012).

1

100

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

The Bible City That the Bible is like a city was the engaging premise of an essay by the North American biblical scholar, Luke Timothy Johnson, and published in 1998.2 Johnson invites his readers to imagine the world of Scripture ‘as a living city that one might inhabit’: How do people who have grown up and continue to live in such a city know it? Their knowledge is instinctive, connatural, geared to the practices of the city and its own peculiar ways. They understand how things are done in the city even if they cannot explain such customs to outsiders. They know how to get to places in the city quickly and easily even when they do not know the names of streets. They move about the city largely by means of images and landmarks which inform their every move even if they never consciously advert to them: a storefront here, a park bench there, a billboard hanging overhead.

Now at one very obvious level, the Bible is like a city because it is big and complicated. That modern cities are big and complicated is the reason why it takes London taxi drivers a long time and a lot of sweat and tears to acquire ‘The Knowledge’.3 It is one of the reasons why outsiders cannot easily pick up a city’s customs. The Bible makes those demands on us too. Furthermore, like a city, the Bible has been built up in stages and at different historical periods. Areas have been added on, or removed or adapted. And it has many quite different quarters to it, to which you go for different reasons. You behave differently in these different areas, just as you would behave differently depending on whether you were in a private house, a museum or a night club. We can play for a while with Johnson’s city analogy, and suggest just some of the districts that the Bible has. First of all, and very noticeably, it has a legal district. There is a great body of material, concentrated largely in the Pentateuch, which deals with law, for the regulation of human society, the righting of wrongs, and the repair of suffering – all of those goals being related explicitly to the praise of God, who is glorified in lives well-lived Luke Timothy Johnson, ‘Imagining the World Scripture Imagines’, Modern Theology 14 (1998), pp. 165–80. 3 ‘The Knowledge’ is of key routes and landmarks within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross; a test on it, after two or three years of study, must be passed by all London taxi drivers before they can be licensed. Available online at http://www.tfl.gov.uk/businessandpartners/taxisandprivatehire/1412. aspx (Accessed 29 October 2012.) 2



Community, Imagination and the Bible

101

and communities well-ordered. Perhaps not entirely distinct from the legal district, and at times overlapping with it (in a way that recalls for me the way that King’s College London and the London School of Economics press on the fringes of the Inns of Court in London), are educational districts – university quarters – in which wisdom is articulated and transmitted. The books of the law are educative as well as regulatory. But elsewhere in the Bible we also find the books which Jewish traditions calls ‘writings’; they include philosophical explorations like that in Job and Ecclesiastes, and ethical teaching like that in Proverbs. Solomon’s civil servants were probably trained in these quarters of the Bible,4 and many like them have been since. Then there are the Bible city’s temples and cathedrals, synagogues and churches – which is to say, areas set aside for worship, song, petition and thanksgiving: the Book of Psalms above all, but the Song of Songs too. There are entertainment districts in the Bible city, where great epic stories are told and re-told, as the great stories of our culture are replayed for us in our cities on huge cinema screens, as well as on the stages of our theatres and opera houses. Genesis and Exodus, and the books of Kings and Chronicles, and perhaps to some extent the Gospels, all represent this kind of district. And we ought not to forget that, like any city, the Bible City has unsettling fringes where it is easy to feel uncomfortable or threatened. Voices that challenge the established institutions of the Bible City are heard in these rougher and wilder districts; they are the voices of prophets, and those who conjure up visions of apocalypse. At times, there have been attempts to make such districts ‘no-go’ areas for the faithful, as the Book of Revelation was for countless laypeople in the medieval Church – a dangerous district where you could be corrupted if you went there without being properly forearmed. This city has been inhabited by faithful people for centuries; its various districts attracting various levels of human traffic at different times of year and in different historical epochs. Parts of the Bible that at one time were heaving with people have at other times become depopulated – subject to a sort of urban decay. Others – and the Book of Revelation, just mentioned, is a good

See E.W. Heaton, Solomon’s New Men: The Emergence of Ancient Israel as a National State (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974).

4

102

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

example here too – are visited frequently in a sensationalist modern age when they were once the preserve of a few.5 The 400th anniversary of the translation of the King James Bible in 1611 afforded a valuable opportunity to remind ourselves of the extent to which it increased the population of the Bible City, and affected the nature and quality of people’s citizenship. The translation’s contribution to population growth was overwhelming, and intensely affected the self-consciousness of the citizenry. The Bible City became an easier place to enter, to set up home in, and to find your way around. Like a good transport system, the ‘Englishing’ of the Bible made it a simpler place to negotiate. (The vernacular of the KJB was, you might say, the TFL – ‘Transport for London’ – of the Bible City.6) Not long before the Tudor period, speaking religion in English was the peculiar and suspect practice of Lollards and their like. Not long afterwards, Catholic bishops and theologians as much as Puritan ones found themselves opening the door to a vernacular religion which would come to play a central role in English culture as a whole. The English language of the Bible would become the lynchpin of a national religious culture. In the King James Version, each district of the Bible City would go on to exert an unprecedented influence on its equivalent district in the actual cities where the English lived and worked. The principles of the Bible provide the foundation for a number of important legal principles and practices in English Law, and the language of the KJB provided the language whereby those principles and practices were put into effect post-1611. The old universities of this country, at least most of the more venerable ones, are religious foundations in which the Bible (and mainly the KJB) was and is read daily in the context of prayer, and it is against this backdrop that religiously-minded university scholars have interpreted their learning and tried to turn it into wisdom. The stories told in our palaces of entertainment are too profoundly indebted to the Bible to measure easily, and there is a great deal of truth in the frequent claim that the film industry in the I have recently been approached by an artist who would like a residency in our Department of Theology and Religious Studies in order that he can produce a new work, using digital media, on the theme of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Tate Britain has just concluded a major exhibition entitled Apocalypse, focusing on the work of the artist John Martin (1789–1854). The Chapman brothers – Jake and Dinos – show a fascination in their art with the Book of Revelation. These are just a few examples of many that indicate the appeal of this area of the Bible City today. 6 Transport for London is the agency which provides information on how to access and get around Greater London by public transport, from bicycles and buses to tubes and rivertaxis. 5



Community, Imagination and the Bible

103

English-speaking world over and over again reproduces the great narrative patterns, motifs and phrases of the scriptures. Theatre did this before them. Even horror films still turn naturally to the KJB when in search of a particularly resonant or portentous phrase. And perhaps the high point of London’s particular musical history is Handel’s virtuosic harnessing of a very urban and overwhelmingly popular type of music – the grandeur of the ‘English sublime’ style – to texts from the KJB. In this way the KJB has topped the city’s bill of entertainment, just as the vehicle of Anglican chant has translated the ‘cathedral district’ of the Bible City into the cathedrals of our actual cities day in and day out, for generations. And if we have neglected the idea of commercial quarters when talking about cities, we should not forget the fact that a Bible in English gave ordinary people a new sort of currency to trade with, pass from hand to hand, carry in their pockets, or turn to some sort of profit. KJB language is still a medium of exchange in our dealings with one another. Some of you will know the famous story of the translators of the New English Bible visiting Smithfield Market in London to search out the modern equivalent of ‘fatted calf ’. They were told that it was (wait for it) ‘fatted calf’, exactly because that was the Bible’s term for the meat in question.7 These are all examples of how the Bible – helped by its translation into English – has shaped the social and sometimes even the physical urban environment. There are more instances that I am sure you will be able to add to this brief list. It is no doubt important not to overstate the way that the Bible has ‘made cities what they are’, but I think one can defend the claim that to understand the deep structures of an historic European city (and certainly a city like the one that, for reasons of familiarity, I have chosen as my main example: London) a knowledge of the Bible is indispensable. But what about the countryside? Johnson’s analogy with a city works well but need not limit itself to built environments alone; it offers a very productive way of thinking about other modes of Bible occupancy arising in other environments. An English tradition fed by the King James Version has bequeathed to us some extraordinary experiments in the creation of a Bible Cf. Stephen Prickett, ‘Language Within Language: The King James Steamroller’ in Hannibal Hamlin and Norman W. Jones (eds), The King James Bible after 400 Years: Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Influences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 27–44 (38).

7

104

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

landscape out of a natural landscape, experiments which more than match the power of the ‘urban imaginary’ I have just now been conjuring up, and which are also vivid examples of inhabiting Scripture – finding one’s place in it rather than simply making a bit of room for it somewhere in a pre-established environment. The writings of my favourite poet, Henry Vaughan, were a discovery I made when growing up as a teenager in the rural seclusion of the Wye Valley. Now, of course, I am able to appreciate just what a beautiful a place to live the Wye Valley was. Back then, until I read Vaughan, I was callowly unappreciative of it. It felt like the middle of nowhere – far from the centre of anything you might call ‘the action’. Vaughan’s poems, written out of an acute sense of exile, were composed in the time of Cromwell’s Protectorate, in a valley only a little deeper into Wales than mine – the Usk. He described wandering in landscapes that I recognized as my own, with a listlessness I could relate to. His church – the episcopally-led Church of England which would be re-established at the time of the Restoration – had had its forms of worship suppressed. And so, denied his liturgies and his sacraments, Vaughan was forced to look for grace elsewhere, in a very English (or in this case, Anglo-Welsh) combination of (i) Scripture, which was still available to him, and (ii) observation of the natural world. The Bible – in the King James Version – often tops or tails his poems. These verses from the Book of Acts conclude his characteristically longing poem The Search: Acts xvii 27–8 That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far off from every one of us, for in him we live, and move, and have our being.

The poem describes a journey through a series of biblical locations, which correspond to episodes in Christ’s life, but – as the episodes themselves do – pick up Old Testament resonances too (Jacob’s well is a singularly important stopping off point, even though it sounds less like a well and more like a Welsh water-source: ‘the angry spring in bubbles swelled’, says Vaughan8). Henry Vaughan, ‘The Search’ in The Complete Poems (ed. Alan Rudrum; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983), pp. 157—9.

8



Community, Imagination and the Bible

105

The journey begins in Bethlehem, moving through Egypt, Jerusalem, Sychar, and back to Jerusalem again, to the hill of Calvary. But the poem is only half over. Where is there to go now? Perhaps rather surprisingly, Vaughan’s inner promptings take him off to the wilderness, where while still alive Christ both faced temptation and found retreat. Here the ascended Christ still feels near to Vaughan. And this, Vaughan surmises, is the place the true Church (his church, not Cromwell’s) now finds her destiny lying. As with his evocation of Jacob’s well, it is hard not to hear his descriptions of this desert space as descriptions of the Welsh valleys: What silent paths, what shades, and cells, Fair, virgin-flowers, and hallowed wells…

But, of course, that is precisely the aim of these extraordinary flights of biblical and poetic imagination; they are to make sense of his environment – however unpromising it may seem; however far from grace – as a place of revelation and divine touch. Vaughan’s neoplatonic leanings often – unfortunately – lead him to assert the transitoriness of the material creation, and look for a better vision beyond the world’s ‘shell’,9 but he cannot get away from the fact of the incarnation. Jesus Christ sat on the ground, drank from springs and wandered the earth’s paths, as Vaughan does now. In a powerfully beautiful phrase, used of the peregrinations of the seraphim with whom Jesus shared the wilderness, Vaughan says that Jesus ‘heavened their walks’.10 The desert is sanctified, and the ‘wild shades’ are made a paradise. The aptness of the verses from Acts is apparent – ‘he be not far off from every one of us, for in him we live, and move, and have our being’ (Acts 17.27–8). That was what awoke in me, as a teenager, a sense that what might initially seem lonely places, out of the way, neglected, forgotten, are places where miracles might happen. Vaughan could let the world that the Bible described and imagined infuse the way he viewed and experienced his own rural landscape, so that whenever he looked at a grove of trees or a river he saw angels talking with patriarchs (Abraham discoursing and eating, Jacob wrestling, and Elijah being fed). To use his own language, he let the Bible ‘heaven’ his landscape, and this relatively

Ibid. Ibid.

9

10

106

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

unforced imposition of a scriptural template upon the landscape he lived in, to create a scriptural-natural palimpsest, is an extraordinary achievement. Vaughan gives us a magnificent example of how literature in particular has been an exercise in habitation of the Bible. It is a literary tradition of Bible habitation that will find an even more sustained flowering in the work of two of Vaughan’s successors in the world of English letters: John Milton and John Bunyan. Both write after the Restoration – and it ought to be a point of remark that they are deeply loyal to the KJB even though the nonconformity of both did not make them natural sympathizers with the King and the Church that had sponsored that Bible.11 The sort of knowledge that both Milton and Bunyan display, in the tradition of Vaughan, is the sort of knowledge Luke Timothy Johnson attributes only to the true citizen of the Bible City: it is ‘deep, intimate, non-systematic, comprehensive, practical’. They are the opposite of Johnson’s ‘outsider’, who can spend decades trying to memorize and master the intricacies of accent, nomenclature, body language and so on that are the mark of native inhabitants, and still not get them quite right. Theirs is a knowledge taken in (like the later John Ruskin’s) with their mother’s milk. In Milton’s and Bunyan’s relation to the Bible ‘the past is not memorialized but incorporated’. For them, the Bible is neither just Johnson’s city, nor Vaughan’s rural landscape, it is both: an entire native land. The blind narrator of Book Three of Paradise Lost cannot see his actual, physical landscape, but this does not prevent an intensely experienced, wholly embracing absorption into an immaterial landscape – in fact, a world of words construed precisely as a city and its environs. It is Jerusalem, or ‘Sion’: Yet not the more Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt Clear Spring, or shady Grove, or Sunny Hill, Smit with the love of sacred Song; but chief Thee Sion and the flow’ry Brooks beneath It is not that they lacked other options. We know that Bunyan knew the Geneva Bible – an earlier English translation – as well as metrical psalms translated by Sternhold, Hopkins and others. We also know that Milton knew the Bible in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and other languages. But it is the words of the KJB that we most often hear sounding through their works; a clear sign that, as a recent book puts it, ‘even for non-conformists, radicals, and dissenters, the KJB had become the English Bible’ (Hannibal Hamlin and Norman W. Jones, ‘Introduction: The King James Bible and its Reception History’, in Hamlin and Jones [eds], The King James Bible after 400 Years, pp. 1–24 [12]).

11



Community, Imagination and the Bible

107

That wash thy hallow’d feet, and warbling flow, Nightly I visit.12

‘These sacred places visited by the blind bard’ – and above all, this fair, oracular, generative city – are, as Jason Rosenblatt points out, ‘the books of the Bible, almost certainly in the KJB, a source not of anxiety but of comfort’.13 In a fashion not unlike that of Paradise Lost – indeed, even more comprehensively perhaps – Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress ‘seems like a journey through Scripture itself ’.14 Bunyan’s relationship with the Bible is a turbulent one, in which he can be hurled into despair, or can find different biblical passages fighting with one another in his mind like Jacob and Esau. But at happy times, as Bunyan writes, Scriptures are ‘made to spangle in mine eyes’; and, he goes on, ‘I have sometimes seen more in a line of the Bible than I could well tell how to stand under…’15 What is phenomenal is the way that the prose of Pilgrim’s Progress weaves phrases from and references to the KJB with consummate skill into an apparently seamless garment, and the way that in the experience of Christian, which could not be so powerfully rendered if it were not also in key features the experience of Bunyan himself, we do not simply see the Bible making piecemeal contributions to a fictional creation; we see a fictional creation unfolding within a Bible world. ‘Christian may have the Bible in his hand, but it is allegorically all around him too’.16 But the big question all these historical examples raise – and which I want to address in the second half of this essay – is whether the Bible is still capable of speaking like that to us today.17 In the city or landscape which is the Bible – with all its many districts, old and new – can there still be residential areas where we are at home? My hope is that we can still live in it. But the fact is that we may not have done all we can to maintain its habitability, and (Smithfield notwithstanding) the bits of it we continue to hurl around in our day-to-day

John Milton, Paradise Lost, 3.26–32, in Milton: Poetical Works (Douglas Bush (ed.); Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966). [Emphasis added]. 13 Jason P. Rosenblatt, ‘Milton, Anxiety, and the King James Bible’, in Hamlin and Jones (eds), The King James Bible after 400 Years, pp. 181–201 (198). 14 Hannibal Hamlin, ‘Bunyan’s Biblical Progresses’, in Hamlin and Jones (eds), The King James Bible after 400 Years, pp. 202–18 (203). 15 Cited in ibid., p. 206. 16 Ibid., p. 207. 17 David Fergusson raises it very helpfully in his essay in this volume. 12

108

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

speech may be broken fragments of what is little more than an ‘asset-stripped’ Bible. Johnson helps highlight the problem here. It is one shared by many modern biblical scholars, by many modern Christians, and by all of the unchurched, and it is that they relate to the Bible as though it were simply ‘another place’. The unchurched may be forgiven this. But the stance when adopted by a Christian reader is implicitly that his or her right relation to the Bible is that of an archaeologist or else of a tourist. It is a claim that this is not a living city to be inhabited, but either a dead one to be unearthed, or mined, or else a foreign one to be dropped in and out of. But the way in which dead cities can be known is fundamentally different from the way that living ones are known – just as (so we have just argued) the way in which foreign cities are known even by regular visitors to them is always going to contrast with the way in which one’s native city is known. Johnson writes: Through archaeological exhumation […] some pieces and some sense of those cities can be recovered. In fact, the archaeologist can know the city in ways that none of its original inhabitants ever did. The archaeologist can dig through the various strata of ruins, exposing to light and synchronic examination the changes in culture that none of its former inhabitants noticed. The archaeologist can date with some precision the stages of the city’s former life, can mark the streets and houses with great precision, can uncover the systems of aqueducts and sewers, can compare this city at its various stages to other places similarly covered over and then uncovered. The archaeologist might even imagine what the people were like who created this city.18

But the one thing the archaeologist cannot do, as Johnson points out, is imagine what it was really like to be an inhabitant of that city – or be an inhabitant herself. So – to reiterate – the question we face is whether it is any longer possible to do what earlier users of the Bible once did – who knew instinctively how to find their way around the Bible City, and in their theological imaginations to ‘roam freely through the Sacred Writ’.19 My conviction is that interpretations of Scripture through drama, music, literature, and so on, may be capable of re-educating the modern reader of the Bible to read more richly – more Johnson, ‘Imagining the World Scripture Imagines’, p. 168. Johnson, ‘Imagining the World Scripture Imagines’, p. 174.

18 19



Community, Imagination and the Bible

109

traditionally but simultaneously more creatively – than they would otherwise do. And that is what I want to explore now, looking in turn at four contemporary examples of engagement with the Bible which to varying degrees might be said to represent an inhabitation of it. We begin dramatically.

A drama In 2010, the actor Michael Sheen returned to his home town of Port Talbot in Wales to play a character who, although not explicitly identified as Christ, was clearly Christ-like, while at the same time co-directing the marathon threeday-long street theatre event in which he appeared. It was an innovation on a venerable European tradition – the Passion play – acted out in locations all over the town, with a core of around 15 professional actors and 1,000 local people involved. Now a major Hollywood star, with film performances of Tony Blair and David Frost under his belt, Sheen chose to tell this dramatic story in and for a town whose economic hardships and need of regeneration was very marked. How was this an exercise in Bible-habitation? One might say that the town was almost a character in the drama. Or, to put it another way, the drama played host to the town at least as much as the town played host to the drama. The Bible (and the traditions of community drama it has spawned) gave Sheen the resources for a piece of theatre that would ‘enfold’ Port Talbot in a remarkable way. The Port Talbot Passion began ‘unofficially’ at 5.30 a.m. on Good Friday, at the seafront, with a scene that evoked the baptism of Jesus by John at the Jordan. Word of mouth had been one of the main ways in which the production was publicized, and hundreds of people turned up to watch. By 3 p.m., which was the first formally-advertized stage of the production, organizers estimated something like 6,000 people were present. News of the unfolding drama was spreading. On Saturday Sheen ate a ‘last supper’ in the local social club – eating sandwiches and drinking beer. There was a performance by the rock band the Manic Street Preachers (who were ‘arrested’ on stage). The setting for Sunday’s crucifixion scene was a roundabout. The

110

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

impact the production had on the town of Port Talbot is not easy to measure, but one local resident (a student at my university) described to me the almost reverential attitude which still persists in the town towards that previously anonymous, marginal piece of urban geography. The Victorian poet Francis Thompson (1859–1907) might have understood. Thompson is a nineteenth-century exemplar of something like the seventeenth-century sensibility that we have already seen and explored in Henry Vaughan. The big difference is that Thompson found his walks ‘heavened’ not in a rural wilderness but in an urban waste – in this sense, he returns us (with Michael Sheen’s Passion) to the city landscape with which this essay began. A Roman Catholic who had at one stage seemed destined for the priesthood, Thompson found himself – drug-addicted and destitute – on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields in London. He was given succour there, and experienced this as his own version of Jacob’s vision of the ladder set up between heaven and earth in Gen. 28: But (when so sad thou canst not sadder) Cry – and upon thy so sore loss Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross. Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter, Cry – clinging to Heaven by the hems; And lo, Christ walking on the water, Not of Genesareth, but Thames!20

(There is now a pub at this spot whose name is ‘Halfway to Heaven’.) So Charing Cross in London, for Thompson and his readers, becomes Bethel. It too, like Port Talbot, becomes ‘enfolded’ in the biblical drama – a drama made present by an exercise of the human imagination. The dirty heart of a huge metropolis can have this in common with the tawdry roundabout in a deprived South Wales town; both can be ‘heavened’ by a sitespecific re-narration of the biblical story. Thompson’s poem points us back to Vaughan’s equivalent exercise 200 years previously, but forward too to Sheen’s Francis Thompson, ‘In No Strange Land’ (or ‘The Kingdom of God’), ll.17–24, in The Poems of Francis Thompson: A New Edition (ed. Brigid M. Boardman; Chestnut Hill: John J. Burns Library, Boston College, 2001), pp. 298–9 (299).

20



Community, Imagination and the Bible

111

extraordinary achievement in the present. And in common with older Passion play traditions, the Port Talbot Passion had the added dimension that its exercise of the human imagination was not first of all an individual one (like that of the poets) but collective. The audiences to the Port Talbot drama were not only those who were physically present; other audiences were caught up in it too. As well as the old-fashioned media of gossip and rumour (both playing a crucial part), it was relayed to online audiences both within and beyond the town by cameraphone, tweets and YouTube. Many witnessed it through a combination of live performance and virtual relay: it was possible for these ‘platforms’ to come together, and to create a richly-layered and encompassing experience in which the boundary between the performance and the real life of the town became blurred, or (at least temporarily) forgotten. While not having any proselytizing or homiletical agenda, and sponsored in no way by the Church, the play nevertheless found a way to make the biblical story connect with a hyper-connected twenty-first century audience, including those who would be unlikely to go anywhere near a theatre let alone an ecclesiastical building. In it, the Bible found a new and highly contemporary way to map itself onto a local landscape, in a way that had deep continuities with the painting, drama and literature of earlier centuries.

A painting We turn now to a painting: a modern work of art which has the capacity to stimulate an almost patristic-style reading of scripture. It permits a rich engagement with a scriptural narrative which opens up associative meanings and inter-textual possibilities that an interpreter like Origen or Tertullian or Bernard of Clairvaux would instantly recognize, but that do not as naturally emerge for many modern readers. The picture is the late Norman Adams’s Vision on the Road to Damascus, a huge canvas (more than six feet high) which is now part of a private collection. The uniting theme of the scriptural texts which the painting seems to draw around itself (and thus inhabit) is the ‘cursed earth’, the earth determined by the effects of the Fall, as when God says to Adam in Genesis Chapter 3: ‘cursed

112

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you’ (Gen. 3.17b-18a). (In Jesus’ hands, in his parable of the sower [Lk. 8.4–15 and parr.], this hard earth will also become a metaphor for the human heart.) Our eye is I think drawn first to the darkness of Paul’s head – turned on its side. Long fingers shield it as its cavernous eyes stare blindly out at us, and here I think the painting invites us to make our first inter-textual move – from Paul’s experience as testified to three times in the Book of Acts (Acts 9.3–9; 22.6–21; 26.12–18), to Paul’s words in the letter to the Romans: We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. (Rom. 8.22–3)

Norman Adams invites us to see Paul’s head, painted in blacks and browns, as a huge, groaning earth in travail. Part of what this painting is doing is showing us the cry of this earth, this world of ours, by making it look out at us through Paul’s face. Norman Adams has discerned, I believe, that when Paul talks of the earth as being in darkness and awaiting ‘somehow a liberation into light’,21 into a new awareness and a new fruitfulness, this description of the earth is also an autobiographical description. It is both cosmic and personal. The earth after the Fall – the earth that groans in travail – confronts us in this painting with and in Paul. With those strangely root-like fingers Paul/the earth covers the surface of his/its head, as if to repel all attempts to reach beyond that carapace – as if to ‘harden the ground’ and remain untouched. The darkness may draw our attention first, but the light is hard at work in this picture. After the earthy head has arrested us, our eyes turn to the gold in the upper half of the canvas, and we begin to see a radiant heavenly face emerging, with blue flowers for eyes, weeping with compassion, and sending penetrating rays of light which are just beginning to find a way through the tight outer fingers of the agonised head below. This second face is of course Christ’s. We noted in passing the fact that Jesus draws a parallel between the state of the earth and the state of the human heart in his parable of the sower; however, I am indebted to the late Bishop Peter Walker of Ely for this phrase, as for so much of the discussion of the painting which follows.

21



Community, Imagination and the Bible

113

the story of the Fall could itself be said to draw this parallel. The hardening of the earth is self-evident: what had been a garden bursting with fruit, abundant in every way, is replaced by dust. This new reality of Adam’s is, however, one in which the human heart becomes progressively more incapable of good as well. Having seen Adam and Eve descend progressively from jealousy at the prohibition of the fruit, to greed for that fruit, to theft of it, to lying and concealment about it, we need only read a little further in Genesis to see that the disastrous chain of sin is still not broken – for in the story of Cain and Abel there follow envy, anger and murder, as the heart becomes ever harder and dustier and more ungenerous, so that by the time of Noah, as we hear, ‘the LORD saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually’ (Gen. 6.5). Yet this is not the last word. On Christ’s head, in the painting, there is a crown not of thorns but of brightly coloured leaf forms. Why? An answer has been suggested by Peter Walker (attributing it in his turn to Sister Wendy Beckett). ‘Over the aeons, some plants have evolved their leaves into weapons, into the aggression of thorns. Wearing them in love, Christ draws them back to their first innocence. In accepting cruelty and death, he redeems them into life, into gentleness’.22 If the painting has already made inter-textual links between the Acts of the Apostles, Romans 8, and the account of the Fall in Genesis 3, it also points us simultaneously forward and back from that Fall: back to the first creation narrated in Genesis 1 and 2, and forward towards the new creation which reverses the effects of the hardening and cursing of the earth. The painting takes us back to the first creation narrated in Genesis. The ‘elemental’ quality of the painting, with its nearly-abstract use of circles, lozenges and straight lines, is a correlate of the fundamental elements of creation that it depicts: not only earth, but light and water. Just as the leaf forms on Christ’s head are thorns won back to their primal innocence, so the light and water of the painting represent a recovery of the fertility of Eden, whose primal moments of life are so vivid: light called forth, life-giving waters released, the earth

Peter Walker, unpublished sermon preached in Fitzwilliam College Chapel, Cambridge.

22

114

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

become a garden, and man formed from the dust of the earth and life breathed into his nostrils to make him a living soul. But this recalling of the building blocks of the first and good creation happens precisely as we are pointed towards the new creation in Christ. In showing us that glowing face which gathers the picture from above, Norman Adams shows us the compassionate identification of Christ with his suffering people; it meditates on the redemption of that earth and its inhabitants who share its hardened condition. In a Christian perspective, it is into just this hardened world that Christ comes, who (as the figural readers of early Christian tradition interpreted the parable of the sower) is both the sower and the seed – just as he is both priest and victim; both giver of the sacrament and yet present in the sacrament itself. The Fathers call him the seed sown in believers’ hearts (logos spermatikos), who comes forth from God that He may be the principle of righteousness in man.23 Jesus Christ the sower continues to cast his seed (the seed which is his own self), undeterred by the resistances of the hardened earth; and keeps scattering until he finally finds good soil, where he will be received and where he can be fruitful. In seeking good ground, the seed effects a new fruitfulness. In this respect, the seed is rather like the rays of light and the runnels of water in Adams’s painting, which keep up their attempt to penetrate the tightly closed fingers. While some of these rays are halted at the surface, others find their way to deeper layers – and eventually, as we know if we know Paul’s story, they will reach the dark spaces within, where Paul – modelling the fallen earth itself – will be illuminated and renewed, and will begin to bear the fruit of Christ in himself. Christ’s work is to break up the surface of this earth, and find its places of fertility again. To conclude this experiment in which a modern painting has been shown to function in a way that has remarkable similarities with the figural readings of the Bible-inhabiting pre-modern Church, we can suggest what would for the Christian reader be a ‘tropological’ (or moral) sense of these texts. These

See, for example, Justin Martyr: ‘For we worship and love, after God the Father, the Word who is from the Unbegotten and Ineffable God, since He even became Man for us, so that by sharing in our sufferings He also might heal us. Indeed, all writers, by means of the engrafted seed of the Word which was implanted in them, had a dim glimpse of the truth’. Justin Martyr, The Second Apology, in The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, Volume 6, Writings of Saint Justin Martyr (trans. Thomas B. Falls; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1948), pp. 113–35 (134). Other classic examples exist in the works of Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria.

23



Community, Imagination and the Bible

115

Scriptures can be read as exhorting Christian believers to be ready, like Paul, to have their hardened surfaces broken open, so that they in turn can become fruitful with Christ’s seed, warmed and watered by him. In the words of Luke’s Gospel: ‘But as for that in the good soil, these are the ones who, when they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance’. (Lk. 8.15)

A liturgy This was an event in Fitzwilliam College Chapel that took its initial inspiration from two things: the architecture of the building, and a prayer from the Prayer Book baptismal service, which uses a particular kind of imagery which the modernized service does not have – the imagery of Noah’s ark: Almighty and everlasting God, who of thy great mercy didst save Noah and his family in the ark from perishing by water; and also didst safely lead the children of Israel thy people through the Red Sea, figuring thereby thy holy Baptism; and by the Baptism of thy well-beloved Son Jesus Christ, in the river Jordan, didst sanctify Water to the mystical washing away of sin; We beseech thee, for thine infinite mercies, that thou wilt mercifully look upon this Child; wash her and sanctify her with the holy Ghost; that she, being delivered from thy wrath, may be received into the ark of Christ’s Church; and being stedfast in faith, joyful through hope, and rooted in charity, may so pass the waves of this troublesome world, that finally she may come to the land of everlasting life, there to reign with thee world without end; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.24

The Chapel was designed by the architect Sir Richard MacCormac to look like a ship: the ship of faith, of which Noah’s ark is a foreshadowing.25 It is ‘suspended’ at first floor level, with a ship’s rail running around the central space, and staircases leading up into it on each side from the ground floor entrance. The crypt-like space under the ‘ship’ (which has a convex ceiling suggesting a keel) could also be used for worship. So during the service we moved from one place to another – giving actual physical expression to ‘The Ministration of Publick Baptism of Infants’ in The Book of Common Prayer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 170–3 (170). An image of the chapel can be seen in Plate 3.

24

25

116

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

the language of movement with which the liturgy of baptism is filled. This theologically (and scripturally) intelligent architectural design permitted the congregation to enact an entry into the Church: out from the waters of baptism and into Christ’s ark; out from danger and chaos and into the vessel which in God’s dispensation is to carry the world’s hope forward – the vessel which contains the new humanity, the new creation. If the architecture enabled an inhabiting of scripture then the liturgy did so even more – and the two together made a powerful combination. In the crypt (under the water, so to speak), we recalled what it was to be threatened by the waters of chaos, and the significance of the hope that we might be brought through them. We recalled not only the Flood (Genesis 7–8), but also the disciples’ experience of the storm on the Sea of Galilee (Jn 6.16–21 and parr.), and what it might have meant to be in Jesus’s company at that event. The baptism itself took place in this crypt area. When we came to move from downstairs to upstairs, we introduced words from Psalm 24 – words that might not have been inappropriate on the lips of those first disciples when they learnt that to be at sea with Jesus was to have a unique hope and a destination beyond the power of chaos and death; beyond their worst fears. We imagined them proclaiming, and joined with them in declaring, ‘The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it; for he has founded it on the seas, and established it on the rivers’ (Ps. 24.1–2). The Psalm then exerted its own agency in this liturgical context: it posed a question as we mounted the stairs to the main body of the Chapel: ‘Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place?’ (Ps. 24.3). It seemed a good question. Who is equipped with the means to guarantee any entitlement to a place aboard this ship? ‘Those who have clean hands and pure hearts’, says the Psalm. But who is that? Who can make his or her feet firm – firm against the chaos not only of life but of the human heart, with all its distractions and mixed motives? We remembered how Peter’s first sense after the stilling of the storm was of his own extraordinary unworthiness. He found his life secured for him, but knew he could not possibly have earned this new standing with his Lord in the face of the world’s threats. This highlighted the fact that it is wholly by God’s grace that the baptized can ascend the hill of the Lord and stand firm in his holy place, because by that same grace they are incorporated into Christ. Christ alone can stand, but God the Father looks on



Community, Imagination and the Bible

117

the baptized, incorporated in Christ, and says what he says of the Son whose hands were clean and whose heart was pure – ‘you are my beloved child’. And this means that where Christ goes, we go; and where Christ enters in, we enter in. In the Psalm, the great gates of the holy city are then addressed. And they are called to let in a new arrival – the King of glory, who has been victorious. The King of glory, for Christians down the ages, is read and celebrated as Christ. He is the only one who is entitled to call for the doors to be flung open, and entitled to make his way in. But the incorporation of Christians into Christ – their sharing with him in name, and in all the benefits of his death and resurrection – means that when the gates are thrown open, and the King of glory comes in, they come in too. We entered, and the Eucharist was celebrated in the main Chapel. That liturgical event, saturated with scripture, but also shaped by scripture, enabled its participants to ‘inhabit’ a very scriptural triumphal entry: an entry into the holy place, made firm against the chaos; an entry made possible by the free and gracious work of God. Of course, this was an unusually resource-rich environment for such an exercise in Bible-habitation: the unique architecture of the Chapel and the time it was possible to spend in preparing the liturgy do not make this an event that could straightforwardly be imitated in all settings. Nor do I intend to advocate experimental liturgies as better modes of encouraging Bible-habitation than traditional ones. Rather, I use this example to present in a vivid way what is in fact already true of all good liturgies: that they model a very remarkable way of being ‘in the midst’ of delicately related and interacting scriptural texts – often from very different parts of the Bible – which operate together to make a ‘world’ of meaning. The Fitzwilliam College example may help to heighten an awareness of what is true of liturgy more generally. It offers a profoundly different mode of relating to the Bible from the ways we see exemplified in Johnson’s tourist and archaeologist, whereby little scriptural units are visited or unearthed and examined in a distanced way. In seeking how modern people can better inhabit the Bible, it would be a mistake to overlook what is under our noses: one of the time-honoured ways in which that construction of a scriptural dwelling place happens daily in Church life.

118

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

A work of modern art I finish with Tracey Emin’s work For You, which won the Art and Christianity Enquiry’s prize for the best new piece of permanent ecclesiastical art in 2009. It is installed above the West Door of the Anglican cathedral in Liverpool. The words ‘I Felt You and I Knew You Loved me’ are written in Emin’s own handwriting; they are spelt out in bright pink neon tubes.26 This pinkness is not subtle. It has been remarked that it brings with it a slightly wild sense – a sense of youth and flamboyance; a sense of the fairground. Its aesthetic language is at one level that of advertising, the entertainment industry, and the city – perhaps even those particularly liminal urban spaces represented by the trailer park or the red-light district. Catherine Pickstock describes it as an ‘appearance of market modernity within sacred space’.27 In the setting of a traditional cathedral building its aesthetic – summed up in the pink colouring – risks a jarring tackiness, but its readiness to sail so close to the wind in this respect is the secret of its success. A different culture is introduced into the cathedral which is disruptive but not violent; sensitive to its context even while being disconcerting. This successin-context can be accounted for both by artistic and by liturgical continuities. Artistically, the pink of For You seems connected to the stained glass above it, as though the pink of the neon has its source in the window. The conventional components of light and coloured glass – a time-honoured tradition of church decoration – are not contradicted but made new in neon. It is ‘as if the fragments of rose glass haven’t quite been able to contain themselves’, spilling into the intimate handwriting below. And liturgically, pink is used in penitential seasons, to denote a less solemn Sunday that permits rejoicing at salvation already won. The ‘shock’ of the piece can perhaps be compared with the playfulness that is licensed by Christianity even in the midst of a confrontation with our sin in Lent and Advent. It does not have to be an unpleasant shock; there is shock but also exhilaration in a sudden gust of fresh air. Of course, there is no respect in which the piece is overtly Christian – the word ‘You’ is capitalized in a way that recalls traditional ways of honouring I am grateful to my student Lauretta Wilson for conversations about this work. Catherine Pickstock, ‘Tracey Emin, For You’, Art and Christianity 56 (2008), p. 13.

26 27



Community, Imagination and the Bible

119

the divine dignity when addressing God, but then so is every other word (except – interestingly – the personal pronoun ‘me’). So the piece adds an additional layer of ambiguity – one of content – to the ambiguities generated by its choice of materials. Who is being spoken to? The words are imaginable in a Valentine’s Day card. They could easily be the speech of romantic or erotic love. In the spirit of figural readings of the Song of Songs, and a longstanding tradition of interpretation of Mary Magdalene’s attachment to Jesus, might what we witness in these words, therefore, be the transformation of the language of erotic love to serve the expression of devotion to the divine? This suggestion is not imposed by the artwork, and by the same token could never be its fixed or final ‘meaning’. But the possibility is raised. And as the language of human love can offer a point of entry to articulation and expression of the love of God, so the installation of a work by an artist as well-known as Emin – who does not claim any moral or religious high-ground, and whose art often speaks from out of an intense vulnerability – might well act as its own sort of ‘entry point’ to a contemplation of God by those who would not normally cross the threshold of a place of worship. Its voice speaks the language of ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ simultaneously. The handwriting reinforces the sense that this is a real response from an actual human being, while the words chosen are not hackneyed, stilted, or off-puttingly pious; they convey a heartfelt response to something (apparently) powerfully moving, and this is moving in its turn. The work, you might say, introduces strange possibilities familiarly. It is not just over a doorway, it is one, opening onto ‘a space dedicated to the revelation of love’.28 Does it have anything to do with the Bible? The evidence here is a good deal more tenuous in any of the three earlier examples I offered. Maybe Emin was consciously echoing a range of biblical resonances; maybe unconsciously. Or maybe the Bible could be said to be having something to do with her artwork, even if her artwork wasn’t explicitly having anything to do with the Bible. Her writing on the wall seems to me to draw a set of biblical experiences around itself and to feel them acutely. The woman who anointed Jesus’s feet (or head) in the Gospels is one of them (Jn 12.1–8 and parr.); the woman with an issue of blood who touched Jesus’s garment is another (Lk. 8.43–8); so are all those Ibid.

