Kugel's Critique of Christian Confessionalism

As if by some mysterious working of divine providence, Emerging from Babel has decided to post on James Kugel, exactly the day before I decided to do the same. The content is different, as Stephen focuses on Kugel's suggestions on the essence of Judaism, and how that helps him cope with the challenge of historical criticism. The 'substance' of Judaism, as Kugel sees it, lies in the ongoing attempt to work out the implications of a single command: that Israel must serve the LORD. Everything else would seem to be peripheral, such that whatever the Bible actually says or whatever historical criticism throws at us is not relevant to the pragmatic task of obedience. The essence of Jewish faith preserves it from attacks from the outside.

This provides a nice bridge to my post. On an online forum recently, a commenter cited Kugel's critique of Christian attempts to come to terms with historical criticism. My aim today is simply to post what he said (with permission). I'd love to know how others respond to what Kugel has to say. On Monday I'll post what I wrote it response. Here it is:

I haven't seen much comment on biblioblogs about the online appendix to James Kugel's new book, How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now, which is entitled:"Apologetics and `Biblical Criticism Lite'"http://www.jameskugel.com/apologetics.php.

But I think it's well worth some responses. Hopefully this post will stimulate some.

Kugel notes that people have grown used to the idea that the Bible really wasn't written by those figures long claimed to be its authors, that it is full of contradictions and editorial overlays, etiological narratives and invented history. Notwithstanding the fact that they admit this, most Christian and Jewish biblical scholars tend to immediately turn around and argue that the situation is "not so bad – in fact, it's not bad at all. We embrace the truth about the Bible as we now know it."

But when you scratch a little deeper into this common response by confessional biblical scholars one finds that--instead of genuinely accepting the results of modern biblical scholarship--they have in fact only adopted an apologetic reflex to the findings. They really automatically downplay or minimise the implications. They have adopted a series of qualifications which overrule the findings which they ostensibly affirm. That is, their response is: "Yes, it's true, modern scholars have shown X, BUT ... "

As Kugel's first example: despite the fact that parts of the Bible have been shown to be derived from ancient Mesopotamian texts and are `invented history' (such as the Flood Story)—bible scholars spend endless energy in trying to downplay the implications. In respect of the Flood Story itself, he gives a series of revealing quotations from biblical scholars who are intent on downplaying the many similarities, in order to defend the literary and theological distinctiveness and `superiority' of the biblical version. Why do they do this?

"The answer is obvious. They feel torn between what they would like the Bible to be – an utterly unique, divinely inspired book given to mankind – and what modern scholarship has sought to show about this particular story, that it is essentially copied from a Mesopotamian source (and therefore not, on the face of things, an utterly unique, divinely inspired composition). So there has to be a world of difference between the biblical and Mesopotamian versions despite the obvious similarities. The differences commentators fix on, however, are really not very convincing."

Kugel also has some damning comments about the current trend for viewing the Bible as `great literature'. He rightly observes that this method is often misused by apologists:

"Ultimately, this is just another form of apologetic, an attempt to save something special about Scripture in an unbelieving world. Strange to tell, while many of today's literary critics of the Bible are avowed secularists, their writings sometimes hold a particular appeal for people of rather conservative religious beliefs, Christians or Jews eager to celebrate the Bible's merits. For them, its selling point lies not only in its capacity to push aside modern scholarship, but as well in its attribution to Scripture of a kind of artistry and design bordering on the miraculous, something that only "the great novelist in the Lord" (as Norman Mailer once put it) would be capable of composing. It might seem unfair to compare the appeal of this approach to that of a truly crackpot domain, the discovery of secret "codes" in the Bible that are held to have predicted various historical events. What both have in common, however, is their ability to convince ordinary readers, at least those eager to be convinced, that there still is something special, indeed, something deeply hidden or infinitely complicated about the Bible that fully reflects its divine origins."

The rest of this provocative essay is here:http://www.jameskugel.com/apologetics.php

So, what do people think of that?

What Childs is Trying to Do

I've done a fair bit of blogging today! I'm currently having two nice conversations with a new contributor by the name of Deane. Here, we are discussing the theological significance of the fourfoldedness of the gospel witness. Here, we are discussing whether Seitz's approach is fideistic (the issue is framed in terms of 'christological' readings, and I notice that inhabitatio dei has a post on a christological reading of the Psalms. This blog rates as one of my favourites, though I rarely have time to keep up with what is written :( ). Check 'em out and tell us what we're doing wrong!

