Most people do not understand the whole of the Bible literally. A 'creationist' (the world began literally in seven days pace Genesis 1) is likely to baulk at 'Sell everything you have and give to the poor'. Conversely, the person who says something like, 'the Bible is all metaphor; no one understands it literally these days' probably will be found out to take some parts literally. 'Of course "love your enemies" means "love your enemies".' In short: there is a challenge for all readers of the Bible, though only a few will be bothered to take up the challenge, namely, to explain the consistent hermeneutical principle by which one reads one part of the Bible in one way, and another part in another way.
In respect of human sexuality and the Bible, this challenge is very much one to which many are alert. One form of the challenge is 'the church has changed its mind on following the Bible on slavery, remarriage of divorcees, and treatment of women, it now ought to change its mind about homosexuality'. Another form, focusing on Mosaic law, suggests (often in mocking tones, one might add) that if we eat prawns we should not be against (faithful, stable, loving) gay and lesbian partnerships. A tough challenge Down Under where shellfish and the like are plentiful and delicious!
But this challenge is also one to which some may not be alert. Go back, for instance, to 'Sell everything you have and give to the poor'. It can seem so obvious that this does not apply to most of us most of the time that we may scarcely be aware that if we do not sell everything we have and give to the poor, we really really ought to use our time profitably to develop a consistent hermeneutic!
On history’s eradication of memory
1 month ago
I don't see any difficulty in taking Genesis 1 'literally' (i.e. non-metaphorically) and in understanding Matthew 19.21 as a literal command to a particular individual. I see no evidence that it was a command to all the church that we have been blithely ignoring.
ReplyDeleteAs it happens, I don't read Gen 1 as a 'literal' scientific description of origins, but this is partly because of the actual poetics of the text, which strongly suggest a literary (theological) reading rather than literal. This point was made by some of the earliest Christian commentators, like Basil of Caesarea (in Hexaemeron) and Augustine (in De Genesi ad litteram).
So I don't feel the need to triangulate and poke both the 'conservative' and the 'liberal' in the eye! - as I see a lot of clerics form conservative backgrounds doing as they gain establishment respectability!
The interesting - and still unsettled - question for me is: if you accept evolution by natural selection as your 'creation story', can you dismiss the historicity of Adam and Eve and the Fall? Gen 1 isn't really a problem for me; Gen 2-3 is the real question.
Now that's what I'd like to see a thread on!
A consistent hermeneutic: well, I listened to these lectures a long while ago by Don Carson, in which the Reformation doctrine of Scripture is brought into conversation with 20th century issues in epistemology and linguistic philosophy and suggest they may be a good listen for a walk along the Avon or around Hagley Park ...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theologynetwork.org/search/author/Don%20Carson
Hi Anonymous or Anonymice
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the pointer to Don Carson ... but do I have time to walk around Hagley Park?!
As for reading this passage metaphorically and that not ... I note you do not offer an actual explanation of your consistent hermeneutic ...
Peter, a walk around Hagley Park with a thoughtful lecture on your ipod (I hope your parents did give you one for Christmas!!) is not leisure but a Lenten discipline, working off excess pancakes and working up some lectures fro Ministry Training.
ReplyDeleteA consistent hermeneutic for an evangelical would include something like this:
1. The Scriptures are the true and trustworthy Word of God Written, as Jesus affirmed. Theopneustia.
2. Christ is the key to the Scriptures, their goal and supreme interpreter.
3. Because Christ is the climax of many revelatory acts by God (Heb 1.1-2), some parts have been surpassed as a fact of salvation history. (This touchers mainly on how far the Mosaic law is binding on Christians, as Acts 16 notes.)
4. How the original human authors and audience understood their words is binding on the evangelical conscience. Authorial intent, reader response, and genre all matter if we are to be competent readers.
5. But the prophetic character of theopneustia means that the human authors also spoke more than they knew naturally or historically. So something like the RC idea of sensus plenior comes into play.
6. The Reformation principles of the basic unity, coherence and 'claritas Scripturae' should be affirmed. Tim Ward has written a good little book on this, which summarizes some of the ideas of his Edinburgh PhD (supervised by Kevin Vanhoozer).
