Is the Bible religious or theological?

Douglas Mangum, partly in response to my post Exegesis: Does religion get in the way?, has posted two more quotes arguing for the separation of the faith claims of particular faith communities from the business of objective Biblical research. He sets up the dichotomy in terms of the difference between religious scholarship and theological scholarship, drawing on a quote by Stephen Prothero. Biblical study would belong to the former realm, in this analysis. Here's Prothero's quote:

I am by training a professor of religious studies. That means, among other things, that just about every time I step onto a plane or attend a party I have to explain to someone that, no, I am not a minister, no, I do not teach theology, and, no, I do not work in a divinity school. Theology and religious studies, I often say, are two very different things--as different as art and art history. While theologiansdo religion, religious studies scholars study religion. Rather than ruminating on God, practitioners of religious studies explore how other human beings (theologians included) ruminate on sacred things. Scholars of religion can be religious, of course, but being religious is not our job. Our job is to try to understand what religious people say, believe, know, feel, and experience. And we try to do this work as fairly and objectively as possible.

(Prothero 2007, 10; emphasis original)

Epistemological objections aside, my question is whether an approach such as Prothero's can really do justice to the subject matter of the Bible (its Sache, as a whole bunch of German Biblical scholars have put it).

Perhaps I can present the issue like this:

1) What is the goal of a scientific approach to the Bible?

Answer: to understand it according to what it is (i.e. to read it on its own terms, sachgemäß).

2) Which side of the religiou/theological dichotomy described above best equips us to read the Bible "on its own terms"?

Answer: it depends on the nature of the text, i.e. is the Bible itself religious or theological?

Let's compare Prothero's quote with one by a famous Old Testament scholar: Gerhard von Rad (who operated in the heyday of the academy's confidence about its capacities to be objective).

Prothero saif the following:

religious studies scholars study religion. Rather than ruminating on God, practitioners of religious studies explore how other human beings (theologians included) ruminate on sacred things.

In terms of Biblical scholarship, the goal of reading the Bible is to understand how other people ruminated on God.

Von Rad's analysis of the Bible is very different. He says the following:

Because Israel, in its historical witnesses, did not refer to its own faith but rather to Jahwe himself, in other words, because faith was not the "object," rather the "bearer, mouth" of its witness, the revelation of Jahwe in history in words and deeds becomes the object of a theology of the Old Testament.

In other words, the Bible is a kerygmatic text. It witnesses to a reality outside of itself, and this witnessing activity is part of its historical intentionality, the reason for its existence in the first place. As far as von Rad was concerned, this view is not a pious move made by theologically minded scholars hoping to retain the Bible's relevance beyond the confines of past history, it is a scientific statement about the actual nature of the text. The fact that a living God is part of the equation doesn't make it less scientific.

Thus, on von Rad's analysis, Prothero's approach is fundamentally flawed because it doesn't do justice to the nature of the text itself.

Is von Rad a theologian or a religious studies scholar? And what should one be in order to understand the Bible?

(A related post is my Why exegesis needs dogmatics).

Von Rad was a Barthian

And this, curtesy of W.H. Schmidt, proves it (I think; there is now an English summary beneath):

"Im Grunde sucht G.v.Rad in vierfacher Hinsicht als Zusammenhang zu verstehen, was historisch-kritschem Denken auseinanderzufallen droht:

1) "Was Israel selbst von jahwe direkt ausgesagt hat", also das Glaubens-Zeugnis oder Bekenntnis Israels, und die (überlieferungs- bzw.redaktionsgeschichtlich gewonnene) Intention der Text in ihrer Situation. "Der Theologe muß sich vor allem unmittelbar mit den Zeugnissen beschäftigen, also ... nach der jeweiligen kerygmatischen Intention fragen" (I4, 118).

2) Die Geschichte - G.v.Rad kann sagen: die "Geschichtstatsachen", "Fakten" (118) - und die alttestamentliche Deutung der Geschichte aus dem Glauben.

3) Die Offenbarung Gottes - "Der wesentlichste Gegenstand einer Theologie des AT ... das lebendige Wort Jahwes, wie es an Israel ... je und je ergangen ist" (125); "Was Israel selbst als den eigentlichen Gegenstand seines Glaubens angesehen hat, nämlich die Offendbarung Jahwes" (127) - und Israels Glaube, der bekenntnishafte Bericht von Gottes Wirken.

4) Gottes Taten und Gottes Wort, "die Offenbarung Jahwes in der Geschichte in Worten und Taten" (127; vg. II4, 381ff).

