The Text as Tradent of Authority

For an overview of posts in this thread, go here.

"Prophetic authority is related to the function of the biblical text. The text is the tradent of authority in establishing a link with specific prophetic figures. The literature has no life apart from Israel's life, institutions, and offices. The prophet serves as the living voice of God now preserved in a living text of Scripture. The text can certainly be extended beyond the scope of the original prophecy, but the theological link with its origin must be maintained in order to sustain its authority. It is impossible to have free-floating literary constructs which are totally without historical rootage because authority ultimately rests on divine communication through these prophetic messengers. The prophetic text is not a creation of nameless editors to manipulate for a private agenda, but it remains the irreplaceable vehicle in the service of God for the sake of Israel.

There are different functions of textual authority which directly relate to the issue of the retrospective reading of the prophets. One such role provides the proper theological explanation for the function of etiology with the biblical prophecy. The technique of historical retrojection is not an attempt, as often claimed, to buttress a failing prophetic authority, but rather a means of confirming its recognized truth. Events in history were retrojected into the past precisely to confirm the authority of the prophetic voice. Thus, most likely the savage imagery of the utter destruction of Jerusalem in 587 was used post-factum in Isa. 6:11ff. to register the truth of the prophetic threat which the editors viewed as a unified reality according to its substance which unfolded in history as predicted. Similarly, Isa. 22:8b-11 appears to be a retrojection of the destruction of the city which functions as the voice of the prophet who outlined the plan of God which was never heeded by Israel either in the 8th or 6th century.

Then again, the role of the biblical text as tradent of prophetic authority explains the important feature of intertextuality common to the prophetic corpus. A prophetic text is specific and concrete, yet its imagery continues to reverberate within the tradition. It continues to exert a coercion on future generations of recipients and gives evidence of its force in the way in which a text is repeatedly actualized to remain highly existential even in changing historical contexts. This echoing effect arises from a widespread conviction that the authority of a single text extends to the larger story and partakes of the selfsame reality. By means of intertextuality a text can be extended into the future by means of Fortschreibung or it can be retrojected into the past by expanding and enriching the earlier imagery from the content of later events. Both redactional movements employing intertextuality rest on the same inner logic of Scripture's textual authority."

B.S. Childs, "Retrospective Reading of the Old Testament Prophets" (1996: 375, 6) ZAW 108 362-77.

The principles of Childs' exegesis

In my forthcoming posts - the subject of my next "mega thread" - I will be presenting examples of Biblical exegesis by Brevard Childs, the inspiration for my last "mega-thread." There will, however, be a logic behind the presentation. That logic is the logic of Childs' 'canonical approach,' (those are 'scare quotes,' by the way) as I worked it out in my last thread (also published as an article here) and refined through further study. What follows in this post is a roughly schematic summary of my understanding of the basic principles Childs operated by. I will then present examples of his exegesis in order to illustrate each of these principles.

I feel I should add a caveat: there is something awkward about having claimed to have understood someone else's approach. In fact, there is still much that is difficult for me and I am aware that even in those areas where I think I understand, I could be seriously mistaken. I always appreciate critical feedback.

A final note: I've scattered hyperlinks to the posts I've made over the last few years throughout the text. My selection is, due to time constraints and the limitations of memory, rather ad hoc and I may no longer fully stand behind the views expressed in the links. Feel free comment where you wish.

Our starting point should be Childs' alethiological stance, namely his theological commitment to the content of the testimony of the prophets and apostles, understood to be vehicles of truth. On the one hand, the historical nature of these witnesses requires a thoroughly historical critical analysis of their testimony in all its human particularity. The adequate tools for such an analysis are unlimited, so the exegete should make use of the best of contemporary scholarship. It is important that every dimension of the testimony be taken seriously. No one stage should be prioritized a priori over the other. If an earlier layer of tradition is more decisive for the thrust of the whole, then it should guide an interpretation of the final from.¹ This commitment to human proclamation coupled with a recognition of the multi-layered nature of the text raises a particular challenge concerning the significance of intentionality, particularly in assessing types of intertextuality. It is not the case the one can freely garner texts from across the canon in order to observe the creative outcome of their interplay. Rather, just as there are different types of activity within the history of the text, so one must wrestle with different types of intentionality, or “different degrees of consciousness” as Childs put it.² The juxtaposition of completed blocks of tradition such as the four Gospels or the two Testaments requires a different level of analysis to the citation of an earlier text by a later one or unintentional allusions due to a shared ideological background. Again, in line with current understandings of communicative acts, it would appear that the form of a text or tradition is integrally related to its function, both within the community and within the literary corpus to which it has been assigned.³ Until a better understanding of human communication is developed, it would appear that these two dimensions of the text must be continue to be kept in view.