28

120

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

people (men and women) whom Jesus laid hands on (there is a nice ambiguity in the fact that the verb ‘to feel’ can relate both to an act of touching and also to the experience of being touched). The lower-case ‘me’ may be a signal of the humility of the Gospel petitioner. Emin’s work can also be positioned in a line of mystical questing which includes works in other genres: Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poetry, for example, which addresses words directly to God as Emin might be addressing them in For You: ‘over again I feel thy finger and find thee’.29 And sounding through Hopkins’s line, we may hear Henry Vaughan’s The Search which we looked at in the first part of this chapter – written 200 years earlier in similar isolation – with that climactic binding of itself to the Bible’s own words: That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far off from every one of us, for in him we live, and move, and have our being. (my emphasis)

Conclusion The English-speaking West in the twenty-first century no longer works with a single, shared translation of the Bible, and the number of those immersed in its stories and images from childhood, and week by week in worship – is fewer than it has been since the King James translators finished their work, at least in a European context. But the examples I have offered in the second part of this essay are intended to express an optimism about the continued possibility of Bible-habitation today, and about the range of ways a home in the Bible City (or at the very least something longer than a mini-break) might be made attractive. The Church has a key task in fostering habitable ways of relating to the Bible – but to achieve this it will also need to be open to approaches, like Sheen’s production and Emin’s artwork, that come from beyond its institutional walls. It will need to be ready to see their possibilities and receive from them. In some cases these approaches will represent ways in which the Bible speaks Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’, stanza 1, in The Major Poems (ed. Walford Davies; London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1979), pp. 51–61 (51).

29



Community, Imagination and the Bible

121

back into the Church from a position outside it, and this is an indication that the Bible’s citizens will not always be identical with the Church’s. Finally, it is especially important to attend to what artists are able to do with the Bible if one accepts Rowan Williams’s premise that the imagination of our culture stands uncaptured by it at present – and this too is a reason why my four examples of ‘indwelling’ the Bible are not all by professed Christians. Bible literacy is all very well, but not enough to make citizens unless it is married with some of the insights that artists can bring. For they have a wisdom to offer about how the human imagination is engaged, and this is a wisdom which the Church needs.

Plate 1: Norman Adams, Vision on the Road to Damascus (by permission of the estate of Norman Adams).

Plate 2: Tracey Emin, For You (by permission of the Chapter of Liverpool Cathedral).

Plate 3: Fitzwilliam College Chapel, Cambridge (Ben Quash).

Plate 4: Michael Sheen as ‘The Teacher’ in The Passion, produced by National Theatre Wales and Wildworks in Port Talbot, Wales, April 2012 (by permission of National Theatre Wales/Wildworks/Ian Kingsnorth).

7

Bible in Community: Authority and Contemporary Ecclesiology Matthew Prevett

In the Western church, there has been a trend away from an explicit recognition of the role of the Holy Spirit within the questions of biblical authority and ecclesiology. Instead, Western theology has located these aspects within a Christocentric perspective which places both biblical and ecclesial authority within a historically received, revelatory framework.1 It is to the ‘inadequate economic hypostatic weight’ given to the Spirit within the theology of Augustine that Gunton attributes this theological deficiency in the West,2 while Moltmann reminds us that the ‘Spirit was said to be the Cinderella of Western theology’ since the ‘doctrine about the Spirit’s origin a patre filioque… led to the division of the church in 1054’.3 As a consequence, emphasis has been placed on the ‘Christ-event’ in the development of the church and of the biblical canon, suggesting that the authority of both church and Bible is related primarily to the temporal incarnation of God. However, it may be suggested that the authority bestowed upon both the Bible and the church from a Christocentric perspective potentially leaves the Scriptures and the ecclesia in a historical vacuum untouched by the ongoing witness to God over time and in the present. This chapter begins a conversation about the Western ideas of biblical and ecclesial authority by addressing, within a Reformed framework, the issue of divine revelation in the light of Eastern pneumatology. In considering the ways in which Western The pneumatological deficit in Western theology was strongly advocated by Colin E. Gunton, e.g. ‘Augustine, the Trinity and the Theological Crisis of the West’, in Colin E. Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2nd edn, 2003), pp. 30–55. 2 Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 51. 3 Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life (trans. Margaret Kohl; London: SCM Press, 1992), p. 1 1

124

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

biblical and ecclesiological thought have tended away from the role of the Holy Spirit, these issues raise questions and set forth challenges for contemporary theology.

The Reformed and sola scriptura Any examination of the Bible within a Reformed framework necessarily leads towards one of the central principles of the Reformation: sola scriptura. This has been understood in a variety of ways. Where ‘Scripture is considered to be the only authority for the life and the faith of the church’, evidence similarly suggests that ‘appeal is seldom made to sola scriptura without any awareness of the actual role of a tradition’.4 Tension is generated between giving credence and weight to Scripture alone, and the alternative of bringing Scripture into dialogue with tradition. This is not simply a contemporary question, but one the Reformers themselves faced too. Calvin struggled with the historical reality that the Church existed before the Bible in its completed form, and thus before a biblical mandate for the Church. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion he recognizes Bullinger’s argument that Scripture does not depend upon the determination of the Church to be given weight.5 Calvin asserts that apostolic writers reveal ‘sure and genuine scribes of the Holy Spirit, and their writings are therefore to be considered oracles of God’.6 This, it seems, is Calvin’s only criterion for the authority of Holy Scripture. In understanding apostolic writings as the narrative of the early church, we must recognise that the church’s role in defining the content of the biblical canon relates to authorizing Scripture itself. Yet for Calvin, ecclesiology cannot simply be the precursor to Scripture. ‘For if the Christian church was from the beginning founded upon the writings of the prophets and the preaching of the apostles’, argues Calvin, ‘wherever this doctrine is found, the acceptance of it … must

Commission on Faith and Order, Baptism, Eucharist & Ministry 1982–1990 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1990), p. 133 [emphasis original]. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (trans. Ford Lewis Battles; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), I.vii.1 (p. 75). As sources Calvin cites Bullinger, De scripturae sacrae authoritate (1538); also Cochlaeus, De authoritate ecclesiae et scripture (1524) and De canonicae scripture et catholicae ecclesiae authoritate, ad Henricum Bullingerium (1543). 6 Calvin, Institutes, IV.viii.9 (p. 1157). 4

5



Bible in Community: Authority and Contemporary Ecclesiology

125

certainly have preceded the church’.7 The church, this supposes, grew out of prophetic and apostolic traditions which, by their very nature, occurred prior to the church. Therefore these influences precede ecclesiology and must provide a template for the church. These prophetic and apostolic influences became, eventually, canonized within Scripture. The biblical canon was not generally agreed until the fourth century and bore witness to the influence of Fathers such as Origen, Irenaeus, Augustine and Athanasius. It was this canon that remained fixed in the West until the Reformation. In his tract entitled The True Method of Giving Peace to Christendom and Reforming the Church, Calvin’s scepticism of the canon can be seen where he writes, ‘[b]ut in regard to the Canon itself, which they so superciliously intrude upon us, ancient writers are not agreed’. 8 Further, his view of the Roman Catholic assertion of the canon was such that ‘to subject the oracles of God in this way to men’s [sic] judgment, making their validity depend upon human whim, is a blasphemy unfit to be mentioned’.9 James A. Whyte suggests, in connection with the human nature of judgement, that ‘[h]uman beings often seek to divinise their own authority, claiming in their own sphere the Divine Right of Kings’.10 In trying to understand this supposed ‘judgment of the church’, Calvin goes on to question ‘in what council was that canon promulgated?’.11 Calvin does not deny that ‘it is the proper office of the Church to distinguish genuine from spurious Scripture’, but for the Roman Catholic Church to receive ‘a kind of precarious authority among men [sic]’, he writes, ‘is blasphemous impiety’.12 For Calvin, it is important that the role of the church is in hearing the voice of the Shepherd and not the Stranger.13 However, his criticism of Roman Catholicism leads him to be concerned ‘that instead of the word of God, human license alone is to prevail’.14 Despite his disagreement with the very existence of the canon of the church, Calvin was seemingly content with Rome sustaining their canon ‘provided we are at Calvin, Institutes, I.vii.2 (75–6). John Calvin, ‘John Calvin on The True Method of Giving Peace to Christendom and Reforming the Church’, in Calvin’s Tracts, vol. 3 (trans. H. Beveridge; 3 vols; Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1851), pp. 240–358 (267). 9 Calvin, Institutes, IV.ix.14 (1178). 10 James A. Whyte, ‘The Problem of Authority’, King’s Theological Review 7 (1984), 37–43 (42). 11 Calvin, Institutes, IV.ix.14 (p. 1179). 12 Calvin, ‘John Calvin on the True Method’, p. 268. 13 Calvin, ‘John Calvin on the True Method’, p. 268. 14 Calvin, ‘John Calvin on the True Method’, p. 266. 7 8

126

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

liberty to repudiate those which all men [sic] of sense, at least when informed on the subject, will perceive to be not of divine original’.15 Protestant Churches seem to have come, over time, to accept the canon with less contention than their forebears. In a document from the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe (CPCE), Scripture – Confession – Church, it has been suggested that the development and subsequent acceptance of the canon ‘emerged in the early church … as part of a developing tradition’.16 During this ‘lengthy process’, certain texts found their home in Christian use whereby ‘they became the “measure” for the church’s proclamation’.17 In the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC)’s The Gift of Authority, emphasis on this assertion is seen whereby ‘formation of the canon of the Scriptures was an integral part of the process of tradition’18 and that ‘the Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit… [declared] that [certain texts] were inspired and that others were not to be included in the canon’.19 That the canon may be seen as a tradition imposed upon the later church demonstrates Calvin’s difficulty. One is left with the question of whether the church has been formed in response to Scripture, or whether Scripture has been authorised by the existing church. Calvin’s contortion around this matter, without a clear and definitive resolution, suggests that he struggled with this conundrum and was unable categorically to separate the issue of tradition and canon from the sola scriptura debate. The Reformation redrew the boundaries. The Protestant division of the Old Testament separated the deutero-canonical texts which appear only in the Septuagint (known as the apocrypha) from texts found in the Hebrew Bible.20 Statements of a confessional nature, such as the Thirty-Nine Articles (1563) and the Westminster Confession (1646), explicitly indicate these separations within the church’s accepted canon. The lists of texts understood as ‘divine original’ were therefore revised during the Reformation through Calvin, ‘John Calvin on the True Method’, p. 267 Community of Protestant Churches in Europe (CPCE), Scripture – Confession – Church (Vienna: CPCE, 2012), p. 17. 17 CPCE, Scripture – Confession – Church, p. 17. 18 ARCIC, The Gift of Authority: Authority in the Church III (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1999), §22 (p. 14). 19 ARCIC, Gift of Authority, §22 (p. 15). 20 Alister E. McGrath, Reformation Thought: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), pp. 140–1. 15 16



Bible in Community: Authority and Contemporary Ecclesiology

127

the authorization of the community of faith. It would follow, therefore, that this authorization of scripture as the Word of God remains the fundamental prerogative of the church, the Body of Christ.

The authority of revelation The church’s authorization of the biblical canon gives Scripture credence as the authoritative Word of God. The Thirty-Nine Articles attest that, ‘Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary for salvation’,21 while statements and confessions of other traditions hold the Bible as the ‘supreme authority’22 for the ordering of the life of the church – for defining the ecclesiology of the church, its ministry and its mission. Biblical authority consequently relates to issues beyond that of Scripture alone. A classic Reformed understanding of the supremacy of Scripture rests in the confession of it being testimony to the revelation of God in Christ. Recognizing the Reformed three-fold understanding of the Word – proclamation, Scripture and revelation in Jesus Christ23 – Bruce Rigdon emphasizes Barth’s clarification that the ‘three forms may never be regarded in isolation… [although] revelation is the form which establishes the other two’.24 This is supported by Michael Welker who suggests that ‘the various testimonies of the biblical traditions… point to God’s presence and to God’s glory’.25 The inspiration of God is in and through the pages of Scripture, culminating in the testimony of the revelation of God’s self in Christ. The testimony of God’s presence and glory through the Hebrew and Greek scriptures – the two testaments of the Christian Bible – reflect the ‘making known of that which otherwise remains hidden or unknown’.26 Barth, Gunton suggests, believed See Mark A. Noll (ed.), Confessions and Catechisms of the Reformation (Leicester: Baker Book House Company, 1991), p. 215 The United Reformed Church, ‘Basis of Union’, in Manual (London: United Reformed Church, 1973), A.12 (p. 12). 23 Barth’s expansion on this can be seen in Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1 (trans. G. W. Bromiley; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), pp. 88–124. 24 V. B. Rigdon, ‘Worship and the Trinity in the Reformed Tradition’, in T. F. Torrance (ed.), Theological Dialogue Between Orthodox & Reformed Churches (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1993), pp. 211–18 (216). 25 Michael Welker, God the Spirit (trans. J. F. Hoffmeyer; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), p. 277. 26 Colin E. Gunton, A Brief Theology of Revelation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), p. 68. 21

22

128

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

weight should not be put on the inspiration of the biblical authors (one would not be alone in suggesting editors), but rather ‘on that through which their writings by inspiration, so to speak, become revelation in the here and now’.27 The revelatory nature of Scripture is not, this supposes, restricted to God’s revelation through the Christ event in Scripture, but rather to the inspiration that the Word gives in the present. ‘Scripture is not revelation’, writes Gunton, ‘but [is] in some sense mediator of it’.28 If Scripture can be understood in these terms – as mediator of revelation and, by extension, also of salvation29 – then the revealing of God’s self to the world is not dependent upon the content of Scripture but rather by the mediation it provides. Thus, testimonies are the mediation of the revelation of God – making known what was hidden or unknown – and point to a divine reality beyond that which can be otherwise experienced. C.H. Dodd writes that revelation ‘is the mystery of the way in which God uses the imperfect thoughts and feelings, words and deeds of fallible men [sic], to convey eternal truth, both to the men [sic] themselves and through them to others’.30 The danger in understanding Scripture as mediator of revelation is that it can lead to a denial of the present-day self-revelation of God which is to deny significant implications of trinitarian belief: that the Spirit of God is alive in the present as the active agent of God. God’s Spirit is the mediator for the revelation of God in all times. Scripture indicates such mediation in the incarnation of Jesus Christ – God’s self-revelation in human form – through ‘the forming of the body and soul of Christ by the Holy Spirit’.31 It is the witness, the testimony, to God’s self-revelation which mediates the act of revelation and points towards an experience of God acting in the present. Such pneumatological emphasis is echoed in Orthodox theology which focuses less on history and more on the work of the Spirit in communion and eschatology32 to Gunton, Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 67 [emphasis original]. Gunton, Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 67. 29 ‘The particular quality of the Bible’s mediation of revelation is derived from its mediation of salvation’ (Gunton, Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 74). This is in distinction to the assertion of the Thirty-Nine Articles that Scripture contains all that is required for salvation. Mediation, in this sense at least, is not synonymous with completeness but is understood as an agent of revelation and salvation. 30 C. H. Dodd, The Authority of the Bible (London: Nisbet & Co, 1928), p. 17. 31 John Owen, The Works of John Owen, Vol. III (ed. W. H. Goold; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1862), p. 166; additionally emphasized in Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 69; cf. Mt. 1.18, Lk. 1.35. 32 John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1985), p. 131. 27 28



Bible in Community: Authority and Contemporary Ecclesiology

129

the extent that it ‘runs the danger of historically disincarnating the Church’.33 However, with a focus on the work of the Spirit, revelatory action may extend beyond the historic Christ event: ‘[f]or although the risen and glorified Christ continues His revelatory and saving work within the Church, He does so through the person of the Spirit’.34 Zizioulas similarly writes that the Spirit ‘is to liberate the Son and the economy from the bondage of history’.35 Thus while Christ revealed God in history, the Spirit reveals God throughout time. If the revelation of God by the Spirit is to be understood as a legitimate source for the continued ‘revelatory and saving work’ of Christ freed from the ‘bondage of history’ it follows that witness to God’s revelation cannot be held solely within history, or canonical Scripture, but rather is open to the work of the Spirit in the present and thus that the biblical canon can no longer be considered the sole testimony to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. While the Bible maintains its unique witness to the revelation of Christ, its authority is found to falter if based on its status as the sole testimony of the revelation of Christ. New revelations by the Spirit invalidate the supremacy of the biblical canon as uniquely authoritative and the Bible may no longer be all that can be said of God’s revelation. ‘God’s revelation to human beings, and human experience of God’ are, as Moltmann suggests, central to the revelatory action of the Holy Spirit.36 The question we must now address concerns who is responsible for the authorizing of testimony and what process is used for its authorization.

The Hermeneutical Cycle: Bible and community It can perhaps be assumed that the authoritative nature of any body, process or document, is dependent upon the authority bestowed upon the body, process or document.37 As such, a powerful document is only authoritative if Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 20. John Breck, The Power of the Word (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1986), p. 36; Breck gives two passages to support this argument, namely Jn. 14.26 and Jn. 16.13–15. 35 Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 130. 36 Moltmann, The Spirit of Life, p. 6. 37 A recent examination of authority in the church can be found in G. Arthur, Law, Liberty and Church: Authority and Justice in the Major Churches in England (Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006). 33 34

130

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

it has a body which validates and authorizes it. As we have seen, in the case of the Bible it is the church which is responsible for this authorization and it is by the pouring out of God’s Spirit at Pentecost that the church is given this function.38 For John Webster, in the Spirit, ‘God is the agent of revelation’s perfection, its being made real and effective in the community of the church as the reconciled assembly of the saints’39 and hence it is the presence of God’s Spirit in the church which both authorizes and gives interpretation to the words of Scripture and affords it the status of Word of God. Early Reformers felt that the church, or more specifically the Bishops, had strayed from listening to God’s voice through the Spirit and had become dependent instead upon their own authority. ‘Where these foundations have been laid’, wrote Calvin, ‘it is plain that the power of which God has been robbed is transferred to horns and mitres’.40 The Reformed movement centred on this need to reclaim a pneumatological discernment in the church and to find again the presence of God in the ecclesial community. It is perhaps no surprise that Calvin’s response to this was to develop an ecclesiology that dispensed with the authority of personal episcope and held to the principle of a conciliar discernment of the Spirit as authoritative in the life of the church. Calvin’s ecclesiology did not become universal among Christian communities, with the result that today there is a vast array of differing ecclesiological models. The result is that the Bible is authorized by different bodies with various interpretations of ecclesial authority. Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and Reformed each hold their individual authorization for Scripture which makes it impossible to suggest that there is a sole and definitive authorizing body for the grounding of biblical authority. For example, the difference between the canons of the Roman Catholic Church and that of Protestant denominations demonstrate this lack of universality. It is possible, however, to recognize that there is a biblical authority which stands within each given community. Hence, the community in which this authorization is offered is the church whose ecclesiology is defined by the authorized biblical Scripture. While the Church gives authority to Scripture, the reverse is also true. N. T. Wright argues that, ‘Scripture’s authority is thus seen to best advantage Acts 2. See also Welker, God the Spirit, especially pp. 228–78. John Webster, Word and Church: Essays in Christian Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001), p. 28. Calvin, ‘John Calvin on the True Method’, p. 266.

38 39 40



Bible in Community: Authority and Contemporary Ecclesiology

131

in its formation of the mind of the Church, and its stiffening of our resolve’.41 In being the solidifying influence, Scripture’s internal authority is the effect it has on Christians and in particular, upon the church. Wright’s statement echoes Richard Hooker’s view that the authority of Scripture is initially seen in the early church’s influence in the post-apostolic age, and latterly in the lived presence of the life of the Christian.42 In this final matter, Hooker’s perspective gives the church the potential to be led at any time by the influence of Scripture. For some, such as Wright, this may ‘stiffen’ our resolve, maybe even confining its interpretation, while perhaps Hooker offers a breadth of openness to the influence, and therefore interpretation, of Scripture. There is, therefore, a cycle beginning with the idea that ‘Scripture forms the church’ which leads to the idea that ‘the church authorizes Scripture’ and back again. Whether the Bible is considered as the ‘supreme authority’ for the ordering of the life of the church, or as a soteriological treatise, it can be observed as key in defining the structure of the church, its ministry and its mission. The historical reality of so many churches with different models of polity points to the fact that Scripture has not, to date, defined one single ecclesiological model; rather that interpretation within different contexts results in different authorizations for Scripture. We must therefore say that Scripture forms the church (in reality the churches) rather than simply authorizing one particular polity. This leads to the paradox that the community of faith – the church – is required simultaneously to authorize Scripture while Scripture is required to form the church. Scripture forms; the church authorizes. As the authorizing body, each church must hold a view of scriptural authority which their ecclesiology suggests and should not be determined by the personal convictions or readings of individuals. Calvin recognized that ‘[t]he Spirit of God furnishes the gift of interpretation to those to whom he [sic] thinks fit to give it for the common edification of the Church’.43 However, those who are gifted in this way form the community of faith; the authorized body of the church. Therefore, the text must be interpreted within the community, in accordance with the movement of the Holy Spirit, ‘who

N. T. Wright, Scripture and the Authority of God (London: SPCK, 2005), p. 55. Wright, Scripture, pp. 55–6. Calvin, ‘John Calvin on the True Method’, p. 268.

41 42 43

132

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

animates the church and enables its perception of the truth’44 and which may offer a new perspective in each age. This association with the Scriptures may lead to the ongoing revision of the church and, therefore, also to the authority it gives to the Bible. This cycle is not simply a circle of forming and authorizing, for the process of being formed by Scripture leads to a changed reading and biblical hermeneutic. The spiritual revelation which comes at each juncture causes not a return to the same place, but rather to a new position where there is an amended forming of ecclesiology and subsequently a revised hermeneutic. As each revolution of this cycle seeks to better understand Scripture and the church, this process can turn from a circle into an inward spiral, slowly refining the relationship between Scripture and ecclesiology through obedience to God’s Spirit.

Contemporary ecclesiology: a case study The formation of the United Reformed Church in 1972, from the Congregational Church in England and Wales and the Presbyterian Church in England, was a momentous occasion in the ecumenical environment in the United Kingdom. With both the Congregational and Presbyterian traditions discerning a change in their ecclesiologies such that where there was once division there should now be concord, there came the opportunity for the two churches to unite. This union was subsequently joined by the Re-formed Association of the Churches of Christ in 1981 and the majority of the member churches of the Congregational Union of Scotland in 2000. The changing nature of the ecclesial model for the predecessor traditions over time made the union possible. The formation in 1833 of the Congregational Union brought together Congregational churches in ‘expressing a sense of common purpose and mutual support’.45 Congregationalism had long disapproved theologically of the concept of a ‘third church’46 separating the Webster, Word and Church, p. 36. David Cornick, Under God’s Good Hand: A History of the Traditions which have come together in the United Reformed Church in the United Kingdom (London: United Reformed Church, 1998), p. 106. 46 Alan P. F. Sell, Saints: Visible, Orderly and Catholic: The Congregational Idea of the Church (Geneva: World Alliance of Reformed Churches, 1986), p. 107. 44 45



Bible in Community: Authority and Contemporary Ecclesiology

133

Church catholic and local. The formation of a Union, and not a church, emphasized this theology. However, the covenanting in 1966 that formed the Congregational Church in England and Wales was, in the eyes of some, formalizing the direction in which Congregational polity had progressed. In 1972, Congregational theologian Harry Lovell Cocks stated that from as far back as 1912 (‘or thereabouts’) a Congregational Union rule required ‘Aided Churches’ to seek the ‘approval of the Executive of the County Union’ to fill ministerial vacancies, thereby already establishing the practice of oversight over the decision of a local church meeting.47 In accepting external authority, the tradition, certainly in the eyes of the Congregational Union, had discerned a change in the reading of Scripture sufficient to allow for a change in the understanding of external episcope. While in matters of church union there is a considerable sense of pragmatism in play, the presence of the Spirit in such processes should not be underestimated. The centrality of the Spirit at work was encapsulated by John Oman at the beginning of the twentieth century who recognized that the church ‘must still be under the immediate guidance of the Spirit of God in applying and expanding the truth for the immediate occasion’.48 In considering the nature of Church Meetings as steeped in prayer and as the ideal arena of the movement of the Spirit, some Congregationalists understand that without a Church Meeting ‘a church lacks one of the essential ordinances which God has provided for this people as they live the Christian life together’.49 Such a view expresses the centrality of the democratic, or theocratic, ideal of the Church Meeting, wherein the prayerfully constituted meeting is tasked with discerning the will of God for the congregation and its members. Therefore, the Church Meeting has, de facto, the authority of Christ to oversee the life and discipline of its members and does so ‘as a matter of building up the body of Christ’. 50 Hence it is the Church Meeting, under the guidance of the Spirit in discerning the will of Christ, which sustains the authority of Congregational polity. Gabriel Fackre recognizes that in this way ‘the local church becomes the hermeneutical community, on the grounds that the Holy 49 50 47 48

Cited in Sell, Saints, p. 156. John Oman, Vision and Authority (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1902), p. 86. Daniel T. Jenkins, Church Meeting and Democracy (London: Independent Press, 1944), p. 19. Alan Sell, Guidelines on Church Discipline (London: United Reformed Church, 1983), p. 5.

134

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

Spirit is distributed to all the members gathered in covenant’.51 Conversely, the Presbyterian Church in England had functioned with a conciliar ecclesiology which included external episcope but had not been used to the same level of discernment within a church meeting. Along with their Congregational sisters and brothers, the process towards union required the denomination to discern the place of authority in its structure. Therefore, it was through the process of responding to Scripture that the authority of the denominations was questioned and the union could take place. The Congregational Church, formed by its readings of the Scriptures began to understand the place of oversight within the wider structures of a church, and the Presbyterians began to see the gift of the local church meeting as a primary place of discernment as the church meets in the power of the Spirit around the Scriptures. A similar principle was at play in the early years of the twenty-first century when the Catch the Vision process sought to revise the structure of the United Reformed Church in response to the diminution of membership numbers and questions around ongoing financial and human resources. Alongside reform of central committees, the four-tier conciliar structure (General Assembly, Synod, District Council, Local Church) was reduced to the three tiers of General Assembly, Synod and Local Church. Functions previously held by District Councils (known as Areas in the National Synod of Scotland) were largely handed to Synods who have authority to carry out these activities. This resulted in a change in the location of oversight within the ecclesiology. The process of corporate discernment, which took place in the General Assembly and in the inferior councils prior to the adoption of the Catch the Vision report in 2005, was one of discerning the place of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church. In doing so, the church was reflecting that within a contemporary context its ecclesiology ‘hinders rather than enables our wishes to seek God’s will together, enjoy fellowship in Christ and express our belonging to each other’.52 Therefore, in response to this reading of the Christian gospel in Scripture, the General Assembly consented to the changes to the ecclesiology. The inferior councils similarly concurred. In agreeing to change the authority structure, the denomination was tacitly approving a revision of the herme Gabriel Fackre, The Doctrine of Revelation (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), p. 198. United Reformed Church, Catch the Vision report to the General Assembly 2005 (London: United Reformed Church, 2005) p. 12.

51 52



Bible in Community: Authority and Contemporary Ecclesiology

135

neutic previously used to read and interpret Scripture. This has resulted in changes to the ecclesiology of the denomination and, inter alia, a change within the authority of the church.53

Concluding observations The relationship between the authoritative nature of the Bible and the community of the church is one which is open to the movement of God’s Spirit in the church and in the world. Henk van den Belt suggests that a ‘pneumatological approach to the authority of Scripture precludes a one-sided emphasis on the nature of inspiration or a strong antithesis between Scripture and tradition’.54 As such, the external factor, common to the authoritative status of both Scripture and church is the Spirit of God – the Word alive and active. In the words of the United Church of Christ’s campaign: ‘God is still speaking’.55 A concept which the West may receive from the Orthodox tradition suggests that while apocryphal sources may be representative of apostolic tradition, the purification and legitimization of them allow them to ‘return to the church as its own property … She will reject them, or she will receive them, without necessarily posing the question of their authenticity on the historical plane, but considering above all their content in light of tradition’.56 This rejection or reception of testimonies of revelatory action in the world invites the church to consider again testimonies of a less historical manner but rather those which are in line with the faith tradition which the church maintains. The questions such conclusion raises, therefore, are these: Why, when the authoritative church remains obedient to the living Word of God, does the scriptural canon remain closed to the possibility of ongoing divine revelation? The area of authority has been largely neglected in historical and ecclesiological study to date, especially in connection with the United Reformed Church. My own research offers some further matters for discussion: Matthew Prevett, ‘A Consideration of the Place of Authority in the Polity of the United Reformed Church’, Unpublished BTh Dissertation, University of Cambridge (2011). 54 Henk van den Belt, ‘Scripture as the Voice of God: The Continuing Importance of Autopistia’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 13 (2011), 434–47 (447). 55 Available online at http://www.ucc.org/god-is-still-speaking/ (Accessed 21 October 2011.) 56 Vladimir Lossky, ‘Tradition and Traditions’, in Daniel B. Clendenin (ed.), Eastern Orthodox Theology: A Contemporary Reader (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), pp. 125–46 (138). 53

136

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

If God is ‘still speaking’, what prevents the reopening of the biblical canon to acknowledge the authority of God’s revelatory action in the world? Might the church be able to receive texts from other faiths as authentic signs of God’s revelation through the ages? What might it take for the inward spiral of forming and authorizing to finally reach a stage whereby the church has no longer to be formed and Scripture no longer needs to be authorized? Does the hermeneutical spiral we have discerned in this chapter have a historical telos? The challenge to Reformed churches, and arguably the entire Christian church, is to recognize that trinitarian doctrine can easily tend towards Unitarianism, modalism, or – in the case of neglect of the Spirit – into Christomonism.57 A pneumatological centring of the ecclesial community and biblical authority may offer new possibilities to the twenty-first century church. An emphasis on the revelation of the living God as a continuation of the revelation of God throughout the ages, embraced uniquely in the incarnation, may offer the church an enhanced narrative which relates both to the contemporary church and to wider society. In bearing witness to a Still Speaking God, the authority of the Bible and the church may be revised and reformed in ever closer obedience to the living God.58

Rigdon, ‘Worship and the Trinity’, p. 218. For the allusions in this sentence see the United Reformed Church’s Statement of Nature, Faith and Order. See Schedule D, Version 2, available online at http://www.urc.org.uk/the-manual/62– general/the-manual/595–the-basis-of-union.html and the ‘Still Speaking’ campaign of the United Church of Christ (USA), available online at http://www.ucc.org/god-is-still-speaking/about/ (Both accessed 25 April 2012.)

57 58

8

The Bible in a World of Religious Pluralism: Reading the Bible with and for the Jewish People? Gavin D’Costa

Introduction Reading the Christian Bible has become a complex task when we turn to the question of religious pluralism, especially in relation to the Jewish people. In this chapter I want to raise two particular questions: (i) how do Christians read the ‘Old Testament’ in the light of the critique that the Christian church is guilty of anti-Jewishness? Some go further and argue that the New Testament is also guilty of this anti-Jewishness so the question takes on a different form; (ii) does the provisional outcome of that discussion impact upon our reading of the ‘scriptures’ of other religious traditions? How should we read the Hindu Upanishads or the Quran, and so on? I will be suggesting that (i) and (ii) are very closely related, without detracting from the unique status of Judaism. The difference between Judaism and the world religions is sui generis, but this does not disallow analogical reflection, recalling that analogy is always based on a basic difference. The justification of this linking (i) and (ii) will I hope become apparent as the argument proceeds. A quick word about two operative presuppositions. I work as a Catholic theologian and believe all theology is tradition specific.1 This means that I also believe that approaches to the Bible are shaped by tradition and the rules for See Gavin D’Costa, Theology in the Public Square: Church, University, and Nation (Blackwell: Oxford, 2005); and for a Reformed version of the same argument, see Oliver Crisp, ‘On being a Reformed theologian’, Theology 115 (2012), 14–25. This claim is not meant in any negative exclusivist sectarian fashion.

1

140

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

reading dictated by the particular Christian tradition. The rules for reading are still being thought through in the Roman Catholic exegetical tradition after the bumpy birth of Catholic exegesis into the modern world. One need only consider how a Quaker might read the Bible and how a Lutheran might read the same passages, and so on. This type of comparative exercise may yield the same results (although less likely between a Quaker and a Lutheran), but will almost always uncover different types of hermeneutical operation. This contribution is intended as part of an ecumenical conversation. I believe that each tradition comes to a common table to think further through the questions. This collection of essays represents just such a common table. My second assumption is that while this paper is written primarily for intraChristian theological discussion, any Jewish observations on it, or from other religions, would be greatly appreciated.

Question 1: (a) How do Christians read the ‘Old Testament’ in the light of the critique that the Christian church is guilty of anti-Jewishness; while some go further and argue that the New Testament is also guilty of this anti-Jewishness? Rosemary Radford Ruether represents a dual covenant position.2 Some of her assumptions are shared quite widely, but cumulatively her own position represents the most forceful articulation of the question I am dealing with. What are her assumptions? First, that the New Testament is guilty of antiJewish sentiments and these are to be found especially in John’s Gospel but also in Hebrews and Paul. For Ruether, this calls for both special catechesis and preaching to the faithful when these texts are in the lectionary; and for careful education for exegetes in their university or seminary training. This anti-Jewishness does not render the texts invalid, but reminds us that they are written by humans who may be inspired, but not necessarily in every detail and certainly not in their anti-Jewishness. Much of Ruether’s approach to the Bible draws heavily from the historical-critical tradition. Second, the reading See Rosemary Radford Ruether, Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism (New York: Seabury Press, 1980). There are Christian theologians from all denominations who share this view.

2



The Bible in a World of Religious Pluralism

141

of the ‘Old’ Testament by the ‘New’ Testament continues and generates this ‘supersessionism’. Ruether argues that Israel is theologically invalidated through the typology of new/old, spiritual/fleshly, disobedient/obedient, ‘people of God’/reprobate and so on. This theological invalidation translates into a historical invalidation exemplified in the politics of the Third Reich. Ruether is clear about the deadly current running from the New Testament through the early Fathers, who act as a voltage transformer, and then to the medieval period, which exemplifies some serious spikes in the current; and finally, the highest charge is seen in the veins of the Nazis. There are of course many other currents present in this tapestry of violence towards the Jews. Third, Ruether grasps the implications of her position by the horns and recognises that the New Testament claim that Jesus is the Jewish messiah need to be re-thought in two particular ways. There needs to be a historical recognition that there are plural expectations of what the messiah might look like. Thus the rejection of Jesus by many Jews was not wilful, disobedient and hard-hearted, but reflects a true fidelity to God’s covenant and promises, interpreted differently from Christians. Ruether urges that Christians should instead understand Jesus as the proleptic messiah, an eschatological reality that is not realised in history. Hence, until the eschaton, a legitimate difference might prevail between the two religions. This way Ruether keeps intact the Christian belief that Jesus is the messiah, but does not superimpose that upon the Jewish people. The other change she argues for is not logically related to the term ‘messiah’, but is connected. It is a change to the doctrine of the incarnation. Ruether argues that the claim that Jesus is uniquely the God-man, the single event of God’s self-speaking, is problematic. The historical-critical approach has also generated this question independently of the question of Christianity’s relation to Judaism or other non-Christian religions. 3 Ruether, like others who find such biblical research convincing, proposes that we think of Jesus ‘as if ’ he were God ‘for us’. The ‘as if ’ indicates that the unique ontological hypostasis should not be regarded as hard ontology, but a kind of poetry. The ‘for us’ indicates that these claims are binding on Christians alone. They should not be ontologized and used against other possible modes See for example John Hick, ‘Jesus and the World Religions’, in John Hick (ed.), The Myth of God Incarnate (London: SCM, 1977), pp. 167–85. Amongst Catholic theologians, Roger Haight and Paul Knitter hold similar positions on Jesus Christ.

