tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547653347296107692.post3346774351579165071..comments2024-01-09T12:59:32.666+01:00Comments on Narrative and Ontology: R. Hays: Reading the Bible with Eyes of Faith: The Practice of Theological ExegesisPhil Sumpterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16491514886782881340noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547653347296107692.post-66112500309403165762007-10-02T23:09:00.000+02:002007-10-02T23:09:00.000+02:00Wow, is he your supervisor? Feel free to post any ...Wow, is he your supervisor? Feel free to post any critical comments. There seems to be a divide between New Testament Scholars and Old Testament scholars on how 'theological interpretation' should be done. I'd appreciate your views.Phil Sumpterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16491514886782881340noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547653347296107692.post-51707584284833231712007-10-02T17:31:00.000+02:002007-10-02T17:31:00.000+02:00Enjoyed the conversation. I'll keep this in mind....Enjoyed the conversation. I'll keep this in mind. I have a doctoral seminar with Hays on Matthew in an hour. <BR/><BR/>andy<BR/><BR/><I>Andy Rowell<BR/>Th.D. Student<BR/>Duke Divinity School<BR/><A HREF="http://www.andyrowell.net/" REL="nofollow">Blog: Church Leadership Conversations</A> </I>Andy Rowellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15317283478472718864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547653347296107692.post-40484717940505555312007-09-23T17:49:00.000+02:002007-09-23T17:49:00.000+02:00Danke schön WTM. The more I think about these poin...Danke schön WTM. <BR/><BR/>The more I think about these points, the more I can see to criticise. But I guess that's just the hubris of a beginning OT student trying to find his own ground! They are definitely a great starting point, infinitely better then most phenomenological attempts to provide theology with a secure foundation, prior to faith.Phil Sumpterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16491514886782881340noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547653347296107692.post-11422102273334810812007-09-21T21:19:00.000+02:002007-09-21T21:19:00.000+02:00Thanks for posting these 12 points from Hays. The...Thanks for posting these 12 points from Hays. They are very important.W. Travis McMakenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12347103855436761304noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547653347296107692.post-37901430408751164242007-09-21T00:26:00.000+02:002007-09-21T00:26:00.000+02:00Stephen,I sorry, I forgot to respond to your state...Stephen,<BR/><BR/>I sorry, I forgot to respond to your statement about Hays on the Trinity. Yes, I also blinked when I read that. Of course it's important to remember the foreigness of the Bible and our stance as recipients of a word that comes from the outside, but ulitimately we can reify the concepts of the Bible either as the only ways to describe reality. There's too much diversity to do that. Childs himself makes a non-biblical philosophical term central to his entire approach, namely "substance" (<EM>res</EM>). People often worry that this means he's returning to a static concept of dogma or a quest of a ground of being. He counters this by saying that the term does not necessarily have to mean this, and he then goes onto give the term 'biblical content' (ie. the substance is a God in communion with himself and his creation). This would be another of the areas where I think Childs would qualify Hays' approach.<BR/><BR/>John,<BR/><BR/>I'll get back to you tomorrow. Thanks for your thoughts, though in the light of all that I've said so far, it should be clear that your issue is with Hays and a small group within the 'theological exegesis' movement and not with Childs himself, who is different. The fact that he would make the exact same criticisms of Hays as you have made should ring some alarm bells (which I've pointed out already, in relation to Hays, Barr and Frei). Perhaps there's a third way?Phil Sumpterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16491514886782881340noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547653347296107692.post-60298400240394417342007-09-20T23:20:00.000+02:002007-09-20T23:20:00.000+02:00I can now look at what I wrote a couple of weeks a...I can now look at what I wrote a couple of weeks ago, and quote a few places to give you an idea of what I say.<BR/><BR/>I write that “[r]hetorically, the [theological exegesis] movement pretends to represent little more than a simple unpacking of the terms ‘theological’ and ‘exegesis’. At least, that is the impression it gives by defining itself over against exegetes who have no theological interest whatsoever, or who might promote reading programs that are essentially anti-theological.” I note that Hays does this in his article by setting up vocally antitheological exegetes such as Wayne Meeks, Hector Avalos, Heikki Raisanen, and Michael V. Fox, and then presenting what he’s doing as the opposite of that. This makes it look like anyone who doesn’t want to be doing the sort of faithless exegesis that Meeks, Avalos, Raisanen, and Fox practice should do things the way Hays does them, or at least something approximate to it. As I’ve said already, this defines out of existence the sort of reading that most theologically focused readers have given the text.<BR/><BR/>I also write that “if NT theology is to be a philosophically coherent project, we can and must subject the NT writers’ hermeneutic of the Old Testament to the alethiological demands of the apostolic kerygma. To make the New Testament’s way of reading the Old Testament determinative for our theology (and normative for our hermeneutic) would be singularly wrong-headed. It would be like writing an architectural treatise on a great cathedral, but approaching the subject by studying the scaffolding that happens to surround it.”