Theology as Retrieval

Receiving the Past, Renewing the Church

W. David Buschart, Kent Eilers

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780830898169
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

"Tradition is the living faith of the dead." —Jaroslav Pelikan The movement to retrieve the Christian past is a mode of theological discernment, a cultivated habit of thought. It views the doctrines, practices and resonant realities of the Christian tradition as deep wells for a thirsty age. This movement across the church looks back in order to move forward. David Buschart and Kent Eilers survey this varied movement and identify six areas where the impulse and practice of retrieval has been notably fruitful and suggestive: the interpretation of Scripture, the articulation of theology, the practices of worship, the disciplines of spirituality, the modes of mission and the participatory ontology of Radical Orthodoxy. In each area they offer a wide-angle view before taking a close look at representative examples in order to give finer texture to the discussion. More than a survey and mapping of the terrain, Theology as Retrieval inspires reflection, practice and hope.

1

Scripture

Anyone who thinks he has understood the divine scriptures or any part of them, but cannot by his understanding build up this double love of God and neighbor, has not yet succeeded in understanding them.

ST. AUGUSTINE, ON CHRISTIAN TEACHING1

Read Scripture like any other book.

BENJAMIN JOWETT, “ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE”2

IN AN INTERVIEW IN 2004 a well-reputed biblical scholar described his relationship to the Bible as “schizophrenic.”3 It was schizophrenic in the sense that his approach to the Bible as a person of faith was different from his academic approach. “In my [academic] work, I attempt to deal with the Bible as I would deal with any work of literature. And to treat the history of Israel as I would treat the history of England or Russia or China; that is, an attempt at a scientific, historical approach.” As a person of faith, the Bible shaped his life, beliefs, ethics, moral concerns and religious outlook, but he describes these as a “private aspect” of his relationship to the Bible. “So I think that there are these two very different sides to my relation to the Bible,” he reported. “One, my professional life; the other, a more private concern, interest, and fascination with the Bible.”4 His testimony is illuminating not because it represents the approach of every Christian biblical scholar. Rather, it portrays the outworking of an axiom voiced by Benjamin Jowett in 1860: “Read Scripture like any other book.”5

Today, Jowett’s precept is being challenged. Under the broad banner of “theological interpretation of Scripture” (TIS) many biblical scholars and theologians are retrieving approaches to the Bible that predate modernity, practices of interpretation often called premodern or “precritical.”6 These approaches attempt to recast the relationship between readers, texts and history so that the Bible is interpreted by Christians not as a book like any other book but as Scripture.7 In this sense the attack against Jowett’s axiom is, more basically, an assault against the assumptions and logic which underlie it.

It is because the underlying logic of Jowett’s axiom is predominantly modern, many advocates for TIS argue, that it has held such considerable sway in modern biblical scholarship.8 The intelligibility of “read Scripture like any other book” depends upon particularly modern assumptions about readers, texts and history. These assumptions are likewise inscribed upon methods of biblical study that have dominated in the modern university, especially historical criticism. “Like citizens in the classical liberal state,” Jon Levenson observes, “scholars practicing historical criticism of the Bible are expected to eliminate or minimize their communal loyalties, to see them as operative only within associations that are private, nonscholarly, and altogether voluntary.”9 One obvious consequence of the elimination of communal loyalties (such as an interpreter’s identification with the Church) has been the slow migration of classic theological beliefs (and in some cases systematic theology) away from biblical studies. As Walter Moberly describes,

It is common knowledge that modern biblical criticism only became a recognizable discipline through the process of explicit severing of the Bible from classical theological formulations. The basis for this was the belief that only so could the Bible be respected and heard in its own right, untrammeled by preconceptions which supposed that the answers were already known even before the questions were asked, or by anachronistic impositions of the conceptualities and assumptions of subsequent ages.10

This is not to say that advocates for TIS discount the discipline of modern biblical studies out of hand. Rather, many contend that Christian biblical interpretation must utilize the insights of critical studies while, at the same time, remaining wary of its underlying logic and assumptions, many of which they argue are doctrinally insufficient (a model termed “postcritical”).11 “We must appropriate without capitulating,” Michael Allen argues. “Historical method is a wonderful handmaid and a terrible master.”12

Given the range of opinion about the role of modern biblical criticism, it is not surprising that approaches and projects for TIS widely vary. Some retrievals focus on distinct eras of Christianity—Patristic, Medieval, or Reformation13—and others on specific individuals from the Christian tradition.14 Both approaches seek in one way or another to immerse themselves in their patterns and habits of interpretation, not uncritically but thoroughly and honestly. For others, lost or underprivileged practices are the primary focus15 or the role of the church’s creeds related to exegesis.16 Some seek wisdom from the history of interpretation,17 and still others retrieve doctrines related to the status of the Bible within the Christian community, such as divine inspiration or the economy of salvation.18 The diversity of approaches and emphases is due in part to the range of ecclesial locations from which these proposals arise, but it is also due to how advocates of TIS name the problem to which the retrieval of TIS is the solution (we address this further in the next section).