3

142

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

of revelation that God has chosen to reach humankind, such as the Jewish revelation. Others, including Ruether, extend this to point to the world religions.4 Here we see clearly how question (i) is related to (ii). If Christians need to revise our view of the Jewish religion then likewise they need to review the world religions. The first need not lead to the second, but often has done. I will be sticking with (i) for the first half of this chapter. There are two issues at stake: a question of appropriate hermeneutics; and a question of inter-religious relations arising out that hermeneutic. Let me say a little about both of these issues and at the outset clarify an important point so that the reader might understand where some of my presuppositions lie. I do not think the New Testament is guilty of the charges raised by Ruether, although I do think various Christians and Churches through history are guilty of political, social and religious anti-Jewishness and that the New Testament has been used to buttress this. This is a sin that is unacceptable and should be condemned in the contemporary world.5 Further, I do not believe that theological ‘fulfilment’ is logically and necessarily causally related to political anti-Jewishness. Contingently, it has been at times, that I do not deny. But there is a basic theological component to ‘fulfilment’ that shares the New Testament insight that all creation and cultures (including the Jewish out of which Jesus arises) comes to its completion and fulfilment in Christ, who never destroys that which is good and true, but always lifts and purifies such elements. Harnack, Ruether’s ancestral father, was typically perceptive in his claim back in 1920, The rejection of the Old Testament in the second century [an allusion to Marcion] was an error which the great Church was right in resisting; holding on to it in the 16th century was a disaster from which the Reformation has not yet been able to extricate itself; but to maintain it since the 19th century in Protestantism as a canonical document equal in value to the New Testament, that is the result of religious and ecclesial paralysis. 6 See Rosemary Radford Ruether, ‘Feminism and Jewish-Christian Dialogue’, in John Hick and Paul Knitter (eds), The Myth of Christian Uniqueness. Towards a Pluralistic Theology of Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988), pp. 149–62. 5 For Catholics, the condemnation of anti-Semitism in all forms begins in 1964 in the Second Vatican Council’s document, Nostra Aetate. 6 Adolf von Harnack, Marcion. The Gospel of the Alien God (trans. John E. Steely and Lyle D. Bierma; Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2007 [1920]), p. 217. 4



The Bible in a World of Religious Pluralism

143

Harnack goes to the heart of the matter in realizing that with the advent of the historical-critical reading of Scripture, the theological positioning of the Old Testament was in an utterly new crisis because history and theology were starkly at odds. This crisis was not that of the Marcionite claim that the God of the Old Testament was not the God of the New Testament. Without the linking of the two books in a shared canon the early Church would simply not exist. The scriptures of Jesus and his Jewish disciples was the ‘Old’ Testament. In pre-critical times the self-understanding of the Church was not possible without the Old Testament. But neither was the crisis the same as the Reformation’s question about Scripture and the Old Testament, although I suspect Harnack’s trajectory is born through the Reformation, given the entrance of Humanistic forms of reading Scripture that would pre-figure, in part, the historical-critical method. The Reformation inaugurated the difference between Law and Grace, whereby the Old and New were seen to be in serious tension. But whether that schematization actually belongs to the Reformers themselves (a much debated question), Harnack realised that a non-theological point was at stake in the present crisis. It was a question of history – and it would not go away. It is simply not credible to imagine that the historical writers (or traditions recorded) of the Old Testament had in mind the meanings attributed to the stories by the Fathers who saw them as consistently pointing to Jesus Christ. Harnack argued that the fantastical allegories and types employed to read the Old Testament were part of a Hellenistic mind-set, whereby a figure like Origen set in train a process that was absorbed by Ambrose, Augustine and the Western tradition, so that every detail of the Old Testament was analyzed in a fashion that deeply detracted from any possible historical intentionality of its ancient author. Harnack realized that he stood at the beginning of a new age in biblical hermeneutics. Tough decisions were required. And to his credit he made them. To the Protestant Church’s credit, they were rejected on the whole. The primacy of the historical-critical method has been sufficiently challenged in the exegetical-hermeneutical literature so that it now forms only one approach to exegesis, although in some countries and cultures it still dominates professional exegetical training.7 But Harnack’s question about It is interesting to see John Barton’s almost defeated defence of the role of historical-critical scholarship back in 1998 in his essay John Barton, ‘Historical-critical approaches’, in John Barton (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 9–20.

7

144

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

the meaning of scriptural exegesis remains, even if his own radical proposal of detaching the Old and the New, thankfully, never caught on. The historical and theological are rent asunder. Is it possible or even desirable to return to pre-critical exegetical methods, without of course either denying the importance of the historical method, or returning to anti-Jewish readings? Harnack’s characterization of Origen’s exegetical methods as Hellenistic is probably inaccurate. Of course, Origen and Ambrose’s methods were influenced by Philo’s methods, wider rabbinic exegesis, and Hellenistic models deriving from Homer. However, they were held together and transformed in Origen by his employing an entirely unique theological principle deriving from Jesus’ own practices and the early Church’s own practices that eventually formed the New Testament: the belief that Scripture foresaw Jesus.8 This basically Christological exegesis is evident in the Lukan account in the resurrection narrative near Emmaus. The disciples are confounded and disoriented and the as yet, unrecognised, risen Christ begins a scriptural exegesis: ‘Beginning with Moses and all the prophets … [he] interpreted to them the things about himself in all the Scriptures’ (Lk. 24.27). It was by virtue of this hermeneutic that the disciples began to recognise who the historical and risen Jesus was, materially: at the breaking of bread when they stopped at Emmaus; and hermeneutically: as the messiah that the promises and prophets foresaw. It is no accident that this scriptural hermeneutic is both Christological and ecclesial, as these were the two principles operating in its formation and reading practices. Likewise, Jesus’ teaching of the Scripture during his life, derived from his own ‘authority’ (Mk 1.22). This authority, that eventually became part of the Church’s authority to interpret Scripture, is thus central to the entire process of biblical reading. Obviously, this claim would require a lot more elucidation than I can give here.9 There is thus both a Christological and ecclesiological principle at work in reading the scripture, which is not part of the Hellenistic trajectory as such, but attained through exegetical

See Elizabeth Ann Dively Lauro, The Soul and Spirit of Scripture within Origen’s Exegesis (Leiden: Brill, 2005), although her primary purpose is not to demonstrate the point I am making. And see also Susan K. Wood, Spiritual Exegesis and the Church in the theology of Henri de Lubac (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) who follows de Lubac’s proposal that shows a line of continuity from Origen right through the medieval period, despite many differing hermeneutical patterns. 9 See the Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church (1993), available online at http://catholic-resources.org/ChurchDocs/PBC_Interp.htm (Accessed January 2012.) 8



The Bible in a World of Religious Pluralism

145

methods that derive from surrounding cultures, including the Hellenistic, to consolidate a unique reading strategy. It was the fundamental conviction that the Old Testament pointed towards Christ. And given that the New Testament begins to see the body of Christ as being the Church, Scripture thus becomes the formation of Christ, both then and now. One implication of this, to which I will return, is that it is difficult to move away from the paradigm that Jesus and the early disciples saw the meaning of Jesus and the early Church primarily in terms of the fulfilment of the promises of the covenant, as the new Israel, as having a commission to preach this good news to the ends of the earth. Furthermore, Paul in the much exegeted Romans 9–11 is, in my view, providing a reflection on this mystery (Rom. 11.25: mysterion) as to why so many Jews turned their back on their own messiah (which was in part Paul’s experience as he toured preaching at Jewish synagogues). This rejection has happened so that the Gentiles might now receive the good news of the gospel. The mission to the Gentiles will reach its consummation and the Jewish people, ‘all Israel’, will then finally ‘come in’, an event that will not happen until the ‘last days’ – whether in history or eschatologically, is difficult to discern. What this latter means is that Israel’s final coming in will be an act of God, but that in itself does not mean that witness and mission are inappropriate.10 Interestingly, this reading of Paul is also possible within a historical-critical approach, even if the actual reading of the Old Testament by the New is a separate problem for the historical-critical approach. All of the above is predicated on an assumption that mission towards the Jews will not, should not, and must not, lead to any form of pressure, coercion, or anti-Jewishness. Nor should it detract from the great gains made at the Second Vatican Council. While this is a Roman Catholic Council, it would be fair to say that the following teachings are also accepted by the World Council of Churches: that the Jews are not to be deemed guilty of deicide, that the Jewish spiritual life in so much as it stems from the Old Testament, the Tannach, can be the source of much learning and growth for Christians, and that Christians and Jews,

See Gavin D’Costa, ‘Does the Catholic Church teach mission to the Jews?’, Theological Studies, forthcoming.

10

146

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

united by their ethical monotheism should work together for justice and peace whenever possible and against all forms of religious persecution. To return to the question of the hermeneutical rules for reading the Bible, these two doctrinal themes (Christology and ecclesiology) clearly relate to my contention that reading Scripture is a traditioned process. All scriptural reading is properly done within the Church through the power of the Spirit to make Christ present in building up the Church so that she, like Christ, may serve the world. These Christological and ecclesiological principles are traditionally enshrined within the notion that scripture must be read within the ‘rule of faith’.11 This is not the claim that non-ecclesial readings are not truthful, helpful, and challenging, but a more modest claim that in the long run, the authority of reading the Scripture for Christians lies finally within the Church as it does with Christ, following from the New Testament pattern itself. This should not circumvent long and sometimes heated scriptural debates about what the Scripture teaches. That is how it should be. Nor does this make the Scripture subservient to the Church which was a particular worry to some Reformers – and of course to many a liberal Catholic. The delicate tension between the authority of Scripture and church is still being hammered out by both Catholic and Reformed traditions.12 Nor does this seal Scripture off from various hermeneutical approaches and other intellectual disciplines, but signals that the presuppositions of all approaches must also be open to intellectually rigorous ecclesiological and Christological scrutiny. This perhaps allows us to see how the historical-critical method precipitated such a deep crisis for scriptural interpretation, because for some of its history it allied itself first and foremost with a secular historical methodology, rather than per se with the rule of faith. This eventually led to it being detached from faith and then in some of its guises, inimical to faith. But it need not be like this and in the hands of various scholars it has been tamed and contextualized. 13 What then are we to say to Harnackians about a possible modern See, from an Episcopal perspective, a very similar argument in: Ephraim Radner and George R. Sumner (eds), The Rule of Faith: Scripture, Canon, and Creed in a Critical Age (San Diego: Moorhouse, 1988). 12 See for example H. Ashley Hall, ‘The development of doctrine: a Lutheran examination’, Pro Ecclesia 16 (2007), pp. 256–77, who also outlines George A. Lindbeck’s position that recognises the sola scriptura of the Reformation is problematic when dealt with in a literal and exclusive fashion. 13 See for example Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Interpretation of Scripture: In Defense of the HistoricalCritical Method (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), who is fully cognizant of the ecclesiological and Christological dimensions of exegesis. 11



The Bible in a World of Religious Pluralism

147

recovery of pre-critical exegesis? Two things at least, both of which require a lot more argument than I can here provide. First, the Christological rule of pre-critical exegesis cannot be given up without giving up what constitutes Christian exegesis. The modern exegete must face the challenge squarely of how to develop credible reading strategies that do not surrender the Christological and ecclesiological hermeneutical principles, while at the same time respecting the limits and legitimacy of historical-critical readings. This exegete must be critically open to a wide gamut of other reading strategies. If these are to be genuinely theological reading strategies, then one cannot rule out a priori the Christological and ecclesiological principles, but the theologian must, like Origen, discover how to employ reading processes be they historical, psychoanalytic, feminist, and so on, to secure these goals. That cannot rule out the rehabilitation of pre-modern exegesis suitably adapted and developed, for the principle that all creation seeks Christ, and more specifically, Israel also seeks this out, was part of that special preparation for Christ. This presupposition is part of the exegetical rules for reading the Bible. With the eclipse of the biblical narrative, as Hans Frei put it, much of this theological underpinning of the reading strategy has fallen out of view.14 What might these Christological readings look like? We can see how the canonical criticism of Brevard Childs and the postliberal exegesis (‘the Bible reading the world’) of George Lindbeck go some way to recover salvageable elements of a deeply Christological reading strategy.15 With Childs we return to a more holistic manner of interpretation, whereby the whole interprets the parts and vice versa; and with Lindbeck we are forced to understand and interpret the world through biblical and Christological categories. In both of these writers there is an implicit ecclesiology which is not quite as pronounced as I would like, but these different notes of emphasis might in part be a Reformed and Catholic issue. Obviously, strict type-casting like this is problematic, and I would need to defend this comment in more detail. In some quarters of course there is an attempt to recover the pre-critical approaches See Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974). 15 See George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (London: SPCK, 1984); Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1993) and dealing with the Jewish issue implicitly: Brevard Childs, Biblical Theology: A Proposal (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002). 14

148

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

more rigorously.16 Within these alternative Christological approaches the question of Israel/Judaism does not have a predictable outcome and only some authors would reflect the approach being urged in the present chapter.

Question 2: Does the provisional outcome of the previous discussion impact upon our reading of the ‘scriptures’ of other religious traditions? How should we read the Hindu Upanishads or the Quran, and so on? It is now time to turn to the second point which requires us to return to Ruether, for Harnack was not interested in the Jewish question as such. While not denying the rightful concern of Ruether to stamp out all forms of antiJewishness, I would question her contentions outlined above. I have attended to our disagreements elsewhere, so here I would like to move to a new point.17 If it is assumed that fulfilment theology, the traditional view of seeing Christianity as the fulfilment of the covenant with Israel, does not lead to the Holocaust, then what does it tell us about how we relate to the Jewish people inter-religiously and also, does it impact on our engagement with the scripture of other religious peoples? The main point I wish to pick up at this juncture is to argue that the principle of a Christological and ecclesiological reading of the scripture of other religions could prove deeply productive in interreligious dialogue. Before actually showing how, I need to clear the thickets of possible misunderstandings regarding what I am and am not proposing. I want to make six qualifications before explicating why this proposal might bear fruit in the future and all are concerned to retain the unique sui generis nature of the Jewish covenant. First, apart from the New Testament, we can presuppose that no other scripture than the Old Testament has revelatory status. Judaism is not on a par with any other religion, although there is a point of analogy between Judaism and the world religions, and that

See David Steinmetz, ‘The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis’, in Stephen Fowl (ed.), The Theological Interpretation of Scripture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 26–38, and essays by Henri de Lubac, David S. Yeago, and George A. Lindbeck therein. 17 See Gavin D’Costa, ‘One Covenant or Many Covenants’, Journal of Ecumenical Studies 27 (1990), 441–52. 16



The Bible in a World of Religious Pluralism

149

is the key to progressing the argument.18 Second, I am not commenting on the relationship of present Judaisms to the Old Testament. That is a disputed question within Judaism. For example some Reform Jewish movements have dispensed with halakha altogether, while some Orthodox Jews view it as a defining norm. David Hartman, a leading Jewish authority explains, One of the salient features of modern Jewry is the lack of consensus about what constitutes membership in the Jewish people. The impact of modern history on Jewish life has led to the gradual disintegration of the organizing frameworks which defined the Jewish community both internally, in terms of standards of membership, and externally, in terms of relations with the outside world … The once assumed connection between minimal faith and membership in the Jewish people can no longer be taken for granted with respect to the majority of Jews.19

Third, to refuse mission towards Jewish people is a betrayal of Jews who have decided to follow Christ, either as Jews for Jesus, Hebrew Christians, or far more significantly for my concerns, the Association of Hebrew Catholics (AHC).20 The AHC bring the question about Jewish identity into the heart of the question of Catholic identity, wishing to stress that these identities are compatible and convergent, in so much as Christ is the locus of final and historical meaning for both. Hindu or Muslim converts sometimes bring analogous questions with them when they convert and the question of the status of their previous scriptures become a question, not only for interreligious dialogue, but also for inculturation within the church. Fourth, reading non-Christian scriptures in this fashion is just one of the many ways in which engagement with those from other religions might proceed, so my focus on this one question is a facet of a complex and changing picture. Fifth, while I shall briefly look at an example, namely the Upanishads, part of the

I argue this point about ‘revelation’ in Gavin D’Costa, ‘Catholicism and the World Religions: A Theological and Phenemonological Account’, in Gavin D’Costa (ed.), The Catholic Church and the World Religions. A Theological and Phenomenological Account (London: Continuum, 2011), pp. 1–34. 19 See David Hartman, Israelis and the Jewish Tradition: An Ancient People Debating Its Future (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 12–13, and David Ellenson, Tradition in Transition: Orthodoxy, Halakhah, and the boundaries of modern Jewish identity (Lanham: University Press of America, 1989). This internal pluralism was evident very early; see Paula Fredriksen, ‘TorahObservance and Christianity: The Perspective of Roman Antiquity’, Modern Theology 11 (1995), 195–204. 20 Available online at: http://www.hebrewcatholic.org/AboutheAHC/index.html (Accessed June 2011.) 18

150

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

Hindu ‘sacred’ scripture, the process I am suggesting can also be used for looking at post-Christian scripture such as the Quran, as the principle I am utilizing is theological not chronological. Sixth and most importantly, the principle of fulfilment should not be used uncritically or divorced from the principle of discontinuity. Daniel Strange nicely coins the phrase ‘subversive fulfilment’ which is more in keeping with the historical patterns to be found in Christianity, but some of those patterns are also unnecessarily negative or hostile and Strange’s own Reformed view differs from that being proposed here.21 The guiding theological principle that justifies a Christological and ecclesiological reading of the scripture of other religions is: that which is true, good, beautiful in culture always finds its fulfilment in Jesus Christ.22 And when we read the scripture of others, in their own terms, we do find elements that are true, good, and beautiful in our terms and indeed, we are challenged by many of these findings to think more deeply about our own terms and practices. The principle here that is central to my argument is a rendering of Aquinas’ claim that grace perfects, rather than destroys, nature. In this way, the second Vatican Council decided to rather radically apply praeparatio evangelicae to other religions, which had only previously been applied to ‘Israel’, without detracting in any way from Israel’s unique status.23 My proposal is thus part of what I take to be a Catholic trajectory within the debate on other religions and their meaning. I turn to Raimundo Panikkar’s classic study, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism to demonstrate the fecundity of this approach.24 Panikkar undertook a scriptural reading such as I am advocating. He tries to grasp Hinduism in its own terms and then asks whether Hinduism in any way anticipates the God-Man, Jesus Christ. This question is only answered by a thorough grounding in classical Hindu texts, in their own context (intra-textually). See Gavin D’Costa, Paul Knitter and Daniel Strange, Only One Way? (London: SCM, 2011). See in particular Strange’s opening position paper. 22 For a defence of this basic orientation see Gavin D’Costa, The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000). 23 See Joseph Corola’s chapter on the church fathers and ‘praeparatio’: ‘Appendix. Vatican II’s Use of Patristic Themes Regarding Non-Christians’ in Karl Josef Becker et al (eds), Catholic Engagement with World Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2010), pp. 143–52. 24 Raimundo Panikkar, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism (London, Darton, Longman and Todd: 1964). Subsequent references are in the text. They are only to the 1964 first edition; he changes his view in the second edition, of 1981.

21



The Bible in a World of Religious Pluralism

151

Panikkar answers his question ‘yes’, intra-textually, through an exegesis of the celebrated passage in the Brahma Sutra 1.i.ii, which reads ‘janmadi asya yatah’, which is traditionally rendered ‘Brahman is that whence the origin, sustaining and transformation of this world comes’; in effect, ‘Brahman is the total ultimate cause of the world’. Through the centuries this important text has been interpreted differently by the many philosophical commentators in their bhasyas (commentaries). For Sankara’s Advaita Vedanta, a major Hindu monist school, the problem in interpreting this text was to retain the absoluteness of Brahman, the unconditioned reality. Bridging the gap between Brahman and the world was, and is, a major problem in Hindu philosophy. The followers of Sankara felt that Brahman’s unconditioned and absolute nature would be compromised if Brahman was admitted as the cause of the world and consequently held that this cause was not properly Brahman, but Isvara, the Lord. However, the text maintained its integrity if it was understood that Isvara, the personal God, was in fact the unqualified Brahman in his personal, qualified aspect. Therefore, Isvara becomes the link between the undifferentiated Brahman and the created world. It is at this point in the exegesis that Panikkar suggests that the solution to the antinomy of the One and Many, Brahman and the world, is better solved if we realize that Isvara is none other than Christ, the Logos, the Mediator between God and Man. Panikkar is claiming that this is a genuine intra-textual question, conducted on proper intra-textual grounds, but becomes charged in a dynamic intertextual context, when Hinduism and Christianity meet. His Christological bhasya concludes, ‘That from which all things proceed and to which all things return and by which all things are (sustained in their own being) that “that” is God … not God the Father and source of the whole Divinity, but the true Isvara, God the Son, the Logos, the Christ’. (126) Panikkar is intervening within a Hindu debate regarding the question of the supremacy of Brahman and Isvara. To further support his argument he draws upon the Bhagavad Gita and some bhakti (devotional) schools where the notion of a personal God is privileged. He is aware that in popular worship, followers adore Krishna, Hari, Siva, Rama and other gods, but he notes that in reflective stages the devotionalists often recognise that it is the same Lord that they worship, even if in different forms. Drawing on this bhakti tradition, Isvara is seen to be the bringer of grace, revealer of Brahman, the destroyer of

152

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

maya, allowing souls to recognise their true relationship with Brahman, and although distinct from Brahman, Isvara is also identical to Brahman. Panikkar ends this stunning and careful exegetical exercise drawing out its very clear theological rationale. In Hinduism, Christ has not unveiled his whole face, has not yet completed his mission there. He still has to grow up and be recognised. Moreover, He still has to be crucified there, dying with Hinduism as he died with Judaism and with the Hellenistic religions in order to rise again, as the same Christ (who is already in Hinduism), but then as a risen Hinduism, as Christianity. (17)

No one, to my knowledge, has criticised Panikkar of eisegesis or of inadequate indological training, but in the process Christians have learnt deeply about Hinduism as it is and about certain aporias that might be the places where dialogue is sought. One clear problem here is the charge, not dissimilar to Ruether’s concerning the Jewish people, of a type of spiritual imperialism or colonizing of their scripture. With Jews however, the Old Testament is historically equally the scripture of Christians as it is of Jews. With Hindus, the same is not the case about the Upanishads. This raises two interesting points. Panikkar’s approach asks questions, it probes and pushes and suggests. It reads the Hindu texts with Hindus, never forgetting that this reading is both intra-textual (in the plural, as Sankara and Ramanuja are at loggerheads about the reading of the Brahma Sutra I.i.ii) 25 and inter-textual (Panikkar the Christian is now reading these texts). It poses questions to the Hindu selfunderstanding in terms of the Hindu tradition itself and it daringly suggests that internal problems within Hinduism are better resolved within the Christian tradition or a Christianised form of Hinduism. This kind of process of traditioned-reading in engagement with other traditions of reading finds a good defence in the work of Alasdair MacIntyre.26 MacIntyre successfully walks the tightrope between taking seriously the differences between world views and the importance of finding a manner in which there can be reasoned debate between two ‘rival’ traditions. MacIntyre’s solution requires tradition See Eric Lott, Vedantic Approahes to God (London: MacMillan, 1980) for the exposition of these key internal differences. I am using ‘intra-textual’ to denote debates within a tradition about the manner of reading and the outcome of interpretations; and ‘inter-’ to denote debates within traditions. I am indebted to Lindbeck for this helpful terminology. 26 See Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (London: Duckworth, 1990). 25



The Bible in a World of Religious Pluralism

153

A to properly narrate tradition B (so that tradition B could recognise this genealogy), to then isolate lacunae and unresolved conflicts within tradition B, and finally to show how tradition A could better deal with these conflict from within tradition A, thus demanding a kind of conversion. He assumes that tradition B will also engage in such dialectics if there is a strong role for reason, even recognizing that reason is always operative within a tradition and shaped by a tradition. MacIntyre shows how this happened between Aristotle, Aquinas and Augustine in the University of Paris, and the synthesis of Aquinas, in his view, provides the best narration of the traditions engaged with at the time. MacIntyre is also well aware that every tradition develops so that a discussion with Aristotle will eventually require a discussion with every form of Aristotelian thought in the long run, so that we cannot easily envisage the wholesale conversion of single traditions and will historically see the continuous intra-traditioned debate continue even if one major element of that tradition is ‘defeated’. I’m not entirely comfortable with ‘rivals’ and ‘defeat’ as metaphors which enlist a certain militaristic form of battle, which is not in keeping with the Christian discourse of peaceful reconciliation. Even if a theologian such as John Milbank is frequently criticised for a lack of peaceful rhetoric, he is surely right to also emphasise other modes of argument such as rhetoric (understood as per Aristotle), but is wrong in assuming this negates MacIntyre’s view of rational dialectics. I think that dialogue between religions need not fall into any single pattern and can helpfully draw from a range of modes of engagement to pursue the question of the truth that is proclaimed within Christianity.27 Second, Panikkar’s engagement with Hindu scripture raises the inculturation question which has been with Christianity since its beginning. While there are legitimate questions arising out of interreligious dialogue, there are also legitimate questions which overlap, arising from inculturated converts from non-Christian religions. What do these religious texts such as the Upanishads mean for converts who are in an analogous position to Hebrew See John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory. Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), pp. 326–76, although it should be noted that Milbank here is dealing with the early, rather than the Thomist version of the later MacIntyre. And see also John Milbank, ‘The End of Dialogue’, in Gavin D’Costa (ed.), Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990), pp. 174–91 in which he continues this line and relates it to religious pluralism. For a more extended discussion of both writers see D’Costa, Meeting of Religions, pp. 3–15.

27

154

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

Catholics who as Jews see their scriptures leading them into Catholicism? There is the famous Bengali Brahman who nicely embodies this point, Brahmabandhab Upadhyay. He claimed he was both a Hindu and a Catholic and proceeded to read his Hindu scriptures religiously as seeing Christ as their promise.28 He is rare of course compared to thousands of lower caste Hindu converts to Christianity who have no time for Hindu scriptures that they regard as Brahmanical, caste-ridden, oppressive texts which fail to reflect the love of God they have found in Christ. But Upadhyay could easily be replicated in principle and practice, perhaps not to the point of dual-belonging, but to the point of recognizing that when women and men are converted from other religions, they are not asked to culturally become Europeans to do so, but can bring glory and honour to Christ and plant genuinely indigenous churches in non-European soil. Are these converts like gentile Christians who became cut off from their Jewish roots? No, this is where the analogy definitely breaks down, for the Christian can never be properly Christian and cut off from their Jewish roots – an insight that it has taken two thousand bloody years to achieve, although Paul had established this principle very early in Christian history. So there is a serious debate to be had on the Hindu front about this question which is no longer a serious debate on the Jewish front precisely because the font of the Jewish heritage is revelation, whereas this is not clearly so for non-Jewish non-Christian religions. But it might be an interesting problem were there to be thousands of Brahmabandhabs who like the Hebrew Catholics, wanted to claim something more unique and special about their scriptures. As I noted earlier, I do not think ‘revelation’ is on the table for the claim, but whether ‘inspiration’ is, in so much as a genuine preparation for Christ has taken place within those scriptures, is another matter.29 This situation See Julius Lipner, Brahmabandhab Upadhyay: the Life and Thought of a Revolutionary (New-Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999). 29 I try and develop this question in relation to the Qur’an in Gavin D’Costa, ‘The Holy Spirit and the World Religions’, Louvain Studies 34 (2009–10), pp. 279–311. With each particular religion the points of continuity and discontinuity are going to differ greatly. With Buddhism and non-theistic traditions, there is a real challenge regarding the points of continuity as there are fundamentally discontinuous ontologies: see for example, Paul Williams, ‘Catholicism and Buddhism’, in D’Costa (ed.), Catholic Church and the World Religions, pp. 141–77 (especially 160–77). Williams’ approach is of course much disputed, especially by those who argue that Buddhism’s non-theism best approximates to a form of negative theology. See, for example, Raimundo Panikkar, The Silence of God: Answer of the Buddha (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1989). There is also the interesting textual reading of other scriptures in a comparative theology mode in the series, Christian Commentaries on Non-Christian Sacred Texts, edited by Catherine Cornille and published by Eerdmans. 28



The Bible in a World of Religious Pluralism

155

does actually occur in post-Christian religions like Islam where Christian converts from Islam wish to retain their Muslim roots. These are interesting times ahead and the politics of these conversations and their impact on each other, intra- and extra- Christian, are going to be complex. But the questions must be faced.

Conclusions What I have hoped to show above is that reading the scripture of other religions can learn much from how we read Jewish scripture: as a preparation for the Gospel, with all the discontinuity and continuity that calls for, and for all the dangerous genocidal avenues it can falsely open, but also the rich inculturating avenues that it refreshingly generates and the constant discovery of new aspects of doctrine and practice that will inevitably follow. No doubt there will be error and false travel up unfruitful pathways, but this is to be expected and is the inevitable part of growth in the church. One should not be unduly vigilant against error if it blocks entry into new explorations and rich intellectual engagements. Of course, in the long run, this process of scriptural engagement, which is the focus of this collection, would require from me an assessment of alternative approaches to other scriptures such as scriptural reasoning and comparative theology which are most promising and interesting. Elsewhere, I have tried to offer this assessment, welcoming their political, social, dialogical and intra-learning processes, but criticizing their lack of missionary perspective.30 I hope readers will not think this is a stale old re-run of fulfilment theology that had its heyday in the nineteenth century with figures like John Farquhar and the like,31 and was rightly critiqued by Hendrik Kraemer.32 I certainly do For some reservations about the comparative theology project on my part, see Gavin D’Costa, Christianity and the World Religions. Disputed Questions in the Theology of Religions (Oxford: Willey-Blackwell, 2010), pp. 37–45. On scriptural reasoning see also Gavin D’Costa, ‘Reading scriptures and Scriptural reasoning’, in Catarina Belo and Jean-Jacques Pérennès (eds), Festschrift in Honour of Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald (Louvain/Paris: Peeters, 2012). 31 See the helpful exposition of this tradition: Ivan M. Satyavrata, God Has Not Left Himself Without Witness (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2011); and the equally helpful criticism of this tradition: Adam Sparks, One of a Kind. The Relationship between Old and New Covenants as the Hermeneutical Key for Christian Theology of Religions (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2010). 32 See the very adequate and able defence of Kraemer in Tim Perry, Radical Difference: A Defence of Hendrik Kraemer’s Theology of Religion (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001). 30

156

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

not want to defend a continuity line alone which emphasises fulfilment and commonality, nor indeed do I wish to defend a discontinuity line, emphasizing difference, rupture and newness, but both together, in a tension that only resolves differently according to what living religion we engage with, and where and when that engagement happens, and who ‘we’ happen to be. But I have to also admit that my argument is to some extent a re-run of an ancient Christian tradition of reading Scripture, with the added spice of taking on seriously many contemporary questions and pushing the Christological and ecclesiological mission once more to the fore. Surely for faithful Christian witness, it could be no other.

9

Traversing Towards the Other (Mark 7.24–30): The Syrophoenician Woman Amidst Voicelessness and Loss Peter Admirand The flies settle on eyes, on wounds, around nostrils, on the sides of mouths, gorging on human filth, on the dying.1

Introduction: opening steps The epigraph gruesomely portrays the depth of some losses in our world. Quoted from Chanrithy Him’s memoir of childhood under the Khmer Rouge, the scene describes the horrid conditions that her mother and other dying Cambodians endured despite being promised medical treatment by the Khmer Rouge. Technically alive, but virtually dead, they are abandoned and silenced. In this chapter I will remember the suffering of such individuals while reflecting upon the gospel story of the Syrophoenician woman (or Canaanite woman) in the context of affliction, hopelessness and voicelessness. My aim here is to uncover some viable meaning in a biblical story dominated by absence and the unsaid more than any presence or uttered words. Additionally, such uncovering can provide an example of (and inspiration for) how a peripheral, anonymous figure can still be a guide and authority to emulate. This illuminating truth is important for Christians seeking to apply biblical values in the public square. In short, we have a traumatized individual Chanrithy Him, When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge (London: Norton, 2001), p. 193. For my discussion of the impact of such testimonies on theology and theodicy, see Peter Admirand, Amidst Mass Atrocity and the Rubble of Theology: Searching for a Viable Theodicy (Eugene: Cascade/Wipf and Stock, 2012).

1

158

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

desperately seeking Jesus to exorcise her demon-infested daughter, but who must additionally persevere to be accepted as a person and voice that deserves to be heeded and healed. As David Rhoads writes, the story is also ‘fundamentally about crossing boundaries’. It is about traversing towards the other, as two strangers of vastly unequal status – a Jewish male sage (and purported Messiah) and an anonymous, Gentile woman – meet upon foreign territory, exchange words, and impact the other. To traverse contains a number of meanings, some ambiguous or contradictory. To traverse can be a movement across or through, but can also imply thwarting or opposing. There is then a sense of potential encounter and exploration, even fusion, but also of potential violation – to pass through an Other. To traverse is also to examine and so this study is also a type of traversing. The tale’s focus is predominantly on two figures: Jesus and the woman. Her name, however, like so many suffering before and after her, is lost to us. Noting that names in an Asian context often link people to their family and community, Ranjini Wickramaratne Rebera remarks: ‘By omitting the woman’s name in this story, the writers have used her while denying her an essential part of her identity’.2 Tat-siong Benny Liew similarly argues: ‘… that the episode betrays an alliance between sexism and ethnocentrism’.3 As a tale of eventual mending, moreover, it may resonate little with those loss-saturated worlds embodied in the epigraph above. Before addressing some of the above issues, let me highlight my own context and the lenses through which I will traverse this story.

Methodological trajectories This biblical journey will be read through a liberationist and postcolonial lens, acknowledging how gender, class, and ethnicity interact. As Monica Jyotsna Melanchton writes in ‘Dalit Women and the Bible’: ‘If it is good and Ranjini Wickramaratne Rebera, ‘The Syrophoenician Woman: A South Asian Feminist Perspective’ in Amy-Jill Levine with Marianne Blickenstaff (eds), A Feminist Companion to Mark (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), pp. 101–10 (104). 3 Tat-siong Benny Liew, ‘The Gospel of Mark’, in Fernando F. Segovia and R.S. Sugirtharajah (eds), A Postcolonial Commentary on the New Testament Writings (London: T & T Clark, 2007), pp. 105–32 (126). 2



Traversing Towards the Other (Mark 7.24–30)

159

life-giving for marginalized and excluded women, it is good for all’.4 Such a guide and methodology, rooted in the option for the poor, should serve us well in the reading of our chosen text. This is not the place sufficiently to justify the validity of employing a reading strategy that fuses liberation theology, a feminist-informed approach, and a postcolonial optic to examine the Bible and the world of the Bible, which is not simply rooted in the ancient past but recreates and pervades many societies today. Brief words, however, are still needed, especially in the context of this volume’s focus on reading and applying biblical truths and values within our pluralist, and predominantly secular, public square. Generally, we use terms like ‘patriarchal’ and ‘colonialism’ to express unjust inequalities from the individual/family domain to the geo-political and transnational/globalized contexts and how these various spheres often interrelate and interpenetrate one another. Most importantly, the three strands above overlap where there is recognition and naming of unjust power structures, distributions, and legal, cultural, and religious ideologies that sanction or ignore any failure to uphold the rights and dignity of human beings. Such rights are enmeshed with corresponding duties which demand just interaction with the sacredness of all bio-life. Within this all-embracing ethical worldview resides a particular focus on the marginalized, silenced, and oppressed. The biblical reading espoused here is unmoored from any fundamentalist/ literalist constraint but tethers one’s spiritual and hermeneutical reins, not to the horse of any violent apocalypse (Rev. 6.1–8), but to the humble donkey that Jesus rode during his understated entry into Jerusalem (Mk 11.7–8). Thus, the Bible should be the liberating word of God, promoting harmony and community, embracing nonviolence, forgiveness and humility, and remaining grounded in the messiness of this life in solidarity with the colonized, the poor and the peripheral. For theists, it is working for God’s reign and will ‘on earth as it is in heaven’. Those biblical texts that promote such cathartic, just, and harmonious moral values need to be heard and applied within churches, and especially, the public square. The story of the Syrophoenician woman is particularly apt in this regard. If biblical passages or biblical interpretations Monica Jyotsna Melanchton, ‘Dalit Women and the Bible: Hermeneutical and Methodological Reflections’, in Kwok Pui-lan (ed.), Hope Abundant: Third World and Indigenous Women’s Theology (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2010), pp. 103–22 (115).

4

160

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

undermine these aims, they must be highlighted, contextualized, and where necessary, rebuked. Lastly, my own context needs to be scrutinized. Inevitably biased and constricted by (among others) ethnic, able-bodied, class, and gender perceived advantages, my reading of the biblical text may not only do injustice to individuals like the Syrophoenician woman, but must rely upon such individuals as voices of authority for my ongoing learning and critiquing of my privileged worldview.

Surveying the geographical and textual terrain According to Ched Myers, the tale ‘represent[s] the northernmost geographical penetration of Mark’s narrative …’ .5 Biblically, Tyre and Sidon is the land of Gentiles, of the Other. Tyre, rich in metallurgy and other trade resources, was considered a wealthy, predominantly Gentile city whose citizens could afford the agriculture produced from Galilean (Jewish) lands, unlike the peasants of Galilee.6 Rhoads reminds us that in the opening of the Jewish war against the Romans in the mid-60s ce, ‘… Tyrians killed and imprisoned many Jews in the city of Tyre and in the villages under their aegis’.7 Depending on when one dates Mark’s Gospel, such political events may have impacted how the biblical story was retold, inscribed and redacted. In terms of its textual context, Kwok Pui-lan writes: ‘The story occupies a pivotal position in the narratives of both Mark and Matthew’.8 Bracketed by a series of healings and miraculous feedings, it is linked by bread and community metaphors and discipleship. In terms of its narrative plot, Jesus sought solitude; the woman sought alleviation for her daughter. As a character Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man (New York: Orbis 2010), p. 203. Sharon H. Ringe, ‘A Gentile Woman’s Story, Revisited: Rereading Mark 7.24–31’, in Levine and Blickenstaff (eds), A Feminist Companion to Mark, pp. 79–100 (84–5). See also David Rhoads, ‘Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman in Mark: A Narrative Critical Study’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 62 (1994), pp. 343–75 (370); and Hisako Kinukawa, ‘Biblical Studies in the Twenty-First Century: A Japanese/Asian Feminist Glimpse’, in Kathleen O’Brien Wicker et al. (eds), Feminist New Testament Studies: Global and Future Perspectives (London: Palgrave, 2005), pp. 137–50 (147). 7 Rhoads, ‘Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman’, p. 370. 8 Kwok Pui-Lan, Discovering the Bible in the Non-Biblical World (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2003), p. 83. See also Rhoads, ‘Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman’, pp. 344–5. 5 6



Traversing Towards the Other (Mark 7.24–30)

161

study, Rhoads notes that the Syrophoenician woman resembles a ‘complex’ stock character (that of the faithful suppliant) and the scene follows a basic type deemed the ‘suppliant with faith’.9 The word ‘faith’ linked to the Syrophoenician woman has been challenged by postcolonial biblical critics and will be addressed towards the end of this chapter.

One seeking solitude, another succour The Markan narrator establishes from the onset that Jesus is a hunted man. Pharisees and Herodians whisper and plot (Mk 3.6) while Jesus’ fate is prefigured in that head on a platter (Mk 6.28). John the Baptist proclaimed ‘repentance’ (Mk 1.4), but is no longer. Jesus also proclaims ‘repentance’ (Mk 1.15). The dénouement should not be a surprise. With all journeys, however, even Messiahs need respites. Hence, Jesus’ attempts to abscond and pray alone, or here, enter a house unseen. Evil and suffering, though, are unrelenting, as Jesus acutely knew (Mk 14.7). Children with deformities; women suffering from haemorrhages; the blind and deaf; victims of earthquakes, famine and poverty; of possession by evil spirits; of that ubiquitous phrase, man’s inhumanity to man – all were in ample force in Jesus’ time. Such conditions were exacerbated with war hovering over the people’s past, present and immediate future as Jew would fight Jew with the Roman army – spear and lance at the ready – waiting in striking distance. It was an era (similar to ours), rife with exploitation of the destitute, the women, the lame and the occupied. The desperation for healing was a cacophony of prayers and groans. It was no wonder Jesus sought to hear himself think, to pray or rest undisturbed. Though Jesus walks into this house alone, a woman follows him. Hers was a brazen act, risky to a woman’s reputation and safety. As Myers opines, ‘Unlike the approach of Jairus [Mk 5.22–4], her solicitation is an affront to the honor status of Jesus …’10 One can only imagine the look on Jesus’ face as he hears the woman’s footsteps, her breathing, the rustling of her clothes;

Rhoads, ‘Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman’, pp. 348–52 and 359–61. Myers, Binding, p. 203.

