The need for ontological categories in Biblical exegesis

In response to my post on the exegesis of Karl Barth, the question has been raised concerning the most adequate controls on interpretation. What is the right context to save our exegesis from turning into dogmatic eisegesis? Or is dogmatic eisegesis so bad after all? The classic answer of the academy has been that the only control is the historical context of the text. Recent literary approaches emphasise the literary - often "narrative" - context as a restraint on interpretative possibilities. The recent influence of N.T. Wright has led to many to emphasise the broader "salvation narrative" that first century Judaism formulated in response to its Scripture. As such, we have a new theological context which privileges the temporal categories of development and direction, climax and resolution, for undestanding the message of individual texts.

I'm not against any of these, and in particular I think the Heilsgeschichtle dimension that Wright has emphasised is a great bonus for the academy (I think the church has always been saying it). But is that enough when reading the Bible? Does "narrative theology" provide us with the ultimate key for unlocking God's word?

I think it would, if the Gospel really did only consist of a narrative with a plot. But it doesn't. As my blog name indicates, that Gospel has not only a narrative, temporal dimension, but also an ontological one. The Trinity, for example, structures the creed and is held by systematic theologians such as Jenson to be the foundation for thought about God. Not only the Trinity, but the eternal nature of Christ as pre-existent Son and the vehicle for creation is a reality that cannot be best described in “narrative categories” lie at the heart of the New Testament's kerygma. This was the problem with narrative which I was trying to get at in my post on the NT being seen as a chapter in a story. At best, Heilsgeschichte is a theological construct which gives us one way for understanding the Gospel, but not the only way.

Applying this larger dogmatic reality now to the text means that we must do more than fit its particularity within an unfolding narrative which enfolds us. It also means that we must think hard about the nature of the reality that the text is talking about, understood from our perspective now in the “latter days.” It means that we can understand the Psalmists' Christology better than he could, or the significance of the creative power of σοφία (Wisdom) better than the sages. Theological exegesis—exegesis which aims to get to the reality to which the Biblical witnesses (μάρτυρες ) are trying to point us at in all their fragmentary form—means thinking about the content of their particular message in the context of the content of all the messages contained in the Bible. Childs tries to put this across with the following example:

The Old Testament witness to creation does not ever sound the name of Jesus. At the same time, it is equally true that the Old Testament does not conceive of the creator God as a monad or monolithic block. In Genesis, in the prophets, and especially in the wisdom books, there is a dynamic activity within the Godhead and an eschatological relation between the old and the new, between creation once-for-all and creatio continua, between divine transcendence and immanent entrance into the world. It is crucial for any serious Christian theology to reflect on how this variety of witness to the God of Israel is to be understood in the light of the New Testament's witness (John, Colossians, Hebrews) to the creative role of Jesus Christ in relation to the Father.” (Biblical Theology, 83)

Childs concludes: “It is my thesis that such reflection demands a continuing wrestling with the central issue of the reality constitutive of these biblical witnesses.” (Ibid.)

I hope to give an example of this in a post on Ps 8 in the context of the canon.

The Transcendence of God and Human Historicity

This morning I posted a quote by Childs on the Incarnation as an analogy for the dialectical relation between the Bible as a human creation and the Bible as a witness to God. The following quote by Paul Minear, from his astounding book The Bible and the Historian (go here and here), serves as the perfect compliment. He is interested in the significance of the paradigm of modernity (á la Kuhn) for Biblical exegesis:

At the moment we are especially interested in how this paradigm deals with the dimension of transcendence. The simplest answer is that the method encourages either antagonism or neutrality toward the presence of such a dimension. Altizer, for example, says, “We inherit the historical revolution of the nineteenth centruy, a revolution which stripped all historical events of a transcendent ground” (Thomas J.J., The New Apocalypse, xiv). In the less enthusiastic words of A.E. Loen, the historical process has been “de-divinized,” since the message of the Bible comes to be seen as “determined exclusively by historical factors.” The sequence of historical events is sundered from its metaphysical ground, so that “forgetfulness of the sphere of being robs history of its essence, just as it robs man of his.” (Secularization, 7, 10).

Can exegetes transfer that task to the preacher and the theologian and limit their own work to the business of objective historical description? Should they do this, their decision will reflect their mastery by the paradigm of historical science as well as mastery over it. (pp. 40-41)

Minear concludes his chapter with the following words of wisdom:

The task of contemporary exegetes is to allow Scripture itself to criticize both the assumptions and the methods that are used in its study. They must listen also, of course, to secular historians and to theologians. Success in their task will be possible only through a conviction that the temporal distance between this and earlier centruies is itself bridged by the eternal purpose of God and by the participation of the church in that purpose. But it will also be possible only if there is more effective collaboration between historians and theologians. Even the ideal cooperation among scholars, however, will never lead to reducing God's transcendence to the size of our various conceptual boxes. (49).

Oh how not only the academy but also the church needs to hear this!

Incarnation and Childs' subtle dialectic

The dialectic is in the relationship between historical-criticism of the Bible and the Bible as witness to God. Childs explains it this way:

The Bible in its human, fully time-conditioned form, functions theologically for the church as a witness to God's divine revelation in Jesus Christ. The church confesses that in this human form, the Holy Spirit unlocks its truthful message to its hearers in the mystery of faith. This theological reading cannot be simply fused with a historical reconstruction of the biblical text, nor conversely, neither can it be separated. This is to say, the Bible's witness to the creative and salvific activity of God in time and space cannot be encompassed with the categories of historical criticism whose approach filters out this very kerygmatic dimension of God's activity. In a word, the divine and human dimensions remain inseparably intertwined, but in a highly profound, theological manner. Its ontological relation finds its closest analogy in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, truly man and truly God.

Brevard Childs, "The Canon in Recent Biblical Studies: Reflections on an Era, " Pro Ecclesia 14 (2005): 44-45.

For the perfect compliment to these reflections, see my post on The transcendence of God and human historicity.

I should add that Hyperekperissou has made some related comments in relation to a forthcoming book review on Augustine and the Psalms.

Childs on Scripture/Incarnation

I'm back from my brief sojourn in the Ardennes, Belgium. Apart from illness and thunderstorms it was a pleasant retreat. I've only got a few minutes before I dash off to a birthday party so a quick quote by the illustrious Childs (pbuh) on the subtle dialectic between historical-criticism of the Bible and the Bible as a witness to God. It's things like this that make my mouth water ...

The Bible in its human, fully time-conditioned form, functions theologically for the church as a witness to God's divine revelation in Jesus Christ. The church confesses that in this human form, the Holy Spirit unlocks its truthful message to its hearers in the mystery of faith. This theological reading cannot be simply fused with a historical reconstruction of the biblical text, nor conversely, neither can it separated. This is to say, the Bible's witness to the creative and salvific activity of God in time and space cannot be encompassed within the categories of historical criticism whose approach filters out this very kerygmatic dimension of God's activity. In a word, the divine and human dimensions remain inseparably intertwined, but in a highly profound, theological manner. Its ontological relation finds its closest analogy in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, truly man and truly God. [*]

I feel like some quotes are like ripe peaches packed with health and juiciness. You just have squeeze them for a while and all manner of goodness oozes out. Or am I just weird? Does anyone know another doctrine of Scripture - or a compact summary thereof - that can produce such joy?

[*] B.S. Childs, "The Canon in Recent Biblical Studies: Reflections on an Era," Pro Ecclesia 14 (2005): 44-45