Von diesem Ansatz aus gelingt es G.v. Rad, statt Einzelaussagen aus verschiedenen Zusammenhängen zu einem Gedankenkomplex zusammzustellen, in einem hohem Maße, Theologie als Exegese zu betreiben und umgekehrt die Exegese in die Theologie einzubeziehen, die Texte selbst zu Wort kommen zu lassen und dabei Feinheiten theologischer Differenzierungen in den einzelnen Literaturwerken aufzunehmen.

[...here Schmidt critiques the limitations of von Rad's emphasis on "history"...]

Ausdrücklich möchte G.v.Rad mehr und anderes bieten als eine geschichtliche Darstellung der alttestamentlichen Religion oder eine "Geschichte des Jahweglaubens" - so nur der einleitende I. Hauptteil. Da Israel in seinen Geschichtszeugnissen "nicht auf seinen Glauben, sondern auf Jahwe hingewiesen" hat (I4, 124), der Glaube also nicht "Gegenstand", vielmehr nur "Träger, Mund" des Bekenntnisses war, wird eigentlich "die Offenbarung Jahwes in der Geschichte in Worten und Taten" (127) zu Gegestand einer Theologie des Alten Testaments." [*]

No wonder Childs loved him so much!

Update: I was asked in the comments to briefly summarize this in English. Here it is:

In short, von Rad tries to hold 4 things together that historical-criticism threatens to separate.:

1) The confessional witness of the text and the historically particular intentionality of the text. The Bible, in its particularity, is kerygmatic.

2) The interelation between the facts of history and their interpretation (I'm not too sure what Schmidt was saying here).

3) God himself as the living object of the Bible's witness and the human witness to this.

4) God's deeds and his word.

Schmidt goes on to say that by holding these things together von Rad was able to practice "theology as exegesis" as well as bring exegesis into theology without overlooking the nuances of the particular texts. The text in bold reads:

Because Israel, in its historical witnesses, did not refer to its own faith but rather to Jahwe himself, in other words, because faith was not the "object," rather the "bearer, mouth" of its witness, the revelation of Jahwe in history in words and deeds becomes the object of a theology of the Old Testament.

[*] Werner H. Schmidt, Alttestamentlicher Glaube (Neukirchner Verlag, 2004), 18-19.

Tradition-history: a two-way movement

Although this post can be read on its own, it is part of a longer thread analysing Chris Seitz's Prophecy and Hermeneutics (go here for an overview).

According to Seitz and Childs, the canonical approach is predicated upon some conception of theological continuity within the development of the Biblical tradition. Within this framework, later tradents of the sacred tradition were

seeking to hear the original word, overtaking them and enclosing them, in the context of a new set of circumstances, constraints, hopes, and divine judgments (129).

What are the hermeneutical implications of this for those interpreters today who want to grasp the word itself, the living word active throughout the process?

The theological continuity between traditions means that one can read older traditions in light of their later development, and thus gain a fuller understanding of their original witness (Childs would have said that the old is infused with its “full ontological reality”). The prophetic word of the past lays claim to the future,

without ever ceasing to be relevant on the terms of its original delivery. The dynamic character is fully on view, but the bridge being built enables us to move in two directions and not just one. The book of Joel shows a present generation enacting the repentance (2:12-29 … ) called for in the days of Hosea (… Hosea 14.1 …). In so doing, one is drawn back into the world of Hosea to learn again what the character of God is truly like. More than this, one is given the chance to stand before the mystery of God's ways and the penetrating insight offered through the canonical witness of Hosea to that, which had gone unheeded or was only partially comprehended in the days of the first delivery (125-126, emphasis original).

Again, von Rad is Seitz's foil. In von Rad's attempt to bridge the gap between earlier and later tradition, including the New Testament, by means of a critically reconstructed, non-canonical theory of prophecy's “forward thrusting” movement, the bridge

self-destructs once it has arced from the past into its next phase (125, emphasis removed).

Next in the series I will post a parallel insight from the New Testament, furnished by Richard Bauckham.

Continuity in tradition-history

As I mentioned in the most recent post of my thread analysing Seitz's Prophecy and Hermeneutics, Seitz's canonical approach does not exclude the historical dimension of the text. The "canonical approach" is not a repudiation of historical criticism but rather an adaptation of the older tradition-historical model. In Seitz's words, it wishes to

take into consideration the effect of the final form of the text, once the prehistory has been appreciated and interpreted (130).

It is important for this approach, however, that there is theological continuity between the layers of tradition. In contrast to von Rad, Seitz does not believe that later tradents (or “traditionists”) were “manifestly misdrawing” an earlier tradition in order to extract its doxa (to quote von Rad, p. 250). Rather,

they are seeking to hear the original word, overtaking them and enclosing them, in the context of a new set of circumstances, constraints, hopes, and divine judgments (129).