9

10

162

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

when he sees those pleading eyes. There would be no respite. Worse than one’s own suffering, however, is to be helpless while one’s child writhes and moans. Such witnessing was inevitably etched on the woman’s face and gestures, laced among lost thoughts and words. The Markan narrator provides two biographical details: her daughter is possessed by an unclean spirit, and she is a ‘Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth’ (Mk 7.26). Mark is clear: she is a pagan.11 In Matthew’s Gospel, the woman is immediately identified as a Canaanite, while Mark delays disclosure of her hybridized ethnicity and national affiliation (she is simply a woman first, a status which still elides with a sense of inferiority and limitations).12 In Mark, what follows is a terse, if pitiful, scene as she ‘begs’ Jesus to ‘drive the demon out of her daughter’ (7.25–6). Nameless, she is also voiceless as the narrator speaks for her, paraphrasing whatever she may have uttered. To recap: the woman is alone; the mother of an unclean, ‘sick’ child who is possessed; and a foreigner. As there is often an economic and social relation to the manifestations of physical suffering,13 she and her daughter are marginalized in every way. In the table fellowship of Jesus’ time, a daughter possessed by a demon is marked with impurity. Her attentive mother would also be tainted. This lack of fellowship is cited between Jews; (doubly) unclean foreigners are another story.14 Is the woman poor though, and does that matter? Biblical scholars are divided, especially in regards to Jesus’ initially ungraceful response to her. Is his response because she approached him, breaking social taboos, or because she is a Gentile? Sharon Ringe opines that the Syrophoenician woman may Ibid., p. 203. See Musa Dube, Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (Danvers: Chalice, 2000), p. 183. 13 Jairus’s daughter ‘is at the point of death’ (Mk 5.23), but is not possessed by a demon. The healing of a Gentile also occurs in Mt. 8.5 and Lk 7.1–10, and one should also consider the centurion’s servant ‘lying at home paralyzed, in terrible distress’ (Mt. 8.6; Luke also has him as ‘ill and about to die’) but not possessed by a demon. A royal official also comes to Jesus in Cana and asks him to heal his son ‘who was near death’ (Jn 4.46). Sickness would also be a stigma but possession by demon worse. Rabbi Michael Cook, moreover, predominantly views these Gentile healing stories in the light of a nascent group breaking away from their Jewish beginnings and emphasizing the enlightened Gentile to justify how ‘Christian’ mission became predominantly Gentile and rejected by most Jews. See his Modern Jews Engage the New Testament: Enhancing Jewish Well-Being in a Christian Environment (Woodstock: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2008), p. 217. 14 See Peter Admirand, ‘The Other as Oneself Within Judaism: A Catholic Interpretation’, Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue 3 (2010), 113–24. For an analysis of impurity in Jesus’ culture from a Jewish feminist perspective, see Amy-Jill Levine, The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish People (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), p. 173. 11 12



Traversing Towards the Other (Mark 7.24–30)

163

have represented that class of people who were a ‘source of suffering for her mostly poorer, rural Jewish neighbours’.15 Ringe quotes two Nicaraguan peasants from The Gospel in Solentiname, though she omits their names.16 Laureano from Solentiname believed she was ‘a rich old woman’. Jorge, a Chilean dissident, said: ‘She must have been an oppressor’, but then acknowledges that ‘… she also needed Christ because she had a sick daughter’.17 One can observe how the pendulum has swung from seeing her as the quintessential figure of the oppressed to a possible oppressor. While acknowledging some of the above possibilities, Hisako Kinukawa remarks that if the woman is from one ‘of the villages in the hinterland of Tyre … [t]hen she may not be so rich and so privileged in comparison with those in the urban part of the city’.18 The issue cannot yet be definitively resolved, but it adds a key hermeneutical tension, refusing inflexible labels like oppressor or oppressed. It is to be reminded that ‘there is always the Other within the Other’ as Pui-lan highlights.19 Regardless, note how there is a double absence in the text: layers of suffering and voicelessness like stratigraphy in a landscape. Questions proliferate: Where and who is the daughter, also nameless and voiceless? Who is taking care of her? Is she really possessed? How did the woman find Jesus? Was this part of her plan from the moment she had risen that day? If not Jesus, who passed this story onto others to became part of the gospel?20 These of course are all questions outside of the text. What is striking is the woman’s vulnerability, her desperation, her begging, her portrayed voicelessness. When horrific evil and suffering strike, human beings – regardless of class or status – are often reduced to such an impotent state. The chapter epigraph from the Cambodian genocide horrifically embodies this notion on a massive scale. In Matthew’s Gospel, though, the Canaanite woman shouts: ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David, my daughter is tormented by a demon’ (Mt. 15.22). Ringe, ‘Revisited’, p. 86. Quoted in Ibid., p. 93. Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname (trans. Donald D. Walsh; Maryknoll: Orbis, 2010), p. 259. 18 Kinukawa, ‘A Japanese/Asian Feminist Glimpse’, p. 148. 19 Kwok Pui-lan, ‘Overlapping Communities and Multicultural Hermeneutics’, in Athalya Brenner and Carole Fontaine (eds), A Feminist Companion to Reading the Bible: Approaches, Methods, and Strategies (Shefffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2007), pp. 202–15 (215). 20 Leonard Swidler argues that such stories support the role of women passing on (and writing down) gospel traditions (Jesus Was a Feminist: What the Gospels Reveal About His Revolutionary Perspective [Lanham: Sheed & Ward, 2007]). 15 16 17

164

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

The change in the tone of voice along with hearing her ‘actual’ words stands in stark contrast to Mark’s version. Here the victim of suffering manages to articulate her needs and anxiety. Imagine the ridicule this woman endured, the looks of shame that hounded her, the accusations that the punishment was just and fated. There are other key differences in Matthew’s account that can provide a model into the voice of the suffering and other people’s responses, a voice that resonates within many testimonies of mass atrocity. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says nothing after the woman speaks. What must have been her reaction, her thoughts at this man’s apparent dismissal of her? It would have crushed most of us. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus at least addresses her while refusing her request: ‘Let the children be fed first’ (Mk 7.26). As Bas M. F. van Iersal notes, Jesus’ reply here is doubly surprising in light of the two preceding episodes in which he seems to transcend what I would call the patriarchal and racialist prejudices prevalent in his society.21 In Matthew, however, another tension lurks: the disciples. There she is completely outnumbered: ‘And his disciples came and urged him, saying “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us”’ (Mt. 15.23). Despite these additional barriers, she did not remain silent.

Encountering children and loss, dogs and voicelessness From the above, we discover that this woman has been haranguing and pleading with the disciples. Annoyed at her or their own impotence, they try to dismiss her. Such is a ubiquitous response, which is why witness testimonies to suffering are so problematic when in dialogue with any religious or secular faith: in sight of manifest evil and armed only with a provincial, exclusivist theology or philosophy, inevitably one seeks to urge that person – or that text – away. The voices of the suffering though are rarely permanently silenced. Memory and the voices of the dead often endure through other witnesses and M. F. van Bas Iersal, Mark: A Reader Response Commentary (trans. W. H. Bisscheroux; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), p. 249. See also the biblical annotations of Mt.15.21–8 and Mk 7.24–30, in Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler (eds), The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 29 and 75, respectively.

21



Traversing Towards the Other (Mark 7.24–30)

165

survivors. Their authority transcends their passing. Hushed whispers, if not bone fragments, remain.22 Jerzy Ficowski testifies to such witnessing in the title of one of his poems: ‘A Girl of Six from the Ghetto Begging in Smolna Street in 1942’. We are not given her name, as he, too, may not have known, but that she perished at such a young age demands answers and witnessing. The poem ends: ‘Her silence / was not golden / worth at most / 3 ha’pence perhaps a carrot or whatever / a very well behaved silence / with a Jewish accent / of hunger / so she died’.23 From the gospels, recall the story of Bartimaeus. Many in the crowd sought to silence his entreating voice (Mk 10.47). The disciples perform a similar obstacle for the Syrophoenician woman.24 Aggravating the woman’s plight, Jesus replies to her: ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’ (Mt. 15.24). He uses a similar metaphorical connotation, using the same tenor (Israel) but with a different vehicle (sheep) as noted above in the phrase in Mark: ‘Let the children be fed first’ (7.26). The synecdoche of children to stand for Israel is more explicit in Matthew though that gospel employs sheep imagery and implies Jesus as shepherd, while Mark continues the use of one-loaf metaphors as the story is sandwiched between the two miracles of the loaves and fishes.25 Thus, the language of crumbs would fit with the sense that the people of God are united (as one loaf).26 As Liew writes, however: ‘Even if one understands “children” as a symbol for … those who occupy a marginal position in society, infantilization is still an insulting form of patronization at best and an extreme form of victimization at worst’.27 As children were at the complete mercy of the paterfamilias, the term is not without its problems when read with a postcolonial and gender-informed lens. In addition, Jesus’ ‘response’ is even more disheartening in Matthew, compounded by the disciples’ attempt to dismiss her. At least in Mark there Mario Aguilar, Theology, Liberation, and Genocide: A Theology of the Periphery (London: SCM Press, 2009). Jerzy Ficowski, ‘A Girl of Six from the Ghetto Begging in Smolna Street in 1942’ (trans. Keith Bosley), in Hilda Schiff (ed.), Holocaust Poetry (New York: Harper, 1985), p. 61. 24 The disciples play a similarly obstructing role as Job’s wife who tempts Job to ‘Curse God and die’ (Job 2.9). 25 See Mk 6.32–44 and 8.1–10. See also Rhoads, ‘Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman’, p. 363. For sheep imagery in Mark, see especially 6.34. 26 Myers also highlights the economic and political pressure on the community as such sharing is essential for everyone’s survival (Binding, pp. 224–6). 27 Liew, ‘The Gospel of Mark’, p. 115. 22

23

166

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

is hierarchical ordering. He will eventually help non-Israelites after he ‘feeds’ the Israelites first. Regardless, this woman and her daughter need ministering now. Matthew then states that the woman kneels before Jesus and says: ‘Lord, help me’ (Mt. 15.25). This simple but effective plea may summarize the state of individuals amidst the onslaught of suffering, so, too, individuals before the divine. There is no fancy rhetoric: her voice is direct and calm. Three words bring renewal, salvation and hope.

Surmounting obstacles, traps (and insults) Anonymous, suffused with a sense of absence and voicelessness, pushed to the brink of hopelessness by the threat of her daughter lost and the callousness of others, the Syrophoenician woman insists, and argues, and demands and challenges, even if she has to do so with God incarnate. Still, initial words do not bring immediate gain. In both Mark and Matthew’s versions, Jesus invokes an argument of distributive justice: ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs’ (Mt. 15.26). There also lurks an insult. Aruna Gnanadason contends: ‘Even traditional interpreters of these texts would consider Jesus’ behaviour offensive’.28 Citing Theissen, Rhoads explicates that Jews often referred to Gentiles as dogs because Gentiles ‘had contact with and ate things which were unclean’.29 The use of bestial imagery in naming a foreigner or enemy is attested in many cultural discourses, known through the more vitriolic and degrading instances like the Nazis calling Jews ‘vermin’ and Hutus referring to Tutsis as ‘cockroaches’. The chasm between a so-called ‘joke’ and a racial slur may entice one to contend here is merely the first type, but in this unequal power relation, when the ‘joke’ comes from the one deemed ‘culturally superior’, we must hesitate before implying this is a shared pun between equals. Regardless, what follows may be the tour de force of the Gospel, in some ways as powerful a human response to suffering as the crucifixion and Aruna Gnanadason, ‘Jesus and the Asian Woman: A Post-colonial Look at the Syro-Phoenician Woman/Canaanite Woman from an Indian Perspective’, Studies in World Christianity 7 (2001), 162–77 (163). 29 Rhoads, ‘Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman’, p. 356. See also Pui-lan, Discovering the Bible, pp. 77–8; and Ringe, ‘Gentile Woman’s Story’, p. 99. 28



Traversing Towards the Other (Mark 7.24–30)

167

resurrection are a divine one. A victim of suffering and exploitation, labelled as woman and foreigner and unclean, empowers herself in the face of ridicule and patriarchy to say: ‘Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs’ (Mk 7.28). As Myers highlights, Jesus can refute learned Pharisees and scribes, procurators, kings, and the wealthy, but he acquiesces to this unnamed, foreign, suffering woman.30 In this regard, it resembles the famous scene from Lamentations Rabbah when Rachel challenges God’s mistreatment of the Jewish people and elicits God to repent before her.31 In the Gospels, it also resonates with the woman bleeding from the haemorrhage for twelve years (Mk 5.21–42).

Mapping out the journey: who was saved, why, and how Some nagging issues remain. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus responds: ‘For saying that, you may go – the demon has left your daughter’ (7.29). What if she had remained silent or retreated after the disciples’ insults, or Jesus’ silence or curt response? Would her unnamed, absent daughter remain uncured? Was this some type of test? Kenneth Bailey argues this, stating that she also became an example to the disciples to recognize their own prejudice.32 There must be more here, however, than her use as another pedagogical moment for the generally tone-deaf disciples, bellowing, off-key. In Matthew, what is implicit in Mark is made explicit. Jesus says: ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish’ (Mt. 15.28). While her faith remains heroic, postcolonial biblical critics are valuable here, attuned to the interpenetration of mission and empire, as women are rendered as signs and entry-points in bringing the faith into Gentile land and bodies. Moreover, in Mark’s Gospel, the woman’s ‘faith’ is never specified, unlike the Samaritan woman (Jn 4.4–52). In the context of multireligious Asia, Wickramaratne Ched Myers, Say to this Mountain: Mark’s Story of Discipleship (New York: Orbis, 1997), p. 82. In discussing the passage, Myers also adds a rabbinic saying of Jesus’ time that may or may not be reflected in the text: ‘He who eats with an idolater is like one who eats with a dog’. 31 Anson Laytner, Arguing with God: A Jewish Tradition (Northvale: Jason Aronson, 1990), pp. 79–80. See also Zachary Braiterman, (God) After Auschwitz: Tradition and Change in Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 41. 32 Kenneth Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels (London: SPCK, 2008), pp. 217–26. 30

168

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

Rebera writes: ‘There is no evidence of her becoming a follower of Jesus or a Gentile Christian in the early church’.33 Rebera cites it as an example of interreligious dialogue and faith encounter where ‘there is a mutual ministry here that is often lost in its focus on what is clean and what is unclean.’34 R. S. Sugirtharajah similarly contends that the story challenges us ‘… to evolve an appropriate hermeneutic that would take cognizance of … religious pluralism earnestly and also acknowledge the integrity of the people of other faiths’.35 Pui-lan and Kinukawa also emphasize this interreligious encounter and challenge the missionary impulse (either) embedded – or forced – within the text.36 The woman clearly had faith in Jesus’ miraculous abilities: was it an exclusively religious faith? Does Jesus only aid those with undivided adherence to him (Mk 9.39)? As some of the Asian theologians above have argued, multiple faith-belonging remains a possibility for many but has never been a viable possibility in traditionally orthodox Christian churches. The most prominent issue is not the woman’s Christological position, but a daughter possessed, a cure sought. The daughter, too valuable to be a pawn in any faith-contest, should have been healed – regardless of the mother’s actions or words. In the context of the gospel as a faith journey, though, the reader is given models of faith to avoid (the pre-resurrection disciples) or to emulate (this woman and Bartimaeus, for example). Matthew’s version ends by focusing on the woman’s persistence and faith. She is the agent (or co-agent) who helps rejuvenate her daughter, and Jesus is softened here to show empathy, humility and kindness. In Mark’s version Jesus is relegated to the background. The story ends with the news that her daughter was found lying in bed with the demon gone (Mk 7.30). In Matthew, ‘her daughter was healed instantly’ (Mt. 15.28). The woman’s belief and resolve are astounding. Though Jesus had initially ignored or dismissed her, she returns home anticipating her daughter to be cured. It was a question of whether Jesus would – not could – save her daughter. She trusted that he would (perhaps, now) overlook her status as a foreign, pagan, impure woman (possibly aligned with the oppressors of Rebera, ‘The Syrophoenician Woman’, p. 107. Ibid., p. 108. 35 R. S. Sugirtharajah, ‘The Syrophoenician Woman’, Expository Times 98 (1986), 13–15 (14). 36 See Pui-lan, Discovering the Bible, pp. 79–82 and Kinukawa, ‘A Japanese/Asian Feminist Glimpse’, p. 149. 33 34



Traversing Towards the Other (Mark 7.24–30)

169

Jewish peasants). Also consider Sugirtharajah’s notion that this story is not about justifying mission to the Gentiles, but Jesus’ own conversion through the woman’s words and actions: ‘It is the evangelizer who is evangelized now.’37 While challenging the context of an orthodox Christology that maintains Jesus’ sinlessness and moral perfection, it is also a beautiful and moving way to uphold not only the full humanity of Christ, who grew in wisdom as Luke tells us (2.52), but of a gracious, kenotic God incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth (Phil. 2.5–8).

Traversing fractured, diverging terrain All authors and stories are constrained by their contexts, subjective blindspots, and universal human frailty. Here the version in Mark differs from Matthew’s, while the story is absent from John and Luke. The story would differ further if told by the woman herself or her daughter, or the unnamed disciple who griped of her intruding presence (Mt. 15.23). Of the daughter, Laura Donaldson highlights the girl’s (so-called) disability as configured through her (so-called) demon possession and contends that: ‘this extraordinary daughter displaces and reconfigures both anti-colonial and postcolonial readings of the story through her own struggle with “demon-possession”’.38 For Donaldson, the girl’s so-called demon-possession is couched as a means to silence her ‘indigeneity’ which continues to haunt the text despite biblical and missiological endeavours to silence and shame.39 Even as hauntings, such a rich multiplicity of versions lives on and continues to develop our understanding of silenced voices, while challenging supposed bearers of authority or orthodoxy.

Quoted in Pui-lan, Discovering the Bible, p. 81. Laura E. Donaldson. ‘Gospel Hauntings: The Postcolonial Demons of New Testament Criticism’, in R. S. Sugirtharajah (ed.), The Bible and Postcolonialism (London: Continuum, 2005), pp. 97–113 (100). 39 Ibid., p. 111. 37 38

170

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

Conclusion: ongoing steps The story of the Syrophoenician woman provides a message of self-empowerment and faith. It also highlights how the marginalized can be a voice of authority and how those in power need to listen to peripheral voices. It does not, however, provide a universal response and explanation for evil. The daughter’s demon is defeated, but other children languished from demons or sickness or malnourishment after she rose from bed. It is not only these ‘saved’ children but their neglected, dying brothers and sisters that must remain our focus and reference point especially in any attempt to move between a discussion of humanity and absence and a discussion of God and absence. For both seemed absent in this biblical story, at least at certain key moments in the tale and, perhaps, in the life of this unnamed woman. Yet, she endures and perseveres. Like Jacob, she wrestles with God. But unlike Jacob, no discernible limp is seen in the aftermath; instead, there is only victory: her daughter is restored to full health. And her own sense of self, her own evaluation through the eyes of the men who have ignored and dismissed her? This is a more painful and urgent question that is never raised. Her daughter lives but one does not expect her to be met and received by the disciples with equality in a passing encounter in a village. Would she even be remembered by most of them? As women continue to seek equality 2,000 years later, the candid response should invoke hesitation and doubt, even as she is included briefly in Christian tradition. This story is immersed in extant limitations and uncomfortable ethical questions (especially in light of Jesus’ initial reactions towards her). However, few readers today can easily forget this nameless, marginalized, desperate, pagan. Or rather, this courageous, triumphant mother and guide for all of us, theist or not, seeking healing despite curt words, closed doors, and the impending erasure of identity. In the midst of so much absence and loss and a tradition that forgets (or never inquires) her name, she remains tangible and present, and we are all left wanting and hoping to know so much more.

10

The Bible and Public Theology Andrew Bradstock

In 2011, as part of a major reappraisal of the country’s laws relating to the purchase and consumption of alcohol, the New Zealand government invited civil society to make known its views to a specially-appointed Select Committee. Many thousands of individuals and organizations – including churches – responded, and I want to start with an excerpt from a submission made by one church on the west coast of the South Island. (All submissions are available on-line so I am betraying no confidences!) After setting out a well-argued and generally thoughtful case for limiting the availability and accessibility of alcohol, restricting advertising and sponsorship by breweries, imposing stiffer penalties on drunk drivers, increasing treatment opportunities for problem-drinkers and so on, the church concluded its report with what it described as ‘some words of Wisdom from one of history’s wisest men’: Proverbs 23:29 – Who hath woe? Who hath sorrow? Who hath contentions? Who hath babbling? Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things…1

It is not my intention to be critical here: I commend this church wholeheartedly for making its voice heard on an issue of major national significance

Available at http://www.parliament.nz/NR/rdonlyres/B871C581–A674–4692–8204–CAAEB30B249C/ 186176/49SCJE_EVI_00DBHOH_BILL10439_1_A172292_HokitikaChr.pdf (Accessed 25 April 2012.)

1

172

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

– for engaging in ‘public theology’ – and for seeking to use Scripture to argue its case. Its approach, I suggest, is more praiseworthy than that of a church or Christian organization which, while holding the Bible as in some sense normative, may have made its case without any recourse to or reference to it, or – even worse – declined to make its views known publicly at all, while privately bemoaning the evil days in which it was living. But the way in which this specific Christian fellowship used Scripture in its submission raises, I think, some important questions about the role of the Bible in contributing to public discourse.2 Is it appropriate to introduce the Bible into public debate and, if so, how, when and to what purpose? Is it sufficient, as this particular church did, simply to quote texts and assume that that will make your point or ‘clinch the argument’? Can we take it for granted that, because we may invest a degree of ‘authority’ in Scripture, others will too? In the case of this particular church, it did not explicitly state that the passage it quoted was from Scripture, simply that it was ancient wisdom: so, is presenting insights from the Bible in that guise more likely to gain them serious attention among a ‘secular’ audience than labelling them more overtly as Holy Writ? Given that the Bible has sometimes been used in the past to support all manner of destructive and anti-human practices, might it be preferable deliberately not to affirm a particular argument as ‘biblical’? There are also questions to raise about the level of biblical literacy and comprehension one might assume on the part of potential readers: did this church, I wonder, consider whether the readers of its submission would actually recognize those words as from the Bible, would understand the significance of the references to ‘Wisdom’ with a capital ‘W’ and ‘Proverbs’? There’s also the question of why they chose to use the King James translation. Was it assumed that this was the version that most people still recognize as the ‘definitive’ Bible, despite its (albeit unsurpassed) language and literary style rendering it not the most accessible text around these days? I want, in the rest of this chapter, to explore some of these questions and look critically at the role of the Bible within the discipline we now call ‘public

Further examples of submissions by Christian organizations to public bodies are provided by Neil Messer and Angus Paddison in their contribution to this volume.

2



The Bible and Public Theology

173

theology’. What place – if any – has the Bible in the public square, and what sort of issues attend its engagement there? Given public theology’s relative newness on the scene, and the degree of confusion that still exists concerning its aims, priorities and methods, I need to offer a brief definition of it. I am aware that there is at present no universally agreed understanding of the term, and often, in the work of public theologians, an impreciseness about what the term means – though this can in part be explained by reference to its inherently contextual nature. Public theology is a global enterprise – there are now opportunities to study it, and ‘centres for theology and public issues’, in various parts of Europe, North and South America, Africa, Asia and Oceania – and so it is reasonable to expect that it will appear in slightly different guises, or at least exhibit varying priorities and emphases, in different places. Nevertheless, most conceptions of public theology do share important fundamental assumptions, such that it is possible to speak of a ‘consensus understanding’ of the term and identify its core features. In one sense public theology arose in reaction to a tendency, particularly in the United States of America, to personalize, interiorize and therefore ‘privatize’ theology; focusing attention almost exclusively on the individual’s soul and spiritual development tended, it was felt, to promote a profound indifference to the affairs of the world, whereas the gospel imperative, as lived authentically by Jesus himself, was to be salt and light in that world. It is, however, unhelpful to see public theology as primarily reactionary, since it is profoundly committed to activism around a clear objective and task. The first person intentionally to speak of ‘public theology’ and sketch out a description of it was Martin Marty in the early 1970s, and among those who built on Marty’s foundations were the ethicist David Hollenbach – who spoke in 1976 of the need for public theology to attempt to ‘illuminate the urgent moral questions of our time through explicit use of the great symbols and doctrines of the Christian faith’3 – and David Tracy, who famously argued that ‘all theology is public discourse’ and that every theologian should address three ‘publics’ or ‘distinct and related social realities’, namely ‘wider society,

David Hollenbach S. J., ‘Public Theology in America: Some Questions for Catholicism after John Courtney Murray’, Theological Studies 37 (1976), 290–303 (299).

3

174

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

the academy, and the church’.4 There is a sense in which, although the term ‘public theology’ is relatively new, what it represents is what ‘the Church’ has always been called to practise. In the United Kingdom the most significant pioneering work in the field has been done by Professor Duncan Forrester, founder of the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Theology and Public Issues and its Director from 1984 to 2000. Forrester sees public theology as having a concern to ‘discern the signs of the times and understand what is going on in the light of the gospel’, and speaks of it ‘contribut[ing] to public discussion by witnessing to a truth that is relevant to what is going on in the world and to the pressing issues which are facing people and societies today’.5 Drawing upon these perspectives, and more recent work by public theologians operating in my present context of the South Pacific, particularly Marion Maddox and Clive Pearson,6 I operate with the following definition: Public theology is concerned with bringing a theological perspective to bear upon contemporary debates in the public square, drawing upon the insights of the Christian faith and offering its contribution as ‘gift’ to the secular world.

The term ‘contemporary debates’ should not be understood as implying that theology only responds to an agenda set by others: it will also itself seek to ‘set the agenda’. It is in unpacking what might be meant by terms such as ‘theological perspective’ and ‘insights of the Christian faith’ that we confront the central questions of this chapter. Does a ‘theological perspective’ presuppose biblical content? Can we talk meaningfully about ‘insights of the Christian faith’ without including Scripture? And if the answer to one or both questions is positive, what does it mean to talk of offering Scripture as a ‘gift’? What

David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad, 1981), p. 5. See the useful summary of the origins of public theology in E. H. Breitenberg Jr, ‘What Is Public Theology?’, in Deirdre King Hainsworth and Scott R. Paeth (eds), Public Theology for a Global Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), pp. 3–17. 5 Cited in William F. Storrar and Andrew R. Morton, ‘Introduction’, in William F. Storrar and Andrew R. Morton (eds), Public Theology for the 21st Century: Essays in Honour of Duncan B. Forrester (London: T & T Clark, 2004), pp. 1–21 (1). 6 Marion Maddox, ‘Religion, Secularism and the Promise of Public Theology’, International Journal of Public Theology 1 (2007), 82–100 and Clive Pearson, ‘The Quest for a Glocal Public Theology’, International Journal of Public Theology 1 (2007), 151–72. 4



The Bible and Public Theology

175

measures can be taken to try to avoid one’s ‘gifting’ being rejected by a ‘secular’ audience? Before engaging directly with these questions, let me make two prefatory remarks: first, there has been surprisingly little written about the relationship between public theology (qua public theology) and the Bible, and hence I have a feeling of stepping into reasonably uncharted waters in this essay.7 Second, my work at Otago is intensely practical, rooted in a commitment to ‘do’ as well as ‘theorize about’ public theology, and hence my concern in this chapter is to reflect upon how practically the Bible might function within public theology as well as to engage at a more ‘theoretical’ level. When public theologians talk about ‘drawing upon the insights of the faith’ I take them to be referring to a rich variety of sources, including the historic creeds of the church, the teachings of the ‘Fathers’, and the contribution to the interpretation and understanding of the faith offered by luminaries and councils within the Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox traditions over many centuries. Some may also include the wisdom of other traditions – for example, the Qur’an has much of contemporary interest and relevance to say on economics and ethics and will certainly inform an Islamic ‘public theology’8 – though my own work, and that of most (if not all) of my colleagues in the Global Network of Public Theology, is rooted within the Judaeo-Christian tradition. And it is because it is so rooted, I would argue, that a genuine public theology must emerge from an honest and open engagement with Scripture – those texts which, historically, the Church has understood in some sense to be (or at least ‘contain’) the ‘word of God’, and which, to a greater or lesser degree, will have shaped and informed the other sources at public theology’s disposal. This assertion may reflect the Protestant Reformed tradition in which I am steeped; but it is surely difficult to define as authentically ‘Christian’ any form of theology which accords no significant place to the text held by all the main Christian traditions as (to some degree) authoritative with respect to faith and practice. In terms of contributing insights to contemporary debates – the Interestingly, some of the most insightful work on the Bible and public theology has come from scholars based in Australasia, including David Neville, Elaine Wainwright, Chris Marshall and Clive Pearson. My indebtedness to them is evident in this chapter. 8 See, for example, Zahid Hussain, ‘Contours of an Islamic Political Economy’, in John Atherton and Hannah Skinner (eds), Through the Eye of a Needle: Theological Conversations over Political Economy (Peterborough: Epworth, 2007), pp. 102–18. 7

176

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

central task of public theology as I have tried to define it – ignoring the Bible leaves us free simply to ‘make it up as we go along’, a process which might well lead to creative and constructive contributions being inputted into the public square, but which can hardly, I suggest, qualify as genuine Christian theology. As Canberra-based theologian David J. Neville has written, Whether one sees the church as a biblical people, perhaps the more satisfying perspective theologically, or the Bible as the church’s book, perhaps the more satisfying perspective historically, the reality is that those whose world-view, moral vision and communal ethos have been shaped by Christian faith relate to the Bible not only as a cultural ‘classic’ but also as a norm for faith and practice, both personal and public.9

Or as Cambridge theologian David F. Ford has put it, ‘Christianity’s core identity is inseparable from the testimony of the Bible, and its wisdom must be in line with the Bible if it is to be genuinely Christian’.10 David Neville makes the important point that, in a post-Enlightenment context, an important task of public theology is to retrieve ‘the capacity to perceive – or to perceive again – the public dimension of the biblical witness’, not least since so many aspects of Western society are premised upon certain values profoundly shaped by Christian convictions.11 I would indeed see this as a foundational task of public theology. As we have observed, the tendency among certain sections of the Christian church to comprehend biblical motifs such as salvation, righteousness, justice, and even the core teaching of Christ relating to the kingdom – and its vindication in his Resurrection – in largely privatized, individualized and spiritualized terms, was one of the factors behind the emergence of public theology; and so for this mode of theology to find acceptance within the believing community – in terms of prompting it to engage more fully and integrally in public issues – and in the wider realm – in terms of being recognized as a valid contributor to public discourse – it must convincingly stress the essentially social, communal and public focus of the David J. Neville, ‘Christian Scripture and Public Theology: Ruminations on Their Ambiguous Relationship’, unpublished paper, 2010, p. 2. David F. Ford, ‘God and Our Public Life: A Scriptural Wisdom’, International Journal of Public Theology 1 (2007), 63–81 (78). 11 Neville, ‘Christian Scripture and Public Theology’, p. 3, and private correspondence citing David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). 9

10



The Bible and Public Theology

177

biblical material. As Neville provocatively puts it, ‘[a] collection of texts that begins with the creation of the cosmos and ends with its renewal in the form of a city can hardly be said to focus on the private, rather than public, sphere’12 – and the more so, we might add, when between its covers we encounter a God who calls on humanity to steward and tend the earth, acts in history to liberate oppressed slaves, institutes measures aimed at promoting economic and social justice, raises up prophets to ‘speak truth to power’, and announces and inaugurates a ‘kingdom’ in which the powerful and mighty are made low and the poor and humble raised up. These few examples should be enough to suggest that, contrary to the impression which sections of the church have sought to convey with their excessive focus on issues related to sexuality, among the themes to which the Bible devotes most attention are the use and misuse of wealth, power and status; the temptation to serve idols rather than God and others; and the need for communities to operate within just and equitable structures. None of this is to downplay the Bible’s strong ‘personal’ message of hope, release and forgiveness to fallen individuals: it certainly has that. But it is to emphasize that there is also, perhaps as the other side of the same coin, an inherently ‘public’ dimension to the biblical narrative – to remind us, as Richard Bauckham has put it, that ‘the notion that biblical Christianity has nothing to do with politics is little more than a modern Western Christian aberration’.13 The Resurrection of Jesus, with its profound challenge to concretize the radical message of the kingdom with its themes of peace, justice and inclusion, on the basis that sin and death have been defeated, is but one (albeit egregious) example of a biblical motif prone to interpretation in highly privatized terms. I am reminded of a favourite saying of the United States activist and writer Jim Wallis: ‘faith is always personal but never private’. To affirm that the Bible is ‘inherently public’ in its focus is not necessarily to argue for its relevance to ‘public issues’ today, however; indeed, there are two distinct questions to be addressed when considering the Bible and its connection with public theology. The first concerns the extent to which the Bible can give rise to the actual business of doing public theology by having

Neville, ‘Christian Scripture and Public Theology’, p. 3. Richard Bauckham, The Bible in Politics: How to read the Bible Politically (London: SPCK, 1989), p. 1.

12 13

178

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

itself a public dimension, and that I have sought briefly to answer in the affirmative. The second has to do with whether the Bible has the resources to inform public theology, to say anything of relevance to public issues. It is to exploring this second question that I propose to devote the remainder of this chapter. On one level it may seem absurd to suggest that principles relating to governance or economic or social arrangements of nomadic Middle Eastern communities many centuries before Christ might have anything to say to twenty-first-century, post-industrialized developed nations. And if it is absurd, we shall abandon at this point our quest to identify a role for the Bible in contemporary public discourse. But what public theology will want to argue is that, while of course the specific contexts from which the Bible narratives emerged bear little or no resemblance to situations we encounter today, the essential nature of the world, and humanity, has not changed. The physics and chemistry are the same, as is the human psyche – our emotions, needs, wants, proclivities and so on. Certain basic issues and principles relating to, for example, the economic and political organization of society remain unchanged also, and can be seen to be present at all stages of human history. As the distinguished Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann wrote with respect to the global market downturn in 2008–9: while the specifics of the current market collapse are peculiarly modern, biblical perspectives are pertinent because the fundamental issues of economics are constant from ancient to contemporary time, constants such as credit and debt, loans and interest, and the endless tension between the haves and have-nots.14

The question, then, is not whether there might be points of contact between the Bible and contemporary issues – between, for example, the Creation narratives and current concerns about the state of the environment; the Sabbath and our materialistic and consumer-driven culture; calls to show hospitality to strangers and the plight of refugees and asylum-seekers; even Jesus’ commitment to bring ‘release to captives’ and the problem of prison over-crowding – these can be identified with little effort. The more pressing

Walter Brueggemann, ‘From Anxiety and Greed to Milk and Honey’, in Faith and Finance: Christians and the Economic Crisis: Discussion Guide (Washington, DC: Sojourners, 2009), pp. 5–8 (5).

