Pain and Promise: Thoughts on Historical and Figural Interpretation

                The misuse of Scripture by the historical critical perspective has been well documented. Whether it is the silliness of the Jesus Seminar, or trying to prove that Adam and Eve once existed as historical people, these interpretive experiments have often been adventures in missing the point of the canonical Scripture. The central interpretive purpose of the Christian church should be to see Jesus Christ as the “golden thread which runs through the whole of the Scripture” (Gertrude Hove). 

For theologian Ephraim Radner this implies a “deliberate setting aside of certain historical presumptions” for the sake of seeing Jesus Christ in the text. When parts of a text identify characteristics of Jesus, we are called to see the text as a description of Jesus Christ. When a texts’ “narrative whole resonates with the grande themes of Jesus own life” we are called to see Jesus Christ. This way of thinking about Scripture rests on the presupposition that God is ordering “the Bible according to his own creation and recreation of human history” (Hope Among The Fragments, 98-99). It should show us that Christ’s suffering, his broken body, is calling us to suffer for one another as his Church (Colossians 1:24). 

In our modern context the problem that sometimes occurs with this Christological reading of Scripture is that we jump straight to our new life in Christ without recognizes the reality of suffering that still exists in a world that is not yet. We assume that reading Christ into the whole of the Scripture means that we can ignore the pain and brokenness of a Hebrew people, and say “well things were pretty bad before Jesus, but now that we have been made new we don’t have to worry about that anymore.” We assume that because were in Christ things will be so much better, thing will be so much happier, everything will be “so radically new” as Brian Walsh poignantly suggests in his most recent Advent blog post.

 A lot of this is due to the influence of the “principalities and powers” that surround us. The empire wants to numb us so we don’t feel the pain of our own lives, and the lives of those around us (so will continue to operate without question in the system it has designed). This is where a historical look at Scripture can reveal the pain of the people in that text, and relay to us our own pain that we so much want to resist. In Walter Brueggeman’s “Unity and Dynamic in Isaiah” he critiques the father of modern canonical interpretation Brevard Child’s for jumping to quickly from the Judgment of early Isaiah to the promises of God in later Isaiah. For Brueggeman the Judgment or social critique of early Isaiah leaves room for an embrace of pain in the middle of the book and slow movement toward God’s promises. Child’s is moving too quickly from the old to the new without recognizing the pain that is involved. It is here where a historical look at the people in Scripture can keep us in the reality of our brokenness as we “wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23). While Radner sees the over emphasis of historical critical tools as “an almost gnostic yearning for release from a world that is to be cut loose from God” (Hope Among The Fragments, 108) Walsh and Brueggeman see an overly spiritualized view of Scripture as its own gnostic denial of pain in the Christian life.            

Where the Newsroom goes wrong and the idolatry of Nationalism

Over the last few days I have had the chance to catch up on a few episodes of my new favourite television show the Newsroom. It is a powerful show about journalists working to properly inform voters about political and economic forces running their country. So far it has been a show which has stood for truth, equality, and democracy. Unfortunately this has not been true for the most recent episode I watched where the center of the plot surrounds the killing of Osama Bin Laden and the relief/excitement everyone has at the declaration of his death. Osama Bin Laden was a pretty awful guy. He manipulated his own people into believing in him as a spiritual leader and force for good against western powers, all while accepting money from the United States. He has also likely been behind several violent attacks against opposition countries including American embassies in east Africa. However, there is very little evidence he had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks. He did not take credit for the attacks until three years after, and had repeatedly denied he had anything to do with them up until then, though he praised whoever did commit the atrocity. It seems all to convenient for him to claim credibility for the attacks in '04 and would use his new stage to further his message of hate.

I don't like Osama Bin Laden, but the Newsroom has still lost its integrity with me at this episode. While the show tries to come off as a supporter of libertarian thought, it reeks of a nationalistic liberal agenda. The killing of Osama Bin Laden was plain and simply about making the American people feel better about themselves and their country. We caught the bad guy, America is safe, secure, and indestructible once again. Don't mess with America or you will go down like Bin Laden.

It was another Canada yesterday, another year I felt like a Jehovah's Witness on Halloween. I don't celebrate Canada day. It's not because we're a country that supports the abuse of the homeless so we can play sports with other countries, its not because one segment of our population believes justice is locking people up and throwing away the key, while another segment celebrates doctor's who kill unborn babies. It is because Jesus Christ tells me that I am a citizen of absurd grace, I am subject to a King who despite his anger towards injustice loves Osama Bin Laden. While Barack Obama understands very little about theology, he has one thing right about Jesus Christ, His teachings will never cohere with the American ideology. You cannot support the absurd message of Jesus of Christ and support nationalism, it will simply never make sense.

Post-Liberal vs. Contextual Theology

A major problem in Modern Christian theology has been the tendency to emphasize methodologies like historical critique and the contextualization of scripture over and above understanding scripture as God’s word preserved by him throughout time as his canonical revelation through the church. Post-liberal theology wants to affirm that God was in control of the canonical process, and continues to speak to us to through his word in the here and now. Furthermore we should not be so arrogant to assume that God’s voice was muffled in Christian theology before the modern age. The theology of Irenaeus, Luther, and Augustine should be taken just as seriously as modern historical critical thinkers like N.T. Wright and Marcus Borg. At the end of the day, the revelation of Scripture speaking into our lives is God’s work not our own. The methodology of inter-textual canonical reading is used heavily by post-liberal theologians along with examining the patterns in past Christian theology to see how God was and is continuing to work in the Scripture. Post-liberal theologian David Yeago, as an example, likes to show how past theologians like Martin Luther would actually agree a lot with what folks like N.T. Wright and the New Perspective on Paul have to say. In his commentary on Matthew Stanley Hauerwas gave himself rules that he would not fall into the historical critical trap of theorizing Matthew’s historical context. Instead his only exegetical reference would be scripture itself (how does a passage in Matthew relate to other passages in the Old and New Testament?) and how it applies to our current context today.    

While Contextual theologians like Sylvia Keesmaat, Brian Walsh, and Ellen Davis understand the danger of thinking historical critical lenses will allow us to more objectively understand scripture, examining our context as it potentially relates to the context or narrative of scripture is seen as important in understanding how God might be moving in our lives. When we see the human context of the scripture, we are able to relate to each in other in our joys and our suffering...