<BR/><BR/>I also write, “[when] advocates of ‘theological exegesis’ . . . represent biblical theology as a sort of theology of the Word, are they not adopting an organizing structure altogether foreign to the Bible? And when they turn the readerly component of reading for comprehension into a hermeneutical privileging of the reader, are they not translating biblical theology into a poststructuralist project? And when they substitute a history-of-religions etic definition of ‘scripture’ (as the authoritative literature of a given religious community) in place of the early Church’s emic definition of ‘the New Testament’ (as the preserve of the apostolic testimony), are they not, once again, making a translation of the most profound sort?”<BR/><BR/>In other words, I have many of the concerns with Hays’s project that I have already aired here in connection with Childs’s project.<BR/><BR/>Unfortunately, I have little time at the moment to do much more than quote myself, but I hope this helps.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547653347296107692.post-44133820940601123652007-09-20T17:07:00.000+02:002007-09-20T17:07:00.000+02:00Phil,I'll try to be brief on this. Let me just sa...Phil,<BR/><BR/>I'll try to be brief on this. Let me just say that Frei annoys me quite a bit, as I don't think he plays fair, and I think that the tedium in his history of hermeneutics is ultimately a smokescreen to sell some bogus and very dangerous ideas. He is the perfecter *par excellence* of the postliberal habit of rendering a pre-Enlightenment profile of an idea by simply mirror-reading the Enlightenment: e.g., if the Enlightenment gave a lot of attention to discovering what an author intended, then pre-Enlightenment hermeneutics (according to the bogus presumption behind this logic) didn't care about the author (which, in spite of how widespread such a view has become, is patently false)! (And thus you get folks like A.K.M. Adam, Nancey Murphy, and Stephen Prickett saying that the modern quest for authorial intention was invented by the Enlightenment, when, in fact, it goes back to the earliest hermeneutical debates on record [those raged by Homer's readers], and has been a part of biblical hermeneutics throughout the ages.)<BR/><BR/>When I say "propositional", I am referring to the alethiological shape of pre-Barthian hermeneutics. There are a lot of problems with the claims made for the idea of a narrative hermeneutics. One thing that has caused me to scratch my head quite a bit is the presumption, found among postliberals, that the presence of a narrative genre somehow implies a narrative hermeneutic (a la "narrative theology"). The claim, of course, is bogus: there is nothing implicit in the narrative genre that implies that the work in question should be read on the terms of a storytime alethiology. Narratives very often are intended to be read on the terms of their referring to extratextual reality. But the correlation of the word "narrative" in the naming of a narrative genre, on the one hand, and in the naming of a narrative hermeneutic, on the other hand, somehow fools people into thinking that narratives (esp. biblical narratives) are not supposed to be read propositionally--that is, as saying things about what happened in extratextual reality. Frei tried very hard to make this sleight of hand work, and ever since his book came out, a whole slew of scholars have bought into his gross misrepresentation of pre-Enlightenment biblical hermeneutics. (Hays is one of these: the argument in his *The Faith of Jesus Christ* is basically that Paul's gospel is built upon the presupposition of a narrative, and that this somehow legitimates, on Paul's authority no less, the whole approach of narrative theology!)<BR/><BR/>I realize, of course, that Barth very much thought that the historicity of the referents of Scripture were necessary for the Christian faith, but, as I see it, he was a huge factor in the current flight from propositionalism, because he, like so many other postliberals, didn't think through to the alethiological conundrum caused by combining an ecclesial hermeneutic with a referential propositionalist reading of the kerygma.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547653347296107692.post-70511986321618414922007-09-20T16:14:00.000+02:002007-09-20T16:14:00.000+02:00Could you do both? I doubt I'll have time to read ...Could you do both? I doubt I'll have time to read the essay as I am struggling to stick to deadlines. The advantage of you posting the main points is that it contributes to the thread and can be discussed publicly.<BR/><BR/>You'd have to explain to me what you mean my 'propositionalist' approach to theology and in what way this is pre-Barthian. If it's what I think it is, it is pre-Barthian only up until the Enlightenment. Frei's <EM>Eclipse of Biblical Narrative</EM> has a few things to say about that.Phil Sumpterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16491514886782881340noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547653347296107692.post-44695744483480962672007-09-20T13:19:00.000+02:002007-09-20T13:19:00.000+02:00Phil,I'm glad to read your remarks.Two weeks ago, ...Phil,<BR/><BR/>I'm glad to read your remarks.<BR/><BR/>Two weeks ago, I drafted a 5000-word response to Hays's article. Perhaps when I get off work today, I can comb my response for my main points and post them here. Or, if you would like, I could send you the whole thing as an email attachment. (Just tell me where to send it.)<BR/><BR/>While I have problems with some (but not all) of Hays's twelve points, my main bone of contention is that he continues what so many other in the "theological exegesis" movement are doing: he defines theological exegesis in such a way that good old pre-Barthian, propositionalist, intentionalist theological exegesis is defined out of existence.