14



The Bible and Public Theology

179

and complex issue is how the biblical material is to be used with regard to these issues, and to what purpose. The example of Jesus announcing he had come to proclaim ‘release to the captives’ (Lk. 4.18 citing Isaiah 61) shows the futility of adopting a ‘wooden’, uncritical position with respect to the business of bringing scriptural insights to bear on contemporary issues. One cannot simply lift verses – let alone whole paradigms or models – from Scripture and seek to ‘apply’ them willy nilly to contemporary situations: indeed, it is not helpful to try to ‘apply’ Scripture to particular situations at all, but rather – as I shall go on to suggest – to engage the two in a dialogic, conversational and altogether more ‘dynamic’ way. Before considering how that might be done I want to highlight the particular task facing the public theologian with respect to the ‘use’ of Scripture. Much scholarship devoted to hermeneutics and exploring how Scripture might ‘speak’ in the present day assumes, implicitly or explicitly, that it will primarily be ‘the Church’ undertaking the task of reading and interpreting the Word;15 indeed, some of this scholarship works precisely on the premise that ‘the Bible exists only within the Church’.16 Its focus, therefore, is on issues such as how the text can be ‘normative’ for the practice of the Christian faith, or how believing communities might ‘identify’ themselves with, say, the first disciples of Jesus or the Old Testament ‘people of God’. The specific challenge facing the public theologian, however, is to engage the Bible outside of the Church in the ‘public square’, to demonstrate its relevance to society’s understanding of the sort of ‘current issues’ alluded to above – climate change, consumerism, criminal justice and so on; and meeting that challenge requires what Bauckham has called ‘a more imaginative and creative hermeneutic’, one which enables us first to appreciate the biblical material ‘in its own culturally specific uniqueness’ and then to explore the extent to which it may suggest a ‘paradigm’ or ‘an analogy’ for our own day.17 See, for example, Nicholas Lash, Theology on the Road to Emmaus (London: SCM, 1986), pp. 75–92; Rowan Williams, ‘Historical Criticism and Sacred Text’, in David F. Ford and Graham Stanton (eds), Reading Texts, Seeking Wisdom (London: SCM, 2003), pp. 217–28. 16 Robert W. Jenson, ‘Hermeneutics and the Life of the Church’, in Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (eds), Reclaiming the Bible for the Church (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), pp. 89–105 (89). A helpful corrective to this position is offered by Messer and Paddison in their contribution to this volume. 17 Bauckham, The Bible in Politics, p. 12. 15

180

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

For Walter Brueggemann, ‘imagination’ is an essential ingredient of responsible biblical interpretation. Interpretation is not ‘the reiteration of the text… rather the movement of the text beyond itself in fresh ways’, a process as old as the biblical texts themselves – which, Brueggemann asserts, were ‘created… out of observed and remembered miracles’ and ‘in turn became materials for imagination that pushed well beyond what is given or intended even in the text’. Thus if we want to insist that Scripture is a ‘contemporary word to us’ today, if we want it to have ‘missional energy or moral force’, such an imaginative process is inescapable. For Brueggemann, it is only after a leap of imagination that we understand the Genesis mandate to steward the earth to be ‘really’ about environmental issues and the chemicals used by farmers, that the Jubilee in Leviticus ‘in fact’ concerns the cancellation of developing-world debt with an implied critique of modern-day global capitalism.18 Certainly one could demonstrate – as some of us tried to do in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008–919 – that the Jubilee narratives can prompt reflection on the wider benefits for a community when boundaries are placed on individual accumulation and measures adopted to prevent the rich benefiting permanently from the misfortunes of the poor. The concepts of ‘Sabbath’ and ‘fasting’ can similarly be shown to have relevance to current concerns about over-use of the earth’s resources and the excessive emphasis on ‘consumption’. In his book on reading the Bible ‘politically’, Richard Bauckham suggests that, while the law of gleaning in Lev. 19.9–10 made sense only in a simple, agrarian society, ‘by observing how very appropriate it was as a means of provision for the poor in that society, we can be stimulated to think about forms of social legislation appropriate to our society’20 – some of which, if we want to be specific, might relate to food items consigned to the skip by supermarkets at the end of the trading day. In 2010 a group of United States church leaders used the famous passage from Micah 4 – in which the prophet asserts Walter Brueggemann, The Book That Breathes New Life: Scriptural Authority and Biblical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), pp. 28–29. 19 Andrew Bradstock, ‘Profits without honour? Economics, theology and the current global recession’, International Journal of Public Theology 4 (2010), pp. 135–57; Andrew Bradstock, ‘Tackling economic inequality’, in Jonathan Boston, Andrew Bradstock and David Eng (eds), Public Policy: Why Ethics Matters (Canberra: ANUE Press, 2010), pp. 183–99; Jim Wallis, Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street. A Moral Compass for the New Economy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), p. 95. 20 Bauckham, The Bible in Politics, p. 12. 18



The Bible and Public Theology

181

that only when people feel secure in their society will they beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks – to exhort the Obama White House to consider tackling the situation in Afghanistan by investing more in development and infrastructure than more weapons. Borrowing motifs such as these does lay us open to the charge made by Oliver O’Donovan of plundering the Old Testament ‘as though it were so much raw material to be consumed, in any order and in any variety of proportions, in the manufacture of [our] own theological artefact’ – a practice O’Donovan wants to outlaw on the grounds that the Hebrew Scriptures are only properly to be understood as the history of God’s dealings with the ‘unique political entity’, Israel.21 Richard Bauckham, however, suggests that, provided it is read from the perspective of the New, the Old Testament can still be of value in terms of contributing to the shaping of public life today. ‘Jesus fulfilled the whole of the law and the prophets’, Bauckham writes, and while none of the Old Testament can be unaffected by that, ‘all of it, as fulfilled in Christ, remains instructive’.22 I return to the question of a Christocentric hermeneutic for public theology in a moment. To use one’s imagination to draw connections between biblical themes and contemporary situations is thus to continue a process already at work in the biblical texts themselves. As Brueggemann notes, this is what Jesus is doing in his ‘You have heard it said of old’ utterances, and other examples of teaching being intentionally overturned or abrogated in later texts appear in the Bible. Rather than something ‘fixed’ or ‘frozen’, Scripture should be seen more as a ‘script’, ‘always re-read, through which the Spirit makes new’.23 Or as Rowan Williams puts it, texts… live in the complex processes of revision, retelling and reception … the response we make now to the text does not contain or confine the meanings of God – which is why we read alert for deeper ‘senses’ of the text, and why we never finish reading Scripture.24

As David Neville observes, drawing upon the work of Ellen Davis and Michael Fishbane, within Scripture itself ‘traditions are often preserved while also Oliver O’Donovan, The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 27. 22 Bauckham, The Bible in Politics, pp. 6–7. 23 Brueggemann, The Book That Breathes New Life, pp. 29, 26–7, 25. 24 Williams, ‘Historical Criticism and Sacred Text’, pp. 217, 227. 21

182

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

being reinterpreted … the Bible itself witnesses to a process in which the preservation of tradition goes hand in hand with interpretative innovation’.25 When public theologians use the Bible they must also pay attention to their context as readers and interpreters of the text. All biblical interpreters are situated within ‘the Empire’, as Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and Elaine Wainwright have reminded us, albeit some at the centre and some at the periphery. Each must therefore ‘consider the political context of their scholarship and… reflect on its public accountability’, asking ‘Whose perspectives are validated/not validated? Whose interests are served? How does the text or its interpretation underpin or undermine contemporary ethical issues and discourse?’.26 If it is possible, as Duncan Forrester and Walter Brueggemann have argued, to identify two ‘trajectories’ in Scripture – one ‘socially conservative’ and ‘stressing stability’ and ‘the glory and holiness of God, and institutions and practices which stress that holiness’, and another more ‘socially revolutionary with a stress on transformation’27 – then public theology needs a criterion to enable it to avoid simply choosing those parts of the Bible which suit its case. For Chris Rowland it is ‘the gospels’ witness to Jesus’ which privileges Forrester’s ‘liberative/egalitarian trajectory’ in the Bible over against others, and this is particularly the case with respect to the Old Testament, ‘where all are agreed there are conflicting strands’.28 Richard Bauckham also affirms this: ‘Jesus Christ is the centre of the canon of Scripture’, he writes, ‘All the themes of Scripture converge on him and find their final and fullest significance with reference to him. All Christian study of Scripture must constantly return to him if it is to read Scripture correctly’.29 Neville, ‘Christian Scripture and Public Theology’, pp. 18–19; cf. Ellen Davis, ‘Critical Traditioning: Seeking an Inner Biblical Hermeneutic’, Anglican Theological Review 82 (2000), 733–51, and Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). 26 Elaine Wainwright, ‘Engaging the Biblical Text and Public Issues in Creative and Critical Dialogue’, unpublished paper, 2010; cf. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, The Power of the Word: Scripture and the Rhetoric of Empire (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), p. 36, and ‘The Ethics of Biblical Interpretation: Decentring Biblical Scholarship’, Journal of Biblical Literature 107 (1988), 3–17 (9). 27 Duncan Forrester, On Human Worth: A Christian Vindication of Equality (London: SCM Press, 2001), pp. 80–1; cf. Walter Brueggemann, ‘Trajectories in Old Testament Literature and the Sociology of Ancient Israel’, in Norman K. Gottwald and Richard A. Horsley (eds), The Bible and Liberation: Political and Social Hermeneutics (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1993, rev. edn), pp. 201–26. See also the exploration of the themes of ‘freedom’ and ‘order’ in Scripture, in Nick Spencer, Freedom and Order: History, Politics and the English Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2011). 28 Christopher Rowland, ‘“The First will be Last, and the Last First”: Practical Theology and Equality’, in Storrar and Morton (eds), Public Theology for the 21st Century, pp. 331–50 (344). 29 Bauckham, The Bible in Politics, p. 142. 25



The Bible and Public Theology

183

Yet as David Neville has pointed out, while public theology may wish to take as its point of departure a ‘Christocentric’ position, or some other distinctively Christian standpoint, this does not preclude ‘thin agreement’ (a term he acknowledges to be borrowed from Michael Walzer) on things that count for everyone, or at least most people. ‘Thick’ agreement, being based on dependence on a tradition, is very hard-won, Neville notes, but ‘thin’ agreement can occur relatively often. Public theology does need to be open about its starting points, but also willing to show that, distinctive as they may be, they do not preclude broader concurrence.30 To return to the hermeneutical challenge posed by the co-existence in Scripture of a rich variety of emphases, themes and models – helpfully systematized by Brueggemann and others into ‘conservative’ and ‘transformatory’ trajectories – another important principle governing how public theology selects biblical texts will be their perceived potential to contribute positively and creatively to discourse around contemporary issues. If, as we have suggested, public theology understands its contribution to public discourse as ‘gift’, as adding insights and perspectives that are ‘new’ but also positive, constructive and life-enhancing, that will of necessity both inform the selection of the appropriate insights to be drawn from Scripture, and the manner in which they are offered. If an objective of public theology is to reflect the exhortation of the prophet Jeremiah (Jer. 29.7) to the exiled community in Babylon to ‘seek the welfare of the city’, its choice of biblical resources will be shaped by that intent. David Neville makes the related point that theology’s ability to gain a hearing in public may depend upon whether what it has to say is likely to effect ‘change for good’ – which does not mean that ‘what it has to say’ must be palatable to all. Quite the reverse, in fact, for as Neville rightly says, discernment is imperative, and theology may well need to avoid the temptation of gaining its hearing by saying what people in power may want to hear. Such, in fact, may well not serve the public good. ‘A measure of the value of public theology might well be the extent to which its voice challenges

In private correspondence.

30

184

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

and unsettles entrenched structures that make injustice systemic and thereby endemic’,31 Neville claims. Given understandable preconceptions (which may sometimes be misconceptions) about the potential of the Bible to promote the common good, public theology needs carefully to consider how biblical material is to be employed. Reference to the biblical category of ‘Sabbath’, for example, may well provoke negative reactions, given its perceived use in the past to restrict freedom and its evocations of a bygone era (usually known as ‘Christendom’) when ‘the Church’ had a role in shaping cultural norms. Thus the challenge for public theology today must be to show how, in an age characterized by ‘materialism’, in which human fulfilment and purpose are defined primarily in terms of what one owns, regular breaks from the cycle of earning, accumulating and consuming can enhance the quality (as opposed to ‘quantity’) of life for individuals, families and societies. Similarly, in seeking to show how current economic debates could benefit from reflection on Scripture’s endorsement of economic systems which ensure that the basic needs of all are met and extremes of wealth and poverty are not entrenched, reference might also be made to contemporary research into the (negative) social effects of economic inequality.32 In seeking to affirm that Scripture can make a positive contribution to contemporary debates, it may be important to prioritize the ‘spirit’ of the biblical text over the ‘letter’, in the sense in which St Paul writes of the latter ‘killing’ but the former ‘giving life’ (2 Cor. 3.6). The marginal position of the Christian worldview today, the pluralist context of much public discourse, together with public theology’s intent to offer its contribution as ‘gift’, suggests that Scripture will engage most effectively in the public square through a process of dialogue and conversation. Clive Pearson makes this point with respect to the need for theology to engage with other disciplines: public theology, Pearson notes, ‘comes from a perspective which recognizes both the marginal location of the Christian faith in a post-Christendom world, and the value of other disciplines’.33 Thus David J. Neville, ‘Justice and Divine Judgement: Scriptural Perspectives for Public Theology’, International Journal of Public Theology 3 (2009), pp. 339–56 (342–3). 32 I am thinking here of the seminal work by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone (London: Penguin, 2009). 33 Clive Pearson, ‘What is public theology?’, (n/d) downloadable from: www.csu.edu.au/faculty/arts/ theology/pact/documents/What_is_public_theology.pdf (Accessed November 2008.) 31



The Bible and Public Theology

185

while theology’s contribution may be distinctive and even significant, it must be made with an awareness of the limitation of its own resources. To engage effectively in public discussion, theology must shape its contribution in dialogue with appropriate disciplines. In a recent work the US theologian Paul Hanson notes a consistency between a conversational approach and the nature of the biblical material itself. Hanson joins with others in rejecting the ‘direct application’ approach to Scripture critiqued earlier, but does so on the ground that it rests on what he calls ‘an unbiblical concept of divine revelation’. God does not communicate via solemn pronouncements of ‘abstract truth’, Hanson argues, but rather through an ‘ongoing conversation’ involving people ‘attentive to God’s presence in their midst’. For Hanson this means that, in terms of engagement in public issues from a biblical perspective, ‘we are deployed not with a timeless blueprint in hand, but with the example of ancestors in the faith who responded to the call to covenant partnership in an ever-changing world’. To bring the Bible to bear on public issues in a dialogical rather than dogmatic spirit is therefore not only appropriate in a context in which a religious worldview cannot be presupposed, but reflective of the manner in which biblical insights have themselves been divinely conveyed over time. ‘The nature of the biblical sources themselves … deprives us of the simple exercise of consulting an authoritative manual for answers to problems’, Hanson writes: Not timeless answers, but testimony to a living God involved in his creation and the people responding to his call to partnership on behalf of fullness of life for all, such is the authority to which we have fallen heir.34

Even if the Bible is used within the context of dialogue or conversation, how can we be sure, in a post-Christendom culture, that the full ‘potential’ or depth of its message will be understood? Given that part of the rationale for drawing upon Scripture is that it may offer perspectives which other voices will not be found articulating, the temptation to seek to re-phrase its distinctive insights into the language of secular discourse should be avoided. This is not the place to engage with the lively contemporary debate about the validity of using religious language in the public square (though I have Paul D. Hanson, Political Engagement as Biblical Mandate (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2010), pp. 29, 30, 32, 35; cf. Neville’s citation of Gerd Theissen in ‘Christian Scripture and Public Theology’.

34

186

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

attempted that elsewhere),35 except to say that adhering to the influential argument propounded by John Rawls, Richard Rorty and others that public discourse, to be truly public, must employ language, principles and reasoning which are intelligible to any reasonable person, and based on public canons of validity, has the potential to diminish the quality of public debate, while acceptance of such language in public discourse has the potential to ‘lift’ it. A danger of translating ‘God-talk’ into the terminology of secular discourse is, as Wellington-based scholar Chris Marshall for one has pointed out, that it will filter out what is most distinctive and essential to the Christian worldview. As Marshall says, to adopt the language of, for example, ‘human rights and human autonomy’ is to say something less about what it means to be a human being than the biblical account of humanity being made in the image of God, ‘with all its relational and spiritual implications’.36 As I and others have argued elsewhere,37 what is needed to facilitate better public debate is not the translation of faith-based language or biblical concepts into a secular ‘Esperanto’, but a greater degree of openness to confessional and values-based discourse – on the basis, of course, that it is ‘offered’ and ‘shared’ and not ‘imposed’ from above. Much that could enhance the quality of public debate, and the search for solutions to policy challenges, will be lost if biblical insights are excluded from the public square or introduced in ways which prevent appreciation of their ‘layers of meaning’. As David Neville has said, reflecting upon the extent to which what he calls ‘the biblical notion of justice … supersedes strict conceptions of justice’ by encompassing ‘notions of grace or mercy, covenant accountability, fairness … and special regard for those most vulnerable in society, even those perceived to stand outside the covenant community’: …if Christians fail to advocate justice on the basis of resources at the wellsprings of our faith, we will likely fail to contribute what only Christians are able

Andrew Bradstock, ‘Using God-Talk in a Secular Society: Time for a New Conversation on Public Issues?’, International Journal of Public Theology 6 (2012), 1–22;. See also the chapter in this volume by Messer and Paddison. 36 Christopher Marshall, ‘What Language Shall I Borrow? The Bilingual Dilemma of Public Theology’, Stimulus 13 (2005), 11–18 (14). 37 Bradstock, ‘Using God-Talk in a Secular Society’; Jonathan Chaplin, Talking God: The Legitimacy of Religious Public Reasoning (London: Theos, 2008). 35



The Bible and Public Theology

187

to contribute with respect to the meaning of justice and the means to agitate for it.38

We have already attempted to show how biblical categories such as Jubilee and Sabbath can inform thinking around contemporary issues, and if due attention is paid to the hermeneutical principles offered above, I suggest the Bible can be drawn more and more toward that place where so much of its teaching is rooted, the public domain. But there is another profoundly important and powerful way in which the Bible can speak directly into the public square, namely through story. More than any principle or dogma or concept, drawn from Scripture and carefully related to a contemporary context, stories can pierce directly to the heart of an issue, reframing thinking, challenging assumptions and exposing hitherto unanticipated truths. Story-telling was, of course, the form of ‘public theology’ undertaken most frequently by Jesus himself, and it is intriguing to imagine how, for example, current debates about the relative value of ‘retributive’ and ‘restorative’ approaches to justice might be nudged in new directions by exposure to biblical stories or narratives like the prodigal son, the woman taken in adultery, and Jesus’ encounter with Zaccheus. The power of story to lift the imagination, prompt in the hearer a search for infinite layers of meaning, and point to ‘truths’ in a non-dogmatic and non-didactic manner, suggest it may be a way in which Scripture can most effectively assist the task of public theology. Perhaps it is within the telling of such parables and stories that Jesus’ announcement that he had come ‘to bring release to the captives’ might be uttered and more readily understood. Finally, back to our fellowship in New Zealand, and the question whether they might have used Scripture to better effect in their submission on alcohol reform. It is hardly for us to be prescriptive in this matter, though clearly a variety of approaches can be conceived. Perhaps in this case employing stories might not be the best policy – one could see how the miracle at Cana, for example, might not make the desired point too clearly. But perhaps one could adopt a different angle altogether and, instead of citing biblical warnings about the dangers of strong drink, reference the guidelines found in Scripture regarding an individual’s responsibility to the wider community and a community’s reciprocal responsibility to each of its members. An important tenet of Neville, ‘Justice and Divine Judgement’, pp. 349, 340.

38

188

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

the Christian and Jewish scriptures, it could be noted, is that the fruits of the earth were created by God for all to enjoy, yet for the sake of the health and wellbeing of individuals, families and the wider community, certain boundaries should be observed with respect to that enjoyment. Individual freedom and choice are important principles, but they also entail responsibilities. From there the submission might argue that a society’s elected representatives have a duty both to protect the corporate quality of life and reduce the potential of individual citizens, particularly the most vulnerable, to harm each other and themselves. It is neither sufficient nor responsible to allow consumption of alcohol – which would be categorized as a Class II drug were it being introduced now – to be dictated by ‘market forces’ alone. Reference to the strong affirmation within Scripture and Christian teaching that individuals have the potential to change their behaviour could also be included, drawing from that the insight that counselling and treatment are often much more effective than punishment in helping people to re-orient their lives, and that resources would be better employed channelled into programmes focused on the former rather than the latter. None of this, of course, is to rule out including cautionary tales about wine’s tendency, when imbibed to excess, to lead to woe, sorrow and contentions – not to mention babbling, redness of eyes, the uttering of perverse things and the beholding of strange women; just, perhaps, to add a bit more ‘context’ to such colourful warnings.

11

The Bible and Public Policy: What Kind of Authority? Neil Messer and Angus Paddison

Introduction The question which lies at the heart of this chapter is: what kind of authority does the Bible have in public policy debates? The emphasis on public policy debates is a distinction of what kind of ‘public’ we are speaking about, which is worth noting. We are not looking in this chapter at the Bible’s prophetic role in matters of general public concern – for example, the Bible’s ability to speak into Nazi Germany or apartheid South Africa as a voice of clarity. Nor are we concerned in this chapter with the Bible’s at times baleful public influence, faithfully documented by many people1 (although we are certainly mindful of such baleful influence: go back to late seventeenth-century Scotland, for example, and one of the very public uses of the Bible would be to support the act of witch-burning). Rather, what we are looking at in this chapter is the kind of role the Bible can and does play when Christian representatives are invited to contribute to contemporary public policy debates. Specifically we will be looking at the role of the Bible in British parliamentary debates surrounding assisted dying and human fertilization and embryology. But before we examine the concrete role played by the Bible in these debates we need to orientate ourselves to some theo-political questions surrounding the Bible and public issues.

See for example, Adrian Thatcher, The Savage Text: The Use and Abuse of the Bible (Oxford: WileyBlackwell, 2008).

1

190

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

The Bible and public issues In order to tease out the Bible’s authority in relation to public issues it is necessary to pursue answers to two related questions: Should the Bible have a role in public policy debates? And how can we understand this public role theologically? What we want to do in this section is offer some points of navigation around these riddling questions – holding fast to Scripture’s publicity in the always-contested space that is the ‘public square’. First, should the Bible have a role in public policy debates? That we ask this question is one hint of how we might define our secular age – we can no longer assume that our fellow citizens will be operating with ‘the same religious assumptions’ we are.2 Our secular space is space where no one religion is dominant or can expect a monopoly of attention. Expressed a little differently, the British society that the authors of this chapter inhabit cannot be defined as a people united by a common object of love.3 In an age that sees religion as divisive and the enemy of consensus, bringing the Bible into matters of public deliberation might appear to be the ultimate spoiler. Indeed, it is not hard to imagine the opposition that use of the Bible in the so-called public square might generate. Surely, our gainsayers would say, one cannot make decisions about public policy based on the particular religious beliefs of one part of society?4 Religion, it is imagined, is divisive, particular and so inadmissible at the bar of public reason.5 Motivations for why this policy is being favoured over that policy cannot, the gainsayer would continue, be accounted for by appeal to sacred texts or religious teachings. In the articulation of John Rawls ‘the ideal of citizenship imposes a moral…duty – the duty of civility – to be able to explain to one another…how the principles and policies they advocate and vote for can be supported by the political values of public reason’.6 Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 97. See Oliver O’Donovan, Common Objects of Love: Moral Reflection and the Shaping of Community (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002). 4 So, e.g. Mary Warnock, ‘Public Policy in Bioethics and Inviolable Principles’, Studies in Christian Ethics 18 (2005), 33–41. 5 See, further, David Fergusson, ‘Faith in the Public Square’ in Bruce L. McCormack and Kimlyn J. Bender (eds), Theology as Conversation: The Significance of Dialogue in Historical and Contemporary Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), pp. 313–26 (313–14). 6 John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 217. Cited in Eric Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), p. 61. 2 3



The Bible and Public Policy: What Kind of Authority?

191

Religion, when it trespasses beyond the boundaries political liberalism affords it, becomes a ‘conversation stopper’,7 in the lapidary formulation of Richard Rorty. At the very least, the Bible must be ‘translated’ into broader principles and current themes if it wishes to be heard by a public beyond the church walls. As many have noted there is something curiously illiberal contained within this stance. A model that presumes to make space for all actually serves to exclude those who do not accept that the Bible has merely a private authority, excluding people’s ultimate convictions and practices from the public discussion of the good. For such people, in the words of David Fergusson, the model can only be ‘experienced as oppressive and discriminatory’.8 What Daniel Barber (following Talal Asad) says of secularism could also be said of this version of political liberalism: that it is ‘a particular that arrogates to itself the quality of being universal’.9 Fergusson also points to the tendency of political liberalism to thin out our role as political agents.10 If we are to engage one another with depth and honesty we need to engage with the full density of each other’s motivations. This requirement to engage with the density of our fellow citizens’ motivations is, Rowan Williams maintains, especially important when responding to a question unequivocally wrapped up with the common good, such as how we as a society should tend to the dying.11 To be sure Scripture will be one among many influences shaping a Christian response to such an issue as assisted dying, but in any meaningful encounter with a Christian moral agent the authority of Scripture will need to be reckoned with. To refuse any public role for an authoritative sacred text like the Bible would betray a monistic outlook that asserted the pre-eminence of one tradition of reasoning, or at least sustained the illusion that there is one such tradition. This is to suppose that there can be a public reason that belongs to no one in particular. We might imagine that exclusion of particular convictions and motivations is an adequate response to the challenges of pluralism. But as Charles Mathewes diagnoses, in concert with agonistic political theorists, ‘[t]he belief that “the Richard Rorty, ‘Religion as a Conversation Stopper’, in Philosophy and Social Hope (London: Penguin, 1999), pp. 168–74. 8 Fergusson, ‘Faith in the Public Square’, p. 317. 9 Daniel Colucciello Barber, ‘Epistemological Violence, Christianity, and the Secular’ in Peter Dula and Chris K. Huebner (eds), The New Yoder (Eugene: Cascade, 2010), pp. 271–93 (276). 10 Fergusson, ‘Faith in the Public Square’, p. 318. 11 Rowan Williams, ‘Secularism, Faith and Freedom’ in Graham Ward and Michael Hoelzl (eds), The New Visibility of Religion (London: T&T Clark, 2008), pp. 45–56 (46). 7

192

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

liberal state” is the response to the challenge of pluralism gets things the wrong way round; pluralism is a problem only when you have a monotheism of the state’.12 Christians in particular should be rightly suspicious of any claim that Christian textual reasoning, the collection of complex and intense ways in which the Christian tradition has engaged its scriptural writings, has to be subordinated to a rationality that resists any transcendent reference.13 As a rebuke to thinned-out models of political deliberation, Christians should insist that precisely the embedding of Scripture within a tradition of listening, reasoning, contest, and engagement is to the benefit of a lively democratic culture. Having a tradition of readers of texts accountable to one another for the readings they put forward is something that any culture committed to ‘reason-giving’ should welcome. Communities of textual reasoning invite the world to imagine a form of moral activity that is more than a naked ex nihilo,14 but is instead social and historical. We shall return later in this chapter to the contribution that can be made by communities of biblical interpretation, and the consequent responsibilities that rest upon them. Therefore, in answer to the first question we set ourselves – should the Bible have a role in public policy debates? – we would respond by saying that to not allow the Bible a role in public policy debates is to accede to a very bleak view of political culture, an attenuated vision of the world which imagines ‘there is nothing fundamental to argue about in public’.15 Although not always articulated in the language that we have hitherto deployed, one response to that question (whether the Bible should have a role in public policy debates) goes along the lines of saying that we live in postsecular and religiously diverse times, when religion has acquired renewed visibility and just as such the state should recognize religious motivations. This might be one way of plotting the recent contributions of faith groups to British parliamentary processes of scrutiny. If we do indeed live in a postsecular time Christians may well be seduced or flattered by this new attention Charles T. Mathewes, ‘Faith, Hope and Agony: Christian Political Participation Beyond Liberalism’, The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 21 (2001), pp. 125–50 (130). 13 Michael Welker, ‘Which Forms and Themes Should Christian Theology Uphold in Dialogue with Secular Culture?’, in McCormack and Bender (eds), Theology as Conversation, pp. 297–312 (298–9). 14 See Charles T. Mathewes, ‘Providence and Political Discernment’, in Francesca Aran Murphy and Philip G. Ziegler (eds), The Providence of God (London: T&T Clark International, 2009), pp. 255–74 (259). 15 Williams, ‘Secularism, Faith and Freedom’, p. 48. 12



The Bible and Public Policy: What Kind of Authority?

193

paid to the Bible, which makes our second question of this section all the more important. How are we to locate theologically the Bible’s contribution to public policy debates? Answers to this question will be found by pursuing what Scripture is in the saving purposes of God and so advancing an ontology of the text. Only if we say that this text is what it is, the word that offers to give life to the world, by virtue of its relationship to God, can we hope to trace theologically its contribution to public policy debates. In thesis form: no theological account of the Bible’s role in public policy debates is possible apart from attention to Scripture’s location in the economy of salvation. Christians can appeal to the Bible in public policy debates because the Bible, precisely as an instrument of God’s saving purposes, speaks a truth that is not private but public, a word whose universality is contained in its various historical particularities. In drastic form, for Christians, what is spoken of in the Bible is the public truth of Jesus Christ. The publicity of what is spoken of in the Bible is made visible through the church’s determination to interpret, embody, inhabit and dramatize the text. Talk of Scripture’s authority invites us to attend to the ways in which ecclesial communities, in their various ways, precisely receive and wrestle with this text as a witness to Christ. In so looking at such communities we are further invited to imagine the church as a people sustained by their pursuit of the common good.16 Theologically rendered, the Bible’s primary location is precisely in communities whose life is the pursuit of the common good, that is, to give flesh to a protean phrase, ‘an object of a shared longing that by funding certain virtues draws a number of persons to live together in mutually understood and practiced ways’.17 We call that people the church. The church, whose life is explicable by its attention to the common good, is therefore more than an interest group when it contributes to public policy discussions. For these reasons above, one of the rules for the Bible’s contribution to public policy debates must surely be a resolve to not wander too far from Scripture’s authoritative life in the church, communities whose vocation it is to The language of ‘pursuit’ rightly captures, we believe, the element of eschatological promise necessarily ingredient to Christian life. See Craig Hovey, Bearing True Witness: Truthfulness in Christian Practice (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), pp. 35–8. 17 Robert W. Jenson, ‘The Triunity of Common Good’, in Patrick D. Miller and Dennis P. McCann (eds), In Search of the Common Good (London: T&T Clark International, 2005), pp. 333–47 (333–4). 16

194

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

render the Bible ‘public’. Scripture is held within a community of engagement, interpretation, debate and performance. The church could learn much in this regard from the Port Talbot Passion Play discussed by Ben Quash elsewhere in this volume – in no way an ecclesiastically-sponsored event – as an excellent example of public enactment of the text. It is possible to say therefore that ‘the activity of exegesis is in a way just what the church most fundamentally is’.18 One benefit of this approach is that it helps us avoid the kind of ‘use’ of the Bible that is so discredited – witness Margaret Thatcher’s (ab)use of the Parable of the Good Samaritan in her (in)famous ‘Sermon on the Mound’.19 When Christian representatives present the Bible in public policy debates one would want it to be obvious that the interpretation has come from a community of readers intensively engaged with this text. In this vein, Duncan Forrester talks of presenting to the world theological ‘fragments’, fragments which might beckon all those paying attention to look to the source from which they have been mined20 – although, as some critics point out, one danger of the ‘theological fragments’ approach is precisely that the fragments become isolated from their source in the theological quarry, and the richlytextured meanings informed by their biblical and theological origins are not noticed by other participants in the conversation.21 Christian political action and deliberation are not something separate from the church’s non-negotiable orientation to the Bible. And here is another implication: if we are to draw ‘principles’ from the Bible then this should be done with the utmost caution and never in such a way that allows us to forget that ‘truth incorporates the

Charles Mathewes, A Theology of Public Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 96. To avoid misconstrual this statement of Mathewes needs to be balanced out by ensuring reference to the ministry of the Word and the ministry of the sacrament, understanding the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist as performative inhabitations of the text. 19 See Richard Owen Griffiths, ‘The Politics of the Good Samaritan’, Political Theology 1 (1999), pp. 85–114. 20 Duncan Forrester, ‘Speak Truth to Power: Theology and Public Policy’ in Richard R. Osmer and Friedrich L. Schweitzer (eds), Developing a Public Faith: New Directions in Practical Theology (St Louis: Chalice, 2003), pp. 175–88 (186). 21 Cf. Michael Northcott, ‘Farmed Salmon and the Sacramental Feast: How Christian Worship Resists Global Capitalism’, in William F. Storrar and Andrew R. Morton (eds), Public Theology for the 21st Century: Essays in Honour of Duncan B. Forrester (London: T&T Clark, 2004), pp. 213–30. For a cautionary tale of a public conversation in which the distinctive origins of religious and theological fragments became obscured, see Neil Messer, ‘“Ethics”, “Religious Ethics” and “Christian Ethics”: What Are Scholars For?’ in Maya Warrier and Simon Oliver (eds), Theology and Religious Studies: An Exploration of Disciplinary Boundaries (London: T&T Clark, 2008), pp. 149–65 (157). 18



The Bible and Public Policy: What Kind of Authority?

195

story on which it depends’.22 This is to point to the limitations of the ‘translation’ mode of political encounter – although seductive as a way of being heard it is far less good at bearing the full weight of the narrative. There is a dominant political imagination which supposes that when the church speaks to the public square it is, as a river to the sea, flowing into a more capacious space. So too there is a form of reading the Bible that supposes only when it is ‘translated’ is it expanded. Yet more perplexing to our time is the claim of the New Testament that ‘all things’ are gathered up in Jesus of Nazareth (Eph. 1.10), whose fullness ‘fills all in all’ (Eph. 1.23). In line with what Ephesians states about the refulgence and capaciousness of Jesus of Nazareth another note needs to be sounded here about the Bible’s role in public policy debates. That the Bible is held within an interpretative community, a community which has a responsibility of publicising this text, is not the same as saying that the text belongs to or is bound to this community. The Bible is God’s book before it is the church’s book. The authority which is the Bible’s only points to the authority of God’s graciousness in reaching out to his creation. The theologian Stanley Hauerwas, whom critics sometimes lazily accuse of being sectarian, was once asked if he believed in the common good. ‘Yes’, he said, ‘God!’. This sounds about right – the Bible and the church are only sanctified servants of the common good that is the triune God worshipped by Christians. This means that Christians must be careful about overburdening the offices of either Scripture or the church. When Robert Jenson says that ‘were it not for the church there would be no world’ we cannot help but ask whether the language of the church is doing too much work.23 Equally, there is a way of reaching for the Bible’s authority which, despite its best intentions, is unhelpful for understanding authority in the light of God’s revelation of God’s self. In another statement written for provocation Jenson writes that, ‘Scripture has no authority outside the church, so that we

Nigel Biggar, ‘Not Translation, but Conversation’ in Nigel Biggar and Linda Hogan (eds), Religious Voices in Public Places (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 151–93 (158). There is something curiously apolitical about the push to ‘translate’ the Bible into commonly shared principles, marking as it does an unwillingness to engage where we differ and diverge in our reasoning. 23 Robert W. Jenson, ‘The Church’s Responsibility for the World’ in Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (eds), The Two Cities of God: The Church’s Responsibility for the Earthly City (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), pp. 1–10 (1). 22

196

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

need not look or argue for it there’.24 There is a risk of confining the Bible to a kind of ecclesial captivity here. (Surely one of the roles played by the previously mentioned Port Talbot Passion Play is to warn us of what we might miss if we do not look beyond the walls of the church.) More worrying perhaps, such language tempts us to forget this side of Christ’s coming again there is a proper place for patience, for provisionality and for knowing only dimly. If we do not have a model of biblical authority that allows for some kind of life of the text outside the church will this not tempt us to forget that one of the key ways in which the church hopes (the word is not used lazily) it might find the common good is in ‘listening to and forming relationships with those not like us and with whom we disagree’.25 This means that the church can expect there to be a role from those beyond its walls to shed light on the Word. The walls of the church are porous, necessarily so. In this way, a theological account of the Bible’s authority in public policy debates needs to attend to a doctrine of creation as well as the doctrine of the church. Ephesians speaks of the church as being the body of Christ, ‘the fullness of him who fills all in all’ (Eph. 1.23). This language of fullness invites the church to see how worldliness and participation in Christ are not competitive, but rather mutually supportive. Christian political action is to be responsive (again, the word is not used lazily, for Christian action is subsequent to a given reality) to the way God and world have been brought together in Jesus Christ. Biblical authority is therefore to be found in the richness and fullness of Christian discipleship, in the sheer difficulty of living publicly, in working out what it means to say with Bonhoeffer that ‘there is no real Christian existence outside the reality of the world and no real worldliness outside the reality of Jesus Christ’.26 In summary response to our second question – how to locate the Bible’s role in public policy debates theologically – we would offer this proposal: this side of the eschaton public engagement of the Bible is caught in the creative

Robert W. Jenson, ‘On the Authorities of Scripture’ in William P. Brown (ed.), Engaging Biblical Authority: Perspectives on the Bible as Scripture (Louisville: WJK Press, 2007), pp. 53–61 (58). 25 Luke Bretherton, Christianity and Contemporary Politics: The Conditions and Possibilities of Faithful Witness (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), p. 105. 26 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics (trans. Reinhard Krauss, Charles C. West, and Douglas W. Stott; Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works Vol. 6; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), p. 61. 24



The Bible and Public Policy: What Kind of Authority?

197

tension between the trial of politics, the ‘encounter with the other’, and the prayer of the church, ‘our longing for communion’.27

The Bible’s voice in public issues When we turn to particular instances of public debates in which biblical voices might be heard, what do we find? This section of the paper will address that question with reference to two debates about public policy and legislation that have taken place in the UK within the past decade: the discussion of Lord Joffe’s unsuccessful Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill of 2004,28 and the debates leading up to the passing of the Human Fertilization and Embryology Act (2008).29 These debates offer helpful case studies for various reasons: both raised controversial ethical issues that received considerable public and media attention; both attracted a high level of engagement from churches and Christian organizations; in both cases the parliamentary committees scrutinizing the draft legislation received a large amount of oral and written evidence, the published record of which offers an informative snapshot of the debates. In addition to our opening questions, it will be helpful to keep three further questions in mind as we survey some examples of Christian interventions in these debates: 1 What is the nature of the ‘public’ that the witnesses appear to imagine they are addressing in giving evidence to the Committee, and more broadly in seeking to influence the legislative process and its outcome? (Of course, in most cases the witnesses did not address this question explicitly in their submissions, in which case the inferences we can draw from the form and content of those submissions are necessarily speculative to some extent.) 2 In what ways are these witnesses’ submissions shaped, influenced or supported by the Bible; and therefore… Mathewes, ‘Providence and Political Discernment’, p. 270. Select Committee on the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill, Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill, Volume II: Evidence (HL 2004–5, 86–II). Hereafter Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Committee, Evidence. 29 Joint Committee on the Human Tissue and Embryos (Draft) Bill, Human Tissue and Embryos (Draft) Bill, Volume II: Evidence (2006–7, HL 169–II, HC 630–II). Hereafter Joint Committee on the HTE (Draft) Bill, Evidence. 27 28

198

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

3 What explicit or implicit understandings of the public authority of Scripture can be discerned in the ways in which the Bible is used in these submissions? The first thing to notice is that in a surprising number of submissions, there is little or no explicit reference to the Bible. It seems likely that the reasons for this will vary from one Christian group to another, under the influence of varying views on such basic matters as ecclesiology, the sources of moral and theological authority and the relationship between church and state. Thus, for example, in its submission on the Assisted Dying Bill, the Catholic Linacre Centre (now renamed the Anscombe Bioethics Centre) opens with an explicitly theological statement of the principle of respect for human life, which alludes in general terms to some foundational biblical themes: The Catholic Church holds – in common with other faiths – that human life is a gift from God, to be cherished and protected. In the Jewish and Christian understanding, human beings are created in the image and likeness of God, and God’s loving care extends not only to the strong and well but to those who are suffering in body and mind. We do not have absolute dominion over our lives, but hold them in stewardship from God. The appropriate response to human suffering is solidarity with, and care for, the sufferer; it is not deliberate killing of that person, with or without request. Respect for a human being cannot be divorced from a valuing of, and respect for, that person’s presence in the world.30

But in the following paragraph it continues: ‘The Church teaches that the fundamental moral principles of Christianity are accessible to human reason, without reliance on revelation’,31 and accordingly the remainder of their submission deploys arguments about autonomy, welfare, the experience of euthanasia in the Netherlands and the relevance of palliative care that are not overtly theological. In short, this is an expression of one reading of the natural law tradition (though not, it must be said, the only one) in which the church can address ‘all people of goodwill’, Christian or not, in the public sphere, confident that the light of reason will enable them to discern the moral truths it puts forward.32 More surprising, perhaps, is the absence of any explicit biblical reference in the submission to either parliamentary committee by the evangelical Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Committee, Evidence, p. 704. Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Committee, Evidence, p. 704. 32 For a different kind of reading of the natural law tradition, see, e.g. Jean Porter, Nature as Reason: A Thomistic Theory of the Natural Law (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005). 30 31



The Bible and Public Policy: What Kind of Authority?