Given this ongoing dialogue, I haven't time to post anything new. Instead, I've decided to post part of one of my responses in a dialogue concerning Childs and Brueggemann (from yesterday). They are not necessarily the most eloquent prose in the world, as they were rattled out in the process of thinking, but I think they have enough coherency and integrity to validate a separate posting.

Once again, a bit thanks to all contributors!

When talking of Childs, I'm primarily concerned with theological method: if one were to read the text as a Christian, how would one go about doing that? One way of seeing it would be to take the position of 'progressive revelation'. As one commentator has put it: "Israel's faith is developing along a certain trajectory, which reflects lessons they are actually learned from God.” Childs is working out what he sees as the implications of this process. This process has left a material mark on the text itself, such that we can see this progressive insight unfolding. Older traditions were seen in new ways, their implications were being worked out and comprehended within broader contexts. However the process happened, it was consciously 'theological'. As such, given the temporal, developmental nature of this process, it would make sense that later redactors, who belong to this process, would have better insight into what God is doing. The traditions and texts they edited were done according to this theological intentionality. This editing process was not “innocent” (no one claims or believes that), it was “ideological”. But it was ideological in the good sense of straining to hear God's word as it is being worked out in the history of his people. You and I stand at this point in time, at a point temporally later than what was taking place within the text. As members of the one people of God, travelling with him on the journey, it makes sense that we should submit to the fullest version of God's word: the final form of the text, which is an intentional theological project. The final canonical shape does not hide its diachronic dimension, and thus its 'brokenness', but by virtue of the theological intentionality used to shape it, a theological judgement has been rendered concerning the meaning of the earlier traditions. This judgement was far from “innocent”, it was “ideological”, but ideology is not intrinsically bad. It can be good. Childs' claim is that if the Bible is authoritative (a word Brueggemann understandably avoids), something to which we should submit despite our personal mores, we have no choice but to bow to the voice of the final form. This voice is not coherent in the sense that there are no contradictions. Coherency exists, not at the level of the text, but at the level of the theological reality to which it points. This is an important point which Childs' critics consistently fail to grasp. It is the combined voice of conflicting traditions that point in different and difficult ways to the one God. Childs doesn't avoid this tension by projection the contradiction into the Godhead himself. He maintains it and 'struggles' with it (a favourite word of his). The methodological point is that the final form must be the arena in which we negotiate the Bibles meaning, and this is the case by virtue of the nature of the text as in intentional theological project, and by virtue of the function of scripture in the church as authoritative norm, and by virtue of the eschatological nature of history in which we stand 'here' and not 'there', somewhere behind the text in a now lost ancient Israel

Brueggemann rejects this 'must' on the basis that we are all subjective, so who can prove it 'objectively' anyway? He makes a theological judgement on the basis of a secular philosophical theory. It's a category error and simply doesn't follow. Childs nowhere claims objectivity to ground his position. He simply presents arguments about the nature of the text and Christian faith, arguments which Brueggemann consistently avoids. The only response Brueggemann has recourse to is to blindly insist that Childs is indeed trying to base his arguments on a naïve claim to objectivity. It order to back up this misunderstanding of what Childs is actually trying to do, he goes on to caricature Childs as a “canonical commentator.” This is just a weak way to have an argument.

In sum, normativity can be gained on grounds other than epistemological objectivity. I would have thought Tradition and the Spirit would play a role.

Brueggemann's Critique of Childs

Yesterday I posted a review article by Brueggemann on Childs' Isaiah: A Commentary (you can download the pdf file there). Today I wish to review Brueggemann's evaluation of Childs' theological approach.

Before we can evaluate Brueggemann's response, it is important to understand Brueggemann's own agenda. Like Childs, Brueggemann is interested in a 'theological reading' of the Bible. In order to develop his own proposal, Brueggemann takes human consciousness as his starting point (see my post here, where I defend this). He's basic organizing principle is an observation concerning human subjectivity: we are not always 'present' to ourselves, rather we we are inextricably entwined in our social and cultural contexts. Our view points are always subjective construals of an external reality, made by the force of our imaginative capabilities. Objective knowledge is an impossibility, rather all we have are competing interpretations negotiable by nothing other than the norms bequeathed us by our respective traditions.

From this starting point, Brueggemann wants to propose a reading that is 'theological' in that it is 'pastoral'. In other words, for a Bible to be relevant to a epistemologically limited church, it needs to reflect that church. The Bible too must be broken, partial and conflicting. The Bible functions as the place where we come to be deconstructed, shown the impossibility of the finality of our truth claims, as regardless of what we say they will be subverted by an alternative, competing voices.

