Reading Theologically

Eric D. Barreto

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781451483420
• eBook ISBN: 9781451487527
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Reading is one of the basic skills a student needs. But reading is not just an activity of the eyes and the brain. Reading Theologically, edited by Eric D. Barreto, brings together eight seminary educators from a variety of backgrounds to explore what it means to be a reader in a seminary context—to read theologically.

Reading theologically involves a specific mindset and posture towards texts and ideas, people and communities alike. Reading theologically is not just about academic skill building but about the formation of a ministerial leader who can engage scholarship critically, interpret Scripture and tradition faithfully, welcome different perspectives, and help lead others to do the same.

This brief, readable, edited volume emphasizes the vital skills, habits, practices, and values involved in reading theologically. Reading Theologically is a vital resource for students beginning the seminary process and professors of introductory level seminary courses.

5

Reading Critically

Jacob D. Myers

A Lesson From the Zombies

Rarely does a horror film offer much for those seeking to hone skills of critical reading, but I would argue that the recently released World War Z defies the trend.^[1] Drawing from the award-winning novel by Max Brooks,^[2]WWZ follows the travails of Gerry Lane, an ex-security expert for the United Nations who finds himself and his family suddenly on the brink of annihilation as a zombie plague spreads across the globe like wildfire. As the story unfolds, we follow Lane in his search for the source of this deadly viral outbreak as he strives to stay alive.

His journey leads him to Jerusalem, where Lane meets a Mossad leader named Jurgen Warmbrunn, who providentially learned of the viral outbreak from an intercepted communiqué from an Indian general who spoke of rakshasa (i.e., zombies) that were ravaging his troops. This foreknowledge led to a citywide quarantine in Jerusalem that walled out the illness. Upon hearing this, Lane is incredulous. “So you walled off your entire city when you received a random message that mentioned the word ‘zombies?,’” Lane asks. Warmbrunn explains the rationale behind this decision, and herein lies our lesson for reading critically.

Warmbrunn teaches Lane—and us who would read critically—about the “tenth man.” Based on past experience in which common sense led to disastrous consequences (e.g., the Holocaust, a [fictional] Iranian invasion of Israel), the Israeli leadership instituted the practice of the “tenth man.” This “tenth man” is a member of the leadership who bears the task of arguing against the consensus view. So while the other leaders read the Indian communiqué metaphorically, Warmbrunn, as the tenth man, read the message literally. What if actual zombies were on the loose and headed for Jerusalem? Then all of a sudden a hundred-foot wall seemed like a really good idea.

Reading theologically requires a perspective akin to that of the “tenth man.” It demands a critical eye that is able to build on a basic reading and work in concert with a generous reading, one that asks the hard questions of a text and inquires into those assumptions that lurk behind every text.

The Ideology of Every Text

Every text we encounter is guided by a certain perspective that shapes the contours of the author’s arguments. Moreover, this perspective colors the kinds of things the author chooses to say as well as things she chooses to omit. Another way of talking about this is to recognize that every text bespeaks a particular ideology.

To say that every text contains an ideology is simply to say that behind every text is an author who writes with a particular angle of vision on the world. Ideology is not some mysterious, ethereal force; it merely signifies our finitude as human persons. Ideology is shorthand for the cultural, psychological, aesthetic, linguistic, political, and even theological commitments the author brings to bear on his text. Ideology, to play off of a mundane analogy, is to the author as water is to fish—that is, an environment so entirely constitutive of lived experience that it is taken for granted. The only difference is that authors have the critical capacity to question the experiences and environments that have shaped their respective ideologies; most fish seem rather oblivious to the water.

A critical reader will begin—that is, before a single word is read—by reminding herself that this text she is about to read was crafted by another person, or group of people, who see(s) the world in a particular way. Such a reader will remember that just as she has certain political, economic, cultural, and theological commitments, so too does this author she is about to engage. This is not to discount the author’s words from the first. Faithful theological reading requires that we read works that challenge our own ideological presuppositions, moving us to see the world with fresh eyes. What it does mean is that we hold the author’s words at a critical distance as we read, recognizing that this text, like all texts, does not hold a privileged point of view on the world; it can claim no special access to truth.

Here is where ideological criticism can serve the theological reader.

Ideological criticism is like a Swiss army knife—it is a single tool that can perform many functions. First, ideological criticism is a kind of metacriticism that can help readers interrogate the theoretical frameworks shaping an author’s discourse. It leads us to ask specific questions of the author. What assumptions drive his arguments? What apparatuses are at work behind the scenes that help him formulate his arguments? What examples are privileged in support of his conclusions? What voices are left out or muted? Is the author polemical? If so, why?

Second, ideological criticism can help readers locate an author’s unspoken commitments that impact her arguments. How does the author think about and with scripture? By what measure does she move toward (or from) scriptural meaning? What does her text reveal about her understanding of God and humankind? What theological interpretive schemes are deployed? What assumptions does she make about the way and work of God in the world?

A third function of ideological criticism is that it not only aids us in assessing how a text emerges from a certain set of assumptions but also helps us to discern the telos, or ends, of an argument. Another way of putting this is that ideological criticism allows us to think critically about the function of a work. What change is it hoping to effect in us? in the world? in the church? If we followed the author’s argument carte blanche, what would be the implications for our relationship with God and other people? What are the things and who are the persons who might be left out if such a vision became a reality?

To think ideologically is to read critically. It will guide you to constantly ask crucial questions of the author as you read, and thus it is a tremendous resource for those who seek to read theologically.