On the other hand, it is not the witness himself who should be the focus of our case. He is ultimately only a vehicle to the revelation to which he witnesses. That means that if one wishes to take the intentionality of the prophets and apostles seriously one must move one's gaze from the proclamation itself to its actual substance, its res. We need to move beyond the descriptive task and wrestle with the “content of the witnesses' faith.”⁴ To stay at the “literal” level of the text would negate its kerygmatic function and lead to the anomaly of an “anthropocentric” interpretation of Holy Scripture. We must thus keep an eye out for talk of the theocentric focus of the text and the nature of the text's substance or content. In particular, it is the effect of the shaping of traditions on the final form that provides access to this reality. Again, the reality is mediated by but distinct from the textual vehicle, so that one can expect talk of the substance to break with the concrete contours of the text under discussion. Rather, it is at the thematic level that one can see how a particular text provides light on a broader reality testified to in the totality of Scripture and in the theological experience of the interpreter. The living nature of this substance who has continued to reveal Himself to his people throughout history requires serious attention to those who have also wrestled with this theological subject matter, responding to His coercion through the text.⁵ The history of interpretation, or perhaps more theologically adequate the text's Wirkungsgeschichte,⁶ therefore furnishes us with an invaluable resource for “piercing the text.” Of fundamental significance is the presence of a force. Identifying its movements helps point our gaze in the correct direction.

The move from text to reality takes the interpreter from the the realm of Biblical exegesis (the qualifier “theological” introduces an alien dichotomy) to that of Biblical theology. Though in reality the relationship between text and dogma (reality) is dialectical,⁷ the task of Biblical theology is a sphere of its own, outside of the domain of a commentary. The Biblical theologian extends the hermeneutical circle to include the relationship between different dimensions of the reality, the interaction of Word and Spirit, and includes a reverse movement from reality back to witness.⁸ The theological function of a commentary, on the other hand, is to stay close to the sequence of the Biblical text, and wrestle with interpretative questions.⁹ As far as exegesis is concerned, Biblical theology is an “ancillary discipline that better serves in equipping the exegete for the real task of interpreting the biblical text itself.”¹⁰

1Contra many misconceptions of Childs. See his discussion of the book of Judges in his Introduction

2Childs, “Response,” 54. It is for this reason that Childs prefers Thistleton's use of speech-act theory over Wolterstorff's, and Beuken's use of intertextuality over Steins'. See “Speech-act,” “Critique,” and Isaiah.

3Childs' commitment to function—“illocutionary stance” to use speech-act parlance—as a key ingredient to meaning explains his preference for M. Sternberg's literary analysis (for whom narrative is a “functional structure”) over that of J. Barr. See M. Steinberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideology and the Drama of Reading (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985; especially his critique of H. Frei, J. Kugel,and R. Alter , pp. 1-57), J. Barr, “The Bible as Literature,” in The Bible and the Modern World (London: SCM, 1972), 53-74, and Childs' comments in Biblical Theology, 20. In his exegesis of Isaiah 10, therefore, Childs can say: “Although accurate historical dating can at times be of exegetical significance, the crucial interpretative task lies in determining the narrative function to which the texts have been assigned, rather than in supplying a reconstructed setting apart from its present literary (canonical) context.” Childs, Isaiah, 94 (emphasis mine).

4Cf. Childs, “Psalm 8 in the Context of the Christian Canon,” Interpretation 23:1 (1969), 20-31.

5In conclusion to his analysis of the history of Christian interpretation of Isaiah, Childs proposes that “an investigation of this history of interpretation that focusses its analysis on the assumption that various cultural forces (historical, sociological, philosophical) are the controlling factors at work misconstrues the most central components of the church's theological reflections. ... there are theological parameters preserving the church that are continually being shaped by the Spirit's quickening in the understanding of its scriptures toward a faithful witness to Jesus Christ. ... we can derive new confidence in confessing with the creed: I believe in the one holy catholic and apostolic church.” Struggle, 322-333.

6Wirkungsgeschichte denotes the opposite direction of influence. The text exerts a “coercion” on faithful interpreters who submit to this “theocentric force.”

7“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 assumption are called into question, are tested and revised by the subject matter itself.” In Childs, “Does the Old Testament Witness to Jesus Christ?” in Evangelium, Schriftauslegung, Kirche (ed. J. Ådna, S. Hafemann, O. Hofius, and G. Feine; Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1997), 57-64; here, 60.

8Cf. Childs, Biblical Theology, 85-88. He draws here on A. Louth, Mystery.

9Cf. Childs, “The Genre of the Biblical Commentary as Problem and Challenge,” in Tehillah le-Moshe (ed. M. Cogan, B. Eichler, and J. Tigay; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1997), 185-192.

10Childs, Isaiah, xii.

