Thursday 17 January 2008

What do we do with tradition?

Chris Tilling posted recently on the relation of tradition to scritpture within the Church. He made the following quote from Perriman's book Otherways:

'Scripture is like a forest. As people explore the forest, they tend after a while to follow the paths that others have taken, simply because it's easier. So the paths get well-worn and eventually become the definitive and orthodox way of getting around the forest. In fact the paths have become so well established that people have produced maps, which has led to the phenomenon of people staying at home with their maps and never feeling the need to venture into the forest at all ... It would be nice, in a way, if we could leave the forest alone for a while, let the undergrowth regrow, let the old paths disappear, and then start again, so that we come to know the forest for the first time' (9)
I note in hindsight that in the highlighted text Perriman says "in a way", qualified with "for a while." Considering that I haven't read the book, my extended response may have been an over-reaction. But seeing as it took me a while, I thought I'd post it here (you can read the ensuing dialogue here).

. . .

I appreciate where Perriman is coming from - trying to stay awake to the particularity of the text and the implications of this particularity for our faith - but I think he needs to get clear on the nature of Christian faith itself first, before priviliging the Bible over tradition (how pretentious do I feel when I say that! Oh well). Here are my responses to comments:

From the previous post, Chris said:

But this makes me feel like Perriman's project runs the risk of neglecting the interpretive tradition of the church, and its central creedal statements

I think the risk is greater, it concerns the nature of Christian faith itself. Christian faith is not, in the first instance, about reading the Bible faithfully. It's a response to the Gospel, the God's work and word in Christ to which the four canonical Gospels only witness. They are not the Gospel themselves, they are signposts to the reality that preceded them, encompasses them and grasps us to make us want to read them in the first place.

This distinction between Gospel and text means that theological exegesis requires the paths in the forest, it requires tradition, for without the creedal summaries of the Church (which I define broadly, including Billy Graham's little pamphlets) we wouldn't know why we are reading and what we are reading for. The problem with the Pharisees was not that they were somehow lacking in a pre-traditional, un-mediated reading of the text but that they hadn't grasped the true substance of the text. Neither did the disciples, despite the fact that they knew the text's Substance personally on a daily basis. It took the post resurrection encounter with the extra-textual living Christ and the anointing of the Holy Spirit to open their eyes and to see what had been in the text all along. This extra-textual event "opened up" the text's true meaning (it's "spiritual" rather than "literal" meaning, to use patristic categories). It was because of this vision that the church was capable of reading the Hebrew Bible as the Old Testament in the first place. Paul's hermeneutic, so scandalous to the historical-critical mind, was informed by this understanding of what had really been going on all the time (in seiner Exegese, er hat den Text verstanden, wenn nich erklärt, to use Dilthey's categories). It didn't matter how well or sensitively he read his Bible, without meeting Jesus he wouldn't have grasped the Bibles true meaning.

Thus, if "tradition" is understood to be a systematic formulation of the essence of Christian faith, then tradition is not only helpful to exegesis, it is necessary. I don't know how we'd read the Old Testament otherwise.

Which is why I disagree with Perriman's statement that

[Tradition] may arise out of our reading of scripture, but all sorts of problems arise, it seems to me, if we then reverse the process and allow our reading of scripture to be shaped by our later theological formulations

If Scripture is understood not to be the reality itself, but just a signpost to the reality (i.e. a "witness"), then a true theological grasp of individual texts requires that we to our reading in the light of broader formulations of what this single reality is. The two-testamental canon of scripture is a multifaceted witness to a single reality and its in our apprehension of the whole that we understand what is "really going on." The apostles experience of Jesus recalibrated their interpretation of the Old Testament. Our understanding of the Gospel should recalibrate our understanding of both testaments. We should never be content to remain of the surface, but, as Childs puts it, we need to pierce through to the true subject matter.

Which is why I find the following statement one-sided:

For there to be a genuine dialogue between scripture and tradition scripture must be seen for what it really is, independent of tradition as far as possible - otherwise it's a dialogue heavily weighted in favour of tradition.

Apart from struggling to understand in what sense Scripture "is independent of tradition", the true relationship is dialectic. Each area of discourse needs to be seen in the light of the other. It won't do to have a one way street going from Scripture to Tradition. This is an impossibility, both theologically and epistemologically.

