Revelation, Scripture and Church

Theological Hermeneutic Thought of James Barr, Paul Ricoeur and Hans Frei

Richard R. Topping

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138311824
• eBook ISBN: 9781317063759
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

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

Chapter 1 Revelation and Biblical Interpretation: Divine Disclosure and the Constitution of Faith

DOI: 10.4324/9781315606194-1

In this chapter an exposition and critical examination of James Barr, Paul Ricoeur and Hans Frei on the relation of the Bible to revelation is undertaken. The focus of attention is given to the manner in which the Bible is implicated in the revelatory and saving action of God in Jesus Christ by means of which Scripture is generated and to which it bears witness and is made effective for faith in the power of the Spirit. The manner of procedure will be to provide an overview of each thinker such that the hermeneutic field within which they construe Scripture’s implication in a doctrine of revelation is offered. Classic Christian construals of the doctrine of revelation and the implication of Scripture within them are in each case rendered problematic through analysis of a historical-critical (Barr), hermeneutic-poetic (Ricoeur), or literary/social scientific/theological (Frei) variety. While the aim of each primary author is to provide a conceptual overview of the hermeneutic field such that a doctrine of revelation functions in a properly ordered relation to the content of Holy Scripture in the context of the church, the primacy of revelation to the hermeneutic task is bracketed out for the sake of unencumbered historical-critical research (Barr), deferred, because “authoritarian and opaque,” for the sake of a preliminary poetic detour (Ricoeur), or left tacit, often hidden from view, through a consideration of the features of mediate realities implicated in revelation (Frei). The net effect of these moves is that Scripture’s primary nature in relation to God’s revelatory and saving action is conflated to human action (Barr), textual dynamics (Ricoeur), or, at least at the level of textual meaning, reading conventions required by genre type or embedded communal practice (Frei). What each account lacks, to a greater or lesser degree, is a fundamental and thoroughgoing sense of the relation of Scripture—in its generation and use—to God’s communicative action in Jesus Christ made luminous and effective in the power of the Spirit.

James Barr: Cumulative Tradition and Its Soteriological Function

For James Barr, critical biblical exegesis must be free from controlling theological belief or its character as both “free” and “critical” is threatened. Doctrines of revelation, when they function as dogmatic prolegomena, ought therefore to be resisted since they determine the rules of engagement prior to the empirical examination of biblical texts in their socio-historical circumstances of origin. Barr rejects theological construals of the hermeneutic field, such as Karl Barth’s and Brevard Childs’, since they function to contain critical inquiry with their monolithic and Christological dogmatic depictions of revelation. Barr reconceptualizes revelation and expands the scope of its occurrence through a consideration of the longer and broader tradition (pre-text, inscripturation, canonization and post-crystallization effects) in which knowledge of God cumulates and of which “fixed” Scripture is an objectified instance. The formulation and growth of this cumulative tradition provides, on Barr’s view, the matrix for “the coming of divine acts and the impulse for their occurrence.”¹ However, the basic genre for the formation of Israelite and Christian tradition together with that of inscripturation, canonization and post-biblical effects is human and historical. Barr regards attempts to appeal to an antecedent act of God, which generated the tradition about God, as special pleading since we have no access to such an act apart from the human tradition about God. Thus Barr is resolute both in his account of revelation and inspiration to avoid double-descriptive accounts. While the Spirit accompanies human thoughts and actions, these thoughts and actions are depicted without resort to divine “intervention.” The soteriological function of the Bible as “a God given meeting place” is the means by which there is growth in the cumulative tradition.

¹ Website: James Barr, Old and New in Interpretation: A Study of the Two Testaments (New York, 1966), p. 156.

In the material that follows, the exposition of Barr’s position on revelation a critique of his construal of the hermeneutic field is offered. The fundamental point in this section is that, while he introduces theological language into his discussion of revelation, Barr tends to conflate divine action to human action such that the dynamics of inscripturation, canonization and post-biblical effects are all depicted as human historical acts without recourse to theological description. Indeed, in so far as Barr articulates a sense of divine involvement with the Bible, he assumes either, on the one hand, an independent causal nexus within which God works only by way of “intervention,” or, on the other hand, one in which divine agency is descriptively confluent with human action virtually without remainder. In the critique of Barr’s contrastive understanding of divine action, a theological case is made for the antecedent, generative acts of God to human historical accounts, understood as witnesses to revelation, and an attempt is made to relate human and divine action in a more subtle fashion under the rubric of inspiration.