Childs on intentionality and reader-response

Childs struggled throughout his career with the relationship between authorial or editorial intentionality and the effect a particular constellation of texts had on a reader, regardless of whether this constellation was intended or fortuitous. The latter category takes him into the realm of reader-response, the former keeps him within the realm of traditional historical-criticism. Childs wanted both, though he still felt that in some sense an awareness of intentionality should play some kind of role in evaluating reader-response interpretation. The trick is how to correlate them. In his final commentary (Isaiah), one can see him trying to coordinate these two categories, especially in his treatment of intertextuality in third Isaiah.

I'm currently writing an essay on Childs' exegesis, so I hope to be able to post more articulately on this issue in the future. For now, an earlier quote on the topic, taken from Childs' response to critiques of his Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture.

At times there is clear evidence for an intentional redactional move being made, e.g. the positioning of Isa. 36-39. At other times, no conscious intentionality can be discerned in the joining of sources or traditions. Moreover, there is considerable evidence to show the effect of accidental and fortuitous factors in the shaping of the material. it is certainly possible, even likely, that chs. 21-14 of II Samuel received their present literary function late in the process. But the crucial point to make is that regardless of the exact nature of a text's prehistory, a new dynamic was unleashed for its interpretation when it was collected with other material and assigned a religious role as sacred literature. Whether or not one can determine the motivation for joining Gen. 1 with Gen. 2, the present juxtaposition within a larger literary context affects the semantic level on which ch. 2 is read.

B.S. Childs, "Response to Reviewers" (JSOT 16; 1980: 52 - 60), 54.

Some critiques of Childs

The following critiques of Brevard Childs' work were recently made in a comment on this blog. They are brief and elliptical. Nevertheless, I thought it would be a good opportunity to clarify my thoughts further. Here they are, critique in italics and my (spontaneous) response beneath:

His weaknesses primarily lie ...

... in his reformed theology (with its questionable assumption that its God is clearly good!)

I'm really not sure how Reformed Childs was. I'd like to know how ... He certainly was a great fan of Barth and Calvin, but his basic theological approach to Scripture was often very open to non-Protestant approaches, especially later in his career with his turn to allegory. He talked of the need to keep Word and Tradition in healthy tension, the need to take into account the dogmatic tradition of the church, the subordination of text to substance etc. He was inspired by Orthodox theologian Andrew Louth and said things that sound similar to recent statements by the current Pope.

As for the idea that God is always good, I would have thought that that is a basic tenet of Biblical and Christian faith …

... in his tendency to over-state his case at some points (e.g. in connection with Sanders)

I'm not sure what this means.

... in his failure to provide really convincing examples of canonical exegesis

That depends what “canonical exegesis” is. Childs' approach is consistently misunderstood, so that critiques of his work tend to measure him according to a standard he himself never set up. Some call him too synchronic, others too diachronic (e.g. Rendtorff). Childs has always said the key lies in maintaining the tension, keeping a proper sense of proportion, most significantly in relation to the text's theological subject matter (its res). In fact, Childs was so disturbed by what was passing for “canonical interpretation” that in his Isaiah commentary he tried to refrain from using the term altogether. Richard Schultz's article for the PTR (available online here) points out how diverse the term is just amongst Evangelicals. So again, what is the “canonical approach," and what are the criteria for evaluating Childs' work?

...in his over-reliance on historical criticism in a piecemeal and non-systematic way

This comment is really interesting, especially as it relates to the former critique. A Childsian "canonical approach” is predicated on a historical-critical assumption and a commitment to the historical intentionality of Prophetic and Apostolic witnesses. This is his starting point, as I have argued in a recent paper I submitted to IJST. Once that is accepted, working out how he bridges the gap to “synchronic” interpretation is very interesting … but it doesn't have much to do with theories of speech, intertextuality, or reader-response. Something more like a commitment to ontology and the power of the Spirit. That, in my opinion, is the stance from which a critique of his use of historical-criticism needs to be made.

... in his failure to provide a detailed blueprint as to how others should follow him in his work.

This complaint has often been made (most recently by Georg Steins, in his own attempt at a kanonisch-intertextuelle Lektüre, see my critique here). I think the problem with this critique is that Childs never set out to develop a “method.” Rather, he wanted to articulate the hermeneutical implications of a certain stance vis-à-vis the text, which means taking into account his whole historical-critical, philosophical and most of all dogmatic assumptions. That is the reality out of which the canonical approach lives and breathes and has its being. The canonical approach is an approach and not a method.

I wonder if many of the problems we have with him are simply that we are either not reformed enough or that we are not theologically capable enough.

I think so. This emphasises the holistic dimension to Childs' work. See his statement of the significance of von Rad.

I'm more than happy to be corrected on any of these points!