199

pressure-group CARE (Christian Action Research and Education).33 CARE’s website, with the strapline ‘Making a Christian difference’,34 states its mission as ‘to declare Christian truth and demonstrate Christ’s compassion in society’.35 Its understanding of Christian truth is spelled out in a conservative evangelical doctrinal basis which includes the affirmation of ‘[t]he divine inspiration of Holy Scripture and its consequent entire trustworthiness and supreme authority in all matters of faith and conduct’.36 Webpages on particular issues in (inter alia) bioethics, marriage and family life, make it clear that CARE understands its practical conclusions about these issues – summed up in its vision ‘to see a society that has greater respect for the sanctity and value of human life from fertilization to its natural end’37 – to follow clearly from its biblicaltheological commitments. Yet in its submissions to parliamentary committees arguing for those practical conclusions in relation to assisted dying and human fertilization and embryology, biblical and theological arguments are nowhere to be seen. Instead, we find ad hoc critiques of arguments that CARE wishes to oppose, non-theological arguments for the positions it advocates, and appeals to a wide range of ‘secular’ sources (including, inter alia, reports by public bodies such as UNESCO and a previous parliamentary committee, and newspaper opinion pieces) in support of those arguments. In effect, what seems to be happening here is a translation of a biblical-theological vision into an overarching principle of ‘respect for the sanctity and value of human life’, followed by public advocacy of that principle in which biblical and theological argumentation plays no overt part whatever. At first sight, such a practice of public engagement might seem to betray a lack of confidence in the public voice of Scripture which belies the organization’s own stated convictions. Read more charitably, this practice could perhaps be understood as an ongoing commitment to ‘seek the welfare of the city’ in which we find ourselves (Jer. 29.7), coupled with the judgment that the public spaces of that city are so hostile to the expression of faith that only the most secular of arguments have any hope of prevailing. But even on this reading, Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Committee, Evidence, pp. 708—13; Joint Committee on the HTE (Draft) Bill, Evidence, pp. 305–11. 34 http://www.care.org.uk/ (Accessed 4 July 2011.) 35 http://www.care.org.uk/about/vision-and-values/statement-of-faith (Accessed 4 July 2011.) 36 http://www.care.org.uk/about/vision-and-values/statement-of-faith (Accessed 4 July 2011.) 37 http://www.care.org.uk/about/vision-and-values (Accessed 4 July 2011.) 33

200

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

the ironic result is a mode of public engagement to which even the most hardened secularist could hardly object: one that adopts entirely the crudely quasi-Rawlsian dichotomy between private ‘comprehensive doctrines’ and secular ‘public reason’ too often assumed in public discourse about the public voice of religion.38 Now this could be a defensible tactic for hostile times,39 and might indeed turn out to be the best one for the times we live in; but it is at any rate worth asking whether it sells the pass too quickly. What is not made visible in such a submission is the way in which the Bible, as authoritative text, is held within an interpretative community. There is an unwillingness here to allow secular conversation partners glimpses of theological fragments capable of reconfiguring their imagination of the human condition. Put another way, we argued earlier for a kind of public conversation that pays attention to the community’s intense engagement with its texts. If other parties are completely unwilling to have a public conversation of that kind, Christians might feel that they are faced with a choice between continuing the conversation in entirely secular language and withdrawing from it altogether; and if that is the choice, then they might well judge it preferable to continue the conversation in the language they are forced to use, however unsatisfactory that may be. But even then, they should not give up too quickly on attempting to interrupt the conversation with biblical and theological fragments: this could be considered a ‘duty of care’ to one’s conversation partners, however unwilling they are to receive it. The Brethren Christian Fellowship, in their submission on the Human Tissue and Embryos (Draft) Bill, cannot be accused of a lack of confidence in the public voice of Scripture. Their starting point is that ‘Government is ordained of God’, in support of which they quote Rom. 13.1 and 1 Tim. 2.1.40 From this they infer that governments are obliged to conform to ‘fundamental

Such a dichotomy is defended, e.g. by Warnock, ‘Public Policy in Bioethics’, and critiqued briefly but carefully and insightfully by Jonathan Chaplin, Talking God: The Legitimacy of Religious Public Reasoning (London: Theos, 2008), especially pp. 29–36. 39 ‘Tactic’ rather than ‘strategy’, in the sense that Stanley Hauerwas, following Michel de Certeau, uses those terms: Stanley Hauerwas, After Christendom: How the Church Is to Behave If Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation Are Bad Ideas (Nashville: Abingdon, 1999), pp. 16–18, quoting Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (trans. Stephen Randall; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 35–7. 40 Joint Committee on the HTE (Draft) Bill, Evidence, p. 280. 38



The Bible and Public Policy: What Kind of Authority?

201

principles long established and based on the Holy Scriptures’.41 Thus, for example, for the Government [t]o even contemplate the possibility of creating human-animal hybrids or chimeras is repulsive and directly opposed to Divine principles:– And God created Man in His image, in the image of God created He him, male and female created He them – see Genesis Chapter 1 v 2742

In other parts of the submission, specific and overtly theological ethical claims are made without the biblical grounds being spelled out. For example, the submission states that ‘there should be absolutely no provision for sex selection – God’s creatorial rights must be respected’,43 but biblical sources are not cited for the language of ‘God’s creatorial rights’, nor is it explained why these would be violated by sex selection. (We are not saying that these connections cannot be made, only that they are not spelled out in the submission.) It appears from the early paragraphs that this submission reflects an increased interest on the part of the Brethren in engagement with public debates of this kind, and it is obvious that they are committed to bringing a biblical voice into such debates.44 It will be clear from the foregoing discussion that we welcome such a commitment. However, the use of biblical texts in the Brethren submission lacks exegetical and hermeneutical nuance: it often seems to be assumed that selecting relevant texts, understanding them in their original contexts and bridging the gap between their world and the very different world of (for example) modern embryo research are straightforward matters. There also seems to be a lack of nuance in the account of the roles and responsibilities of political authority implicit in the submission. The assumption seems to be that in the areas covered by the Bill, the choice facing legislators is to pass laws that enforce divine commands given in Scripture or else incur divine judgment. The submission does not seem to canvass other possibilities: for example, that in some areas the calling of legislators might not be to enforce divine commands directly, but to keep open a space (a saeculum) in which citizens are able to hear and respond to those commands 43 44 41 42

Joint Committee on the HTE (Draft) Bill, Evidence, p. 281. Joint Committee on the HTE (Draft) Bill, Evidence, p. 281. Joint Committee on the HTE (Draft) Bill, Evidence, p. 281. See para. 2.1, Joint Committee on the HTE (Draft) Bill, Evidence, p. 279.

202

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

themselves – a view that could be developed from Rom. 13.1, one of the texts quoted at the opening of the submission.45 A more nuanced style of biblical engagement is evident in the Church of Scotland’s submission to the same Committee.46 Early in their submission they set out some overarching theological themes that guide their approach, including a theological anthropology in which humans are creatures of the triune God, created in God’s image, made for life in relationship and community, and promised resurrection hope. The ministry of Jesus is taken as a Christian mandate to heal, which underpins a fundamentally positive attitude to medical research, notwithstanding any moral restraints that might be required in particular areas. No biblical texts are quoted or cited, but these themes are clearly informed by biblical passages such as the Genesis creation stories and the healing narratives of the Gospels. In places, as in the discussion of human-animal hybrid embryos, specific texts such as Gen. 1.27 and Lev. 20.15 are alluded to, though again not cited or quoted: In the historic Christian tradition (drawing on Hebrew scriptures) humans are believed uniquely created in God’s image and set apart from all other creatures spiritually and have a unique moral responsibility which animals do not have. While humans are given the task of caring for the animal kingdom as fellow creatures of God, they are not seen as of equal status to humans. Intercourse between animals and humans is also expressly condemned.47

This submission’s ethical argument is informed by Scripture in a rich variety of ways: probably all four of Richard Hays’ ‘modes of appeal’ to the Bible (rules, principles, paradigms and ‘symbolic worlds’) can be found here.48 These biblically-formed arguments are combined with various other modes of engagement, including comments on political and democratic processes, and non-theological modes of ethical argument drawing on thinkers such as Habermas.49 The Church of Scotland submission demonstrates careful and responsible hermeneutical practice, and as an example of ecclesial and theological Bretherton, Christianity and Contemporary Politics, pp. 81–8. Joint Committee on the HTE (Draft) Bill, Evidence, pp. 324–38. 47 Joint Committee on the HTE (Draft) Bill, Evidence, p. 328. 48 Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1997), pp. 208–9. 49 Joint Committee on the HTE (Draft) Bill, Evidence, p. 331. 45 46



The Bible and Public Policy: What Kind of Authority?

203

engagement with a difficult area of public debate, there is much to commend in it. If we are specifically asking about biblical voices in public debate, however, a note of reservation must be sounded. The theological vision expressed in the submission is clearly formed by a serious engagement with biblical texts, but the texts themselves are somewhat effaced in the submission. They are briefly alluded to, but nowhere do we see a community wrestling with them, or witness an extended attempt to read the texts and the contemporary problems of the Bill alongside one another. This could simply be a matter of space constraints in an already long and detailed submission, or it could reflect a judgment about the modes of argument likely to prove effective in public debate. Either way, it does mean that it is not always clear how much of the weight of the Kirk’s ethical claims is being borne by the community’s wrestling with the texts, and how much by non-theological modes of moral reasoning or pragmatic arguments. It is worth also noting one final example from the same debate. The submission by the Christian Medical Fellowship (CMF) included a briefing paper on human-animal hybrid embryos written for CMF by Calum MacKellar, which offers a very interesting attempt to reason biblically about this highly novel bioethical problem.50 The CMF paper, like the Church of Scotland’s submission, refers to the imago dei (Gen. 1.27), and to the creation of living creatures in ‘kinds’ and the biblical prohibition of the mixing of ‘kinds’ (Gen. 1; Lev. 19.19). However, it goes further than the Church of Scotland submission in offering a sustained attempt to think through the significance of the imago dei and creaturely ‘kinds’ for ethical questions about hybrid embryos. While in our view the argument is not entirely successful,51 the CMF document is certainly to be commended as an attempt to bring biblical voices into serious conversation with new and perplexing ethical and policy issues.

Calum MacKellar, Chimeras, Hybrids and ‘Cybrids’, (CMF File 34; London: Christian Medical Fellowship, 2007), online at http://www.cmf.org.uk/publications/content.asp?context=article &id=1939 (Accessed 11 February 2012.) 51 See Neil Messer, Respecting Life: Theology and Bioethics (London: SCM, 2011), pp. 141–3. 50

204

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

Conclusion What might it mean to ‘be biblical in public’ in relation to debates like these? ‘Being biblical’ suggests an accountability to the Word of God in Scripture that is not satisfied merely by quoting biblical texts. ‘[T]he right to be heard speaking about God must be earned’,52 Rowan Williams counsels, and not the least is this true in relation to being heard speaking about God in public policy debates. Exegetical and hermeneutical agility is required if we are to pay proper attention to the diverse voices of the biblical canon, in order to discern the voice of God in and through those voices. This also militates against domesticating the Bible’s diversity into neat systems – a dominant theme of this volume. The canon is itself multi-perspectival and a pluralistic space.53 This is one respect in which the submission on the draft Human Tissue and Embryos Bill by the Brethren Christian Fellowship falls short: their attempt to bring biblical voices into a public debate is certainly to be welcomed, but the submission gives the impression of treating these voices more or less as proof-texts, not giving much sign (for example) of a sustained attempt to understand a text like Gen. 1.27 (the imago dei) in its context and work out how it might speak to a genuinely novel situation – the creation of hybrid embryos – in a very different context. Being biblical in public calls for modes of intense reading that are attentive to the particular text, to the times of its composition, to the range of readings it has supported, and to the times of our reading, not in the manner of a monologue one direction to another, but in the manner of a conversation in which our context is brought more sharply into relief through the text. Looking to the Bible as an arsenal of texts runs the risk of abbreviating public debates, rather than according them respect by seeking their extension. The responsibility surely falls upon Christians to speak in such a way that public debates on ultimate goods like life and death are extended through the presence of recognizably Christian voices. As we suggested above, more responsible exegetical and hermeneutical practice can be found in the Church of Scotland’s submission on the same Bill, which is Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p. 40. See Michael Welker, ‘Sola Scriptura? The Authority of the Bible in Pluralistic Environments’ in Brent A. Strawn and Nancy R. Bowen (eds), A God So Near: Essays on Old Testament Theology in Honor of Patrick D. Miller (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2003), pp. 375–91.

52 53



The Bible and Public Policy: What Kind of Authority?

205

informed by biblical texts and themes in a rich variety of ways. Yet because its references to the Bible are for the most part allusive and indirect, biblical voices as such are only heard to a limited extent. Those, like CARE, who use the Bible essentially in ‘translation’ mode also restrict unnecessarily the range of possibilities in relation to the second part of our phrase, ‘being biblical in public’. The Bible does not only offer principles translatable into non-theological ethical arguments. Biblical texts and themes also articulate a moral and theological vision that, if brought into conversation with more conventional arguments in these public debates, has the potential to destabilize some of the taken-for-granted assumptions in the latter. For example, the moral principle of respect for autonomy is one of the most dominant themes in debates about assisted dying.54 It is often regarded as a ‘given’ by all sides in the debate, including many of the Christian contributors. Yet the discourse of self-determination implicit in many accounts of autonomy in medical ethics is called into question by a text such as 1 Cor. 6.19–20: ‘[D]o you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body’. Or again, the notion that my life is my own ‘project’, also implicit in a good deal of current autonomytalk, is questioned by another Pauline text: ‘by the grace of God I am what I am’ (1 Cor. 15.10, emphasis added). Paul casts his own life, one not devoid of suffering, on the stage of God’s graceful action through time and history. In these examples, the biblical citations are emphatically not functioning as proof-texts or conversation-stoppers. They are gesturing towards a radically different anthropology from that implicit in autonomy-talk: an anthropology in which we are to understand ourselves as the beloved creatures of a good God, as sinners redeemed by God’s saving work in Christ, and as recipients of the gift of the Holy Spirit, given us to transform us ‘from one degree of glory to another’ (2 Cor. 3.18) on the way to the ultimate fulfillment promised us in God’s good future. These texts expose the theological judgments that lurk in the ‘givens’ of public debates and precisely in this way serve a very public role. The authority of these texts can be experienced in their encounter

On what follows, see further Messer, Respecting Life, pp. 216–17, from which some of the present paragraph is drawn.

54

206

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

with the often unseen authority that clings in public debates to the way we describe such realities as suffering and death.55 So far from being conversation-stoppers, these texts are functioning as conversation-starters, opening up an encounter between contrasting visions of the goods, goals and ends of human life that is not often evident in many public debates. And since their power to open up this conversation depends on their being embedded in a ‘thick’ moral-theological discourse, it would actually be attenuated by any attempt to ‘translate’ them into supposedly universal non-theological forms of moral argument. Something of the communicative power of these texts is simply lost in translation. But this is only half the picture. We maintained earlier that an adequate reading and interpretation of Scripture must not be merely cognitive – a matter of texts and arguments – but also socially embodied. The church’s life is, or should be, made up of various acts of exegesis. This kind of lived interpretation of Scripture offers perhaps the only adequate kind of response to the emotively powerful, conversation-stopping appeals to compassion prevalent in the assisted dying debate: appeals which take it as almost selfevident that anyone with a shred of humanity will appreciate the need to cut short the terrible suffering of some dying patients. In response to such emotive appeals, an argument that is merely an argument seems almost beside the point. But a community that can live through the story of Holy Week and Easter should have a narrative of hope and endurance that will enable it to respond differently to suffering. This ought to be a community with resources that enable it to be present to those in terrible suffering and refuse to abandon them, however painful it is to remain with them. It was of course just such a Christian refusal to abandon the dying that motivated Cicely Saunders to play her enormously influential role in initiating the hospice movement in Britain – an embodied public contribution if ever there was one. Against a widespread suspicion of political theorists that to appeal to an authoritative sacred text in public reasoning can only be particular, sectarian or divisive, a suspicion sometimes treated too reverently by some who are identified as ‘public theologians’ (an unsatisfactory designation, for all theology is surely a public enterprise), we have in this chapter argued that We owe this point to Ben Quash, in the conversation after the original delivery of this chapter.

55



The Bible and Public Policy: What Kind of Authority?

207

biblical texts and themes, and the communities of interpretation and inhabitation bound to these texts, can speak to impoverished debates in ways that enlarge and extend our political vision. The challenge here is two fold. First, we have, as a people dazzled by cosmopolitan diversity, forgotten ‘how to be secular’.56 This helps to explain the impatient tendency to sideline religious voices in public places. So, how do we foster a public culture hospitable to the inevitable differences that will emerge when we encounter each other intensively? The second challenge is for the church in particular: how is it to imagine and sustain a proper, theologically-grounded responsibility to and for the world, a responsibility which responds to the Bible’s public authority?

O’Donovan, Common Objects of Love, p. 42.

56

12

Sola Scriptura and the Public Square: Richard Hooker and a Protestant Paradigm for Political Engagement W. Bradford Littlejohn

A troubled relationship The relation of Scriptural authority to social and political institutions has always been fraught with conflict and confusion for Christians throughout history. Although the advent of Lockean liberalism and the modern separation of church and state was, by some accounts, intended to resolve the tensions inevitably created by the incursion of Biblical interpretation into politics, it has merely altered the terms of the debate. As the existence of a Christian consensus underlying Western politics has ebbed in the last century, conflicts have emerged between Christians accepting exile from the public sphere, and those seeking readmittance by fair means or foul. Although present in most Western countries, this debate has been particularly pronounced in the United States of America, where the failure of Christian faith to die away has intensified tensions between a culture steeped in the Bible and a political arena from which it is ostensibly supposed to be absent. Its story thus offers us a useful case study for exploring the role of the Bible in politics. Early in the twentieth century, Walter Rauschenbusch and others proclaimed a ‘social Gospel’, which combined platitudinous appeals to Scripture with prevailing moral sensibilities in an optimistic call for an end to poverty, war and alcohol.1 Although the specific causes they championed may have been To be fair, Rauschenbusch, far more than most, took the Bible fairly seriously as a source for social ethics, though even he admitted that he only turned to Scripture ‘in order to find a basis for the Christian teaching of a social gospel’ (Glenn C. Altschuler, ‘Walter Rauschenbusch: Theology, the

1

210

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

new, the basic ethos of the movement was anything but, continuing American Protestantism’s heady mixture of robust faith in the Bible and common sense, progressive (even utopian) optimism, and a vague anti-intellectualism determined to deploy Scripture for the cure of social ills, however shaky the exegetical foundation.2 Nonetheless, the social gospel’s marriage with theological liberalism prompted a fundamentalist backlash that decried the whole enterprise. Conservative leaders such as J. Gresham Machen accused it of prostituting the distinctive message of Scripture to an agenda that borrowed liberally from the zeitgeist of the age: The truth is that the life-purpose of Jesus discovered by modern liberalism is not the life-purpose of the real Jesus, but merely represents those elements in the teaching of Jesus – isolated and misinterpreted – which happen to agree with the modern program. It is not Jesus, then, who is the real authority, but the modern principle by which the selection within Jesus’ recorded teaching has been made.3

To safeguard the integrity of the Bible, it was necessary to confine it within the four walls of the church – or sect, as we might more accurately term Machen’s conception.4 On the other hand, more liberal figures such as Reinhold Niebuhr contended that such moralism, while suitable and desirable for individual ethics, was simply naïve when applied to political entities, which must meet force with force and be governed with a hard–headed realism.5



2



3 4



5

Church, and the Social Gospel’, in Martin E. Marty [ed.], Protestantism and Social Christianity [Munich: K. G. Saur, 1992], pp. 133–44 [142]). On the more liberal end of the spectrum could be found famous New York preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick, who propounded the social gospel in many widely published sermons thick on diagnosis of social ills but thin on Scripture. See, for instance, The Power to See it Through: Twenty–Five Sermons on Christianity To–day (London: SCM, 1935). Several fine historians have recently traced the deep roots of this mindset, ‘a compound of evangelical Protestant religion, republican political ideology, and commonsense moral reasoning’, (Mark Noll, America’s God [New York: Oxford University Press, 2002], p. 9) back into the nineteenth (George Marsden, The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience [Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2003]), eighteenth (Noll, America’s God) and seventeenth (D. G. Hart, A Secular Faith: Why Christianity Favors the Separation of Church and State [Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006], pp. 19–45) centuries. J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009 [1923]), p. 66. Machen was steeped in Southern Presbyterianism’s doctrine of ‘the spirituality of the church’ (see Hart, A Secular Faith, pp. 117–19), which distinguished sharply between the strictly spiritual concerns of the church and the secular field of political affairs, which Scripture was not taken to address. Machen would thus argue, for instance, shocking many of his fundamentalist allies, against retaining Christian prayers and teachings in public schools (D. G. Hart, The Lost Soul of American Protestantism [Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002], pp. 92–4). See especially Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society (repr., New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1960 [1932]).



Sola Scriptura and the Public Square

211

Although Niebuhr probably did not intend to conclude thereby that the Bible had nothing useful to say to politics,6 the stern cynicism of his doctrine proved congenial to the rising mindset of realpolitik in the Cold War era, which still comfortably co-exists on the American Right with the presence of born-again evangelicalism. By the late twentieth century, the landscape had grown considerably more complicated. Still to be heard were liberal voices, now less assertively seeking to bring Scripture into ‘dialogue’ with the concerns of the age, presenting it as a text among texts that could be mined for messages of liberation and prophetic critique of the powerful, though itself open to critique where its message was not up-to-date.7 But the fervour and optimism of the early social Gospellers now largely belonged to conservatives8 – ‘fundamentalists’ of various stripes who were eager to use the Bible as a litmus test for good public policy, on issues ranging from abortion to education to taxation.9 A rarer and more sophisticated breed, common in some conservative Reformed circles, sought to revive the conviction of early Scots Presbyterians that the Old Testament judicial law, with a few minor adjustments, provided a blueprint for civil law in the Christian era, and they published extensively critiquing US

For a more sympathetic assessment, see John E. Smith, ‘Niebuhr’s Prophetic Voice’, in Daniel F. Rice (ed.), Reinhold Niebuhr Revisited: Engagements with an American Original (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), pp. 39–54. 7 Of course, this describes something of an ideal type, within which assessments of Scripture’s value for social ethics range from the pessimism of Adrian Thatcher in his recent The Savage Text (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2008), to the more optimistic attempts of recent work on Paul and Empire, such as we see in the volumes edited by Richard Horsley, Paul and Politics (London: Continuum, 2000), and Paul and the Roman Imperial Order (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press Intl., 2004). Even these latter, however, are often quite ambivalent about the moral value of the Biblical text (e.g. Schüssler Fiorenza’s essay in the former volume, ‘Paul and the Politics of Interpretation’, pp. 40–57). 8 Indeed, as hinted earlier, this transformation is not all that surprising, given evangelicalism’s long nineteenth-century track record of social and political activism, from which the 1920s retreat into sectarianism was something of a historical blip. D. G. Hart in particular has chronicled the story of twentieth-century evanglicalism’s relationship to American politics, in chs. 3 and 5 of That Old– Time Religion in Modern America: Evangelical Protestantism in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002). 9 A particularly egregious recent example is evangelical leader Wayne Grudem’s recent 624–page tome, Politics According to the Bible: A Comprehensive Resource for Understanding Modern Political Issues in Light of Scripture (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), which sports section headings such as ‘Limiting the Power of the Courts by Appointing “Originalist” Judges is the Most Important Issue Facing the Nation Today’ and ‘A School Voucher System Should Be Adopted by Every School District’, not to mention arguments on why the US should feel free to continue to waterboard Guantanamo detainees (pp. 425–33), use nuclear weapons as deterrents (pp. 418–24), and support Israel (pp. 457–70). As these latter examples suggest, the greatest problem with evangelicalism’s biblicist invasion of politics is actually its striking lack of genuine Biblical content. 6

212

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

political policy from this perspective and suggesting ‘theonomic’ solutions.10 Oddly enough, whereas the earlier social Gospellers had tended to espouse mostly left-wing political causes, fundamentalists and theonomists have been staunchly right-wing. Again, critics have not been hard to find. Among the most interesting have been a group from within the ultra-conservative wing of the Reformed tradition, who have defined themselves in reaction to both their fundamentalist and theonomic neighbors in arguing for a ‘Reformed two kingdoms’ perspective. In its most radical form, this theological proposal, related to that of Machen mentioned above, asserts that Protestantism does not merely teach sola Scriptura and the lordship of Christ over all things, but teaches that there are in fact two radically distinct kingdoms – a spiritual kingdom, the Church, which is governed by Christ exclusively and authoritatively by Scripture, and a civil kingdom, the state and civil society, which is governed by God through natural law without Scripture.11 They wish to retain all the rigour and literalism of a fundamentalist approach to the Bible, but only within the four walls of the church; outside of spiritual, ‘redemptive’ concerns, Scripture simply does not speak authoritatively, and should not be made to speak. Political society does have God-given norms to govern it, but these can be ascertained without the aid of Scripture, constituting a common ground conception of justice and civility around which all people can unite. Christians should not disrupt the integrity of this sphere by dragging Scripture with them into it.

The ‘theonomist’ or ‘Christian Reconstructionist’ movement, odd as it may seem to outsiders, wielded wide influence within many conservative North American Reformed circles between the 1960s and 1990s, seeking to offer an uncompromisingly thorough alternative to the platitudinous use of Scripture in politics by both liberals and evangelicals. Key texts include R. J. Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973), Greg Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics (Nacogdoches, TX: Covenant Media Press, 1977), and Gary North (ed.), Theonomy: An Informed Response (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1991). Nor was this movement altogether novel, as Steven Wedgeworth has shown in ‘“The Two Sons of Oil” and the Limits of American Religious Dissent,’ Journal of Law and Religion 27.1 (2012), pp. 141–62, analyzing the presence of Scots Covenanter convictions in early American civil life. 11 See especially chs. 6–9 of Hart, A Secular Faith, and David VanDrunen, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms (ed. John Witte, Jr.; Emory University Studies in Law and Religion; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), and Living in God’s Two Kingdoms (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010). 10



Sola Scriptura and the Public Square

213

The Puritan problem Now, having set up the narrative this way, you will not be surprised to learn that I do not consider any of these trajectories a satisfactory articulation of the proper relation of Scriptural authority to the public sphere. The use of the phrase ‘Scriptural authority’ is key here, for it rules out paradigms which seek to make Scripture merely a text among texts. If this is so, it has lost its peculiar character as Scripture – which is that of being authoritative, claiming to have the ability to adjudicate between and pass judgment upon other texts. The key problem with fundamentalism, then, is not that it claims that Scripture has something to say to politics, or even that it claims that Scripture has a great deal to say about politics. The problem is that Scripture becomes a blunt instrument, a self-interpreting standard that demands a particular political result, and that will be repeatedly used to club the relevant authorities until they come into line. In many cases, this is simply a result of ignorance – ignorance of the interpretive complexities of Scripture itself, and of the complex riddles of particular political circumstances. But often, I suggest, and more seriously, it stems from a more fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of God, humanity, and revelation, and unfortunately the Reformed two kingdoms theorists offer no real answer because they share this basic flaw. The flaw in question is what I will label the ‘Puritan impulse’, recognizing that this may do injustice to many fine Puritans over the centuries, but defensible because it appears most starkly in many assumptions of the Elizabethan Puritans and their theological heirs.12 To put it in a nutshell, the Puritans tended to feel that for God to be exalted, humans had to be abased.13 The These assumptions are systematically unmasked and critiqued in Book II of Hooker’s Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity. Any who are tempted to be suspicious that Hooker’s sketch (or mine here) is a caricature may be reassured by consulting the most representative writings of Elizabethan Puritanism, Thomas Cartwright’s engagement with John Whitgift, in John Ayre (ed.), The Works of John Whitgift, D.D. (Cambridge: The Parker Society, 1851–53), or the admirably concise précis in C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama (ed. F. P. Wilson and Bonamy Dobree; The Oxford History of English Literature, 3; Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1954), pp. 444–9. 13 Although dealing primarily with soteriological issues, leading Reformed theologian Michael Horton has traced this same temptation within the Reformed tradition in a recent paper, ‘Let the Earth Bring Forth: The Spirit and Human Agency in Sanctification’ (Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference, 2011, Edinburgh, UK; unpublished conference paper). One notable instance of this tendency, which Horton cites, appears in Jonathan Edwards’s occasionalist metaphysics, which tended to make all creaturely actions and phenomena the result of direct and immediate divine causation. 12

214

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

extreme form of this appeared in the hyper-Calvinist doctrine that in order for God to reap the full glory of his sole sovereignty, sinners could not claim ‘credit’ even for their own damnation, which was to be ascribed exclusively to the divine will.14 Divine action and human action were completely irreconcilable, and the former must be emphasized at the expense of the latter. This meant that any account of authority tended to be rather one-dimensional. In rejecting the authority of the Pope and reasserting the authority of God exercised through Scripture, the Puritans liked to think that they were doing away with, as much as possible, any kind of human authority. Human authority, to the extent it must exist, must be merely a passive channel for divine action.15 A church minister could not teach, institute or publicly enact anything without the express warrant of Scripture. Revelation must be conceived as extrinsic and arbitrary, depending as little as possible on prior human understandings. On any subject about which Scripture might speak, it must speak, and it must speak exclusively and with such detail as to leave little or no latitude for prudential application.16 To say anything else is to raise up human authority in competition with God, to raise up reason in competition with Scripture. The Reformed two kingdoms theorists tend to share this legalistic conception of Scriptural authority; they merely tend to artificially limit this authority to the institutional Church, cutting Scripture off from the concerns of daily life and social ethics with which it is clearly so deeply concerned.17

For a narrative of the predestinarian extremes to which the Cambridge Puritans had gone in the 1590s (which engendered the theological dispute that led to the 1597 Lambeth Articles), see Peter Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), Ch. 9. 15 ‘The basic urge behind this style of reasoning seems to have been the reduction of all purely human authorities to a merely instrumental role in the definition of right doctrine. All human powers were to be effaced before the sovereignty of scripture’ (Lake, Moderate Puritans, p. 101). 16 Thus Thomas Cartwright would contend that, if Christ loved the Church, and blessed her even more than God blessed Israel, it must follow that Christ should have left an even more detailed code of law for Church order and practice than the law code given to Israel (Works of John Whitgift I: 264–7, II: 90). 17 See, for instance, VanDrunen’s defence of nineteenth-century Presbyterian James H. Thornwell’s use of the doctrine of Christian liberty, in Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms, pp. 256–67. 14



Sola Scriptura and the Public Square

215

Richard Hooker and the two realms Now, if these misapprehensions of sola Scriptura are, in many ways, the legacy of Elizabethan Puritanism, who better to propose as a solution than the gentle yet merciless hammer of Puritanism, the great Reformed and Anglican divine Richard Hooker? What the case required, argued Hooker, was a satisfactory harmonization of divine and human authority, revealed law and natural law, and a supple sense of the ways in which law related to the ever-changing exigencies of socio-political life. This enables us to guard against the kind of sola Scripturism that tends to deploy Scripture indiscriminately in all areas of human life without falling prey to the temptation to banish Scripture from the playing field, restraining our political utterances only to neutral universal principles. In response to Puritan biblicism, Hooker sought to re-appropriate the resources of medieval scholasticism (Aquinas especially) for a Protestantism that was in danger, he thought, of throwing the baby out with the bathwater in its rejection of all things Romish. However, despite the impressions given by a century of Anglo-Catholic Hooker scholarship18 (and continued in a similar way among modern Anglicans seeking to deploy Hooker against evangelicals19), this did not mean in any sense a retreat from Protestantism as such. As a growing chorus of modern scholars have begun to recognize, the leading Reformers were largely in continuity with medieval natural-law doctrines, tweaked to fit a Protestant paradigm.20 Hooker sought to build on this foundation, capitalizing as much as possible on the resources of Thomism while also reaping the benefits of a Reformed soteriology.21 For instance, F. J. Shirley, Richard Hooker and Contemporary Political Ideas (London: SPCK, 1949), pp. 73–6; E. T. Davies, The Political Ideas of Richard Hooker (New York: Octagon Books, 1972), pp. 37–8. 19 See, for instance, Lee W. Gibbs, ‘Richard Hooker’s Via Media Doctrine of Scripture and Tradition’, Harvard Theological Review 95 (2002), 227–35; Lee W. Gibbs, ‘Richard Hooker: Prophet of Anglicanism or English Magisterial Reformer?’ Anglican Theological Review 84 (2002), pp. 943–60. 20 See especially Stephen J. Grabill, Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006). 21 Although to some extent implied below, it is beyond the scope of this paper to explore in detail the adjustments to a purely Thomist political theology that are entailed by Hooker’s Protestant commitments. Two points in particular, however, are key. First, as Torrance Kirby has argued, Hooker does not strictly follow Thomas’s Neo-Platonic scheme of a hierarchical mediation of laws, in which human law, natural law, and divine law are, as it were, steps on a ladder from God to man. He superimposes on this an ‘Augustinian’ hypostatic distinction between creator and creature; this renders the relationship ‘simultaneously both more transcendent and more immanent, ruling out a gradual and hierarchical dispositive mediation between the creaturely-derivative and the creator-source’ and serves to make more emphatic our dependence on the grace of Christ and the 18

216

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

This Reformed soteriology, grounded on the doctrine of justification by faith, is at the heart of his distinction, in response to Puritan hyper-biblicism, between ‘things necessary’ and ‘things accessory’ to salvation. As developed by Luther and the magisterial Reformers, this doctrine insisted upon a radical distinction between the relation of the believer coram Deo and coram hominibus. In the former, we are strictly passive, resting upon Christ; in the latter, we are active, empowered by him to serve in the world. Although Christians live simultaneously in both realms, they must not confuse the two, lest they imagine the works they do before men determine their relation to God, or else make an idol out of this-worldly relations and institutions by imputing to them the ultimacy of the heavenly realm. Although the faith by which we live before God is revealed solely and fully in Scripture, in our active response within the provisional structures of the world, we are invited to use other tools and authorities as needed. Confident of our standing before God, we are freed from a sense of bondage to Scripture, enabling us to use it with the flexibility that this realm of social relationships necessarily requires.22 As Hooker thus insisted, to require direct divine warrant for every domain of earthly life was not in fact to exalt God, since ‘Whatsoever is spoken of God or thinges appertaining to God otherwise then [sic] as the truth is; though it inability of natural law to draw us closer to God’ (W. J. Torrance Kirby, ‘From ‘Generall Meditations’ to ‘Particular Decisions’: The Augustinian Coherence of Richard Hooker’s Political Theology’, in Robert Sturges [ed.], Sovereignty and Law in the Middle Ages and Renaissance [Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and Renaissance; Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2011], pp. 41–63 [4]).    Second, following Luther and Calvin before him, Hooker firmly places the visible Church within the earthly realm, not the spiritual realm. Divine law governs the invisible church, but the visible church is subject to reason and human law, like any other polity. Therefore, whereas in Aquinas’s fundamentally papalist paradigm (notwithstanding reinterpretations like Maritain’s which seek to give more space to the secular), the institutional Church stands as mediator between the civil realm and God, teaching the ruler his proper place and if necessary disciplining him, Hooker guards against any such clericalism. With the priesthood of all believers, ministers of the Word, despite the importance of their office, are in a crucial sense on the same level as ministers of public justice. (Hooker’s Protestant doctrine of the ‘two realms’ and the relation of church and state is demonstrated at length in W. J. Torrance Kirby, Richard Hooker’s Doctrine of the Royal Supremacy [Leiden: Brill, 1990].)   For a wonderfully clear summary of the contrast between Luther’s teaching (which Hooker here follows) and the medieval paradigm, see John Witte, Jr, Law and Protestantism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 105–10. 22 The very best discussion of Luther’s two-realms/two-regiments doctrine (although Witte and Kirby both offer fine summaries as well) can be found in W. D. J. Cargill Thompson, ‘The ‘Two Kingdoms’ and the ‘Two Regiments’: Some Problems of Luther’s Zwei-Reiche-Lehre’, in C. W. Dugmore (ed.), Studies in the Reformation: Luther to Hooker (London: Athlone Press, 1980), pp. 42–59, first published in Journal of Theological Studies XX (1969), 77–91.



Sola Scriptura and the Public Square

217

seeme an honour, it is an injurie’ (II.8.7).23 Not only that, but by seeking to make of Scripture something that it is not, and requiring Scriptural warrant for any decision, ‘what shall the scripture be but a snare and a torment to weake consciences, filling them with infinite perplexities, scrupulosities, doubts insoluble, and extreme despaires?’ (II.8.6) In the first realm, in ‘things necessary to salvation’, Hooker will accept, in a sense, the Puritan zero-sum game – human agency does not have the capacity to ascend unto God, and rests passively on God’s saving work.24 Even here, he recognizes that reason must play a role in enabling us to grasp the meaning of God’s word and make use of it, but here at least we may be confident that Scripture affords us a clear and adequate answer. Not so when dealing with ‘things accessory’ – our lives within the created order, which includes of course the whole realm of political decision-making. Here, it is legitimate to rely on the ‘law of reason’, or what is more frequently known as ‘natural law’ .

‘Drenched with deity’: the relation of divine and natural law But this does not mean that we leave the realm of divine speech and enter a self-contained realm of human wisdom. Hooker agrees with his Puritan opponents that all wisdom must come from God, but this does not mean it only comes from Scripture: Some things she [Wisdom] openeth by the sacred bookes of Scripture; some things by the glorious works of nature; with some things she inspireth them from above by spirituall influence, in some thinges she leadeth and trayneth them onely by worldly experience and practise. We may not so in any one speciall kind admire her that we disgrace her in any other, but let all her wayes be according unto their place and degree adored (II.I.4).