Despite its diversity (or maybe because of it), the momentum of TIS seems unlikely to wane anytime soon. Several commentary series are devoted to it,19 an academic journal,20 a dictionary,21 and the number of proposals for its method seems to multiply yearly.22 Miroslav Volf even suggests that the “return of biblical scholars to the theological reading of the Scriptures, and the return of systematic theologians to sustained engagement with the scriptural texts—in a phrase, the return of both to theological readings of the Bible—is the most significant theological development in the last two decades.”23

The question that remains for our study concerns the manner in which TIS seeks to retrieve patterns of reading Scripture from the past. It is not especially useful toward the cultivation of theological discernment for us to merely note that some forms of TIS draw on premodern resources in the effort to revitalize biblical interpretation. We need to press more firmly on the retrieval to discern the conditions on which such retrieval operates and the factors that contribute to its flourishing. That is to say, for those approaches to TIS which do so, what does retrieving lost, forgotten or underprivileged patterns of biblical exegesis necessitate? In order for these kinds of TIS to thrive and flourish, for them to be found sensible ways to exegete the Bible, what is required of the reader? What kind of self-understanding must the interpreter have in order for theological exegesis to be a fitting and sensible way to engage Scripture? What sorts of assumptions about readers, texts and history must be held—in contrast to the predominantly modern ones that many advocates of TIS decry? These are the questions we will pursue following a brief introduction to TIS that focuses on its elements of retrieval.

Commonality and Diversity

TIS is a recovery movement in the following sense: advocates of TIS seek to retrieve a relationship between theology and the practices of biblical exegesis that transcend or rectify modern developments in biblical studies and theology which, it is believed, hinder the interpretation of the Bible as Scripture. What constitutes these modern developments is up for debate. A few examples illustrate.

Retrieving the doctrinal heritage of the church is commonly emphasized among some advocates of TIS. In his preface to the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible, R. R. Reno cites the ready dismissal of tradition among contemporary biblical scholars, many of whom understand doctrine to be “the moldering scrim of antique prejudice obscuring the Bible.”24 Quite the opposite, Reno contends, tradition is a “clarifying agent, an enduring tradition of theological judgments that amplifies the living voice of Scripture.” Other approaches to TIS, such as the Eerdmans Two Horizons New Testament Commentary, attempt to bridge the modern distinctions between systematic theology and biblical studies. The Two Horizons series preface acknowledges the importance of modern and postmodern approaches to the Bible, but it centers the series’ interests “on theological readings of the text” that are “deliberately theological,” interpreting New Testament books canonically and remaining in conversation with constructive theology.25

The role of critical methods is often the focus as well. In the introduction to the Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible, Kevin Vanhoozer calls into question the autonomy of “so-called critical approaches to reading the Bible.”26 He argues that TIS will see the function of critical methods as “ministerial” rather than “magisterial.” That is, rather than abandoning scholarly tools and approaches to interpret the Bible theologically, “modern and postmodern tools and methods may be usefully employed in theological interpretation to the extent that they are oriented to illuminating the text rather than something that lay ‘behind’ it (e.g. what actually happened) or ‘before’ it (e.g. the ideological concerns of an interpretive community).”27 On the other side of the coin, some advocates for TIS critique not merely the presumption of neutral exegetical methods but also the supposed moral neutrality of interpreters. In other words, the virtues of the interpreter matter for biblical exegesis. “We need several interpretive virtues for wise and faithful reading of Scripture,” L. Gregory Jones writes. “Prominent among them are receptivity, humility, truthfulness, courage, charity, and imagination.”28 Drawing on Augustinian and Thomistic resources, as well as more recent linguistic figures such as Umberto Eco, advocates for the retrieval of “virtue” argue that the character of the exegete plays a part in the interpretive process. As the quote from Augustine at the head of the chapter suggests, not only does Scripture elicit particular dispositions among its readers, but its interpretation requires them as well.29

We could multiply examples that illustrate the various rationales that motivate TIS (e.g., canonical interpretation, history of reception, spiritual interpretation, etc.), but the point is simply this: TIS is a movement of theological retrieval because it seeks to recover patterns and practices of reading the Bible that transcend or rectify modern developments in biblical exegesis. Peter Leithart says it well:

Theological interpretation of Scripture thus involves respect for premodern interpretation, attention to the doctrinal heritage of the church, recognition that Bible scholarship takes place within the church and exists for the edification of the church, and acknowledgement that interpretation is not a clinical scientific enterprise but a form of piety and properly proceeded and followed by prayer, praise, and worship.30

However, the growing popularity of TIS should not mask the difficulty of defining it. We should also not assume that its advocates are of one mind about its practice. First, a good deal of confessional diversity exists among emerging proposals.31 Advocates include a wide variety of Protestants, Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Eastern Orthodox, each with their unique ecclesial traditions respecting the Bible, its history and the relationship between it and the church.32 Second, the theoretical shape of proposals for TIS varies according to the resources and methodologies that are emphasized—precritical, linguistic, doctrinal, canonical, cultural-social and so on. For example, in making their case for TIS, some build their presentation around the appropriate location of Scripture’s interpretation, others the exegetical strategies applied, some the goal or telos of reading Scripture theologically and still others the operative agencies at work in the process of interpretation. Third, the actual practice of TIS varies considerably. Simply survey a handful of theological commentaries, and the diversity of approaches and styles for offering theolog...