I hope this makes some kind of sense ... I highly recommend Barth, Childs and Seitz on this topic. Frei wrote some great stuff on the need for typology in order to grasp the essential unity of the biblical message.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Philip,

I have been reading your blog with delight for quite a while!

A few thoughts--
re:
"It took the post resurrection encounter with the extra-textual living Christ and the anointing of the Holy Spirit to open their eyes and to see what had been in the text all along. This extra-textual event "opened up" the text's true meaning (it's "spiritual" rather than "literal" meaning, to use patristic categories). It was because of this vision that the church was capable of reading the Hebrew Bible as the Old Testament in the first place."

I would love to see you ponder the dynamics and implications of this at length. A few questions occurred to me:

- what is the relationship between "what had been in the text all along" and "spiritual meaning"? And what IS a "spiritual meaning"?

- how do we understand Luke's depiction of Simeon as "looking for the consolation of Israel"--which seems to be a pre-resurrection messianic expectation?

- what do we imagine the "post-resurrection encounter with the extra-textual living Christ" to be, precisely? To what extent is Jesus portrayed as expecting his disciples to understand the textual witness to himself before his resurrection?

- what should we think is going on in Luke 24:45? Is this anything more than looking at different passages in a scroll and linking them together? Does Luke imagine that this requires an "anointing of the Spirit" to do this, and if so, why?

I wonder about the utility and clarity of some formulations of the "post-resurrection hermeneutic" model, esp. ones that talk about "reading the text in light of the Easter Event." Is it possible to be more specific? And how might the notion that Jesus was "acting out an entextualized messianic script" shape or challenge these models?

love to hear your thoughts!

Michael

Phil Sumpter said...

Hi Michael, I'm glad to be a source of delight to you!

You ask some good questions, which I would like to try and engage with in time. Unfortunately, my time is limited and these questions need time. I hope you can bear with me as I carry these questions around in my head. Perhaps I can then "drip-feed" answers or thougths over time. If you've ticked the "Email follow-up comments" box you'll be kept up to date. I'd like to hear your opinions on these issues too!

I can start, for now with the first question:

- what is the relationship between "what had been in the text all along" and "spiritual meaning"? And what IS a "spiritual meaning"?

"What had been in the text all along" and "spiritual meaning" are the same, as far as I can see for now. The spiritual meaning is the ultimate reality to which the witnesses witness. The theological presupposition is that God's plan of salvation is one. The problem is that the witnesses are many, so theological interpretation (i.e. interpretation oriented to the knowledge of God, or his plan) needs to penetrate "through" the witnesses to this reality. This is what Paul is doing in his bizarre allegorical interpretations of the OT. He's not exegeting the literal sense of the text, he is (to quote Childs), interpeting the OT

"from within a theological context which was determined by the reality of which both testaments bore witness." (1996: 705)

Collapsing the object of the text's witness and the text itself is what Childs called "biblicism."

It's the "spiritual meaning" which is what matters. Both the OT and the NT witness to Christ in their totality, when read in the context of the reality to which they point, which, as far as I understand, is preserved for us in the traditional formulations of the Church.

The idea of a spiritual sense, by the way, goes back to the NT: cf. John 3:14; Matt. 16:4; 1 Cor. 9:9; Romans 3:31ff

A final Childs quote:

The basic thrust of Christian exegesis can be described as a move from “the partial grasp of fragmentary reality found in both testaments to the full reality which the Christian church confesses to have found in Jesus Christ, in the combined witness of the two testaments.”

Does that help?

Phil Sumpter said...

A vaguely related post from "Faith and Theology" on Milbank:

In The Suspended Middle (which I’m finally reading at the moment), he speaks of “the sterile interest of the ‘Yale School’ in the no-man’s-land of ‘history-like narrative’ which at once abolishes real history and ignores the essential allegorical underpinning of Christian doctrine” (pp. 58-59).

valerie said...