I quote throughout from W. Speed Hill and Georges Edelen (eds), The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, vol. 1: The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity: Pref., Books I to IV (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977). However, all references will be given only parenthetically to the book, chapter, and paragraph. 24 However, here as well he blunts the harder edges of the emerging Calvinist orthodoxy of his day with a nuanced and fruitful account of the role of human will in faith and unbelief. Contrary to some scholars, however, this account is not at odds with Calvinism conceived more broadly. See W. David Neelands, ‘Predestination’, in W. J. Torrance Kirby (ed.), A Companion to Richard Hooker (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 185–220. 23

218

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

We despise God’s handiwork in creation and in human capacities if we deny these their role in helping us discern truth and goodness. Thus, despite what may initially appear to us as a secularizing paradigm, Hooker’s thought is, as C. S. Lewis puts it, ‘drenched with Deity’, insisting that we recognize the works of God in every quarter, even while teaching us the crucial importance of rightly distinguishing them. Thus Hooker seeks to distinguish without separating, and he will have no truck with uses of natural law theory that give Scripture exclusive authority over sacred or spiritual matters, and natural law exclusive authority over everything else. After all, clearly not everything of which Scripture speaks is ‘necessary to salvation’; it sheds light on a great deal else, not merely of a historical nature, but of an ethical nature as well. So to say that ‘only Scripture speaks authoritatively of spiritual matters’ is not to say that ‘Scripture only speaks authoritatively of spiritual matters’. To set up such a dichotomy would remain, in Hooker’s eyes, a product of a Puritan bifurcation between nature and grace. For while Hooker insists on a large sphere within which human reason is competent, he does not make it omnicompetent within that sphere. Nature, says Hooker, hath need of grace. For it is not the case that the principles of the law of reason are in fact known to all people; rather, they are such that ‘being proposed no man can reject [them] as unreasonable and unjust’ and such that ‘anie man (having naturall perfection of wit, and ripeness of judgment) may by labour and travail find out’ (I.8.9). They are in themselves knowable by everyone, but that does not mean that laziness may not leave many in ignorance of them. Worse, on account of our sinfulness, ‘lewde and wicked custome, beginning perhaps at the first amongst few, afterwards spreading into greater multitudes, and so continuing from time to time, may be of force even in plaine things to smother the light of naturall understanding’ (I.8.11). So, for instance, Hooker might consider monogamy to be a principle of natural law, while freely acknowledging that millions of people had at various times and places lost sight of this entirely. Since we are prone to ‘to fawne upon our selves, and to be ignorant as much as may be of our owne deformities’, we cannot necessarily regain our grasp of natural law unless the light of Scripture shows us how far we have veered off track. Finally, mindful of Romans 1, Hooker warns that



Sola Scriptura and the Public Square

219

our natural understanding operates solely by gift of God, and that God may, in judgment against willful sin, withdraw this gift and leave humanity to the vanity of their darkened minds. For all these reasons, divine law is necessary to illuminate natural law.25 Note that Hooker does not ascribe to divine law simply the task of repairing the damage done by sin – although that is crucially important – as if, once redeemed, we were suddenly re-empowered to make perfect use of the natural law in all human affairs. Even without our minds darkened by sin, Hooker acknowledges that we would have difficulty deducing all the applications and ramifications of natural law principles. So even where we might have an adequate grasp of moral principles without Scripture, Scripture often comes alongside the natural law to supply additional light and clarity, much as reading the writings of a long-ago lawmaker might shed light on the meaning, intent and application of a law he had established. For these reasons, we should not be surprised to find that Scripture does not restrict itself to ‘spiritual’ matters only, or to things concerned solely with redemption, but on the contrary, ‘is fraught even with lawes of nature’ (I.12.1). Hooker thus summarizes the relationship: ‘divine law … both ascertayneth the truth and supplyeth unto us the want of that other law. So that in morall actions, divine law helpeth exceedingly the law of reason to guide man’s life, but in supernaturall it alone guideth’ (I.16.5).

‘Instruments to rule by’: the flexibility of human law So if it is in fact true that we should not expect unaided reason to come to a fully adequate understanding of morality and application of it in politics, if it is true that we should expect Scripture to shed light on such questions, indeed, to clarify for us the fundamental principles of morality and how to apply them in a great number of situations, then how exactly does this differ from Puritan biblicism? How is Scripture’s authority in these matters ‘accessory to salvation’ different from in matters ‘necessary to salvation’? Although this issue is vexed with conflicting interpretations on all sides, it is probably safe to say that here, Hooker offers a more Augustinian emphasis than what one might find in Aquinas, though undoubtedly less than what one might find in Calvin.

25

220

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

This is where Hooker’s doctrine of ‘human law’ comes in. For while God is the same, yesterday, today and forever, and the means of calling upon Him and being united to Him has not changed, human affairs change every day. When it comes to things necessary to salvation, we may trust that Scripture, having once spoken, speaks for all time. If I have faith in Christ, my relation to God today, my justification coram Deo, is fundamentally no different than Paul’s was 2,000 years ago. The realm of natural law, however, governs interpersonal morality. Natural law must always be applied to particular circumstances, and when this is done by formal political decision, it takes on the character of human law, of which Hooker has much to say throughout his Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie. So even to the extent that Scripture illumines for us general principles of natural law, and provides particular applications, it does not supersede the need for human beings to deliberate together and make laws for their own circumstances. Against Puritan opponents who insisted that if Scripture declared a law for human action, we would be arrogant to ever make other laws, Hooker insists, Lawes are instruments to rule by, and that instruments are not only to bee framed according unto the generall ende for which they are provided, but even according unto that very particular, which riseth out of the matter wheron they have to work. The end wherefore lawes were made may bee permanent, and those lawes neverthelesse require some alteration, if there bee anye unfitnes in the meanes which they prescribe as tending unto that end and purpose (III.10.3).

Of course, anyone, when pressed, will grant such a distinction between general ends and particular circumstances, and thus the need to use reason and some degree of flexibility in applying Scripture. But the point that Hooker presses against his Puritan opponents is that this is nothing to be ashamed of. God does not reap glory at human expense, but by empowering humans to imitate him. Therefore, we need not grudgingly admit that, unfortunately, Scripture doesn’t give us precise directives on some ethical or political question, nor try to resist all social change so as to keep ourselves from having to make new applications and interpretations. On the contrary, we should happily embrace our God-given task of using all the resources at our disposal – nature, experience, Scripture, and the existing laws of our societies – to seek fresh applications of very old principles to very new problems.



Sola Scriptura and the Public Square

221

Three lessons for today In conclusion, let me summarize three insights for Christian political engagement that Hooker’s model offers us. The first is that Christians need not be afraid of admitting that they do not have an answer for something. Politics is a complex business, and new problems are arising all the time. Scripture does not claim to provide us a clear and direct answer to all these. As Hooker says, it is a dishonor to claim for Scripture what it does not claim for itself, and in fact it is a dishonor to humankind to refuse it the opportunity to sort through a problem that God has invited his creatures to address. Christians need not be afraid of admitting that unbelievers do have a good answer for something; we should not expect that depravity means they have lost all access to the law of reason. And so we need not insist that for every problem, we must have a distinctively Christian or ‘Biblical’ answer. This applies, for instance, to the American pro-life movement, in which Christians have been insistent that the Bible teaches that ‘life begins at conception’ and that ‘all abortion is murder’, when in fact, the Bible remains quite silent on these detailed points (and indeed, possibly contradicts them in Exod. 21.22). This is not to deny for a moment that there are very sound ethical reasons – both Biblically-derived and otherwise – for determining to treat a fetus at any stage of pregnancy as a human person, and thus for avoiding all abortion; but we cannot treat this conclusion, however important, as a direct deliverance of God’s Word. Otherwise, our ham–handed use of the text risks actually undermining the public authority of Scripture. Second, Christians should not be afraid of asserting that they do have an answer for something. They should not accept the rebuke, ‘this is secular business; keep religion out of it’. For natural law is God’s law too, and he has a lot to teach us about it in Scripture and through the Spirit, knowing that we are prone to ‘fawn upon ourselves’ and lose sight of it. In a world of sin, we should expect that many political problems will call for guidance or rebuke that we as Christians have been particularly equipped to provide, and when that is the case, we should speak up. Recognizing the intimate connection between natural and divine law, we should assume that our faith has bearing on many questions of interpersonal morality, and we should rigorously think through those points of intersection. Again addressing particularly my own

222

The Bible: Culture, Community, Society

North American context, this principle bears remembering on questions of national security, including immigration controls. On such questions, many American evangelicals have been content to accept a kind of bastardized Niebuhrian realism that attends solely to considerations of ‘national interest’, and dismisses the relevance of Biblical ethics and Christian charity. Third, when they engage in political action, whether in common with unbelievers or from a distinctively Christian standpoint, Christians should be humbly mindful of the provisionality of such enterprises. The nature of such actions is that they are not of eternal significance – in Hooker’s terms, they are not ‘necessary for salvation’. The nature of human law is such that the right answer today may not be the right answer tomorrow, and we should not assume that what we think is the right answer necessarily is. We should not, therefore, feel that bad political policies mean that the world is coming to an end. Nor should we consider that our attempt to apply Scripture in a particular circumstance carries the full authority of Holy Writ. It may, but it may not. This last principle should serve as a warning to Christians on either left or right who are determined to apply a Biblical prescription for restoring economic justice. Important as this task is, it cannot afford to ignore the fact that modern economic realities are exceedingly complex, and exceedingly different from those of the ancient Near East, so that any attempt to realize Biblical economic justice today must acknowledge its limitations and its need for flexibility. In short, Hooker calls Christians to a life of thoughtful, creative political action, wielding Scripture judiciously like a sharp scalpel rather than whirling it like a blunt axe.

Bibliography Admirand, Peter, ‘The Other as Oneself Within Judaism: A Catholic Interpretation’, Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue 3 (2010), pp. 113–24. —Amidst Mass Atrocity and the Rubble of Theology: Searching for a Viable Theodicy (Eugene: Cascade/Wipf and Stock, 2012). Aguilar, Mario, Theology, Liberation, and Genocide: A Theology of the Periphery (London: SCM Press, 2009). Alexander, Denis, Creation or Evolution: Do we Have to Choose? (Oxford/Grand Rapids: Monarch, 2008). Althaus, Paul, The Theology of Martin Luther (Robert C. Schultz [trans]; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966). Altschuler, Glenn C., ‘Walter Rauschenbusch: Theology, the Church, and the Social Gospel’, in Martin E. Marty (ed.), Protestantism and Social Christianity (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1992), pp. 133–44. Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), The Gift of Authority: Authority in the Church III (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1999). Ariarajah, Wesley, The Bible and People of Other Faiths (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1989). Arthur, G., Law, Liberty and Church: Authority and Justice in the Major Churches in England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006). Auld, Graeme, ‘Pluralism Where Least Expected: Joshua 22 in Biblical Context’, Expository Times 122 (2011), pp. 374–9. Austin, V. L., Up with Authority (London: T&T Clark, 2010). Ayre, John (ed.), The Works of John Whitgift, D.D. (Cambridge: The Parker Society, 1851–3). Bahnsen, Greg, Theonomy in Christian Ethics (Nacogdoches, TX: Covenant Media Press, 1977). Bailey, Kenneth, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels (London: SPCK, 2008). Barber, Daniel Colucciello, ‘Epistemological Violence, Christianity, and the Secular’, in Peter Dula and Chris K. Huebner (eds), The New Yoder (Eugene: Cascade, 2010), pp. 271–93. Barr, James, The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality (London: SCM, 1992).

224 Bibliography Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics (various translators; 13 vols; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956–75). Barton, John, ‘Historical-Critical Approaches’, in John Barton (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 9–20. —The Nature of Biblical Criticism (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox, 2007). Bauckham, Richard, The Bible in Politics: How to Read the Bible Politically (London: SPCK, 1989). —‘Reading Scripture as a Coherent Story’, in Ellen F. Davis and Richard B. Hays (eds), The Art of Reading Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), pp. 38–53. —Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006). Bell, Richard H., Deliver Us from Evil. Interpreting the Redemption from the Power of Satan in New Testament Theology (WUNT, 216; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 2007). van den Belt, H., ‘Scripture as the Voice of God: The Continuing Importance of Autopistia’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 13 (2011), pp. 434–47. Bennett, Zoe, ‘“To see fearlessly, pitifully”: What Does John Ruskin Have to Offer to Practical Theology?’, International Journal of Practical Theology 14 (2011), pp. 189–203. —‘Ruskin, the Bible, and the Death of Rose La Touch: A “torn manuscript of the human soul”‘, in M. Lieb, E. Mason and J. Roberts (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Reception History of the Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 576–89. Berkouwer, G. C., Holy Scripture (Jack B. Rogers [trans]; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975). Berry, R. J., ‘This Cursed Earth: Is the “Fall” Credible?’, Science and Christian Belief 11 (1999), pp. 29–49. Biggar, Nigel, ‘Not Translation, but Conversation’, in Nigel Biggar and Linda Hogan (eds), Religious Voices in Public Places (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 151–93. Billings, J. Todd, The Word of God for the People of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010). Birch, D., ‘John Ruskin’, in R. Lemon, E. Mason, J. Roberts and C. Rowland (eds) The Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature (Chichester: WileyBlackwell, 2009), pp. 525–35. Blenkinsopp, Joseph, Prophecy and Canon: A Contribution to the Study of Jewish Origins (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977). Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Ethics (Ilse Tödt, Heinz Eduard Tödt, Ernst Feil and Clifford J. Green [eds]; Reinhard Krauss, Charles C. West and Douglas W. Stott [trans]; Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 6; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009).

Bibliography

225

—Berlin: 1932–1933 (Larry L. Rasmussen [ed.]; Douglas W. Stott; Isabel Best; David Higgins [trans]; Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 12; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009). —Letters and Papers From Prison (John W. de Gruchy [ed.]; Isabel Best, Lisa E. Dahill, Reinhard Krauss and Nancy Lukens [trans]; Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 8; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010). The Book of Common Prayer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969). Bradstock, Andrew, ‘Profits Without Honour? Economics, Theology and the Current Global Recession’, International Journal of Public Theology 4 (2010), pp. 135–57. —‘Tackling economic inequality’, in Jonathan Boston, Andrew Bradstock and David Eng (eds), Public Policy: Why Ethics Matters (Canberra: ANU E Press, 2010), pp. 183–99. —‘Using God-Talk in a Secular Society: Time for a New Conversation on Public Issues?’, International Journal of Public Theology 6 (2012), pp. 1–22. Braiterman, Zachary, (God) After Auschwitz: Tradition and Change in Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). Breck, John, The Power of the Word (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1986). Breitenberg Jr, E. H., ‘What is Public Theology?’, in Deirdre King Hainsworth and Scott R. Paeth (eds), Public Theology for a Global Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), pp. 3–17. Bretherton, Luke, Christianity and Contemporary Politics: The Conditions and Possibilities of Faithful Witness (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). Brueggemann, Walter, ‘From Anxiety and Greed to Milk and Honey’, in Faith and Finance: Christians and the Economic Crisis: Discussion Guide (Washington, DC: Sojourners, 2009), pp. 5–8. —The Book That Breathes New Life: Scriptural Authority and Biblical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005) —‘Trajectories in Old Testament Literature and the Sociology of Ancient Israel’, in Norman K. Gottwald and Richard A. Horsley (eds), The Bible and Liberation: Political and Social Hermeneutics (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1993, rev. edn), pp. 201–26. Brunhes, H. J., Ruskin et la Bible (Paris: Perrin et Cie, 1901). Burd, V. A., The Winnington Letters of John Ruskin (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969). Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion (John T. McNeill [ed.]; Ford Lewis Battles [trans]; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960). —‘John Calvin on The True Method of Giving Peace to Christendom and Reforming the Church’, in Calvin’s Tracts, vol. 3 (H. Beveridge [trans]; 3 vols; Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1851). p. 240–358. Campbell, Gordon, The Bible: The Story of the King James Version (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

226 Bibliography Cardenal, Ernesto, The Gospel in Solentiname (Donald D. Walsh [trans]; Maryknoll: Orbis, 2010). Cargill Thompson, W. D. J, ‘The “Two Kingdoms” and the “Two Regiments”: Some Problems of Luther’s Zwei-Reiche-Lehre’, in C. W. Dugmore (ed.), Studies in the Reformation: Luther to Hooker (London: Athlone Press, 1980), pp. 42–59; first published in Journal of Theological Studies XX (1969), pp. 77–91. Cartwright, David, Schopenhauer: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). de Certeau, Michel, The Practice of Everyday Life (Stephen Randall [trans]; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). Chaplin, Jonathan, Talking God: The Legitimacy of Religious Public Reasoning (London: Theos, 2008). Childs, Brevard S., Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1993). —Biblical Theology: A Proposal (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002). Coffey, John, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England 1558–1689 (Harlow: Longman, 2000). Collingwood, W. G., Ruskin’s Relics (London: Isbister & Co., 1903). Collins, John J., The Bible After Babel: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005). Commission on Faith and Order, Baptism, Eucharist & Ministry 1982–1990 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1990). Community of Protestant Churches in Europe (CPCE), Scripture – Confession – Church (2009). Cook, Michael J., Modern Jews Engage the New Testament: Enhancing Jewish Well-Being in a Christian Environment (Woodstock: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2008). Cornick, David, Under God’s Good Hand: A History of the Traditions Which Have Come Together in the United Reformed Church in the United Kingdom (London: United Reformed Church, 1998). Corola, Joseph, ‘Appendix. Vatican II’s Use of Patristic Themes Regarding Non-Christians’, in Karl Josef Becker et al (eds), Catholic Engagement with World Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2010), pp. 143–52. Crisp, Oliver, ‘On being a Reformed Theologian’, Theology 115 (2012), pp. 14–25. Cunningham, Conor, Darwin’s Pious Idea: Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get It Wrong (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010). D’Costa, Gavin, ‘One Covenant or Many Covenants’, Journal of Ecumenical Studies 27 (1990), pp. 441–52.

Bibliography

227

—The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000). —Theology in the Public Square: Church, University, and Nation (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005). —‘The Holy Spirit and the World Religions’, Louvain Studies 34 (2009–10), pp. 279–311. —Christianity and the World Religions. Disputed Questions in the Theology of Religions (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). —‘Catholicism and the World Religions: A Theological and Phenemonological Account’, in Gavin D’Costa (ed.), The Catholic Church and the World Religions. A Theological and Phenomenological Account (London: Continuum, 2011), pp. 1–34. —‘Reading scriptures and Scriptural reasoning’, in Catarina Belo and Jean-Jacques Pérennès (eds), Festschrift in Honour of Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald (Louvain/ Paris: Peeters, 2012). —‘Does the Catholic Church Teach Mission to the Jews?’, Theological Studies, forthcoming. D’Costa, Gavin, Paul Knitter and Daniel Strange, Only One Way? (London: SCM, 2011). Davies, E. T., The Political Ideas of Richard Hooker (New York: Octagon Books, 1972). Davies, Paul, God and the New Physics (repr., London/Melbourne: J. M. Dent, 1984). —The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life? (London: Penguin, 2nd edn, 2007). Davis, Ellen F., Imagination Shaped: Old Testament Preaching in the Anglican Tradition (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1995). —‘Critical Traditioning: Seeking an Inner Biblical Hermeneutic’, Anglican Theological Review 82 (2000), pp. 733–51. —‘Teaching the Bible Confessionally in the Church’, in Ellen F. Davis and Richard B. Hays (eds), The Art of Reading Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), pp. 9–26. —Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Dawkins, Richard, The Blind Watchmaker (repr., London: Penguin, 1988). Diamond, Jared, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (New York: Viking, 2005). Dickinson, R. (ed.), John Ruskin’s Correspondence with Joan Severn: Sense and Nonsense Letters (London: Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney Publishing, 2009). Dively Lauro, Elizabeth Ann, The Soul and Spirit of Scripture within Origen’s Exegesis (Leiden: Brill, 2005). Dodd, C. H., The Authority of the Bible (London: Nisbet & Co, 1928).

228 Bibliography Donaldson, Laura E., ‘Gospel Hauntings: The Postcolonial Demons of New Testament Criticism’, in R. S. Sugirtharajah (ed.), The Bible and Postcolonialism (London: Continuum, 2005), pp. 97–113. Doward, Jamie, ‘Richard Dawkins Celebrates a Victory over Creationists’, The Observer (15 January 2012). Dube, Musa, Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (Danvers: Chalice, 2000). Eagles, S., After Ruskin The Social and Political Legacies of a Victorian Prophet 1870–1920 (Oxford Historical Monographs; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Ellenson, David, Tradition in Transition: Orthodoxy, Halakhah, and the boundaries of modern Jewish identity (Lanham: University Press of America, 1989). Eph‘al-Jaruzelska, Izabela, ‘Officialdom and Society in the Book of Kings: The Social Relevance of the State’, in Baruch Halpern and André Lemaire (eds), The Books of Kings: Sources, Composition, Historiography and Reception (Supplements to Vetus Testamentum, 129; Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 467–500. Evans-Pritchard, Ambrose, ‘Water crisis to be biggest world risk’, The Telegraph (5 June 2008), available online at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ newsbysector/utilities/2791116/Water-crisis-to-be-biggest-world-risk.html (Accessed 31 October 2012). Fackre, Gabriel, The Doctrine of Revelation (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997). Fergusson, David, ‘Jesus and the Faith-History Problem Today’, in Stuart G. Hall (ed.), Jesus Christ Today: Studies of Christology in Various Contexts (Berlin: Gruyter, 2009), pp. 265–82. —‘Faith in the Public Square’, in Bruce L. McCormack and Kimlyn J. Bender (eds), Theology as Conversation: The Significance of Dialogue in Historical and Contemporary Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), pp. 313–26. Ficowski, Jerzy, ‘A Girl of Six from the Ghetto Begging in Smolna Street in 1942’ (Keith Bosley [trans]), in Hilda Schiff (ed.), Holocaust Poetry (New York: Harper, 1985), p. 61. Fishbane, Michael, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). Fitzmyer, Joseph A., The Interpretation of Scripture: In Defense of the HistoricalCritical Method (New York: Paulist Press, 1988). Ford, David F., ‘God and Our Public Life: A Scriptural Wisdom’, International Journal of Public Theology 1 (2007), pp. 63–81. —The Future of Christian Theology (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).

Bibliography

229

Forrester, Duncan, On Human Worth: A Christian Vindication of Equality (London: SCM Press, 2001). —‘Speak Truth to Power: Theology and Public Policy’, in Richard R. Osmer and Friedrich L. Schweitzer (eds), Developing a Public Faith: New Directions in Practical Theology (St Louis: Chalice, 2003), pp. 175–88. Fosdick, Harry Emerson, The Power to See it Through: Twenty–Five Sermons on Christianity To-day (London: SCM, 1935). Fowl, Stephen E., ‘Introduction’, in Stephen E. Fowl (ed.), The Theological Interpretation of Scripture (Maldon: Blackwell, 1997), pp. xii–xxx. —Engaging Scripture: A Model for Theological Interpretation (Issues in Contemporary Theology; Maldon: Blackwell, 1998). Fredriksen, Paula, ‘Torah-Observance and Christianity: The Perspective of Roman Antiquity’, Modern Theology 11 (1995), pp. 195–204. Frei, Hans W., The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974). George, Andrew (ed.), The Epic of Gilgamesh: A New Translation (repr., London: Penguin, 2000). Gerrish, Brian A., Grace and Reason: A Study in the Theology of Luther (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962). —The Old Protestantism and the New (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1982). Gibbs, Lee W., ‘Richard Hooker: Prophet of Anglicanism or English Magisterial Reformer?’, Anglican Theological Review 84 (2002), pp. 943–60. —‘Richard Hooker’s Via Media Doctrine of Scripture and Tradition’, Harvard Theological Review 95 (2002), pp. 227–35. Gibbs, M., and E. Gibbs, The Bible References in the Works of John Ruskin (London: George Allen, 1898). Goldenberg, Robert, The Nations that Know Thee Not: Ancient Jewish Attitudes Towards Other Religions (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997). Gnanadason, Aruna, ‘Jesus and the Asian Woman: A Post-colonial Look at the Syro-Phoenician Woman/Canaanite Woman from an Indian Perspective’, Studies in World Christianity 7 (2001), pp. 162–77. Grabill, Stephen J., Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006). Green, Clifford, A Theology of Sociality (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999). Gregory, Eric, Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). Griffiths, Richard Owen, ‘The Politics of the Good Samaritan’, Political Theology 1 (1999), pp. 85–114.

230 Bibliography Grudem, Wayne, Politics According to the Bible: A Comprehensive Resource for Understanding Modern Political Issues in Light of Scripture (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010). Gunton, Colin E., A Brief Theology of Revelation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995). —The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (2nd edn, London: T&T Clark, 2003). Hall, H. Ashley, ‘The Development of Doctrine: A Lutheran examination’, Pro Ecclesia 16 (2007), pp. 256–77. Hall, Joseph, Contemplations on the Historical Passages of the Old and New Testaments (3 vols; Edinburgh: Willison & Darling, 1770). Halpern, Baruch, and André Lemaire (eds), The Books of Kings: Sources, Composition, Historiography and Reception (Supplements to Vetus Testamentum, 129; Leiden: Brill, 2010). —‘The Composition of Kings’, in Baruch Halpern and André Lemaire (eds), The Books of Kings: Sources, Composition, Historiography and Reception (Supplements to Vetus Testamentum, 129; Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 123–54. Hamlin, Hannibal, ‘Bunyan’s Biblical Progresses’, in Hannibal Hamlin and Norman W. Jones (eds), The King James Bible after 400 Years: Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Influences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 202–18. Hamlin, Hannibal, and Norman W. Jones, ‘Introduction: The King James Bible and its Reception History’ Progresses’, in Hannibal Hamlin and Norman W. Jones (eds), The King James Bible after 400 Years: Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Influences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 1–24. Hanson, Paul D., Political Engagement as Biblical Mandate (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2010). von Harnack, Adolf, Marcion. The Gospel of the Alien God (John E. Steely and Lyle D. Bierma [trans]; Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2007 [1920]). Hart, D. G., The Lost Soul of American Protestantism (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002). —That Old–Time Religion in Modern America: Evangelical Protestantism in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002). —A Secular Faith: Why Christianity Favors the Separation of Church and State (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006). Hartman, David, Israelis and the Jewish Tradition: An Ancient People Debating Its Future (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). Harvey, A., By What Authority? (London: SCM Press, 2001). Hauerwas, Stanley, After Christendom: How the Church Is to Behave If Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation Are Bad Ideas (Nashville: Abingdon, 1999). Hays, Richard B., The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, and New Creation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997).

Bibliography

231

Heaton, E. W., Solomon’s New Men: The Emergence of Ancient Israel as a National State (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974). Hewison, R., John Ruskin: The Argument of the Eye (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976). Hick, John, ‘Jesus and the World Religions’, in John Hick (ed.), The Myth of God Incarnate (London: SCM, 1977), pp. 167–85. Hill, A., Introduction to ‘Unto This Last’: Four Essays on the First Principles of Political Economy by John Ruskin (London: Pallas Athene, 2010). Hill, Edmund (ed.), On Genesis (The Works of Saint Augustine, 1.13; Hyde Park, New York: New City, 2002). Hill, W. Speed, and Georges Edelen (eds), The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, vol. 1: The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity: Pref., Books I to IV (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977). Him, Chanrithy, When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge (London: Norton, 2001). Hofstadter, Douglas R, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (New York: Vintage Books, 1980). Hogg, James, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002). Hollenbach, David, ‘Public Theology in America: Some Questions for Catholicism after John Courtney Murray’, Theological Studies 37 (1976), pp. 290–303. Hopkins, Gerard Manley, ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’, in The Major Poems (Walford Davies [ed.]; London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1979). Horsley, Richard (ed.), Paul and Politics (London: Continuum, 2000). —Paul and the Roman Imperial Order (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press Intl., 2004). Horton, Michael, ‘Let the Earth Bring Forth: The Spirit and Human Agency in Sanctification’ (Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference, 2011, Edinburgh, UK; unpublished conference paper, 2011). Hovey, Craig, Bearing True Witness: Truthfulness in Christian Practice (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011). Hume, David, ‘Miracles’, in Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (London: A. Millar, 1748). —The Natural History of Religion (London: A. Millar, 1757). Hussain, Zahid, ‘Contours of an Islamic Political Economy’, in John Atherton and Hannah Skinner (eds), Through the Eye of a Needle: Theological Conversations over Political Economy (Peterborough: Epworth, 2007), pp. 102–18. Iersal, M. F. van Bas, Mark: A Reader Response Commentary (W. H. Bisscheroux [trans]; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998)

232 Bibliography Janz, Paul D., ‘Revelation and Divine Causality’, in Oliver Davies, Paul D. Janz and Clemens Sedmak, Transformation Theology: Church in the World (London: T&T Clark International, 2007), pp. 63–88. Jenkins, D. T., Church Meeting and Democracy (London: Independent Press, 1944). Jenni, Ernst, ‘‫ יוֹם‬Yôm Day.’, TLOT 2: 526–39. Jenson, Robert W., ‘Hermeneutics and the Life of the Church’, in Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (eds), Reclaiming the Bible for the Church (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), pp. 89–105. —‘The Church’s Responsibility for the World’, in Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (eds), The Two Cities of God: The Church’s Responsibility for the Earthly City (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), pp. 1–10. —‘The Triunity of Common Good’, in Patrick D. Miller and Dennis P. McCann, (eds), In Search of the Common Good (London: T&T Clark, 2005), pp. 333–47. —‘On the Authorities of Scripture’, in William P. Brown (ed.), Engaging Biblical Authority: Perspectives on the Bible as Scripture (Louisville: WJK Press, 2007), pp. 53–61. Johnson, Luke Timothy, ‘Imagining the World Scripture Imagines’, Modern Theology 14 (1998), pp. 165–80. Joint Committee on the Human Tissue and Embryos (Draft) Bill, Human Tissue and Embryos (Draft) Bill, Volume II: Evidence (2006–7, HL 169–II, HC 630–II). Jowett, Benjamin, ‘On the Interpretation of Scripture’, in Essays and Reviews (London: John W. Parker, 3rd edn, 1860), pp. 330–433. Kessler, Edward, ‘Judaism’, in John Sawyer (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to the Bible and Culture (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006), pp. 119–34. Kidner, Derek, Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary (TNTC; repr., Leicester: IVP, 1976). Kinukawa, Hisako, ‘Biblical Studies in the Twenty-First Century: A Japanese/ Asian Feminist Glimpse’, in Kathleen O’Brien Wicker et al. (eds), Feminist New Testament Studies: Global and Future Perspectives (London: Palgrave, 2005), pp. 137–50. Kirby, W. J. Torrance, Richard Hooker’s Doctrine of the Royal Supremacy. (Leiden; New York: E. J. Brill, 1990). —Richard Hooker, Reformer and Platonist (Aldershot: UK: Ashgate, 2005). —‘From “Generall Meditations” to ‘Particular Decisions’: The Augustinian Coherence of Richard Hooker’s Political Theology’, in Robert Sturges (ed.), Sovereignty and Law in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and Renaissance; Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2011), pp. 41–63. Kirby, W. J. Torrance (ed.), A Companion to Richard Hooker (Leiden: Brill, 2008).

Bibliography

233

Lake, Peter, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). —Anglicans and Puritans?: Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought From Whitgift to Hooker (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988). Landow, G. P., Victorian Types, Victorian Shadows (Boston, London and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980). Lash, Nicholas, Theology on the Road to Emmaus (London: SCM, 1986). Laytner, Anson, Arguing with God: A Jewish Tradition (Northvale: Jason Aronson, 1990). Lennox, John, God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? (Abingdon: Lion, 2nd edn, 2009). Levine, Amy-Jill, The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish People (New York: HarperCollins, 2007). Levine, Amy-Jill, and Brettler, Marc Zvi (eds), The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Lewis, C. S., English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama (F. P. Wilson and Bonamy Dobree (eds); The Oxford History of English Literature, 3; Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1954). —‘De Descriptione Temporum’, in They Asked for a Paper (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1962), pp. 9–25. Liew, Tat-siong Benny, ‘The Gospel of Mark’, in Fernando F. Segovia and R. S. Sugirtharajah (eds), A Postcolonial Commentary on the New Testament Writings (London: T&T Clark, 2007), pp. 105–32. Lindbeck, George A., The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (London: SPCK, 1984). Lipner, Julius, Brahmabandhab Upadhyay: the Life and Thought of a Revolutionary (New-Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999). Lossky, Vladimir, ‘Tradition and Traditions’, in Daniel B. Clendenin (ed.), Eastern Orthodox Theology: A Contemporary Reader (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), pp. 125–46. Lott, Eric, Vedantic Approaches to God (London: MacMillan, 1980). Luther, Martin, Lectures on Galatians 1535 Chapters 1–4 (Jaroslav Pelikan [ed.]; Jaroslav Pelikan and Richard Jungkuntz [trans]; Luther’s Works, 26; Saint Louis: Concordia, 1964). —Lectures on Galatians 1535 Chapters 5–6 (Jaroslav Pelikan [ed.]; Jaroslav Pelikan and Richard Jungkuntz [trans]; Luther’s Works, 27; Saint Louis: Concordia, 1964). McCormack, Bruce L., ‘The Being of Holy Scripture is in Becoming: Karl Barth in Conversation with American Evangelical Criticism’, in V. Bacote, Lauran C.

234 Bibliography Miguelez and Dennis L. Okholm (eds), Evangelicals and Scripture: Tradition, Authority and Hermeneutics (Downer’s Grove: IVP, 2004), pp. 55–75. McDermott, Gerald R., ‘Review Essay’, Pro Ecclesia 14 (2005), pp. 487–93. MacDonald, Nathan, Not Bread Alone: The Uses of Food in the Old Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). —What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat? Diet in Biblical Times (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008). McGrath, A. E., Reformation Thought: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993). Machen, J. Gresham, Christianity and Liberalism (repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009 [1923]). MacIntyre, Alasdair, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (London: Duckworth, 1990). McIntosh, Andy, ‘Information and Thermodynamics’, in Norman C. Nevin (ed.), Should Christians Embrace Evolution? Biblical and Scientific Responses (Nottingham: IVP, 2009), pp. 158–65. MacKellar, Calum, Chimeras, Hybrids and ‘Cybrids’ (CMF File 34; London: Christian Medical Fellowship, 2007), available online at http://www.cmf.org.uk/ publications/content.asp?context=article&id=1939 (Accessed 31 October 2012.) Maddox, Marion, ‘Religion, Secularism and the Promise of Public Theology’, International Journal of Public Theology 1 (2007), pp. 82–100. Marsden, George, The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2003). Marshall, Christopher, ‘What Language Shall I Borrow? The Bilingual Dilemma of Public Theology’, Stimulus 13 (2005), pp. 11–18. Justin Martyr, The Second Apology in The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, Volume 6, Writings of Saint Justin Martyr (Thomas B. Falls [trans]; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1948), pp. 113–35. —The Second Apology, xiii, in Writings of Saint Justin Martyr (Thomas B. Falls [trans]; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1948). Master, Daniel M., ‘Institutions of Trade in 1 and 2 Kings’, in Baruch Halpern and André Lemaire (eds), The Books of Kings: Sources, Composition, Historiography and Reception (Supplements to Vetus Testamentum, 129; Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 501–16. Mathewes, Charles T., ‘Providence and Political Discernment’, in Francesca Aran Murphy and Philip G. Ziegler (eds), The Providence of God (London: T&T Clark, 2009), pp. 255–74. —‘Faith, Hope and Agony: Christian Political Participation Beyond Liberalism’, The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 21 (2001), pp. 125–50.

Bibliography

235

Melanchton, Monica Jyotsna, ‘Dalit Women and the Bible: Hermeneutical and Methodological Reflections’, in Kwok Pui-lan (ed.), Hope Abundant: Third World and Indigenous Women’s Theology (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2010), pp. 103–22. Messer, Neil, Respecting Life: Theology and Bioethics (London: SCM, 2011). —‘“Ethics”, “Religious Ethics” and “Christian Ethics”: What Are Scholars For?’, in Maya Warrier and Simon Oliver (eds), Theology and Religious Studies: An Exploration of Disciplinary Boundaries (London: T&T Clark, 2008), pp. 149–65. Milbank, John, Theology and Social Theory. Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990). —‘The End of Dialogue’, in Gavin D’Costa (ed.), Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990), pp. 174–91. Milton, John, Paradise Lost in Milton: Poetical Works (Douglas Bush [ed.]; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966). Moberly, R. W. L., ‘“Interpret the Bible Like Any Other Book?” Requiem for an Axiom’, Journal of Theological Interpretation 4 (2010), pp. 91–110. Moltmann, Jürgen, The Spirit of Life (Margaret Kohl [trans]; London: SCM Press, 1992). Muddiman, John, The Bible: Fountain and Well of Truth (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983). Myers, Ched, Binding the Strong Man (New York: Orbis 2010). Myers, Ched, et al., Say to this Mountain: Mark’s Story of Discipleship (New York: Orbis, 1997). Neville, David J., ‘Justice and Divine Judgement: Scriptural Perspectives for Public Theology’, International Journal of Public Theology 3 (2009), pp. 339–56. —‘Christian Scripture and Public Theology: Ruminations on Their Ambiguous Relationship’, unpublished paper, 2010. Nevin, Norman C. (ed.), Should Christians Embrace Evolution? Biblical and Scientific Responses (Nottingham: IVP, 2009). Niebuhr, Reinhold, Moral Man and Immoral Society (repr., New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1960 [1932]). Noll, Mark, America’s God (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). —The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). Noll, Mark A. (ed.), Confessions and Catechisms of the Reformation (Leicester: Baker Book House Company, 1991). North, Gary (ed.), Theonomy: An Informed Response (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1991). Northcott, Michael, ‘Farmed Salmon and the Sacramental Feast: How Christian Worship Resists Global Capitalism’, in William F. Storrar and Andrew R. Morton

236 Bibliography (eds), Public Theology for the 21st Century: Essays in Honour of Duncan B. Forrester (London: T&T Clark, 2004), pp. 213–30. O’Donovan, Oliver, The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the roots of political theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). —Common Objects of Love: Moral Reflection and the Shaping of Community (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002). Oman, John, Vision and Authority (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1902). Owen, John, The Works of John Owen, Vol. III (W. H. Goold [ed.]; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1862). Panikkar, Raimundo, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1964). —The Silence of God: Answer of the Buddha (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1989). Peacocke, Arthur, ‘Evolutionary Biology – A Positive Biological Appraisal’, in R. J. Russell, W. R. Stoeger, and F. J. Ayala (eds), Evolutionary and Molecular Biology: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, (Berkeley: CTNS/Vatican City: Vatican Observatory, 1998), pp. 357–76. —Theology for a Scientific Age: Being and Becoming-Natural, Divine, and Human (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993). Pearson, Clive, ‘The Quest for a Glocal Public Theology’, International Journal of Public Theology 1 (2007), pp. 151–72. —‘What is Public Theology?’, (n/d) available online at: http://faculty.musowls.org/ reese/What_is_Public_Theology.pdf. (Accessed 25 April 2012). Perry, Tim, Radical Difference: A Defence of Hendrik Kraemer’s Theology of Religion (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001). Pickstock, Catherine, ‘Tracey Emin, For You’, Art and Christianity 56 (2008), p. 13. Placher, William, Mark (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010). Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church (1993), available online at: http://catholic-resources.org/ChurchDocs/PBC_Interp.htm (Accessed 21 April 2012). Porter, Jean, Nature as Reason: A Thomistic Theory of the Natural Law (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005). Portier-Young, Anathea, Apocalypse against Empire: Theologies of Resistance in Early Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011). Prevett, M., ‘A Consideration of the Place of Authority in the Polity of the United Reformed Church’, Unpublished BTh Dissertation, University of Cambridge (2011). Prickett, Stephen, ‘Language Within Language: The King James Steamroller’, in Hannibal Hamlin and Norman W. Jones (eds), The King James Bible after 400

Bibliography

237

Years: Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Influences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 27–44. Pritchard, James B. (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978). Pui-lan, Kwok, ‘Overlapping Communities and Multicultural Hermeneutics’, in Athalya Brenner and Carole Fontaine (eds), A Feminist Companion to Reading the Bible: Approaches, Methods, and Strategies (Shefffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2007), pp. 202–15. — Discovering the Bible in the Non-Biblical World (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2003). Quash, Ben, ‘Theology and the Road to Damascus’, Journal of Scriptural Reasoning 7.1 (2008), n.p., available online at: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/journals/ssr/ issues/ (Accessed 31 October 2012). —Abiding: The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent Book 2013 (London: Bloomsbury, 2012). Radford Ruether, Rosemary, ‘Feminism and Jewish-Christian Dialogue’, in John Hick and Paul Knitter (eds), The Myth of Christian Uniqueness. Towards a Pluralistic Theology of Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988), pp. 149–62. —Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism (New York: Seabury Press, 1980). Radner, Ephraim, and George R. Sumner (eds), The Rule of Faith: Scripture, Canon, and Creed in a Critical Age (San Diego: Moorhouse, 1988). Rawls, John, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). Rebera, Ranjini Wickramaratne, ‘The Syrophoenician Woman: A South Asian Feminist Perspective’, in Amy-Jill Levine with Marianne Blickenstaff (eds), A Feminist Companion to Mark (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), pp. 101–10. Renteria, Tamis, ‘The Elijah/Elisha Stories: A Socio-cultural Analysis of Prophets and People in Ninth-Century b.c.e. Israel’, in Robert B. Coote, Elijah and Elisha in Socioliterary Perspective (Society of Biblical Literature Semeia Studies; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), pp. 75–126. Rhoads, David, ‘Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman in Mark: A Narrative-Critical Study’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 62 (1994), pp. 343–75. Rigdon, V. B., ‘Worship and the Trinity in the Reformed Tradition’, in T. F. Torrance (ed.), Theological Dialogue Between Orthodox & Reformed Churches (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1993). Ringe, Sharon H., ‘A Gentile Woman’s Story, Revisited: Rereading Mark 7.24–31’, in Amy-Jill Levine with Marianne Blickenstaff (eds), A Feminist Companion to Mark (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), pp. 79–100.