Childs makes a different proposal. He suggests that the Bible is not as contradictory as Brueggemann claims. Rather, when one reads it according to its kerygmatic ('canonical') intentionality, one can discern particular theological moves at work within the text, organising and sifting the material in order to make broader theological claims. He believes that the Bible is designed to function as a guide for faith and conduct, shaped in such a way that its final literary form is able to function as an authoritative norm. This is a claim about the nature of the text itself, which he backs up with theological arguments concerning scripture and the ways of God in the world.

One can see that Childs' proposal is antithetical to Brueggemann's, in that he is making claims for theological normativity. The Bible "coerces" our interpretations of it (or it "urges itself upon us", to use the language of my post here), it is authoritative and as such we must bow before it. Elsewhere, Childs makes clear that he is not operating with a naive concept of 'objectivity', as if his claims simply 'fall out of this sky' without any intermediating work on the part of the interpreter (note Brueggemann's crude caricature of Childs' approach on p. 25, comparing him to Aaron). Childs explicitly characterises the nature of theological engagement as one of "struggle", in which each generation must commit itself to the task of being faithful within the theological boundaries that have been set for it. His is just one proposal, at this point in time, a self-confessedly partial attempt to comprehend the nature of God, his scripture and his church.

Brueggemann's response to Childs' concrete proposals concerning text, church and God is to simply assert that all humans are subjective and therefore Childs' proposals can't be binding on the church (I will leave aside his only concrete criticism of the canonical approach concerning the tension of the diachronic and synchronic [23-25] for later, if people are interested). Throughout the review, you can see the following logic being played out again and again:

1) Truth claims are only normative if they can be objectively demonstrated.
2) Childs is human, therefore nothing he says is objective.
3) Therefore, the canonical approach is at best only one helpful idea among others.

Thus we see that, despite his appreciation of what Childs has contributed, Brueggemann constantly draws attention to the fact that Childs is a subjective human like anyone else. Childs is operating with an interpretive agenda, his canonical approach is a mighty act of interpretive imagination, his perspective has been legitimated only by the power of his argument (i.e. not by the coercion of the text), he is culturally situated, his main virtues are 'passion, resilience and steadfastness' rather then an ability to figure out the material at hand.

These observations are fine as they go. I'm sure Childs would agree with them (despite Brueggemann's claims to the contrary). The problem, as I see it, is that Childs' very subjectivity, i.e. his humanity, is the reason why Brueggemann rejects his canonical proposal as a genuine proposal for the church, one which could even become normative. Brueggemann seems to be working with the assumption that something can only be normative if one can objectively demonstrate that something is "given" in the text. Since this is epistemologically impossible, Childs' project is doomed to failure from the start (to quote: "Yet Childs ... proceeds as though his interpretive finesse were simply a "given" in the text itself", p. 25).

But surely this is to mix up two categories? It's one thing to say all truth is subjective (Childs agrees, thus obviating Brueggemann's need to keep pointing this out), it's another thing to say that a particular suggestion about that reality is not binding by virtue of this subjectivity. What makes a theological heremeneutic normative is not whether it can be objectively demonstrated, but rather how well it gels with the text as authoritative and Christian tradition (the kerygma). The best way to evaluate Childs' proposal is not to set up the impossible requirement of objective certainty but rather to engage in the content of his argument and come to a decision based on it. This is something I haven't seen Brueggemann do. Instead, he repeats that Childs is subjective and as such his proposals cannot be taken as prescriptive for theological interpretation.

In order to back up his claims concerning Childs' subjectivity, he goes on to make a series of hideous caricatures. He claims, for example, that Childs simply believes that meaning 'falls out of the text' without the need for interpretation. Childs' apparently naive belief that his interpretations do in fact correspond to reality leads to the accusation that he believes his interpretations have 'canonical status', that he somehow sees himself as a 'canonical commentator'. Brueggemann goes on to present Childs as someone who believes that his interpretation is "beyond criticism, as though it were an unquestioned given in the text itself". The fact that Childs thinks he may be right is enough for Brueggemann to claim that Childs believes he can't be questioned. Childs' attempt to see the text for what it is, and to make the audacious claim that maybe it really is so, is enough for Brueggemann to accuse him of thinking he is pure, innocent and detached. Finally, Childs' attempt to understand Isaiah 66.23-24 as making an ontological distinction is dismissed on the basis that it is simply a "rhetorical venture", with no attempt on Brueggemann's to explain why it might not be more.

A final example of Brueggemann's rejection of Childs' claims by virtue of the fact that Childs is a mere human is his rejection of Childs' talk of "coercion". Why is Childs wrong to talk of the text coercing his interpretation? Because other scholars disagree with him. But what kind of standard is that to judge the acceptability of a proposal for theological exegesis? It seems as if Brueggemann believes that meaning really must just 'fall out' of the text before it can be accepted as authoritative, an impossible standard to meet which thus protects his own position that there can be no norms.

