Reading Scripture as the Church

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Hermeneutic of Discipleship

Derek W. Taylor

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780830849185
• eBook ISBN: 9780830849192
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

The Bible is meant to be read in the church, by the church, as the church.

Although the practice of reading Scripture has often become separated from its ecclesial context, theologian Derek Taylor argues that it rightly belongs to the disciplines of the community of faith. He finds a leading example of this approach in the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who regarded the reading of Scripture as an inherently communal exercise of discipleship.

In conversation with other theologians, including John Webster, Robert Jenson, and Stanley Hauerwas, Taylor contends that Bonhoeffer's approach to Scripture can engender the practices and habits of a faithful hermeneutical community. Today, as in Bonhoeffer's time, the church is called to take up and read.

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PART ONE

The Church as
Creature of the Word: Hermeneutics and the Risen Christ

1

Reading in the Domain of the Risen Christ

A CONVERSATION WITH JOHN WEBSTER

OUR FIRST STEP toward a holistic account of reading in the church is to listen to John Webster. He offers a theologically rich depiction of the church as it exists in relationship to God’s action in the risen Christ. In terms of classical Reformation theology, he points us toward an account of the church as the creatura verbi, the creature of the word.1

Such a goal will immediately elicit reactions, for it is often feared that “word theologies” erode genuine ecclesiological reflection. Henri de Lubac, for example, notes the risk of spiritualism and the subtle slide toward “ecclesial Monophysitism” that can arise in Protestant accounts of the church.2 This argument quickly becomes hermeneutical. It is precisely the thinness of Reformation ecclesiologies, so the argument goes, that cedes space for historical-critical practices to flourish.3 It would seem, then, that reestablishing a traditionally Catholic ecclesiology would provide the tools necessary to articulate a theologically rigorous account of Christian interpretive practices. Such logic has driven much of the recent effort to recover a distinctly theological interpretation of Scripture.4

Given this reasoning, it might seem strange to argue for a theological mode of reading grounded in the church as the creatura verbi. Can this fund a distinctly ecclesial form of interpreting Scripture? If church vanishes behind word, as critics worry, then surely little hermeneutical gain is found in this manner of reflection. Ecclesiological spiritualism would leave us hermeneutically empty-handed.

It will become evident in what follows that even as I reference the Catholic criticism of word theologies, I am not necessarily seeking to chart a via media between them. The ecclesial hermeneutic that emerges in this book remains distinctly Protestant. This in itself is a helpful contribution, for much recent discussion about the theological interpretation of Scripture has subtly elided the difference between Protestant and Catholic theologies of church and Scripture. Here in part one I note some common Catholic criticisms because they helpfully highlight real liabilities lurking within Protestant ecclesiology. Granting unique priority to the one who creates the church is not an excuse to neglect the real significance of the church’s agency, as some fear. Instead, as I argue here, it gives a distinct shape to our theological depiction of the community’s material, social, and historical dimensions.

JOHN WEBSTER AND CHRISTOLOGY AS “NEGATIVE ECCLESIOLOGY”

Toward this end, I turn now to engage Webster, one of contemporary Protestantism’s most able theological representatives. His theology of Scripture reads as a sustained hermeneutical manifesto, an attack on what he calls the “dogmatic mislocation” of Scripture and interpretation within modern theology.5 He “resists the quasi-axiomatic status accorded to an anthropology of the interpreting subject” prevalent in modern hermeneutical theory and instead gives “sustained attention to a figure who has virtually disappeared from theological hermeneutics in the modern era, namely Jesus.”6

In order to make this claim, he takes great care, especially in his later works, to ground God’s outward activity in God’s wholly realized life in eternity.7 By stressing divine perfection he attempts to resist trends in twentieth-century theology that reconceptualize the church’s traditional ontological language. The problem with these approaches, Webster suggests, is that while rightly accounting for the humanity of Jesus, they risk neglecting the prevenience of divine being and work.

The ramifications of this neglect ripple across the spectrum of theological reflection. They are especially acute in the hermeneutical realm, particularly as they lead to accounts of hermeneutical space divorced from divine action. While a revisionary approach to divine being does not necessarily entail hermeneutical naturalism, Webster alerts us to the coincidence of the two by suggesting that the “naturalization” of the biblical text and the act of reading it are direct corollaries of the naturalization or historicization of the church’s talk about God. Indeed, as a discrete discipline, hermeneutics emerged in tandem with the separation of the Bible from theology, which itself mirrored a more fundamental separation between divine action and historical reality. In this sense, modern hermeneutical reflection emerges from historicist soil.8

Webster responds by going straight to the root. He contends that “the tide of God’s loving acts toward creatures” flows from the “infinite ocean” of God’s being.9 An account of “God’s infinitely deep, fully realized life” in se serves as the foundation for theological hermeneutics.10 Care is required here, lest this emphasis on eternity draw focus away from history. While Webster may seem susceptible to this danger, as critics sometimes fear, he consistently insists that attention to God’s perfection need not entail the neglect of the economy. Though the economy obviously takes priority in the order of intellect, this “should not be mistaken for the drastically different (and calamitous) dogmatic claim that the only significant distinctions are those enacted in the theater of God’s external works.”11 Real distinction exists on both sides of the economic-immanent divide, for the eternal intratrinitarian relation between paternity and filiation is intrinsic to divine perfection.12 In this sense, Webster is careful to note that “the primacy of theology proper should not be so inordinately emphasized that the glory of God’s works of nature and grace is diminished.”13 The eternal processions that constitute God’s perfection ground and make possible the economic missions, which is why Webster insists that eternal divine being includes evangelical movement, a secondary though no less real expression of God’s love. While God’s being does not depend on the missions, they are no mere epiphenomena; God’s outer works—within the realm of which falls the church’s hermeneutical enterprise—remain aspects of the doctrine of God.