238 Bibliography Ruthann Robson, ‘Tennessee: Back to Anti-Evolution Teaching?’, available online at: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/conlaw/2012/04/tennessee-back-to-antievolution-teaching.html (Accessed 23 April 2012). Rorty, Richard, ‘Religion as a Conversation Stopper’, in Philosophy and Social Hope (London: Penguin, 1999), pp. 168–74. Rosenblatt, Jason P., ‘Milton, Anxiety, and the King James Bible’, in Hannibal Hamlin and Norman W. Jones (eds), The King James Bible after 400 Years: Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Influences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 181–201. Rowland, Christopher, ‘“The First will be Last, and the Last First”: Practical Theology and Equality’, in William F. Storrar and Andrew R. Morton (eds), Public Theology for the 21st Century: Essays in Honour of Duncan B. Forrester (London: T&T Clark, 2004), pp. 331–50. Royal Society, ‘History’, available online at: http://royalsociety.org/about-us/history/ (Accessed 31 October 2012). Rushdoony, R. J., Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973). Ruskin, John, The Works of John Ruskin (E. T. Cook and A.Wedderburn [eds]; 39 vols; London: George Allen, 1903–12). —Annotations: Egerton 3046, Evangelistarium, British Library. —Private diary material: RF MS 11, Ruskin Foundation (Ruskin Library, Lancaster), Folios 284–301. Scharffenorth, Ernst-Albert, ‘Editor’s Afterword to the German Edition’, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Berlin: 1932–1933 (Larry L. Rasmussen [ed.]; Douglas W. Stott, Isabel Best and David Higgins [trans]; Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 12; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), pp. 483–508. Schopenhauer, Arthur, The World as Will and Representation, Volume I (ET; repr., New York: Dover, 1966). Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth, The Power of the Word: Scripture and the Rhetoric of Empire (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007). —‘The Ethics of Biblical Interpretation: Decentring Biblical Scholarship’, Journal of Biblical Literature 107 (1988), pp. 3–17 Select Committee on the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill, Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill, Volume II: Evidence (HL 2004–5, 86–II). Sell, Alan, Guidelines on Church Discipline (London: The United Reformed Church, 1983). —Saints: Visible, Orderly and Catholic: The Congregational Idea of the Church (Geneva: World Alliance of Reformed Churches, 1986). Shirley, F. J., Richard Hooker and Contemporary Political Ideas (London: SPCK, 1949).

Bibliography

239

Smith, John E., ‘Niebuhr’s Prophetic Voice’, in Daniel F. Rice (ed.), Reinhold Niebuhr Revisited: Engagements with an American Original (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), pp. 39–54. Satyavrata, Ivan M., God Has Not Left Himself Without Witness (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2011). Sparks, Adam, One of a Kind. The Relationship between Old and New Covenants as the Hermeneutical Key for Christian Theology of Religions (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2010). Spencer, Nick, Freedom and Order: History, Politics and the English Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2011). Steinmetz, David, ‘The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis’, in Stephen Fowl (ed.), The Theological Interpretation of Scripture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 26–38. Storrar, William F., and Andrew R. Morton, ‘Introduction’, in William F. Storrar and Andrew R. Morton (eds), Public Theology for the 21st Century: Essays in Honour of Duncan B. Forrester (London: T&T Clark, 2004), pp. 1–21. Stout, Jeffrey, Democracy and Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). Sugirtharajah, R. S., ‘The Syrophoenician Woman’, Expository Times 98 (1986), pp. 13–15. —The Bible and the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Sweeney, Marvin, I & II Kings: A Commentary (Old Testament Library; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2007). Swidler, Leonard, Jesus Was a Feminist: What the Gospels Reveal About His Revolutionary Perspective (Lanham: Sheed & Ward, 2007). Tate, A., ‘“Sweeter also than Honey”: John Ruskin and the Psalms’, The Yearbook of English Studies Vol. 39 (Maney Publishing for the Modern Humanities Research Association, 2009), pp. 114–25. Thatcher, Adrian, The Savage Text: The Use and Abuse of the Bible (Oxford: WileyBlackwell, 2008). Thompson, Francis, ‘In No Strange Land’ (or ‘The Kingdom of God’), in The Poems of Francis Thompson: A New Edition (Brigid M. Boardman [ed.]; Chestnut Hill: John J. Burns Library, Boston College, 2001), pp. 298–99. Tracy, David, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad, 1981). United Reformed Church, Catch the Vision report to the General Assembly 2005 (London: United Reformed Church, 2005). United Reformed Church, ‘Basis of Union’, in The Manual (London: United Reformed Church, 1973).

240 Bibliography VanDrunen, David, Living in God’s Two Kingdoms (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010). —Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms (John Witte, Jr. [ed.]; Emory University Studies in Law and Religion; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010). Vanhoozer, Kevin J, ‘Lost in Interpretation? Truth, Scripture, and Hermeneutics’, JETS 48 (2005), pp. 89–114. Vaughan, Henry, ‘The Search’, in The Complete Poems (Alan Rudrum [ed.]; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983), pp. 157–59. Volf, Miroslav, Captive to the Word of God: Engaging the Scriptures for Contemporary Theological Reflections (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010). Volf, Miroslav, and G. Talal (eds), A Common Word: Muslims and Christians on Loving God and Neighbour (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010). Wainwright, Elaine, ‘Engaging the Biblical Text and Public Issues in Creative and Critical Dialogue’, unpublished paper, 2010. Wallis, Jim, Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street. A Moral Compass for the New Economy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010). Warnock, Mary, ‘Public Policy in Bioethics and Inviolable Principles’, Studies in Christian Ethics 18 (2005), 33–41. Watson, Francis, ‘Are There Still Four Gospels? A Study in Theological Hermeneutics’, in A. K. M. Adam, Stephen E. Fowl, Kevin J. Vanhoozer and Francis Watson, Reading Scripture with the Church: Towards a Hermeneutic for Theological Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), pp. 95–116. Webster, John, Word and Church: Essays in Christian Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001). —Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Wedgeworth, Steven, ‘“Two Sons of Oil” and the Limits of American Religious Dissent,’ Journal of Law and Religion 27.1 (2012), pp. 141–62. Welker, Michael, God the Spirit (J. F. Hoffmeyer [trans]; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994). —‘Travail and Mission: Theology Reformed according to God’s Word at the Beginning of the Third Millenium’, in David Willis and Michael Welker (eds), Toward the Future of Reformed Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), pp. 136–52. —‘Which Forms and Themes Should Christian Theology Uphold in Dialogue with Secular Culture?’, in Bruce L. McCormack and Kimlyn J. Bender (eds), Theology as Conversation: The Significance of Dialogue in Historical and Contemporary Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), pp. 297–312. —‘Sola Scriptura? The Authority of the Bible in Pluralistic Environments’, in Brent A. Strawn and Nancy R. Bowen (eds), A God So Near: Essays on Old Testament Theology in Honor of Patrick D. Miller (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2003), pp. 375–91.

Bibliography

241

Westermann, Claus, Genesis 1–11: A Commentary (ET; London: SPCK, 1984). Wheeler, John Archibald, ‘Genesis and Observership’, in Roberts E. Butts and Jaakko Hintikka (eds), Foundational Problems in the Special Sciences: Part Two of the Proceedings of the Fifth International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, London, Ontario, Canada – 1975 (Dordrecht/Boston: D. Riedel, 1977), pp. 3–33. Wheeler, M., Ruskin’s God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Whyte, J. A., ‘The Problem of Authority’, King’s Theological Review 7 (1984), pp. 37–43. Wilkinson, Richard, and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone (London: Penguin, 2009). Williams, Paul, ‘Catholicism and Buddhism’, in Gavin D’Costa (ed.), The Catholic Church and the World Religions. A Theological and Phenomenological Account (London: Continuum, 2011), pp. 141–77. Williams, Rowan, The Wound of Knowledge: Christian Spirituality from the New Testament to St John of the Cross (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1990). —On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000). —‘Historical Criticism and Sacred Text’, in David F. Ford and Graham Stanton (eds), Reading Texts, Seeking Wisdom (London: SCM, 2003), pp. 217–28. —‘Secularism, Faith and Freedom’, in Graham Ward and Michael Hoelzl (eds), The New Visibility of Religion (London: T&T Clark, 2008), pp. 45–56. Winston, David, The Wisdom of Solomon (AB, 43; New York: Doubleday, 1979). Witte, Jr., John, Law and Protestantism: The Legal Teachings of the Lutheran Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Wolterstorff, Nicholas, Divine Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Wood, Susan K., Spiritual Exegesis and the Church in the Theology of Henri de Lubac (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998). Wright, David F., ‘“The Common Buke of the Kirk”: The Bible in the Scottish Reformation’, in David F. Wright (ed.), The Bible in Scotland’s Life and Literature (Edinburgh: St Andrew Press, 1988), pp. 155–78. Wright, N. T. ‘Jesus’ Resurrection and Christian Origins’, Gregorianum 83 (2002), pp. 615–35. —Scripture and the Authority of God (London: SPCK, 2005). Young, Julian, Schopenhauer (London/New York: Routledge, 2005). Zizioulas, J. D., Being as Communion (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1985).

Index of Authors

Admirand, Peter 157, 162 Aguilar, Mario 165 Alexander, Denis 43 Althaus, Paul 68 Ambrose 143, 144 Aquinas, Thomas 150, 153, 215, 216, 219 Ariarajah, Wesley 19 Aristotle 153 Arthur, G. 129 Asad, Talal 191 Athanasius 114, 125 Augustine 33, 123, 125, 143, 153 Auld, Graeme 18 Bahnsen, Greg 212 Bailey, Kenneth 167 Barber, Daniel Colucciello 191 Barr, James 37, 38, 39 Barth, Karl 26–8, 73, 92, 127 Barton, John 16, 24, 143 Bauckham, Richard 14, 22, 177, 179–82 Bell, Richard H. 36, 41, 42 van den Belt, Henk 135 Bennett, Zoë 81, 90 Berkouwer, G. C. 22–3 Berry, R. J. 33–4 Biggar, Nigel 195 Billings, J. Todd 69 Birch, Dinah 94 Blenkinsopp, Joseph 63 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 27, 66, 73–6, 77, 196 Bradstock, Andrew 93, 180, 186 Braiterman, Zachary 167 Breck, John 129 Breitenberg, E. H., Jr 174 Bretherton, Luke 196, 202

Brueggemann, Walter 178, 180–3 Brunhes, H. J. 83 Bullinger, Heinrich 124 Calvin, John 10, 124–6, 130, 131, 216, 219 Campbell, Gordon 29 Cardenal, Ernesto 163 Cartwright, David 42 Cartwright, Thomas 213, 214 de Certeau, Michel 200 Chaplin, Jonathan 186, 200 Childs, Brevard 147 Cocks, Harry Lovell 133 Coffey, John 11 Collingwood, W. G. 91 Collins, John J. 15 Cook, Michael J. 162 Cornick, David 132 Corola, Joseph 150 Crisp, Oliver 139 Cunningham, Conor 33, 44 Davies, E. T. 215 Davies, Paul 45, 46 Davis, Ellen F. 28, 48, 51, 52, 181, 182 Dawkins, Richard 2, 43–4 D’Costa, Gavin 139, 145, 148–50, 153–5 Diamond, Jared 54 Dively Lauro, Elizabeth Ann 144 Dodd, C. H. 14, 128 Donaldson, Laura E. 169 Dube, Musa 162 Eagles, Stuart 88, 97 Edwards, Jonathan 213

244 Ellenson, David 149 Eph‘al-Jaruzelska, Izabela 58 Evans-Pritchard, Ambrose 63 Fackre, Gabriel 133, 134 Fergusson, David 14, 107, 190, 191 Ficowski, Jerzy 165 Fishbane, Michael 181, 182 Fitzmyer, Joseph A. 146 Ford, David F. 5, 176, 179 Forrester, Duncan 174, 182, 194 Fosdick, Harry Emerson 210 Fowl, Stephen E. 65–6, 76 Fredriksen, Paula 149 Frei, Hans 48, 50, 66 Gerrish, Brian 26, 67, 68, 70 Gibbs, Lee W. 215 Gnanadason, Aruna 166 Goldenberg, Robert 19 Grabill, Stephen J. 215 Green, Clifford 73 Gregory, Eric 190 Griffiths, Richard Owen 194 Grudem, Wayne 32, 211 Gunton, Colin E. 123, 127, 128 Haight, Roger 141 Hall, H. Ashley 146 Hall, Joseph 50–1, 56, 57, 60 Halpern, Baruch 50, 60 Hamlin, Hannibal 106, 107 Hanson, Paul D. 185 von Harnack, Adolf 73, 142–4, 148 Hart, David Bentley 176 Hartman, David 149 Hauerwas, Stanley 195, 200 Hays, Richard B. 202 Hewison, Robert 94 Hick, John 141 Hill, Andrew 85 Him, Chanrithy 157 Hofstadter, Douglas R. 45 Hogg, James 29 Hollenbach, David 173 Hooker, Richard 131, 213, 215–22 Hopkins, Gerard Manley 120 Horton, Michael 213 Hovey, Craig 193

Index of Authors Hume, David 13, 19 Hussain, Zahid 175 van Iersal, Bas M. F. 164 Irenaeus 21, 22, 125 Janz, Paul D. 65, 68 Jenkins, Daniel T. 133 Jenni, Ernst 32 Jenson, Robert W. 179, 193, 195, 196 Joffe, Joel 197 Johnson, Luke T. 100, 108 Jones, Norman W. 106 Jowett, Benjamin 12 Justin Martyr 20, 114 Kant, Immanuel 40ff. Kessler, Edward 19 Kidner, Derek 34 Kinukawa, Hisako 160, 163, 168 Kirby, W. J. Torrance 215–7 Knitter, Paul 141 Kraemer, Hendrik 155 Lake, Peter 214 Landow, George P. 94 Lash, Nicholas 179 Laytner, Anson 167 Lemaire, André 50, 60 Lennox, John 43, 44 Levine, Amy-Jill 162 Lewis, C. S. 29, 55, 213, 218 Liew, Tat-siong Benny 158, 165 Lindbeck, George A. 146, 147, 148, 152 Lipner, Julius 154 Lossky, Vladimir 135 Lott, Eric 152 de Lubac, Henri 148 Luther, Martin 26, 67–73, 216 MacDonald, Nathan 59, 60, 61 Machen, J. Gresham 210, 212 MacKellar, Calum 203 MacIntyre, Alasdair 152, 153 Maddox, Marion 174 McCormack, Bruce L. 28 McDermott, Gerald R. 19 McGrath, Alister E. 126 McIntosh, Andy 44



Index of Authors

Marshall, Christopher 175, 186 Marty, Martin E. 173 Master, Daniel M. 60 Mathewes, Charles T. 191, 192, 194, 197 Melanchton, Monica Jyotsna 158, 159 Messer, Neil 172, 179, 186, 194, 203, 205 Milbank, John 153 Milton, John 106–7 Moberly, R. W. L. 12 Moltmann, Jürgen 123, 129 Morton, Andrew R. 174 Myers, Ched 160, 161, 165, 167 Neville, David J. 175–7, 181–7 Niebuhr, Reinhold 210, 211, 222 Noll, Mark 17, 127, 210 North, Gary 212 Northcott, Michael 194 O’Callaghan, Dermot 34 O’Donovan, Oliver 181, 190, 207 Oman, John 133 Origen 33, 111, 125, 143, 144, 147 Owen, John 128 Paddison, Angus 172, 179, 186 Panikkar, Raimundo 150–3 Peacocke, Arthur 34–5, 43 Pearson, Clive 174, 175, 184 Perry, Tim 155 Philo 33, 144 Pickstock, Catherine 118–19 Placher, William 24 Porter, Jean 198 Portier-Young, Anathea 54 Prevett, Matthew 135 Prickett, Stephen 103 Pritchard, James B. 58 Pui-Lan, Kwok 160, 163, 166, 168, 169 Rauschenbusch, Walter 209 Rawls, John 186, 190, 200 Rebera, Ranjini Wickramaratne 158, 168 Renteria, Tamis 52 Rhoads, David 158, 160, 161, 166 Rigdon, V. Bruce 127, 136 Ringe, Sharon H. 160, 162, 163, 166 Rogerson, J. W. 65–6, 69 Rorty, Richard 186, 191

245

Rosenblatt, Jason P. 107 Rowland, Christopher 182 Ruether, Rosemary Radford 140–2, 148, 152 Rushdoony, R. J. 212 Satyavrata, Ivan M. 155 Scharffenorth, Ernst-Albert 73 Schopenhauer, Arthur 40ff. Schüssler Fiorenza, Elizabeth 182, 211 Sell, Alan P. F. 132, 133 Shirley, E. J. 215 Smith, John E. 211 Sparks, Adam 155 Spencer, Nick 182 Steinmetz, David 148 Storrar, William F. 174 Stout, Jeffrey 190 Strange, Daniel 150 Sugirtharajah, R. S. 18, 168, 169 Sweeney, Marvin 58 Swidler, Leonard 163 Talal, G. 20 Tate, Andrew 96 Thatcher, Adrian 17, 25, 189, 211 Thatcher, Margaret 194 Thompson, Francis 110 Thompson, W. D. J. Cargill 216 Tracy, David 173, 174 Upadhyay, Brahmabandhab 154 VanDrunen, David 212, 214 Vanhoozer, Kevin J. 31 Vaughan, Henry 104–6, 120 Volf, Miroslav 20, 25 Wainwright, Elaine 175, 182 Walker, Peter 113 Wallis, Jim 177, 180 Warfield, B. B. 27 Warnock, Mary 190, 200 Watson, Francis 21–2 Webster, John 23, 130, 132 Wedgeworth, Steven 212 Welker, Michael 127, 130, 192, 204 Westermann, Claus 37 Wheeler, John Archibald 46

246

Index of Authors

Wheeler, Michael 93 Whitgift, John 213 Whyte, James A. 125 Williams, Paul 154 Williams, Rowan 71, 99, 121, 179, 181, 191, 192, 204 Winston, David 38 Witte, John, Jr. 216 Wolterstorff, Nicholas 26

Wood, Susan K. 144 Wright, David F. 11 Wright, N. T. 76, 130, 131 Yeago, David S. 148 Young, Julian 41, 45 Zizioulas, John D. 128, 129

Index of Biblical Sources

Old Testament Gen. 1 82, 203 1–3 31, 33, 35–39, 42, 43 1–11 37 1.1a–2.4a 33 1.5b 32 1.8b 32 1.13 32 1.27 202–04 2–3 38–40, 42 2.4b–25 33 3 38, 39, 43 3.17b–18a 112 3.22–24 37 4.14 34 4.17 34 6.5 113 7–8 116 12–50 37 12.10–26 37 12.27–32 37 28 110 Exod. 20.8–12 32 21.22 221

1 Sam. 8.15 60 1 Kgs 4.22–3 59 5.2–3 59 17–2 Kgs 2 48ff. 18 20 2 Kgs 5.19 20 Neh. 13.12 61 Job 2.9 165 38–41 33 Ps. 4.7 61 4.8 61 24.1–2 116 24.3 116 Prov. 23.29 171

Lev. 19.9–10 180 19.19 203 20.15 202

Isa. 1.8 60 28.21 71 61 179

Josh. 22 18

Jer. 29.7

183, 199

Index of Biblical Sources

248 Hos. 2.8 61 2.10 61 Mic. 4 180 Mal. 4.2 86 Apocrypha Wis. 2.23–4

37, 38

New Testament Mt. 1.18 128 5.3 92 8.5 162 8.6 162 15.21–8 163–9 20 87 27.6 93 Mk 1.4 161 1.15 161 1.22 144 3.6 161 5.21–42 167 5.22–4 161 5.23 162 6.28 161 6.32–44 165 7.24–30 157–70 8.1–10 165 8.28 56 9.4 56 9.39 168 10.6–9 32 10.47 165 11.7–8 159 14.7 161 Lk. 1.35 128 2.52 169 4.18 179 4.25 56

8.4–15 112 8.15 115 8.43–8 119 24.27 144 Jn 4.4–52 167 4.46 162 6.16–21 116 12.1–8 119 14.26 129 16.13–15 129 Acts 2 130 9.3–9 112 14.15–17 20 17.23–31 20 17.27–8 104, 105 22.6–21 112 26.12–18 112 Rom. 1 218 1–5 89ff. 5.12 38 5.12–21 32, 42 5.18 38 7.7–13 32 7.10 38, 39 8.3 39 8.22–3 112 9–11 145 11.25 145 13.1 200, 202 1 Cor. 6.19–20 205 10.16 40 15.10 205 15.17 74 2 Cor. 3.6 38, 184 3.18 205 11.3 38 Gal. 1.9 68

Eph. 1.10 195 1.23 195, 196 Phil. 2.5–8 169 Col. 2.2–3 28 2.15 20

Index of Biblical Sources 1 Tim. 2.1 200 Rev. 6.1–8 159 22 82 22.14–17 92

249

Subject Index Note: The letter n following a page number refers to a footnote.

Abel 113 abortion 221 Adam creation 33–4 fall 32, 35, 36–9, 40, 43, 46, 113 immortality 37, 38–9 myth 42–3 sin 39 Adams, Norman 111–14 Advaita Vedanta 151 Afghanistan 181 agriculture 52, 59–60, 61–2, 180 Ahab, King 52, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61 alcohol 170, 188 see also wine Ambrose, St. 143, 144 Andrewes, Lancelot 49n. 3 Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) 126 Anscombe Bioethics Centre see Linacre Centre ‘anthropic principle’ 43 Aquinas, St. Thomas 150, 153, 216n. 21 archaeology 108 Aristotle 153 art Adams, Norman: Vision on the Road to Damascus 111–14 Book of Revelation and 102n. 5 Emin, Tracey: For You 118–20 and insight 121 Ruskin, John and 83–5 Schopenhauer, Arthur on 41–2 Spencer, Stanley 93 Tate Britain 102n. 5 Turner, J. M. W. 83

Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill (2004) 197, 198 Association of the Churches of Christ 132 Association of Hebrew Catholics (AHC) 149 atheists, ‘new’ 17n. 10 Augustine, St. 33n. 7, 153 baptism 115–17 Bartimaeus 165 Bhagavad Gita 151 Bible authority of 123, 124, 130, 189 public issues 190–207 Bunyan, John and 106, 107 canon 125–6 changing view of 47–8 as a city 100–3, 107–9 commentaries 24 education 29 Hebrew 20, 21, 54n. 9, 126 historical-critical interpretation 65–7, 76, 77, 145, 146 Luther, Martin 67–73 and history 49–61 1611 50–1 twentieth century 51–2 2013 53–4 interpretation 180 King James Version 11, 28, 29, 102, 103, 106, 107, 172 materiality in 55 Milton, John and 106, 107 in modern church 28–9 New English Bible 103 and politics 209–12 and public theology 176, 177–88



Subject Index

reading 139–56, 204 relevance 107–9, 120–1 Ruskin, John and 81, 82–3, 86, 87, 88–96 theological interpretation 65, 66 and tradition 182 translations 11, 49n. 3, 86, 103, 120, 195, 206 and truth 194–5 ‘use’ of 194 Victorian attitudes to 91 see also Gospels; New Testament; Old Testament; Scripture bioethics 198, 199–200, 200–1, 203 biology 33, 77 Brahma Sutra 151, 152 Brethren Christian Fellowship 200–1, 204 Buddhism 154n. 29 Bunyan, John 106, 107 Cain 34, 113 Calvin, John 10, 124–5, 130, 131 Cambodia 157 Cambridge: Fitzwilliam College Chapel 115–16, 117 Canaanite woman see Syrophoenician (Canaanite) woman Canaanites 18 CARE (Christian Action Research and Education) 199, 205 Chapman, Jake and Dinos 102n. 5 Chicago Statement (Article XI) 31n. 1 children 158, 162, 163, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170 Christian Medical Fellowship (CMF) 203 Christian Reconstructionist movement see theonomist (Christian Reconstructionist) movement Christians converted 154, 155 identity 176 and Judaism 145–6 and world religions 142 see also Protestantism; Roman Catholicism Christology 146, 147, 148 church and Bible interpretation 195 Meetings 133

251

and public policy 193, 207 and Scripture 10–11, 27, 131–2 see also Congregational Church; Presbyterian Church; Roman Catholicism; United Reformed Church; World Council of Churches Church of England 104 Church of Scotland 201, 204–5 cities 100–3, 107–9, 199 commerce 103 Community of Protestant Churches in Europe (CPCE) 126 Congregational Church 132–3, 134 Congregational Union of Scotland 132 conservatives 211 converts 149, 153–4, 155 countryside 104–6 creation 31–2, 33–4, 113–14 Crichton, George, Bishop of Dunkeld 11 culture 54 Damascus 60 Darwinism 34 see also natural selection; neo-Darwinism death 34 assisted dying 191, 197, 198, 205, 206 see also euthanasia of Jesus Christ 39, 40 Paul, St. and 38 and sin 35 deism 12–13 disciples 164, 165, 170 drought 56, 58, 62 ecclesiology 124–5, 130, 132–5, 146 Edwards, Jonathan 213n. 13 Elijah 20, 50–1, 55, 59, 60n. 18, 61, 62, 63 Elisha 20, 60n. 18 Emin, Tracey 118–20 entertainment 101, 102–3 ethics bioethics 198, 199–200, 200–1 Christian 92, 202 medical 205 eucharist 40 euthanasia 198, 199 evangelicalism 211n. 8, 222 see also fundamentalism

252

Subject Index

Eve 32, 34, 35, 39 evolution 32–3, 43–4, 46 see also Darwinism exegesis 143–4, 146–7 Exodus 18, 28 faith Bible and 77 Christians and 72, 174 doctrine of justification by 67, 216 insights of 175 Jews and 149 rule of 146 of Syrophoenician woman 161, 167–8 Farquhar, John 155 food 54n. 9, 56–7, 60–1, 62 Forret, Thomas 11 fulfilment 142, 148, 150, 181 fundamentalism 31–2, 211–13 see also evangelicalism Gandhi, Mahatma 85 gay clergy 22 Genesis commentaries on 33–4 creation story 31–2, 33–4, 113–14 and environmental issues 180 Gentiles 145, 166 gleaning, law of 180 global financial crisis (2008–9) 178, 180 Global Network of Public Theology 175 Gospels John 13–14, 23, 69 Luke 23, 69 Mark 23, 24–5, 69, 72 Syrophoenician woman 160–3, 165–6, 167, 168 Matthew 23, 69, 87 Syrophoenician woman 163–4, 165, 166, 167, 168 plurality of 21 social gospel 209–10 Synoptic 74, 75 Handel, George Frideric 102 hermeneutics 179 appropriate 142, 143, 168 churches and 133–4 cycle of 129–32

and ethics 200–1 of historical Jesus 144 pierced-side 65–77 and postmodernity 24, 53 revision of 135 rules of 146 Ruskin, John and 93, 94 of suspicion 17–18 Hindus/Hinduism 149, 150–2 Upanishads 149–50, 153 historical criticism 12–17, 48–9 Hobbes, Thomas 50n. 5 Holy Spirit 128, 129, 133–4 hospice movement 206 human fertilization/embryology 199 Human Fertilization and Embryology Act (2008) 197 Human Tissue and Embryos (Draft) Bill 200, 201, 204–5 human mind 45 hunger 62, 63 imagination 180 imago Dei 16, 203, 204 India 62 see also Hindus/Hinduism industrialization 48, 61 inequalities 159, 184 Intelligent Design movement 44–5 Irenaeus 21–2 Islam see Qur’an Israel agriculture 52, 59–60 food 59 history 55 water 56 Jeremiah 183 Jesus Christ Adams, Norman: Vision on the Road to Damascus 112, 113–14 authority 144 baptism 115 conversion 169 and creation story 32, 37, 38 death 39, 40 fulfilment 181 and Gentiles 166 Hindus and 154 historical 13–14, 73–4, 75, 76, 77



Subject Index

Judaism and 141 liberal representation 210–11 as messiah 141 mistreatment of 167 Port Talbot Passion 109 resurrection 69, 72, 74, 75, 76, 144, 177 and revelation 128, 129 and Scriptural authority 26, 27, 28, 182, 196 second coming 196 and story-telling 187 and Syrophoenician woman 160, 161–2, 163, 164, 165–6, 167 triumphal procession 20 Vaughan, Henry: The Search 104–5 Jews and anti-Jewishness 140, 142 Catholic 149 and conversion 154 and messiah 145 and suffering 162, 163 war with Romans 161 see also Judaism Jezebel, Queen 56–7, 60n. 18, 61 John the Baptist 161 Jonah 20 Joshua 18 Josiah 60n. 18 Jubilee 180, 186–7 Judah 60, 61 Judaism and Christianity 145–6, 150 Hebrew Bible 20, 21, 54n. 9, 126 Jesus Christ and 141 and Old Testament 149, 152 and world religions 139, 148–9 justice 186–7 Justin Martyr 20 Kant, Immanuel 40–1, 45 Khmer Rouge 157 King, Martin Luther 85 King James Bible 11, 28, 29, 102, 103, 106, 107, 172 Kings, Book of 60n. 18 Koran see Qur’an Kurkh Monolith 58 La Touche, Rose 91

253

Lamentations Rabbah 167 language 185–6 see also Bible: translations law 100–1, 102, 220, 221 Luther, Martin and 70–1 natural and divine 217–19, 221 liberalism 191, 210 life means of 54–5 Elijah story 56–61 power of 57–9 ‘lifestyle’ 54 Linacre Centre 198 literacy 11, 172 liturgy 117 Liverpool: Anglican Cathedral 118 Locke, John 13 Lollards 102 love 119 Luther, Martin and doctrine of justification by faith 216 Galatians commentary 67, 72, 76 and historical-critical methodology 67–73 and Law 70–1 and rationality 67–9, 70, 75–6 and salvation 70 and Scriptural authority 26 Maddox, Marion 174 Marcionism 21 Martin, John (artist) 102n. 5 material world 47–9 metaphor 165 Micah 180–1 miracles 13–14, 19 Mozambique 62 music 103 Muslim converts 149, 155 myth 36 of Adam 39, 42–3 Christ’s death as 39 discoverability of 40 and reality 42 of Satan 39 Naboth 59, 60n. 18 names 158 natural selection 43, 44 nature 45, 47

254

Subject Index

Ruskin, John and 83–4, 84–5 neo-Darwinism 44 see also Darwinism nephesh (power-of-life) 57–9 New English Bible 103 New Testament anti-Jewishness in 140, 142 Book of Revelation 101–2 and Scriptural interpretation 27 see also Gospels Nimshide dynasty 60n. 18 Noah’s Ark 115 noumena 41, 42, 45, 46 Obadiah 57, 58–9 Oedipus myth 42 Old Testament conflict in 182 division of 126 New Testament reading of 140–1, 143, 145, 181 Pentateuch 82, 100–1 plundering of 181 revelatory status of 148 suspicion of 18 see also under individual books olive oil 59, 60–1 Omri, King 59 Origen 143, 144 Otherness 163 particularity 9–10 passion plays see Port Talbot Passion Paul, St. 20, 184 Adams, Norman: Vision on the Road to Damascus 112, 114 and creation story 32, 37, 38 and death 38 and historical Christ 74 and Jewish heritage 154 preaching of 20, 145 sacrifice of 205 Penn State University ‘Tend and Sustain It Forever’ programme 54n. 9 Pentateuch 82, 100–1 Pentecost 130 perspicuity theory 22 Peter, St. 115 phenomena 41, 46 Philo 144

Port Talbot Passion 109–10, 111, 194, 196 postmodernism 15n. 8, 53 poverty 180–1 prejudice 164 Presbyterian Church 132, 134, 211–12 pro-life movement 221 Protestantism American 209–10 and Biblical canon 126, 142 Hooker, Richard and 215 and ‘Reformed two kingdoms’ 212 see also Church of England; Church of Scotland; Congregational Church; Presbyterian Church; United Reformed Church Puritans 102, 213–14 Qarqar, battle of 58 Quantum Theory 46 Qur’an 19, 154n. 29, 175 Rachel 167 racism: bestial imagery 166, 167 reasoning 190, 191–2, 200 Reformation 10–11, 26, 124, 126–7, 130, 142, 215–16 religious pluralism 168, 190, 191–2 religious toleration 11 revelation 127–9, 135–6, 142, 148, 185, 214 Revelation, Book of 101–2 Roman Catholicism Bible reading 140 Calvin, John and 125–6 and euthanasia 198 Jews and 149 Royal Society 47 Ruskin, John 81–98 and art 83–5 and the Bible 81, 82–3, 86, 87, 88–96 and nature 83–4, 84–5 and practical theology 81–2, 87–8, 97–8 and Turner, J. M. W. 83 Unto this Last 85–7 Ruskin, Margaret 82 Sabbath 184 St George’s Guild 96, 97



Subject Index

Satan 39 Saunders, Cicely 206 Schweitzer, Albert 74 science biology 33, 77 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich and 77 Ruskin, John on 87 and theology 35–43 Scotland Church of Scotland 202–5 Congregational Union of Scotland 132 King James Bible 11, 189 religious toleration 11 Scripture authority of 10–11, 25–8, 130–1, 135, 146, 172, 193, 212, 213–14, 218, 219 canon of 125, 126 centrality of 9 Hebrew 181 Hooker, Richard on 217–19, 221 infallibility of 31n. 1 Jesus Christ and 144, 145, 182 Luther, Martin and 68 meaning of 21–3, 24 moral ambiguity of 17–18 non-Christian 149, 150 plurality of 21–2 sola scriptura principle 124, 126 supremacy of 127 trajectories of 182 ‘use’ of 179 world religions and 19, 20–1 secularism 191 self-justification 67–9 semantics 16 Septuagint 21, 126 serpent: creation story 38 sex selection 201 Shakespeare, William 42 Shalmaneser III, King 58 Sheen, Michael 109 Sidon 160 sin 37, 38n. 28 Solomon, King 59n. 17, 86 Spencer, Stanley 93 Spinoza, Benedict de 50n. 5 story-telling 187 Strauss, David Friedrich 13–14 suffering 161, 162, 163, 164–5, 166–7, 206

255

Syrophoenician (Canaanite) woman geographical/textual terrain 160–1 identity of 162 and Jesus Christ 161–2, 163, 164, 165–6, 167, 169–70 Tate Britain 102n. 5 Thatcher, Margaret 194 theism 159 theology and exegesis 23–5 liberal 74, 75 liberation 18 Orthodox 128–9 public 171–88, 206 and ‘change for good’ 183–4 definition of 174 effectiveness of 184–5 language of 185–6 and story-telling 187 and science 35–43 theonomist (Christian Reconstructionist) movement 212 Thirty-Nine Articles (1563) 126, 127 Tillotson, Archbishop John 48n. 2 traversing 158 truth 194–5, 199 Turner, J. M. W. 83 Tyndale, William 11 Tyre 160 United Reformed Church 132, 134–5, 136 universities 102 Cambridge University: Fitzwilliam College Chapel 115–16, 117 Penn State University 54n. 9 Upanishads 149–50, 153 Vatican Council, Second (1964) 145, 150 war 161 water 56, 60–3 Westminster Confession (1646) 126 wine 59, 60–1, 171, 188 World Council of Churches 145 Wrede, Wilhelm 74–5 Wye Valley 104 Zarephath, widow of 50, 57, 61