The Limits of Human Finitude: Assumptions

Recognizing that we all write from a certain perspective is the simple, but easily overlooked, response to the fact that we all have assumptions that impact what we see when we gaze upon the world. The longer we live, the more widely we travel, and the more broadly and critically we read, the more nuanced our assumptions become (note my assumptions at work behind these words). Assumptions are conditioned in us by our experiences. They are much like the saliva in Pavlov’s famous dogs that precedes even the sight or smell of food. In other words, they are present responses shaped by conditioned expectations. Part of reading critically is learning to ascertain an author’s assumptions and to allow the author’s words to challenge our own assumptions. It helps if we break down the many possible assumptions into several kinds so that we can more readily identify them when we encounter them.

Race/Ethnicity

The last several decades have made us increasingly aware that race matters in theological discourse. In Being Human: Race, Culture, and Religion, theologian Dwight Hopkins offers an incisive statement on race and its importance for reading theologically. Hopkins argues that contemporary theological discourse “must take on the discourse of race because God interacts with human beings through culture in specific collective selves and the individual self.”^[3] In other words, our racial identity conjoins us to others who suffer or who enjoy certain cultural privileges on account of our race, and it is in this racial milieu (“collective selves”) along with our individual selves that God meets us. Race matters, and it is incumbent upon us who would seek to read theologically that we be critically aware of the impact of racial assumptions on our subject matter.

Caucasians, especially American Caucasians, have a hard time assessing their own racial assumptions. As a Caucasian myself, I bear witness to this struggle, within which I am still laboring. Scholars from racial minorities have much they can teach the racial majority (a majority at least for the next few decades—by 2040, America will no longer boast of any one majority race). Nowhere is a critical awareness of racial assumptions more evident than in the opening words of Justo González’s book, Mañana: Christian Theology from a Hispanic Perspective. Forgive me the length of this quotation, but you will see that it is necessary to behold a healthy racial awareness in action:

What follows is not an unbiased theological treatise. It does not even seek to be unbiased. On the contrary, the author is convinced that every theological perspective, no matter how seemingly objective, betrays a bias of which the theologian is not usually aware. Obviously, some theologies are more biased than others. But before we attempt to pass such judgments, we must be aware of the bias that is inherent in the judgment itself. . . . [W]hen it comes to detecting prejudice or even tendentiousness in a theology, we must not be too quick to pass judgment on those views that differ from the established norm. It may well be that our common views, precisely because they are common, involve a prejudice that is difficult for us to see, and that a seemingly more biased view will help us discover that prejudice. This is probably one of the most significant contributions that a minority perspective can make to the church at large.^[4]

As González makes clear, critical reading demands that we acknowledge the ways in which our racial experiences shape our theological and ethical arguments.

It is easy to overlook the ways in which one’s racial identity is constitutive of one’s perceived reality. Perhaps an illustration will prove helpful at this point. Racial awareness is satirized—excruciatingly satirized—by comedian Dave Chappelle. In one of his comedy sketches, he embodies a certain Clayton Bigsby, who is a white supremacist. Born blind, Bigsby developed a vitriolic attitude toward persons of color, completely unaware that he himself is an African American. Though offensive in many ways, Chappelle’s sketch presents a candid indictment of the ways in which a lack of racial awareness can impact others. To a certain extent, some of us have been blind to race and the ways in which race influences theological arguments.^[5] Reading critically demands that we develop a perspicacious view of race, asking questions like these: How might the author’s racial experiences have shaped his argument? What does she miss in her analysis when she fails to treat race as a modality of theological inquiry? How might the author’s racial difference from me inform my understanding of God’s ways and work in the world?

Though overlapping matters of race in many ways, ethnic identity contributes to one’s theological assumptions. For many, national and ethnic markers are the center of ideological activity. Though in many ways inseparable from one’s racial understanding, ethnicity deserves distinct attention. This is primarily the case because ethnicity involves assumptions that race does not. Increasingly in Western contexts, marked as they are by a confluence of cultures, traditions, and allegiances, ethnicity can be as powerful in shaping one’s assumptions as one’s race. Ethnicities are stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what is important to us. Another way of saying this is that ethnicity is a construct, albeit a powerful one. We may learn much from the constructive thinking on ethnicity by a scholar like Eric Barreto. Barreto writes: “As a constructed social reality, ethnicity is a projection of our own anxieties and hopes, an inclusive impulse to identify who we are but also an exclusive effort to distinguish between ‘us’ and ‘them.’”^[6] Such dynamics are often in play in theological discourse, and it is incumbent upon the theologically astute reader that she factor an author’s ethnic assumptions into her reading repertoire.

Consider the wars and atrocities of the last century. Most of these ghastly affairs arose not out of racial differences but from ethnic differences. No longer do these differentiations fall along the lines of national borders. Our globalized, cosmopolitan, wired world blurs our national differences even as ethnic differences remain. What this means for reading critically is that writers come to their texts with a vast array of ethnic assumptions, even biases, and it is at this point that we can apply critical pressure as we read.

One of the ways ethnic assumptions are most pernicious is in the work of those who do not display a critical awareness of their own ethnic assumptions (consider most of Will Ferrell’s lines in Talladega Nights). W...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Reading Basically
• Reading Meaningfully
• Reading Biblically
• Reading Generously
• Reading Critically
• Reading Differently
• Reading Digitally
• Reading Spiritually
• Reading More
• Bibliography