I made the claim recently that Brueggemann's starting point is anthropocentric, in that his epistemological theories provide a "critical norm" against which to measure any truth claims made from the side of theology. In his zeal to protect his theory that nothing is normative, nothing is final, that the Bible really is a irreducible collection of contradicting texts, he has set up a modernist standard of truth by which to measure all competing claims. Anyone who claims to have figured out an element of the text is doomed from the outset to fail by this standard. Brueggemann has reified postmodernism into an ontological statement about reality, something postmodernism was never designed to do (see my post: Postmodernists Believe in Objective Reality too!)

Brueggemann on Childs' Isaiah

I'm currently thinking about the relative merit of Brueggemann's approach to "theological interpretation" in relation to Childs'. Having gone through a passionate Brueggemann phase, I'm coming round to seeing Childs' canonical approach as the most viable option for the contemporary church.

Tomorrow I'm going to comment on a review by Brueggemann of Childs' Isaiah commentary, in which I hope to illustrate some of the points I made in my post "Ecclesial Context": Brueggemann vs Childs.

By way of preparation, you can read the article here (pdf file). It takes a while to download so please be patient!

The bibliographic reference is as follows: "Canon Fire: The Bible as Scripture", by W. Brueggemann, Christian Century, 118 no 33 D 5 2001, p 22-26.

"In Accordance with the Scriptures" #5: The Problem with the Jesus Seminar

Here I finally continue my thread focusing on Seitz's essay, "In Accordance with the Scriptures" (1998). My purpose is to demonstrate that the Old Testament is an indispensable witness to Jesus Christ, and thus forms the matrix within which he is to be comprehended. In order, the previous posts can be found here, here, here and here.

The problem with the "Jesus Seminar" is that is resists the force of the scriptures, as Paul and the creed mean that, on our understanding of Jesus, and consequently, it does not take seriously Jesus' relationship to God as imprinted by scripture's prior word and guided by that word's according potential. In order to understand the one who came to do the Father's will, we should assume that he took significant bearings from the scriptures of Israel, in exactly the public form we can now read them.

Historical investigation into Jesus is in itself not 'wrong'.One has every right to observe the root system of a tree. To do so, however, involves uprooting the tree itself. If, furthermore, one begins to insist that the tree is not as it should be, given the underground investigation, that the mature growth is a misunderstanding in need of correction by experts, or, more enticingly, that the underground tree is the tree itself, is the "historical tree", is that which should occupy our attention, that we have had things upside-down - then, Seitz claims, we are beginning to approach the logic of the Jesus Seminar.

The element of Jesus as requiring unveiling and discovery is not wrong, but has been translated and domesticated by the Jesus seminar and much historical-critical endeavour. It is not that Jesus is hidden behind the words about him, which must then be sifted to get at the "historical Jesus." It is, rather, that the words that tell about him simultaneously convey their inadequacy, in formal terms, because of the subject matter they are trying to reach. The very fourfoldness of the gospel record is a witness to the majestic difficulty of the endeavor of presenting Jesus as a character of time and space, fully man, fully God. But this is not an inadequacy that can be remedied through historical-critical heavy lifting, because it inheres with the subject matter itself, which is God in Christ - who exposes our inadequacy in trying to speak of him, and yet simultaneously remedies this through the work of the Holy Spirit in the church, allowing the frail testimony of human minds to be the lens on the glory of God, a touching of the ark of the covenant.

Free Access to SAGE Publications Throughout November

The blog Evangelical Textual Criticism points out that there is free online access to SAGE journals throughout November, after registration here.

Among the journals of particular interest are:
Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus
Journal for the Study of the New Testament
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha
The Expository Times

I've just gone through the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, downloading all articles to do with the Psalms, the canonical approach and literary approaches.

Useful Posts on 'Wisdom'

A blog which I think I will be visiting regularly is Tolle Lege, hosted by Dave. Not only are our respective doctoral supervisors close colleagues (mine was the first ever doctoral student of his, and they worked in the same faculty for many years and were known as the two Gordons), the topics that interest him will be important to me: Creation and Wisdom. He has series of helpful posts worth checking out: First, he gives a brief outline of various approaches to Wisdom in the modern period, pointing out the inadequacy of approaches which see the 'genre' as either essentially anthropocentric or theocentric. Second, he points out the 'ethno-centrism' of the secular/religious dichotomy which currently prevails in our culture (with a great von Rad quote), as well as the potential significance of Creation Theology for understanding Wisdom. His most recent post offers a great quote on the significance of creation, as understood by a biomedical ethicist.

