The Spirit Says

Inspiration and Interpretation in Israelite, Jewish, and Early Christian Texts

Ronald Herms, John R. Levison, Archie T. Wright, Ronald Herms, John R. Levison, Archie T. Wright

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9783110689310
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

The Spirit Says offers a stunning collection of articles by an influential assemblage of scholars, all of whom lend considerable insight to the relationship between inspiration and interpretation. They address this otherwise intractable question with deft and occasionally daring readings of a variety of texts from the ancient world, including—but not limited to—the scriptures of early Judaism and Christianity.

The thrust of this book can be summed up not so much in one question as in four:

o What is the role of revelation in the interpretation of Scripture?

o What might it look like for an author to be inspired?

o What motivates a claim to the inspired interpretation of Scripture?

o Who is inspired to interpret Scripture?

More often than not, these questions are submerged in this volume under the tame rubrics of exegesis and hermeneutics, but they rise in swells and surges too to the surface, not just occasionally but often. Combining an assortment of prominent voices, this book does not merely offer signposts along the way. It charts a pioneering path toward a model of interpretation that is at once intellectually robust and unmistakably inspired.

Part I Methodology of Spiritual Interpretation

Spiritual Interpretation of Scripture, the Spirit, and the Gospel of John

Andrew T. Lincoln

1 Introduction

The claim that spiritual interpretation of Scripture involves the divine Spirit is uncontroversial. Debate and disagreement begin with attempts to describe what that involvement entails and how it relates to the obviously human activity of reading and interpreting texts. This essay moves towards some brief reflections on that issue through discussion of two prior areas that, it is hoped, may help to shed light. Each of these is a major research area in its own right and so the treatment will inevitably be highly selective. The first sets the context by asking what is in view in talk of the spiritual interpretation of Scripture, in which it is claimed the Spirit is involved. The second begins to probe more closely the role of the Spirit in this sort of spiritual reading by examining what is said specifically about this role in one particular spiritual reading of Scripture found within Scripture itself, that of the Fourth Gospel’s interpretation of its Jewish Scriptures. These discussions then become the springboard for the concluding comments on the relation between human and divine interpretative activities.

2 Spiritual Interpretation of Scripture

The term “spiritual” in the phrase “spiritual interpretation of Scripture” is still frequently taken as simply describing a devotional approach to Scripture, whatever the particular tradition of devotion one might have in view, from lectio divina to a daily “quiet time.” Such practices, however, need to be seen in relation to spirituality in its broader sense. Although the broader phenomenon of spirituality can be hard to define, there is now a body of literature on it that is in agreement about its main characteristics. Most helpful in this analysis, in my view, is to work with dual definitions—a more generic one and then tradition-specific ones. One leading writer on both spirituality generally and spirituality and the Bible in particular who takes a similar approach has been Sandra Schneiders, the Catholic New Testament scholar, and her definitions have been influential. She proposes that “spirituality as lived experience can be defined as conscious involvement in the project of life integration through self-transcendence toward the ultimate value one perceives.” When Schneiders moves from the general to the particular, she makes clear that, for the Christian tradition, “when the horizon of ultimate value is the triune God revealed in Jesus Christ and communicated through his Holy Spirit, and the project of self-transcendence is the living of the paschal mystery within the context of the church community, the spirituality is specifically Christian and involves the person with God, others and all reality according to the understanding of these realities that is characteristic of Christian faith.”¹ Less abstract in its analysis of the generic type of spirituality and how it functions in a predominantly secular culture is the work of Charles Taylor, who talks of the spiritual as the aspiration for a full and flourishing life, which can also be experienced negatively through its absence or loss. His shorthand term for such aspirations is “fullness.” In his own words:

Somewhere, in some activity, or condition, lies a fullness, a richness; that is, in that place (activity or condition), life is fuller, richer, deeper, more worthwhile, more admirable, more what it should be … Perhaps this sense of fullness is something we just catch glimpses of from afar off; we have the powerful intuition of what fullness would be, were we to be in that condition, e. g., of peace or wholeness; or able to act on that level, of integrity or generosity or abandonment or self-forgetfulness. But sometimes there will be moments of experienced fullness, of joy and fulfilment, where we feel ourselves there.²