Again,

In the spirit of the original prophecy, [the] canonical shaping has sought to hear God's word overtaking the generations designed by God for just such an apprehension (Zech. 1:6). Such an understanding of time is better calibrated to the intentions of the author of time and to the canonical portrayal that is providentially under his care, beginning with the original prophetic witness and carrying on through the process of development and consolidation until the witness receives a stable canonical form in the book of the twelve (134, emphasis mine).

Here we see that the continuity is theological—Childs had said “ontological”—and it is guaranteed by the ultimate author of Scripture, God, its subject and object. Again, von Rad's weakness was the theological discontinuity in the message of the prophets that his approach seems to imply:

His work was a brilliant and insightful effort to connect prophecy to the wider canonical achievement by means of a tradition-historical conception. This came at the cost, however, of seeing the abiding characteristic of the prophets as their “forward leaning” capacity, based upon a reconstruction that isolated the prophets from one another … The prophets build a bridge into the New Testament by means of constant change and adaptation of their message, of such a nature that it is unclear how their original deposit is meant to maintain its force within a meaningful providential design and as an integral part of the Old Testament as Christian Scripture (150, emphasis original).

My next post in the series will look at how Seitz thinks the texts ought to be read, when understood as witnesses to divine reality in terms of their present form.

The greatness of von Rad

Jim West has noted the recent birthday of the illustrious von Rad (21 October, 1901). Interestingly enough, despite Jim's early passion for von Rad and his ongoing indetebness to his influence, he goes on to say:

I also find myself oddly estranged from him, and, strange as it will sound, that pains me a bit.

This has reminded me of one of my favourite Childs quotes. I'm not entirely sure if Jim and Brevard are talking about the same thing, but there sounds like a hint of commonality ... Perhaps it depends on what it is about von Rad that they feel "estranged" from?

As a young student who had fallen under the spell of von Rad, I shared with many others the conviction that his brilliant method held the key to a proper understanding of the OT… Yet [in the next generation] much of the excitement which his early post-war lectures evoked had died… Slowly I began to realize that what made von Rad’s work so illuminating was not his method as such, but the theological profundity of von Rad himself. The same observation holds true for Wolff and Zimmerli. I am convinced that no amount of methodological refinement will produce a quality of interpretation which that generation achieved whose faith in the God of Israel was hammered out in the challenge to meet the Nazi threat against the life of the church. [*]

By the way, Jim installed a voting box posing three options: Gerhard von Rad ... 1) Was a fine OT scholar; 2) Was the finest OT scholar of his day; 3) Was not a very good scholar, but then, I'm an idiot so what do I know? I went for the second option, but that only makes up 29% of the votes! Who else could have competed?

[*] “A Response [to James Mays Et Al.].” Horizons in Biblical Theology 2 (1980): 199–221.

Wilhelm Vischer on prophecy and fulfillment

According to B. Hägglund, one of the implications of the ancient patristic understanding of the "rule of faith" (regula fidei) or "rule of truth" (regula veritatis) is that Christian truth is a unity, witnessed to equally (though differently) by both the Old and the New Testaments. This claim concerning the relation between Scripture and truth is important for understanding Childs' so-called "canonical approach."

Interestingly, Wilhelm Vischer made a similar point in his book The Witness of the Old Testament to Christ (1949; for a random extract go here). Childs summarizes his approach in his article "Prophecy and Fulfillment," (1958; available on ATLA):

Vischer's book was epoch making in the vigorous manner in which the question of the relation of the Old Testament to the New was raised. According to him it is not doing full justice to the New Testament's understanding of the Old when the latter is conceived of merely as a history pointing to Christ as its goal. In this case fulfillment would mean the dissolution of the period of expectation in the light of the event itself. The unity of the Scriptures can only be maintained by seeing also in the Old Testament a direct witness to Christ since there is no break in the solidarity of faith between Testaments. Fulfillment cannot be seen on the level of time sequence as the occurrence of an event previously promised. Rather, that which was known in the Old Testament is made perfect in the New. The New Testament's interpretation is made normative for the understanding of the Old. At times Vischer conceives of the Old Testament witness in terms of types, but essentially he sees Jesus Christ actually at work in the Old Testament community (261, 2).

Childs' major issue would be with giving normative statement to the New's construal of the Old (theology requires the "discrete witness" of the Old, or, as Seitz says, its "per se witness"). Nevertheless, there are far more similiarities between this approach and Childs' canonical approach than between it and the theological proposals of von Rad and Eichrodt, which represent a fine-tuning of von Hofmann's Heilsgeschichtliche approach. The issue turns on the relation between narrative and ontology ...

For a quote on Childs' take on prophecy and fulfilment, go here.

P.S. For a brief review of Vischer's approach to Old Testament christology in his historical context, go here.