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.            

Ignoring Pain with Post-Liberal Theology

Remember the good ole days when Christianity was all anyone ever talked about? You know those good ole days...sometime between 400 and 1800 Common Era. When all we talked about was the nature of Christ instead of Miley Cyrus. We knew the Bible inside and out because MTV didn't exist yet. The Bible was about something more then just who wrote it, when, and why...it was about canonical inspiration, absolute truth...

The great theologians of the middle ages and the reformation had a lot of important theological insights, and much of it relates to the world we live in today. But the people who wrote the Bible itself also have a lot to say to our world. They often speak as a community in exile, often in the midst of persecution, often as sinners...they like us lived outside of Christendom. We like them live in a world where suffering and pain is a reality that exists all around us and the Bible has a lot to say about pain. Scripture is about more then just intertextual alignment.

In his unpublished systematic theology Post-Liberal theologian David Yaego tells us that before we engage in modern historical interpretation we need to first and foremost see Scripture as a signpost for our new reality in Christ. I would believe Yaego if every reference to our current culture context wasn't about theological correction...here is how the feminists get it wrong..here is how our Christian culture falls into modalism...Who are you defending Orthodoxy to anyway? Who do you think is reading your book?

If we want Scripture to point to Christ in this world, here and now, then we need to acknowledge the suffering that is in it. Israel was God's chosen people and they failed. They got into bed with idols, they committed genocide, they were people enslaved who chose to enslave. Why? To build a temple. Even if God remains faithful to them, there is still consequences for actions and this consequence is often exile.

In the new covenant Christians are God's chosen people and we to have failed him. Christ called us to live counter culturally against the oppression of women, against the segregation of human races, against the slavery of people. There are consequences for actions and refusing to face this reality will not helping anything. I get it. If you read scripture solely for intertextual insight you never really have to deal with the emotional consequences of the people your reading about. Even better you can further transpose an Augustian, Lutheran, or Thomist perspective and get another step further away from the contextual reality and another step further away from the suffering and injustice that is in the Scriptures and in the world around you. You never really have to deal with the emotional and physical reality of how Israel failed and you never have to deal with how Christians failed and continue to fail.

Intertexuality is great, but it is meaningless if it isn't interrelation. I am not saying we pander to political ideologies or stop declaring the creeds. I am saying that only being a good Christian who reads his Bible, reads theology, prays, and goes to Church is ignoring reality; it is living in a fantasy world. Peter J Leithart declares that “Only the good can be good teachers; only the obedient can hear.” I am not convinced. I think the broken also hear God, the broken teach us about his true nature of Grace. Israel is desperate and God calls them to listen, Peter denies Christ and the prophecy is remembered, Paul is broken on the road to damascus and God speaks. The consequences for their actions have only just begun, but God is heard loud and clear. If we assume that we are to just live moral and obedient lives and relevant interpretation will come, then we are fooling ourselves.

Leithart goes on to say that “Again and again, Israel closes herself to God’s word. Isaiah preaches to the deaf and dull of heart, and Jeremiah’s audience closes its ears to his stern message of doom. Jesus, the last prophet, hears and does his Father’s will, and he spends his days making priests. With a touch, he loosens tongues to sing his praise. By the finger of his Spirit, he bores into our ears so the Father’s word can enter and capture our hearts.”

Amen. But we don't look like Jeremiah or Isaiah. We look more like King Saul desperately trying to hold onto his Kingship, we look more like David on his deathbed. If we want to convict culture and inspire new realities like the prophetic voices of old, we need to to first admit we have lost the kingdom, and for good reason.