Biblical Hermeneutics: A brief comment

This brief post is written in response to a request from a friend for an outline of the basics of my position on biblical hermeneutics - which is to say, the interpretative strategy/ies I adopt when I engage with the Bible. My sole intention here is to sketch out a few fundamentals which I regard to be pretty basic to my view of Biblical interpretation. It's not an attempt to be 'systematic' or 'scientific', nor is it an attempt to be uncontroversial. But it addresses what, for many people in the contemporary church, has seemed a particularly important set of issues - and, I suppose, here, if I am honest I am no exception.

The most basic thing I can say is that I do not adopt any kind of position which insists upon the use of the words 'inerrant', 'infallible', and 'without error' in relation to the Biblical text. To me, the use of these words in respect of the Bible is both naive and unhelpful. The Biblical text is not God and it is not appropriate to use these words in respect of it. (The same, by the way, goes for the church and the pope...more on that, perhaps, in another post). But if the text is not these things, it is still held (at least by me) in high regard, for a number of reasons.

a. As historical evidence/testimony, both of physical events and of theological outlooks.

b. As evidence of multivalence and variety in Jewish and Christian tradition, when it comes to talking about, thinking about and experiencing God...a variety which demands humility from modern day interpreters.

c. As evidence of unity in a number of essentials, such as the focus on the Mosaic covenant, the foundation stories of Israel and the important position of the Temple.

d. As a vital source of inspiration for the devotional lives of subsequent people, both in private and public contexts.

e. As an adaptable vessel through which life in God can be communicated, in conjunction with the activity of the spirit through the church.

The Biblical text admits of different interpretations by different believers. That this is so is well demonstrated by the differences which have characterised outlooks on passages and themes within it down the centuries. Certainly, there is a need to recognise that certain outlooks and passages in the Bible stand in marked opposition to ways of thinking we hold dear today. But does the Bible demand that we align ourselves more directly with all its ideological outlooks, rather than those it seems to us to have right at the heart of its tradition - a tradition which continues in the form of the church today? No one, surely, would argue this. We are all pickers and choosers when we come to the Bible and its interpretation, whether we are fundamentalists or not. And this is the odd thing about the Richard Dawkins criticism that 'fundamentalists' are being 'truer' to the Bible than non-fundamentalists.

The 'rules' of interpretation, insofar as these can be formulated, are in actual fact indecipherable from 'rules' about the integrity of a Christian life, lived as a whole - in dialogue with the Bible, certainly, but also in dialogue with subsequent written tradition and church life, and with fellow believers and non-believers and in prayer. All of these serve to shape the religious life - and Biblical interpretation has to take on a valid form in reference to each. This may mean that we interpret differently in different contexts. But why not aim for a more catholicising style of interpretation, which attempts to draw all people into the question of the textual interpretation of the Bible, and the question of living with integrity. This, as I see it, is the function of the truly lived and truly loving human life - rather than the narrowly sectarian one which refuses to shift beyond the realms of its own self encoded comfort zone.

Biblical interpretation is not a 'science', at least not in any popularly understood sense of the word which has been left untouched by the recent assaults of the philosophers of science of the late twentieth century: the biblical interpreter has no recourse to a reliable empirical vacuum in which he can conduct his research. His is rather a contextual task, which admits of different appropriations of the same truth in different circumstances: as the community, in totum, moves forward through time, it is certainly to be hoped that agreement will be more fully felt about how to read the Bible and about what the Bible is, both within and without the church. But the attempt to present the Biblical texts as self evidently revelatory of higher truths, in particular and already established ways to people, is to miss profoundly the point that the text only attests to the life of God insofar as it possesses the power to illuminate and lead in NEW ways we had not previously thought to be possible precisely through those people. And it is through service to people that the text can become alive to us in new ways too.

A Sermon I gave [4]

If we accept that to be human is, whether we like it or not, to have ‘gods’ – whether they are microscopes or electrons or chromosomes, as in the case of the scientistic fundamentalists I have been describing – or football players, popstars or film actors, as in the case of many of the rest of us, it’s worth entering seriously into the business of thinking about the kind of God or gods we in our heart of hearts really want to have. And here, I think, the Christian Gospel offers us some vital insights. Crucially, it insists that the thing about most so-called gods is that they are dead. Not dead in some bare physical sense: David Beckham is very much alive and well, of course, as are many of the other gods of stage and screen whose lives we are tempted to mould ours around, both in terms of the money we apportion to them and in terms of our efforts to look and be more like them. But they are certainly dead nonetheless, and it is important to appreciate how this is so. They are dead, I think, because what they offer to their devotees is so often offered only in exchange for some reward: it is a form of pay packet, in other words, or some other form of gratification for an ailing sense of self esteem.