There are two main competing narratives about such spirituality in our culture—that which holds a transcendent dimension to be necessary for its aspiration to be met and that which operates within a closed immanent worldview where having a transcendent goal is deemed to undermine a fully satisfying human life. On Taylor’s analysis, both spiritualities have similar pressure points, where the possibility of dialogue between them opens up—dilemmas and tensions in relation to such areas as dealing with violence, the role of erotic desire, justice, humanitarian solidarity, living with suffering and evil.³ As the longing for life in its fullness is experienced more specifically in Christian traditions this, of course, entails not simply an openness to some transcendent dimension to life but a transformative relation to the God, who is revealed in Jesus Christ and communicated through the Spirit.⁴ Since it is shaped by the good news of Christ’s death and resurrection, this is a spirituality in which, paradoxically, fullness may come through emptying, as the self becomes de-centred and drawn into relationship with God, with others and with the created world. This spirituality does not simply leave the secular as secular. It enables created reality to be seen as sacramental, shot through with signs of God’s gracious presence; it is lived out in the world in the context of the church and its practices in particular times and places; and, because it takes seriously the conditions that are necessary for human and planetary flourishing, it strives for freedom and justice.

On this account of spirituality, to interpret Scripture spiritually is to explore how its texts witness to the lived experience of flourishing within the context of the triune God’s relation to the world and invitation to participate in the divine life. From the stance of Christian faith seeking understanding, it employs all the appropriate methods for reading ancient texts and exercises a critical openness to being transformed by the reality to which the texts witness. In this way, to interpret Scripture spiritually overlaps extensively with interpreting it theologically and, if it differs at all, then it is probably in its more sustained focus on lived experience and transformation.

As Sandra Schneiders has emphasized, not least in her exploration of theopoetics,⁵ one of the most prominent features of a spiritual reading is its use of the imagination, an imagination that operates primarily analogically as it perceives how the spiritual reality to which the past texts witness can come to appropriate expression in the very different settings and cultures of later readers. It is the analogical component of the encounter with Scripture that opens up the possibility of a fuller meaning of its texts, whether in terms of Christological and ecclesial readings of the OT within the NT or in terms of reading both testaments for their significance for a fully human life in later times and places. In this way, reading for fullness of life requires reading for fullness of meaning, a sensus plenior.⁶

The imagination is not, of course, some free-floating entity. The agents exercising imagination are embodied. Two consequences of this are that the imagination is shaped by readers’ dispositions, relationships, culture and practices and that it is also part of a much broader social imaginary. In encountering a scriptural text in the expectation of its illuminating and transforming readers in a different situation, the analogical imagination inevitably takes up the reading methods and approaches to classic or sacred texts of its own day. In our time, such readings are informed by our historical consciousness but, under the influence of the linguistic and literary turn, recognise the significant role readers play in producing meaning in the first place. Such readings also recognise the potential of texts for multiple meanings and figural interpretations.

As we have noted, the imagination is both embodied and socially shaped, and therefore spiritual interpretation is not carried out by isolated individuals but in relation to others and in the context of the church, through which Scripture is in any case mediated. That means there is a dialectical relationship in which the Scriptural witnesses have played into and shape our tradition of spirituality but at the same time the present experience of our particular community and its practices, such as its liturgy, catechesis, communal care, hospitality to others, shape the imagination we bring to a spiritual reading. Communities whose spirituality is characterised by participation in the mission of God for human flourishing—in worship and prayer, in exposing injustices, in confronting the exploitation of the earth and the planet, in practising peace-making, in sharing economic resources with the needy—inevitably find that such practices also inform how Scripture is interpreted for its fuller meaning. The imagination formed through the Christian community is at the same time embedded in a social imaginary, which, following Charles Taylor again, refers to the taken for granted assumptions of a culture about the world, our place within it and what is necessary for a full and virtuous life.⁷ Operative in our context are assumptions about spirituality as a holistic rather than dualistic experience of flourishing and about twenty–first century knowledge of science, biology, psychology, sexuality or cosmology. These contribute hugely to our perception of the text’s vision of spirituality and provide the set of possibilities in the midst of which we discover its fuller meaning in the perf...