The Problem of Revelation

Samuel Balentine, in his essay “James Barr’s Quest for Sound and Adequate Biblical Interpretation,”² notes that in his first book³ Barr set out the objective that has guided his work in biblical scholarship for three decades. “It is,” wrote Barr, “a main concern of both scholarship and theology that the Bible should be soundly and adequately interpreted.”⁴ An axiomatic implication of this guiding concern is, for Barr, that biblical interpretation must be allowed freedom from controlling theological belief.⁵ Nowhere is this more evident than with respect to the doctrine of revelation. Throughout his entire corpus of writings, Barr is critical of doctrines of revelation where they are used to privilege the Bible in such a way as to stifle “free” historical-critical investigation. Barr opposes concepts of revelation that “control the methods by which exegesis will be permitted to work.”⁶

² Samuel Balentine, “James Barr’s Quest for Sound and Adequate Biblical Interpretation,” in Samuel E. Balentine and John Barton (eds), Language, Theology and the Bible: Essays in Honour of James Barr (New York, 1993), pp. 5-15. ³ James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (London, 1961). ⁴ Website: Ibid., p. vii. ⁵ See Balentine, “James Barr’s Quest,” p. 9 and John Barton, “James Barr as Critic and Theologian” in Balentine and Barton, Language, Theology and the Bible: Essays in Honour of James Barr, pp. 19-20. ⁶ Old and New in Interpretation, p. 87.

He notes that in Barth’s theology, for example, it is the concept of revelation which, because it forms “part of the dogmatic prolegomena, … lays down the conditions on which exegesis will be possible.”⁷ This pre-determinative character of revelational theologies creates, for Barr, a number of problems in exegesis. The first is its implicit prohibition against the historical-critical interest as to “what really happened” in the world behind the text. While critical investigation can serve to garner insights for biblical exposition, it must not “serve the foolish end of mediating an historical truth lying behind the texts.”⁸ Theological exposition that is in the service of the God to whom the Scriptures testify makes God the subject of exegesis, not the pre-history of the biblical writings. In this way a revelational theology, which is committed to an object-centered exegetical principle, tends to hold historical-critical investigation, with its non-theological and diachronic interests, in harness.

⁷ Website: Ibid., p. 91. See also James Barr, “Revelation through History in the Old Testament and in Modern Theology,” Interpretation, 17 (1963): 193-205. ⁸ Old and New in Interpretation, p. 93.

Barr also notes that revelational theologies, like Barth’s, tend to make a radical distinction between revelation and religion such that dogmatic and exegesis are alienated from taking into themselves the pre-canonical development and comparative study of religion. The religious world of Israel and the church are typically given short shrift and “a virtual theological exception” is made “in favour of biblical religion against extra-biblical Christianity and other religions.”⁹ Religion, in dialectical theology, is viewed as a human, cultural phenomenon or, even more negatively, as human hubris, an attempt to avoid the true God with idolatry. Therefore exegesis must not, on this view, serve the ends of religion, for the Bible is not about religion: “it is about God and his action, his revelation and so on.”¹⁰ In this way, revelational theologies, like Barth’s, seem to use the idea of revelation to insulate the Bible against its origins as a human, culturally situated product. The result, argues Barr, is that such theologies are in a position of alienation from “scholarship”, wherein results must be proven empirically, and left in utter dependence on the concept of revelation.¹¹ In contrast to this approach, which privileges piety,¹² Barr maintains that the formulation of tradition, its inscripturation in writing and the decision to gather a group of books together, are all human decisions that can be historically investigated. Where they cannot, it is not because of transhistorical elements or divine intervention, but because we do not yet have the necessary information.¹³

⁹ Website: Ibid., p. 95. See also James Barr, The Concept of Biblical Theology: An Old Testament Perspective (London, 1999), pp. 9, 11, 22, 106ff., 171; James Barr, The Bible in the Modern World (London, 1973), pp. 5-6; and John Levenson, “Negative Theology,” review of The Concept of Biblical Theology by James Barr, First Things, 100 (February, 2000): 60. ¹⁰ Old and New in Interpretation, p. 107. ¹¹ Barr notes Barth’s “painful” consistency on this point. He draws attention to Barth’s own comment about his alienation from his colleagues in Old and New Testament. “The time has not yet come when the dogmatician will be able to relate himself with good conscience and confidence to the results of his colleagues in Old and New Testament.” Old and New in Interpretation, p. 96, n.1. The citation is from Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 13 vols, ed. and trans. G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh, 1936–1969), III/2: ix. Barr maintains that Bonhoeffer “wisely blamed Barth for a positivism of revelation.” The Concept of Biblical Theology, p. 434. ¹² Barr is here comparing Barth and Childs, maintaining they are both conservative “positivists” who avoid history and rationality in favor of piety. ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Revelation and Biblical Interpretation: Divine Disclosure and the Constitution of Faith
• 2 The Bible as Holy Scripture: Construal and Authority
• 3 The Church and the Bible Critically Read
• Conclusion
• Index