I look forward to reading more!

Oh, and here's his great von Rad quote:

"The modern exegete is always tempted to read into the old texts the tension with which he is all too familiar between faith and thought, between reason and revelation. Accordingly, there has been a tendency to infer too much from the preponderance of worldly sentences over religious ones. The conclusion has, for example, been drawn that this old proverbial wisdom was still scarcely touched by Yahwism and that it was still only at the very beginning of a process of interpenetration by Yahwism. Against this, it can be categorically stated that for Israel there was only one world of experience and that this was apperceived by means of a perceptive apparatus in which rational perceptions and religious perceptions were not differentiated. Nor was this any different in the case of the prophets. The reality surrounding Israel was much more comprehensive than we would imaging, whether in political or socio-ethical or any other kind of terms." (1975, Wisdom in Israel)

Postmodernists Believe in Objective Reality too!

In recent conversations with Stephen from Emerging from Babel, the question has arisen as to the adequacy of postmodern theory in helping us formulate a theological hermeneutic. My purpose here is to argue that the claim that the Bible as an external reality can shape our response to it (Childs' "coercion of the canonical shape") does not contradict the epistemological critique of postmodernism.

My thoughts are taken from James K.A. Smith's book, The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic (2000), specifically the chapter entitled: "The World as Limit: A Phenomenological Criteria".

Postmodernism claims that all articulations of truth function within the specific conditions of human finitude. A great way to signify this is Heidegger's use of the term Dasein ('there-being'; being-there, at a particular point, and not everywhere). Our perspective, shape by our context, inhibits us from ever being able to comprehend anything within the world exhaustively. My knowledge of an object cannot be adequate to the object itself. As such, there can be no normative interpretations.

But to deny that there are no normative interpretations is not to deny that there are no interpretive norms. There is an external reality, there is a given/gift - creation (and in this case God's gracious gift of the Bible) - that every interpreter encounters. This reality stands before our interpretations and is binding upon every construal. It is the phenomenological criterion of every construal, what Smith calls an 'empirical transcendental' (i.e. the world as given and experienced). The 'Bible' is not mine to be manipulated, it is rather the norm that judges my interpretations. The Bible does not prescribe a single "correct" interpretation, but it does preclude an infinite number of interpretations.

The idea that truth is 'subjective' does not mean that it can be whatever we want it to be. Rather, it means that 'truth' is dependent on the uncovering role of Dasein: "All truth is relative to Dasein's being - not "left to subjective discretion".

Two quotes:

"These empirical transcendentals urge themselves upon a plurality of interpreters and resist capricious construal, allowing for a plurality, but not an infinite number, of interpretive possibilities. ... Interpretation is not merely a subjective appropriation: it is a subjective construal of an objective reality."

These thoughts are relevant to the Childs/Brueggemann debate. I hope they can provide us with more precision as we stake out our respective positions.

What's On in Cyberspace? (Well, as far as the Bible is concerned ... )

I've been having online dialogues of the most colossal proportions. So involved, in fact, that I have no time or energy to write anything substantial today. Stephen and I are beating each other over the heads with our respective theological-icons here and here. John Poirier, recently called 'commenter extraordinaire' by John Hobbins, has posted his latest response on our ongoing dialogue concerning what constitutes a Christian 'alethiology' here and its implications for 'theological exegesis'. I'm sure Mr Hobbins meant that in a most positive manner! I for one am most grateful for Mr Poirier's patience, clarity and sheer concern for the significance of the issue under consideration. Our ongoing 'chat' challenges me to constantly refocus what it is I am actually trying to get at, and in itself is an exercise in the challenge and yet potential fruitfulness of sustained dialogue. I, at least, feel that it's bringing me onward, as I have tried to point out in my belated response.

I should point out that John of Ancient Hebrew Poetry has done the biblioblogging world a great service in his unbelievably in-depth analysis and taxonomising of all that is going on in this fastly expanding universe. His Biblical Studies Carneval XXIII is a detailed overview of what's on, his Map of the World of Bible Bloggers categorises the wealth of biblioblog-material into slightly more digestible bites, and finally, of most relevance to the concerns of this blog, he has posted on the canonical approach, pointing to its potential and voicing is his frustrations. Needless to say, I don't agree with his definition of what the canonical approach is trying to do, but my pure exhaustion restrains me from going any further than simply pointing this fact out.

Oh, and he also links to other blogs which are currently dealing with this topic ... cyberspace really is an infinite vacuum!