This account of God’s being allows Webster to situate historical realities within the scope of divine work. Paradigmatically, this means that Jesus’ historicity does not compete with but is enabled by divine activity. Webster thus insists that the church’s understanding of Jesus must be “undergirded by an immensely powerful theology of God’s perfection.”14 He intends for this claim to counteract a particular christological error. “One illuminating way to write the history of modernity would be to envisage it as the story of the steady eclipse in the belief in Jesus’ presence.” Once Jesus ceases to be seen as a “presently operative and communicative figure . . . other doctrinal areas expand to fill the gap vacated by his removal.”15

Prime among them is ecclesiology. Stated simply, Webster fears that talk of church comes to fill in for talk of Christ. Consequently, he understands much of his dogmatic work as what he calls “negative ecclesiology,” a prophylactic measure against dogmatic distortion. By means of turning to a classical account of divine being and a corresponding account of Jesus’ perfection, he attempts “to win back to Christology” territory that has been annexed by talk of the church.16

At this point Webster may seem to confirm critics’ worst fears that word theologies carry an antiecclesiological bent. I will address this concern more fully below, for it carries some truth. For now, in fairness to Webster, we should note the specificity of his theological agenda. The negative tone of his ecclesiology is elicited not by the nature of the church per se but by perceived ecclesiological shortcomings in recent theology.

Webster has one particular such shortcoming in mind: the blurring of the distinction between word and church. This danger is evident, for example, within “communion ecclesiologies” that make the church the means of Christ’s presence to the world.17 While these ecclesiologies have the virtue of accounting for the church’s visibility, they risk implying what Calvin refers to as the crassa mixtura between God and God’s people.18 In being heavily invested in an ontological union between Christ and church, these accounts of the church risk implying a “porous Christology” and thereby eliding the “utter difference” between God and creatures.19 The hermeneutical danger here can only be stated briefly in anticipation of a fuller treatment in chapters three and four: when the difference between Christ and the church is collapsed and the alterity of the text compromised, readers find themselves within a hermeneutical space that lacks the leverage by means of which Scripture can become God’s speech to the church. Consequently, a church that should be listening instead finds itself speaking. In this sense, the crassa mixtura presses toward a particular instantiation of hermeneutical naturalism.

For now, we should note that Webster’s account of the Trinity and Christology produces an ecclesiology not confined to natural or social categories. The creatura verbi has its being within the triune economy of grace as the “first fruits of God’s utterance.”20 Hence, he confidently proclaims, “‘Church’ is not a struggle to make something happen, but a lived attempt to make sense of, celebrate and bear witness to what has already been established by God’s grace.”21 The church exists because Christ calls people to himself. The creatura verbi, therefore, is the collection of people gathered around the risen One, the space that exists because of his grace and in the wake of his call.

In its response to the “already” of God’s grace, the church certainly possesses social dimensions. In this, Webster remains alert to the danger of construing the church in a one-sidedly invisible manner. Yet he distinguishes his position by noting that the church is not identical simpliciter with its visibility. Its social-material dimensions always take shape in the wake of the risen One.22 As the creatura verbi, its being is a gift, never its own creation, which implies that the church’s visible existence is not a social project but remains derivative of its primary task of attending to Christ.

FUNDAMENTAL ASYMMETRY AND ECCLESIAL ACTIVITY

This brief tour through the logic of Webster’s theology reveals how dogmatic work in the doctrine of God pays off in the doctrine of the church. From a vantage point in his ecclesiology, it becomes clear that prioritizing Christ over the church resources a specific account of ecclesial activity. In all that it does, the church is fundamentally a hearing church, a church that has its being in the act of turning toward Christ’s voice.23 Here we arrive at the heart of Webster’s hermeneutical insight. Emphasizing the livelihood and loquaciousness of the risen One places the interpreter in a particular hermeneutical orientation. Because Holy Scripture is an alien reality, an exogenous element of communal life, the church is essentially “a domain of receiving.”24 Hence all ecclesial activity, hermeneutical or otherwise, grows from the same core task—to receive the gospel.25 Therefore the church must read, Webster claims, from a posture of “self-renunciation before the presence and action of God.”26

The threat of hermeneutical passivity. A certain danger looms at this point. Webster’s emphasis on ecclesial passivity calls to mind the Catholic claim against Protestant ecclesiology. Balthasar’s famous appraisal of the early Barth gives voice to this criticism: “Actualism, with its constant, relentless reduction of all activity to God . . . leaves no room for any other center of activity outside of God. In relation to God, there can only be passivity.”27 While Webster’s account of ecclesial agency is not identical to that of early Barth, his notion of interpretation as “active passivity or passive activity”28 nevertheless seems to fall within the range of Balthasar’s critique. Moreover, by prioritizin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Hermeneutics as an Ecclesial Practice
• Part One: The Church as Creature of the Word: Hermeneutics and the Risen Christ
• Part Two: The Church as Institution: Hermeneutics and the Ecclesial Past
• Part Three: The Church as Congregation: Hermeneutics and Togetherness
• Part Four: The Church as Missional Community: Hermeneutics and the World
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• Scripture Index
• Notes
• Praise for Reading Scripture as the Church
• About the Author
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright