A multiple level reading of Scripture

I've been posting on the issue of "figural reading" of the Old Testament recently, in particular on the way in which Jesus relates to the OT both "narratively" and "ontologically." I gave an example of the kind of challenge this type of reading can pose here (with an interesting response by Luke). Today I look at a proposal made by Brevard Childs.

Childs defends a multiple level reading of Scripture according to different contexts, but one where the integral contact between text and subject matter is not blurred. What he proposes is

a single method of interpretation which takes seriously both the different dimensions constituting the text as well as distinct contexts in which the text functions (1997:61).

As I mentioned in a thread dealing with the literal and spiritual senses of Scripture, there is no fixed temporal order in the exegesis: we already come to the text with a dogmatic framework, which is then altered in the light of the text. However, for pedagogical reasons Childs illustrates this move by taking us from the more familiar exegetical activity to the more complex reflective enterprise (taken from his essay, "Does the Old Testament Witness to Jesus Christ?" pp. 61-63):

1.The Old Testament's witness must be heard in its own voice (as I pointed out in this thread), which means it must be interpreted within its historical, literary, and canonical context. The genre of story, for example, excludes the possibility of having Jesus Christ read back into it, as in this context promise and fulfilment cannot be fused.

2.This literal/historical reading can be extended by placing it within the context of the two part canon. Structural similarities and dissimilarities between both testaments are analysed in which the aim is to pursue a relationship of content. For example, in terms of an understanding of God, it inquires as to which features the two testaments hold in common respecting the mode, intention, and goal of God's manifestations. This theological relationship is pursued both on the level of the textual witness and on that of the discrete matter (res) of the two collections.

3.The pursuit of the theological relationships between the two testaments provides an avenue towards comprehending the greater theological unity of the Christian Bible. The reality which undergirds the two testaments should not be held apart and left fragmented, but be critically reunited. When this reality is confronted, however, the reverse move takes place, as the interpreter is compelled to understand the biblical text from the context of this fuller horizon. In reference to the Old Testament's witness to Christ, this means moving beyond the unique voice of the prophets' testimony to a coming royal figure. Rather,

in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ in the history of Israel, the texts of both testaments in their fragmentary testimony to God's utterly mysterious purpose of new creation and redemption take on fresh life. Thus, when the interpreter moves from the reality of God manifest in action back to the Scriptures themselves for further illumination, he or she is constrained to listen for a new song break forth from the same ancient, sacred texts. As a result, in spite of generations of scholarly denial, few Christians can read Isaiah 53 without sensing the amazing morphological fit with the passion of Jesus Christ.”

In sum, Childs is proposing

“a text-oriented hearing of Scripture by a Christian community of faith which allows biblical texts to resonate from the force of divine reality gained through an encounter with the entire Christian Bible.”

The challenge of figurative interpretation: an example

Before I touch on this, I'd like to refer to the comment section of my last post on The "horizontal" and "vertical" nature of the Old Testament witness. Michael has responded with some excellent questions, to which I have responded in depth.

Now to the title of the post:

The challenge in question is the challenge the concept of "allegorical" or "figural interpretation" poses to the task of theological interpretation itself. As Daniel Treier points out, "Without the practice ... we cannot read Scripture religiously as a unified canon" (Introducing Theological Interpretation of Scripture, p. 50; my own review is forthcoming). Yet, there is still debate as to how one ought to go about doing it. Again, as Treier says: "How to handle the legitimacy of typological and/or allegorical interpretation becomes a major concern for theological interpretation of Scripture" (p. 50). He gives the following examples:

Some once read the number of Abraham's servants - 318 (Gen. 14:14) - in such a way that it pointed to Christ. On the arbitrariness of this, we might think, most theological interpreters today could agree. What, then, about Rahab's scarlet cord? Does it point to the blood of Christ, as Clement of Rome suggested, and if so, how? Many critical scholars might assert that there is no connection at all between the two, for the Old Testament writer could not have had the later event in mind. By contrast, many precritical interpreters would find such an association clearly willed by the divine Author. Is the color of the cord really ingredient to the story in such a a way that we should connect it to Christ? If a mental association based on scarlet is arbitrary, merely symbolic in itself, does that mean that we cannot read the text in a way the prefigures Christ? Or might it point us toward a deeper narrative connection, coherence that is more inherent within the story? In that case, we might consider how the divinely appointed object served as the sign and means of God's deliverance, typifying how God rescues people and brings them into promised blessing (pp. 50-51).

Tomorrow I will post Brevard Childs' thoughts on a multi-level reading of Scripture.

More words of wisdom for Biblical exegetes

... though of a different sort. Provided via Tim Furry. This is explicated somewhat here. I must remember that name ... John David Dawson ...

Jonah and the nations: a "figurative" reading

What is the correct context for interpreting the Book of Jonah, the context that gets us to the substance of its witness? The classic historical approach would locate it in its post-exilic setting and come up with something along the lines of Blenkinsopp: the forgiveness of the evil Assyrians represents "the breaking of the bond of divine causality" inside the prophetic office (Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics, 147). What about its canonical/literary context, however? I've posted on Seitz's understanding of typology, both as inner-biblical literary technique as well as prophetic hermeneutical intention. What would it mean to read Jonah as a book “figured into” a larger divine history? Seitz offers the following thoughts on how the canonical “universe of associations" into which the book of Jonah “has been figured and within which it establishes its ongoing prophetic address as the fifth witness of the Twelve” (147) creates a different picture of divine forgiveness and the nations:

Yhwh is “slow to anger”—but he his also “great in might, and YHWH will by no means clear the guilty” (Nah. 1:3). Of Assyria it was ultimately said, “for upon whom has not come your unceasing evil?” (3:19). Jonah ended with a question about divine compassion. Nahum ends with a question about worldly power and its capacity to look divine grace in the eye, as well as an episode of true repentance, and then carry on according to its own dark designs. Here Nahum is telling no detached theological truth, but is speaking of the way of worldly power as it moves through the chapters of history. And Habakkuk sees a worse chapter coming than the one about which he registered his initial complaint (1:2).

Prophetic intertextuality

In my post Biblical figuration as literary technique I pointed out that Biblical figuration is, well, a literary technique. The next question is why? What was the hermeneutical intention animating the creation of such literary associations? For Seitz, the term figural denotes the way in which the prophetic tradents wished to direct our attention towards the effect of their juxtapositioning of later and earlier witnesses.

Literary associations are not made for reasons of esthetic matching or for smoothing out possibly rough literary transition (if such had been the intention, we would struggle to spot secondary editing and derivative association in the first place, quite apart from interpreting its possible hermeneutical significance). Rather, these associations are made on the basis of theological convictions concerning God's character through time, God's sovereign purposes with the nations, God's deliverances of judgment and of mercy through time, and God's eschatological determinations derived from protological announcements and anticipations in the events of his historical life with Israel (250).

Biblical 'figuration' as literary technique

According to Seitz, the Biblical text bears “witness to a process of tradition-building” (72) in which a particular conceptuality concerning time and providence was at stake. This conceptuality was inherently theological and it was the task of the tradents of the Biblical tradition to pass it on to the next generation. Given this fact, what was the best means available to the tradents for capturing, preserving, and communicating this conceptuality? According to Seitz, Israelite prophecy, including its Wirkungsgeschichte within the community, is inherently figural. The term figural denotes both a literary phenomenon and a hermeneutical intention. Today I quote Seitz on figuration as literary phenomenon, tomorrow as hermeneutical intention.

As literary phenomenon, figuration is

the means by which temporally distinct witnesses have been intentionally associated in the material form of their canonical presentation. The way this has been achieved is diverse in application. Entire books have been crafted in order to deliver their intention in association with prior, written witnesses. The effect is by no means monolithic, due to the reciprocal way in which a fresh witness affects and is affected by its association with (literarily) prior and later books. On other occasions, editorial linkages establish connections between books with a prior history of development. Technical studies are available that provide speculations about the nature of the various moves that now correlate the witnesses of the Twelve Minor Prophets … (249).

For a related and fascinating post from a New Testament perspective, see my Christian eschatology and historical methodology: the case of John.

What exegetes can learn from Origen

In contrast to what most people seem to think, the most fundamental category for Brevard Childs' Canonical Approach to Scripture was not a pristine, self-contained collection of writings called the "Bible." It was in fact the so-called "community of faith," the community to whom God has, does, and will reveal himself. Given this reality, the history of the development of the texts and traditions this community "treasured" (a loaded word ...) - the so-called "canonical process" - is just as important as the history of the texts' reception, the completed Bible's so-called Wirkungsgeschichte (German for "history of effects," or perhaps better in Childs' view: the "history of the coercion of the text"). Within this schema, the exegete will want to ask after the text's "function" within the "community of faith." The text is not an absolute entity, a resource of fixed propositions to be extracted and pieced together once and for all. It is rather a "vehicle" that fulfills a special role within the community, which itself fits within the broader eschatological plan of God's redemption.

Given this reality, what can exegetes in the 21st century learn from Origen? I only have time to post Childs' three conclusions, taken from his unpublished paper, "Allegory and Typology within Biblical Interpretation" (presented at St Mary's College, University of St Andrews, 2000):

1) First, Origen raised the basic issue of addressing the function of Scripture for the church which is to be a living and continuous vehicle of divine revelation.

2) Origen struggled to do justice both to the particularity of the literal sense of the text and also to its fuller, spiritual role as a divine pedagogy in hearing testimony to the salvific work of Jesus Christ to the church and world.

3) Origen raised the question as to the faithful role of the interpreter in the exercise of creative response in receiving and transmitting the truth of the Sacred Scriptures to a community of faith and practice.

He adds a quote by Frances Young, who he believes refelcts Origen's concerns, when she wrights:

Without a form of allegory that at least allows for analogy, the biblical text can only be an object of archaeological interest.

(p. 3 Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture)

Update: Check out this fun post from Bishop Alan. I particularly like the latin ditty from Nicolas of Lyra!

How could Augustine do that?

I've often wondered at the validity of Augustine's hermeneutical axiom that if a passage can be variously interpreted, the interpretation which encourages love of God and neighbour should be preferred.

Is that good exegesis? Can one just take an ethic of love as the norm for interpretation of these ancient texts? It sounds like a nice idea, but surely true interpretation involves hearing the text in and of itself, regardless of our ethical presuppositions?

I recently saw Augustines' move within the context of moves made by other church fathers and something went "click" in my head (as the Germans say). Irenaeus, for example, in his battle with the varying scriptural interpretations of the Gnostics, appealed to God's one redemptive purpose uniting both testaments as a context for interpretation. Origen spoke of multiple levels of meaning in Scripture in which the reader is led from external form to internal, spiritual sense, all as part of the divine pedagogy.

What unites these approaches is the conviction that the Scriptures are a witness to a unified theological reality. Though diverse in form, they are united by a single function, the kerygmatic, deictic one of "witnessing," pointing, or referring to this reality, the divine referent. Given ecclesial interpretation is an existential matter of profound importance, rather than an exercise in "dispassionate" curiosity about a dead religion, it makes sense that interpretation start from the position of the reality testified to. The movement is then circular, as we move from referent to text and back again, each pole enriching the other. That this is not necessarily a form of fideism (though in practice it often is) is testified to by the fact that it is only through the literal sense that spiritual was achieved. Just as the church confesses the risen Christ in the text of Jewish Scripture, the New is always testified to in terms of the old.

So coming back to Augustine, the validity of his hermeneutic should not be judged according to a theory of historical referentiality whereby a text only means what it's author intended, or what the literary framework constrains it to mean. This would arguably impose an alien category onto the text itself. Rather, Augustine should be judged by his ability to do justice to both the nature of the text and its true referent. If the texts really are prophetic, and if God really is a God of love, then I may have to rethink my views.

P.S. Check out Brant Pitre for a great quote from Origen on interpretation.

Jesus in the Old Testament?

I've been posting recently on Christian appropriation of the Old Testament and the question of whether it is possible for Christians, given their Christological instincts, to respect it in its own integrity. In my post on Christological interpretation, I turned the question around: perhaps its the Christians who need to have their image of Christ revised so that we can learn to understand the nature of the fit between Old and New. Here are some typically profound thoughts from Brevard Childs:

[T]he New Testament in relating the message of the Gospel to the Jewish Scripture goes far beyond asserting its relationship in terms of a historical sequence. Although the various writers make very clear that Jesus appeared at a given historical moment in the life of Israel—Gal 4.4 speaks of the “fullness of time”—this temporal orientation does not rule out at the same time moving the discourse to an ontological plane. According to John 1.1 Jesus Christ was the eternal Word who was with God in the beginning. Col. 1.15f. Speaks of his being “the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created.” Rev. 13.8 makes mentions of “the lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (“Does the OT Witness to Jesus Christ?” 60)

The question then, is how to relate the two. Childs talks of different contexts in which Scripture functions.

In the first instance, one seeks to hear the historic voice of Israel in its literal/plain sense. ... These witnesses are often fragmentary, at times contradictory, and always veiled in obscurity. Nevertheless, a literal and historical interpretation of the OT is exegetically crucial, especially in reveialing how fragmentary, mysterious, and obscure was the nature of God's messianic promise to Israel which, even following the exile, continued to expand in a host of diverse directions.

In the second instance, one is using Scripture as an authoritative collection of sared writings which has assumed a unique shape and been given a special role within the Christian community of faith as the continuing vehicle of divine manifestation. In this role the text of Scripture, when infused by the Spirit with the full ontic reality of God, resonates with a fresh voice, and evokes from its readers the response of praise and wonder. This voice which transcends its original historical origins calls forth the hymns, liturgy, and art of the church in ever-changing forms of grateful response. This is the genre of prise. The same words of Scripture now perform a different role in instructing the church toward an obedient and joyful life. To project this depth of meaning and experience back into the past as if this interpretation must be coexstensive with an original textual intention is not only a basic confusion of genre, but it falsely dehistoricizes the canonical witness of the two discrete portions of the Christian Bible. However, to speak o f Christuszeugnis in the sense being proposed is to describe a text oriented hearing of Scripture by a Christian community of faith which allows biblical texts to resonate from the force of divine reality gained through an encounter with the entire Christian Bible. This approach is far removed from Vischer's in that its genre is confession not apologetics, its function is worship not disputation, its content is eschatology not time-conditioned history, and its truth is self-affirming not analytical demonstration.(63)

What do people think? Does that make sense? Does it work?

Whence a rule for meaning?

Where there is no critical interpretation of Scripture, there will be a mystical or rhetorical one. If words have more than one meaning, they may have any meaning. Instead of being a rule of life or faith, Scripture becomes the expression of the everchanging aspect of religious opinions.

—Benjamin Jowett

Without a form of allegory that at least allows for analogy, the biblical text can only be an object of archaeological interest.

—Frances Young

[Source: Daniel Driver's forthcoming and excellent dissertation. Congratulations Daniel, for passing your viva yesterday!]

Allegory and the problem of "history"

Tim of The Moving Image has posted the final part of his paper on the challenge of the modern concept of "history" to theological exegesis. His point is that modernity's understanding of the otherness of the past has disconnected us from it. The past is gone and can never be relived in the way it once was. The result is alienation from our Scripture, which is locked into another world, forever separated from the present. The "ontological immediacy," so to speak, once experienced by our forefathers, has been deconstructed by the recognition of temporal distance.

How can one "bridge the gap" in the modern era? Tim senses that the solution is "figural exegesis," and I agree. I think that the key lies in understanding the nature and function of figural exegesis within the "economy of God." Here are my comments on his post:

My understanding of the nature of figural exegesis is informed by my interaction with Childs. In short, Scripture has its true being within the eschatological economy of God. It is defined by its function within this economy, namely, to be a witness to "divine reality" (the text's res) and as such to draw God's people more into faithful, obedient relationship with him. The hermeneutical assumption of allegory, as opposed to midrash, as that the referent of the text is outside of the text. In short, the text is a "witness" to the divine reality and so it is the function of faithful (true) exegesis to "push through" the text, to "penetrate" it, so that one gets to the theological referent. The referent is greater than any of the parts and constitutes the unity of the whole (cf. Childs' "ontological unity of scripture"). Each witness, whether in the OT or the NT, is fragmentary, yet in faith we believe that the reality to which all the parts point is one. As such, we need to read the parts in the light of the whole: the trinity is referenced in the OT, for example, but from our latter day perspective we can see its reality in the OT (I tried to argue this in my post on The need for ontological categories in biblical exegesis). Childs calls this "moving from the subject matter back to the witness."

The key for bridging the past and present, then, is dogmatic. We see that all the parts of scripture ultimately point to a "different world" and so by inhabiting this world we sensitize ourselves to the "fit" between it and the parts, we can't help but hear the constant echoes. I would have thought that the key for bridging past and present would have something to do with the Trinity, the ordo salutis, and the rule of faith. This is not to ask us to jump into an alternative reality which ignores historical causality etc., it is to open us to a different dimension of this reality which intersects with it in complex ways (Childs calls it dialectical). The "glue" which joins the past and the present is apocalyptic and theological and we can't see it because, perhaps, in our quest for external, objective parameters for validating the results of interpretation we've lost the apocalyptic glasses to see what every believer at least intuitively knows has always been there. For Luther, allegorical exegesis was a reflex and he did it even when claiming to be reading "historically."

I have a feeling this all relates to Barth's theory of "the three times of the Word." A relevant essay on this is one by Seitz, which I referenced in my post on The theological crisis of biblical criticism.

Bibliography for the figural reading of scripture

This is Christopher Seitz's recommended reading, printed on p. ix of his outstanding book, Figured Out: Typology and Providence in Christian Scripture.

I've only read the article by Childs, which is exciting as ever, but I intend to work through the rest in due course. Any thoughts on the others?

J. Barr, "Allegory and Typology," in Old and New in Interpretation (Harper & Row, 1966), 103-48.
B.S. Childs, "Allegory and Typology within Biblical Interpretation" (unpublished paper delivered at the University of St Andrews, April 2000).
H. Crouzel, "The Interpretation of Scripture," in Origen (ET; T&T Clark, 1989).
R. Greer, Theodore of Mopsuestia: Exegete and Theologian (The Faith Press, 1961).
___, Broken Lights and Mended Lives (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986).
A. Louth, Discerning the Mystery (Oxford, 1983).
T.E. Pollard, "The Exegesis of Scripture and the Arian Controversy," BJRL 41 (1958-9), 414-29.
M. Simonetti, Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church (T&T Clark, 1994).
K. Torjesen, Hermeneutical Procedure and Theological Method (de Gruyter, 1986).
J.W. Trigg, Origen: The Bible and Philosophy in the Third Century (SCM, 1985)
___, "Allegory," in Encyclodpedia of Early Christianity (2d ed.; Garland, 1998)
Frances Young, "Exegetical Method and Scriptural Proof: The Bible in Doctrinal Debate," Studia Patristica 29 (1989) 291-304.
___, "Allegory and the Ethics of Reading," in The Open Text. New Directions for Biblical Studies? (F. Watson, ed.; SPCK, 1993)
___, "Typology," in Crossing the Boundaries: Essays in Biblical Interpretation in Honour of Michael D. Goulder (S.E. Porter, P. Joyce, D.E. Orton, eds.; E.J. Brill, 1994) 29-48.
___, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge University Press, 1997).

I note that R. N. Longnecker's Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period (Paternoster Press, 1992) isn't on the list. I randomly bought the book at the age of 19 (?) from a Doulos ship and still haven't got round to reading it. I hear he's critical of patristic interpretation ... Is that why he's excluded from this list?

Israel and the Divided Church

In 1998 Ephraim Radner published The End of the Church: A Pneumatology of Christian Division in the West (Eerdmans). I haven't read the book, but Bruce Marshall wrote a detailed review, which you can read here.

Radner's main thesis is provocative:

The divided church ... cannot disclose the gospel, but instead veils it—not only from the world, but above all from the church itself. As a community of those to whom the gospel is veiled (cf. II Cor.4:3), the divided church is ineluctably perishing, all the while ignorant of its fate. (378)

He grounds the church's division at the Reformation not in doctrinal differences but in a “contradiction of ecclesial love,” which led to the development of a “separative logic” amongst the divided church's theologians. The result of this negation of the gospel is the withdrawal of the Holy Spirit and thus inevitable death. In order to find guidance in this dire situation, he looks to the church's type, namely Israel, and what happened as it too was divided after the reign of Solomon.

For Scriptural Israel the cost of the chosen people's wilfully divided life is divine abandonment, exile and destruction for all. In this the faithful remnant share as much as the rest. God's purpose of election is not thereby void, but the form his electing love will eventually take is in invisible to those slated for death in Assyria and Babylon. Since the church's disunity makes sundered and exiled Israel contingently, but irrevocably, its type, our divided denominations must even now reckon with the Spirit's absence, and look forward to their coming death. (381, 2)

This is a brilliant and fascinating essay. There is much food for thought and I'm delighted to see typological interpretation being put to good use. However, there is one thing that bugs me: according to 1 Ki 11, 12, Israel's division is due to the direct intervention of God in response to the apostasy of the monarch and his people. Division is punishment for this sin and is part of a larger process of renewing this people to be faithful, rather than the sin itself which leads to exile and death. It would seem to me that the contemporary lesson this chapter in Israel's history teaches us is that unity is good, but unity without righteousness is meaningless, so that sometimes division and dissolution are necessary in order to bring about a renewal of the people of God. The Reformation was a necessary evil, even though it cannot remain the status quo.

Any thoughts?

NB: for a quote from the time of the undivided church, see here.

Figural Interpretation and Temporal Succession

Following on from my Barth quote concerning the "unity of the manifold," another beautiful quote on the complex yet powerfully relevant question of figurative reading, biblical referentiality and the theological unity of the Christian scriptures, this time by E. Auerbach. This is an area that fascinates me most at the moment. For those interested in this topic, I highly recommend Hans Frei's brilliant opening chapter from his Eclipse of Biblical Narrative.

"Figural interpretation establishes a connection between two events or persons in such a way that the first signifies not only itself but also the second, while the second involves or fulfills the first. The two poles of a figure are separated in time, but both, being real events or persons, are within temporality. They are both contained in the flowing stream which is historical life, and only the comprehension, the intellectus spiritualis, of the interdependence is a spiritual act.

In this conception, an occurrence on earth signifies not only itself but at the same time another, which it predicts or confirms, without prejudice to the power of its concrete reality here and now. The connection between occurrences is not regarded as primarily a chronological or causal development but as a oneness within the divine plan, of which all occurrences are parts and reflections. Their direct earthly connection is of secondary imortance, and often their interpretation can altogether dispense with any knowledge of it."

Erich Auerbach, Mimesis (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1968), 73, 555. Cited in Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (London: Yale Univ. Press, 1974), 28, 29.

The Relationship between Exegesis and Dogma: Childs' View

There's a bit of discussion going on at the moment in the blogosphere concerning the relationship between exegesis and dogma. I've already mentioned Christ Tilling's posts here. Mike Bird has made an independent contribution to the discussion here which is rightly corrected by Ben Myer's brilliant post here (though Mike responds in the long comment thread) with Doug's spot on reflections here. My tiny contribution to this discussion shall consist in quoting from that master of theological interpretation, who spent his career wrestling with the relationship between dogmatics and exegesis, Brevard Childs. This comes from his article, "Does the Old Testament Witness to Jesus Christ," in Evangelium, Schriftauslegung, Kirche (1997), 60:

"... it is an important caricature of the relationship between exegesis and theological reflection to suggest that the former is an independent historical and philological exercise which seeks objectively to discover what the text actually says, whereas the latter is a subsequent and subjectively reflective activity, largely of a speculative nature. This misleading mischief goes back at least to the time of Gabler. ... Rather, I would argue that the relationship between exegesis and theology is a far more complex and subtle one which is basically dialectical in nature. 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. The implication is also that proper exegesis does not confine itself to registering only the verbal sense of the text, but presses forward through the text to the subject matter (res) to which it points. Thus erklären and verstehen belong integrally together in the one activity and cannot be long separated. ... In itself the presence of a dogmatic decision accompanying the exegetical task is of little consequence; rather, the crucial issue turns on the quality of both the exegetical analysis and the theological reflection in relation both to the text and the subject matter. Recent critical work[*] on the problem of determining a text's sensus literalis has made it abundantly clear that the literal sense was never confined to a verbal, philological exercise alone, but functioned for both Jews and Christians as a "ruled reading" in which a balance was obtained between a grammatical reading and the structure of communal practice or a rule-of-faith (regula fidei)."

[*] R. Lowe, "The Plain Meaning of Scripture in Ealry Jewish Exegesis" (1964); B.S. Childs, "The Sensus Literalis of Scripture: An Ancient and Modern Problem" (1976); K. Greene-McCreight, Ad Litteram: Understanding the Plain Sense of Scripture in the Exegesis of Augustine, Calvin and Barth of Genesis 1 - 3 (1994, Yale University dissertation).

'Figuring' oneself into the History of Mankind

Christopher Seitz is interested in how the Church can recover the instincts of figural reading in our own day. He says,

"The loss of figural reading is not the loss of an exegetical technique. It is the loss of location in time under God."

His prayer is that

"Christ's body will be 'figured in' to his glorious body and that the scriptures would illumine him in his threefold mystery and give the church a place in time again."

(2001:viii, italics my own).

A beautiful glimpse of what this could look like is provided by the eucharistic president's speech on behalf of the entire human race in the Alexandrian anaphora of St. Gregory Nazianzen:

"As the lover of man, thou didst create me as a man. Thou hadst no need of my service, though I had need of thy lordship. Of thy mercy thou didst bring me into existence, thou didst establish the heavens above me as a roof, thou didst make the earth firm for me to walk upon: for my sake though didst confine the sea: for my sake thou didst give life to animals in their kinds: thou didst put all things under my feet, not didst thou permit me to lack any of the things of thy love. It is thou who didst fashion me and lay thy hand upon me, thou didst inscribe in me the image of thy power, thou didst endue me with the gift of logos, thou didst open paradise for my delight, thou didst bestow on me the instruction of the knowledge of thyself, thou didst reveal to me the tree of life, didst make known to me the thorn of death. From one tree thou didst debar me that I might not eat of it: I ate it, I rejected thy law, I neglected thy commandment, I brought on myself the sentence of death. Thou, Lord, didst convert my punishment (into salvation) ... Thou who didst ever exist, camest on earth for us who were ignorant, didst enter the Virgin's womb, albeit God who cannot be contained. Thou didst not think it robbery to be equal with God, but thou didst empty thyself and take on thee the form of a servant, didst bless my nature in thyself, didst fulfil thy law for me ... Thou didst go forth like a sheep to the slaughter, didst manifest thy solicitude for me on the cross, didst slay my sin in thy sepulchre, didst take my first fruits up into heaven, didst reveal to me thy second advent wherein thou shalt come to judge the quick and the dead and give to everyone according to his deeds. I offer to Thee, Lord, the symbols of this my free service: my actions are a copy of thy word. It is thou who hast given me this mystic share in thy flesh in the bread and the wine. For in the night in which thou didst give thyself up ... "

Figural Reading and the Fashioning of Identity

Daniel Driver links to a fascinating-looking book, Christian Figural Reading and the Fashioning of Identity. Here's my favourite citation:

“Those familiar with a religion that affirms that submission to God’s agency constitutes human freedom, or that Jesus of Nazareth is no less human for being divine, or that divine power is manifested as divine suffering, or that wholly historical action is the realization of a transcendent divine intention, will not be surprised by the equally unexpected claim that fulfillments are more, and yet again not more, than their figures” (218).

"Fulfillments are more, and yet again not more, than their figures" ... I'm just standing on the tip of the iceberg of theological exegesis, and as yet I can only sense with anticipation the tremors this insight into reality releases. I wait and pray and indeed yearn for the earthquake which will tear down our strongholds and create green spaces for new life to grow.

Or am I just being naively Utopian?

Ancient Typology in Genesis 22?

As is known (in certain quarters at least), B. S. Childs wanted to develop a 'biblical theology' of the entire Bible grounded in a close exegesis of the texts themselves. In other words, he wanted our broader dogmatic claims about God and the world to be justifiable in terms of the Bible texts. Here he is faced with the problem of the particularity and foreignness of the text. How can one move beyond the horizon of the Old Testament to our own day?

In his writings in general one can see that his response to this problem is heavily influenced by Hans Frei's work on figurative reading, i.e. pre-Enlightenment Christianity saw the biblical text as describing the real world, which experience tells us is "single world of one temporal sequence" (Frei, 1974: 2). Therefore, Christianity was driven to assume that there must in principle be one cumulative story in the Bible to depict it. The unity within the diversity was assured by means of typology, "a way of turning the variety of biblical books into a single, unitary canon"by weaving the various biblical stories together into a common narrative "referring to a single history and its patterns of meaning" (2).

My question is whether Childs is arguing that this process was already taking place at the redactional level of the text, such that contemporary figurative reading is in essential continuity with the way the text came to us in the first place. In his OT example of "exegesis in the context of biblical theology" (Genesis 22.1-19) in his 1992 Biblical Theology, he makes what I consider to be a key statement to his whole understanding of the 'canonical process':

It is my contention that this multifaceted text has been shaped through its lengthy development in such a way as to provide important hermeneutical guidelines for its theological use by a community which treasured it as scripture. By carefully observing how the editors dealt with elements which they deemed unrepeatable (einmalig) but which they reckoned to be representative or universal in application, a basic hermeneutical direction is provided by which to broaden theological reflection beyond the Old Testament" (1992: 326; italics mine).

He illustrates this by reference to 'canonical clues' in the text which point to the dual dimension of the final form of the text as incorporating both particularity and universality within itself. The story of Abraham is unique, yet its editorial connection to the repeated trope concerning the promise of seed connects the story to a broader framework which can be seen to encompass us; the editorial addition of the superscription "God tested Abraham" likewise connects a unique occurrence to a more generalisable principle, one that echoes throughout scripture and again can be seen to encompass us; the word play on "the LORD sees" and "the LORD is seen" could refer to a kind of expansion of the unique story to Israel's broader experience of God in that place; finally, resonances with Levitical sacrificial rites, somehow, 'typologically' connect Abraham's experience to Israel's later cultic system.

My question is: is Childs trying to find evidence of Frei's work within the text itself? Is the redaction history of the text an example of typology in process? For me, the key phrase in the quote above is that this move within the text provides a basic hermeneutical direction, which we should imitate in the context of the final form.