The radical thing about the Christian God is that he is not motivated by these things – he doesn’t need a paypacket and his self-esteem does not need to be bolstered. And gods who need paypackets or bolstered self esteem aren’t, I would suggest, in spite of appearances, particularly powerful or even interesting gods. It’s not that such gods are wholly bad or evil or conceited: that’s not it. It’s just that what they really are is human, all too human, just like us: which, to be clear, is not to say wholly bad or evil or conceited but just enough of each to make worshipping them a morally dubious activity, curiously similar in character, I would wager, to worshipping oneself or one’s own sense of ‘Reasoning’. And even if these ‘human’ gods can be very good at singing a song or bending a football over a wall, they’re still not – in the big scheme of things – worth climbing trees to see.

For they would let you look at them for a while but sooner or later would demand a pay packet or some words of eulogy to enhance their deficient senses of self esteem. They might, it is true, tell you that you’re worth a million dollars and that you ought to think more of yourself – even deserve to do so – just like they think they do; I’m thinking here of the Gok Wans and Trinny and Susannahs of this world – people who despite the best assurances and their brash and confident public exteriors nonetheless exude – at least in the eyes of the more perceptive media commentators – a real and nagging lack of self esteem. If some of us find ourselves being taken on board by the message of self fulfilment and self realisation of a Gok or a Trinny, do we really find the gospel they offer, upon reflection, a satisfactory one?

Would Trinny advise us to hold off on the expensive hand bags and necklaces and embrace us in a new light for having sold half our goods to the poor, as Jesus does in the story of Zacchaeus? Would Gok advise us to seek out the needy – as opposed to the local John Lewis – in our search for a renewed sense of life’s meaning?

Even if Gok and Trinny profess to care about the decisions we might make in the absence of their involvement (and here, I think, we can reasonably doubt their sincerity), there is no reason to suppose that the decision to do things such as these – which play no discernible part in their self improving teachings – would be regarded as anything other than at best strange, at worst stupid. For Trinny and Gok, giving your money and attention to them and to designer shoemakers and store managers, rather than to the poor, the outcast, the sick and the spiritually weak and vulnerable is how best to reach a satisfactory sense of self love.

The gospel these celebrity gods most usually preach is the Gospel of the cultivation of self, without reference to or emphasis on the importance of the cultivation of others. That this gospel stands in ideological contradistinction to the Christian gospel is so obvious as to be hardly worth saying. But it can nonetheless never be said enough that the Christian gospel’s leading idea is that the most pressing concern of humans is the love of God and the love of neighbour. And the love of self, insofar as it is important, is important only insofar as these other loves are in view. The kind of self love, then, which separates itself off from the business of loving God and of loving one’s neighbour on this view radically misses the mark. As, for that matter, does the kind of neighbour love which separates itself off from the business of loving God. For it is only through attempting to love our neighbours and attempting to love God at the same time in our innermost being that we can experience the love of God for us.

The God of Jesus Christ exemplifies this divine love, which takes the form of the gift of salvation to those who don’t have it. This gift is not an empty one: it is above all a gift of freedom from dead gods and an introduction to life with a living one through his forgiveness and our repentance, and the interchange of these in the life of the church. God’s gift is an invitation to experience and participate in a creative energy which works remorselessly and creatively in and through people – not for its own gain, but gratuitously, for their sake. It can be a guide as we proceed in the difficult, challenging and uncomfortable directions it leads us in, directions which defy even our most earnest attempts to impose regimes of ‘order’ on what is going on. And in the context of the gratuitous relationships which it opens up, we begin to discover that we are known and loved in ways we previously had not thought to know and love ourselves. For God comes to our houses while we are tax collectors and sinners, before we have begun to understand what his love is really like and before we have begun our attempts to exemplify it in our lives.

And as the third chapter of the book of Revelation, my other text this evening, asserts in the plainest possible terms, when he comes to our houses, God says: ‘Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me’. As for dead gods, they don’t knock. They are themselves, like us, the unwilling subjects of this true God’s saving action: for like us, they are unwilling to open the door to let in true love, as opposed to the merely self gratifying and misguided love which they can find already inside their houses. The tragic pedicament of these gods is that they and their followers have not yet found outside the love and life which Zacchaeus, the tax collector who wanted to see and know the truth and who climbed his tree and opened his door, found there.
Amen.