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547653347296107692.post-79770316384005809502007-09-20T11:45:00.000+02:002007-09-20T11:45:00.000+02:00John,having posted Hays' 12 'characteristics' I'll...John,<BR/><BR/>having posted Hays' 12 'characteristics' I'll come back to your comments from yesterday here. “<EM>Seeking to define "theological exegesis" by roping off certain gestures as inappropriate</EM>” is indeed what both Hays and Childs try to do. In the light of the list, it would be <EM>in</EM>appropriate: 1) to consider the texts as dead documents from the past with no normative implications for us today; 2) for the interpreter to distance himself from the claims of the text in order remain 'untouched' and thus 'dispassionate'; 3) to treat the text as a repository of abstract propositional or spiritual truths; 4) to break the text down into various sources or disjunctive voices <EM>and leave it at that</EM>; 5) to avoid the implications of hearing the various voices from the whole canon in symphony (or not); 6) to treat these texts as 'sources' for historical reconstruction, rather than as a guide to living (similar to point one: in my post from yesterday <EM>scripture</EM> and <EM>testimony/witness</EM> are related terms); 7) to privilege alien concepts when translating the text into our categories; 8) to ignore the greater literary/canonical context in terms of which the authors operated (this is one definition of the complex concept of 'intertextuality'); 9) to operate solely with a 'historical-grammatical' definition of meaning; 10) to shed our exegetical heritage as unwanted baggage; 11) to think that once we've figure out the meaning of a text that' it, i.e. it can no longer speak in fresh ways to changing contexts; 12) to think that genuine theological interpretation is a matter of human imaginative construal rather then a response to a theocentric force (to use Childs' language when criticising Brueggemann). <BR/>Yes, it is clear that reading the text as a Christian includes a whole host of negative judgements. That is the whole point of the idea of 'interpretation within boundaries', it's the idea behind the construction of a canon ('rule') in the first place. But from what you've said (“<EM>there's a place for telling *how* to do it</EM>”) I would think that you agree with me. How do you feel about the individual points?<BR/><BR/>As for defining “theological interpretation” itself, Hays is explicit that these 12 points are his personal attempt to give shape to something that may be hard to pin down. As he says, it is rather like pornography: “we do not know how to define it, but we know it when we see it” (p.11). <BR/><BR/>You say that we cannot take over the NT's view of the OT as our own, as the NT kerygma spoils that option for us. Interesting; that is exactly Childs' criticism of Hays, who says we should use the NT as a lens through which to read the Old (cf. Hays' book <EM>Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul</EM> (1989). This means that the Old loses its own voice and becomes a puppet of what the New wants say about it (a common 'sin' commited by most in the NT guild who want to do “theological exegesis”). Such a move is 1) historically unacceptable because it changes the voice of the original witness; 2) theologically unacceptable because it confuses a word of promise with that of fulfilment; 3) hermeneutically in error for is assumes that “every time-conditioned feature of the NT can be used as a warrant for its continued use without properly understanding the theological relation of its authority to its function as kerygmatic witness” (Childs, 1992: 84, 5). <BR/>I think we differ on just what the <EM>kerygmatic narrative</EM> is, which has implications for the relation of witness to witnessed-to. <BR/><BR/>P.S. Scott responded to you on the <A HREF="blogID=6547653347296107692&postID=5028405585965602868&isPopup=true" REL="nofollow">'alethiology' post</A>.<BR/><BR/>Stephen,<BR/><BR/>good to hear from you again. Your comments about Brueggemann and Childs represent a sticking point between them. I'm glad to have a Brueggemann-fan here, as not only is he interesting, but I also went through a relatively deep Brueggemann phase. I should probably go and have a look at him again when I have time. <BR/>Despite our talk here about 'theological exegesis', however, I think Brueggemann stands in a category of his own. He has certain central concerns that drive his whole approach and which come to dominate the way he construes 'theological reading'. This isn't wrong of course, for we all do it and it is in line with the teleological way most humans go about doing things. Though his concerns are valid and no doubt important from a pastoral point of view, I feel that for a properly Christian hermeneutic they are not sufficient. At some point I want to post on the differences between the two men, especially in terms of their different understanding of the 'ecclesial context' of interpretation. <BR/><BR/>Concerning synthesis, Brueggemann misrepresents Childs on this when he talks of his 'dogmatising' tendencies and search for coherence. Coherence for Childs is at the level of the kerygma, not at the level of the text, which frees him from needing to find textual coherence (this is a problem Hays may have). In this sense his Bible can be just as polyvocal as Brueggemann's. The question is how do we evaluate and work with this polyvalency. Here, the <EM>nature</EM> of the witness and the hermeneutical significance of 'canon' come into play.Phil Sumpterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16491514886782881340noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547653347296107692.post-28029903503184780542007-09-20T03:54:00.000+02:002007-09-20T03:54:00.000+02:00I'm in general agreement, and I appreciate the wis...I'm in general agreement, and I appreciate the wisdom contained in the interaction of the points taken together.<BR/><BR/>Four and five call for some comment. Although I appreciate that both points are valid, I think every interpreter leans in one direction or the other. I'm with Brueggemann, who stresses the multivocal witness of scripture and, indeed, sees it as beneficial. Childs, on the other hand, reputedly strives to interpret the biblical texts in such a way as to achieve coherence between them.<BR/><BR/>Regarding the point about staying close to biblical language instead of theological abstractions — would Hayes apply that principle to the Trinity?stchttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04018824090441668781noreply@blogger.com