Hello,

I have also not read the book and my comments may, therefore, be completely out of line but IF we truly believe that God is alive and active then is it not an act of listening (rather than speaking) to say that we would like to wander the forest without paths? Karl Barth makes the point (paraphrased) that scripture is indeed the word of God insofar as we recollect that we have heard the word of God in every part of the book and therefore we hope and trust that we shall again hear the word of God in it when the Spirit makes it the word of God for us again. And Augustine's statement, "Si comprehendis, non est Deus" (if you think you understand it, it is not God) calls us up short when we rely on tradition to understand scripture. I am not sure I agree with Perriman, but I am hesitant to imagine that it is primarily through tradition that we can understand the Bible. This traditional reading of the Bible has lead to the systematic humiliation of indigenous cultures throughout the ages because Christianity has been in bed with imperialism for so long that we (Christians) often fail to differentiate between the core of Christianity and those things which belong at the margin. While scripture is an important part of Christianity (as Martin Luther says, "abandon scripture and God abandons us to the lies of man") perhaps our traditional readings of it are more peripheral than we imagine? I look forward to others' thoughts on this...
valerie

Anonymous said...

Hello Philip,

re: "The spiritual meaning is the ultimate reality to which the witnesses witness"

I think I can see where you are headed here . . . perhaps I am simply uncomfortable with all the baggage attached to the terms "literal" vs. "spiritual." Are these still useful terms for discussing the issue?

re: "The problem is that the witnesses are many, so theological interpretation (i.e. interpretation oriented to the knowledge of God, or his plan) needs to penetrate "through" the witnesses to this reality."

Interesting. To what extent would knowledge of God and his plan arise from a (at least preliminary) reading of the witnesses? Or is this knowledge coming solely from an extratextual reality?

re: "This is what Paul is doing in his bizarre allegorical interpretations of the OT. He's not exegeting the literal sense of the text"

Most of my work is in innerbiblical quotation and allusion, so I must warn you: with the possible exception of 1 Cor 9:9-10, I don't see Paul doing any "allegorical interpretation." He quite obviously creates allegories--but this is quite different from interpretation (which I define narrowly).

re: "he is (to quote Childs), interpeting the OT "from within a theological context which was determined by the reality of which both testaments bore witness." (1996: 705)"

Fair enough. But I have questions about the extent to which the apostles' reading of the OT is shaped by this "reality." I would imagine this relates to how we construe what is happening in Luke 24:45.

re: "Both the OT and the NT witness to Christ in their totality, when read in the context of the reality to which they point"

Yessss . . . it is the "read in the context of the reality" that I want to see explored. I have yet to be convinced that the passages you cited are relevant (though I'm aware early Christian interpreters cited them as illustrations of a "spiritual meaning").

Keep up your posts--they are both thought-provoking and illuminating!

Michael

Phil Sumpter said...

Dear Valerie,

Sorry about the late reply!

Thanks for your Barth thoughts. I've just posted a quote from him which I think backs up what you say about hearing God's Word in the totality of Scripture. I'm afraid I don't get what you mean about wandering the paths being more a matter of listening than speaking though ...

I'm not an Augustine expert, so I don't know what he thought of the relationship between tradition and scripture. I was under the impression that he had a high view of tradition.

As for my own understanding, I should probably clarify that although tradition is necessary to understanding the Bible, it's not the case that tradition is independent of the Bible and can stand as judge over it. The 'traditions of men' have often drowned out or perverted the Bible, and thus need to be corrected in the light of the Bible. As such, I can appreciate where Perriman is coming from and what he's trying to do. I think that the essentially dialectic nature of the enterprise needs to be constantly borne in mind. As Childs puts it: “One comes to exegesis already with certain theological assumptions and the task of good exegesis is to penetrate so deeply into the biblical text that even these assumptions are called into question, are tested and revised by the subject matter itself.” (1997: 60). I'll post more on this tomorrow.

Michael, I'll get back to you in time. Thanks for the dialogue.

Phil Sumpter said...

Michael,

I've responded to your first question my post above (where I quote Childs).

Interesting. To what extent would knowledge of God and his plan arise from a (at least preliminary) reading of the witnesses? Or is this knowledge coming solely from an extratextual reality?

There is no fixed temporal sequence. You can go in either direction. The key is ongoing dialectic in prayer and guidance by the Holy Spirit.

How do you define paul's interpretation?


I'll get back to you on LK 24

I have yet to be convinced that the passages you cited are relevant

Sorry, which passages?

Phil Sumpter said...

Michael,

I think I've begun to answer some of these questions here.