Hi Anonymous
ReplyDeleteYou will have to do better than that if you wish to propose a consistent hermeneutic to a critical world of scholarship!
What, for instance, are we to do if we think that the original human author of Genesis thought he was telling the story of creation as it literally happened (not understanding that it was possible for him to speak 'more than they knew naturally or historically')?
What on earth is an evangelical hermeneutic doing saying it is close to an RC one!?
'claritas Scripturae' is always paradoxical for us evangelicals, I fear: Scripture is clear but you still need to pay me as your preacher to explain it!
"You will have to do better than that if you wish to propose a consistent hermeneutic to a critical world of scholarship!"
ReplyDeletePeter, call it hubris if you will, but the older I get, the less I care about 'the critical world {worlds, really] of scholarship', which are largely detached from the service of the Church and even from faith itself. I start from a Christocentric hermeneutic of assent, not suspicion, from faith, not autonomous reason - or anti-reason. I began to lose interest years ago in the increasingly idiosyncratic stuff coming out of the 'Sheffield school' which was combining materialist assumptions about religion with postmodern literary approaches. Compare the early David Clines with the later one.
"What, for instance, are we to do if we think that the original human author of Genesis thought he was telling the story of creation as it literally happened (not understanding that it was possible for him to speak 'more than they knew naturally or historically')?"
We learn to apply some basic literary criticism and comparative contexts: understanding genres - and applying an intra-biblical or canonical methodology. The Book of Revelation itself (Rev 20:2) gives us a basis for understanding Gen 2-3 in a symbolic way. A question to you: do you think Adam and Eve were historical persons? And was there a historical Fall?
"What on earth is an evangelical hermeneutic doing saying it is close to an RC one!?"
What on earth was an evangelical doing in an RC cathedral?
"'claritas Scripturae' is always paradoxical for us evangelicals, I fear: Scripture is clear but you still need to pay me as your preacher to explain it!"
Not a cent from me, my friend! 'claritas Scripturae' was not the assertion that everything in Scripture was utterly perspicuous but that the basic meaning could be discerned by diligent people of intelligence and faith who persevered in comparing Scripture with Scripture, without the necessary supervision of a churchly Magisterium that told you 'what is really means' (e.g., the medieval fourfold method) - IOW, Scripture is not a giant cryptic code, as the Valentinian Gnostics made it out to be, but essentially straightforward in its communication. Otherwise, you could never tell the Great Unwashed to read it for themselves. See Tim Ward's little book for a contemporary restatement of this doctrine. Or even better, read his dissertation (parts of the published version can be found via Google Scholar) - maybe that would appeal to 'the critical world of scholarship'?! Really, Peter - you include in the sidebar that quote from the Sage of Old Zealand - now apply it!
Forgive the long URL but here's a link to Ward's dissertation on the sufficiency of Scripture, in conversation with contemporary speech act theory, Derrida etc:
ReplyDeletehttp://books.google.com/books?id=Bx2yQl0m5IAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Tim+Ward+Scripture&cd=2#v=onepage&q=&f=false
Thanks for the link, Anonymous; also for the explanations. Difficult to equate "We learn to apply some basic literary criticism and comparative contexts: understanding genres - and applying an intra-biblical or canonical methodology. The Book of Revelation itself (Rev 20:2) gives us a basis for understanding Gen 2-3 in a symbolic way." with "the basic meaning could be discerned by diligent people of intelligence and faith who persevered in comparing Scripture with Scripture, without the necessary supervision of a churchly Magisterium". Yes, Adam and Eve are historical ... and mythical ... and representative of us all.
ReplyDeleteI suggest the clue lies in 'persevering' and in 'comparing Scripture with Scripture'. Consider how the Cappadocians refuted Arianism (which claimed to be correct biblical exegesis) and affirmed the full divinity of the Holy Spirit: by an enormous comparative exegetical task involving over 700 texts, read in a symphonic way. Of course, I realise that Athanasius, Basil and the two Gregories were all pre-critical troglodytes (actually, they did live in caves in Cappadocia ...) and would not satisfy the New Priesthood of Critical Scholarship (and certainly not the Dunedin School)!
ReplyDelete