Brueggemann on Childs

Inhabitatio Dei recently asked the question, "who is the greatest biblical theologian of the twentieth century?" The comment thread is long, but two Old Testament names that frequently occur are Childs and Brueggemann (though only Childs can qualify as a biblical theologian, Brueggemann having only focussed on the OT). Ben Myer's comment is particularly worth reprinting:

my impression is that the really great biblical theologians have been OT scholars rather than NT scholars. I can’t think of any NT parallels to the works of von Rad, Brueggemann, Eichrodt, Childs, and most recently Rendtorff’s Canonical Hebrew Bible ... Alongside this stuff, most of the NT theologies seem pretty bland and inconsequential.

Despite my appreciation of Breuggemann's work, the Childs in me can't help but respond critically. I've done so a number of times, here, here and here, all in colleagial dialogue with Stephen. I'd like to take this opportunity to respond once again to some remarkable comments made by Brueggemann about Childs in a recent essay, “The ABC's of Old Testament Theology in the US,” ZAW 114, 412-432. The following is his comments in italics with my response beneath:

His presenting problem has been preoccupation with history and awareness that historical critical methods subject the text to references outside the text that are essentially misleading and distractive for the claim of the text itself. (425)

Again,

His counter to such a historical practice has been an insistence that in ecclesial reading (which is his singular interest), the reference point is not external history but the internal claims of the canon, taken as a whole as normative text. (426).

Childs has indeed criticized a historicizing emphasis in biblical studies which considers that the only reality worth understanding is that of the development of ancient Israelite religion, rather than the theological reality witnessed to by the text. But this does not cause Childs to set up an antithesis between “history”and the enclosed world of the text. For Childs, the primary reality is theological—God in relationship with his people—to which the diversity of Israel's traditions, institutions, prophets and priests have witnessed in varying ways. One part of this history is the “inscripturation” of the traditions and their subsequent shaping for the purpose of guiding later generations of this people in their relationship with this God. The church, as the continuation of this people, is required to seek God through this witness. The textual witness is the means of revelation and thus the object of study, but that does not exclude using historical critical tools to understand it. They are only relativised to illuminate the final form. Historical referentiality can be distracting, but not “essentially” so.

As for his “singular interest” in “ecclesial reading,” this is only true in the sense that he believes the text and the community for which it was written cannot be separated—which I think is fair enough. Given Brueggemann's broader critique of Childs, however, it is clear that this statement carries the connotation that Childs' reading is only interested in dogmatics and not the text. This critique, however, is based upon weak understanding of Childs' concept of the text as witness to a reality that encompasses it, i.e. its role within the economy of God, a far more theologically sophisticated understanding than Brueggemann's “text as linguistic testimony.”

Childs is also far more subtle on the issue of intertextuality (“the internal claims of the canon”). Issues of historical context and authorial intention play a consistent albeit complex role in Childs' exegesis, much to the frustration of those who wish to adopt his approach for a post-modern agenda. Key here is Childs' rejection of midrash, which views the text as able to generate its own reality, rather than point to another one (Brueggemann takes the midrashic approach, without commenting on this dimension of Childs' approach).

It is clear that Childs intends to nullify the entire modern period of interpretation and the historical critical project as a failed attempt, insisting rather that one should read as the church read before the Cartesian program of autonomy. (426)

Again, this is a caricature. Not only has Childs consistently referred to the legitimate challenge of historical criticism, taking on board many of the classical conclusions, his entire canonical approach is an attempt to unite historical research with theology, not to replace one with the other. As Levinson has pointed out (in “Is Brueggemann really a Pluralist?”), the whole idea of “canonical process” is predicated on the existence of a diachronic dimension within the text. Given Childs' repeated claim that we cannot retreat to the pre-critical era, I find this statement quite remarkable.

It strikes me that he treats texts very much “in sum,” without any consideration of the internal dynamic of any text, as though one only reads for conclusions. That is, Childs is not inclined to any of the newer “narrative” methods that go “inside” texts, but reads for theological outcomes. (427)

That Childs is indeed interested in the inner dynamic of the text can be seen in his other works (e.g. “On reading the Elijah narratives”). However, given that the issue under discussion is “biblical theology” and not exegesis or a “close reading” per se, it makes sense that, at least at some point, one moves beyond the individual texts to issues of normativity. The complex question is how, and Childs defends that by pointing out that close, narrative readings are only one part of a larger whole, one which involves the recognition of different contexts and different levels of meaning. Perhaps Brueggemann is blinded here by his own assumption that “the text as testimony” requires not much more than a “rhetorical interpretation” of the text, as if that guarantees the revelation of the God that undergirds it. If one is interested in reading the Bible for its subject matter and not just its verbal sense, it would help to stand back and look at the big picture. Update: Thiselton's warning should be taken to heart here: “any suggestion to the effect that a 'canonical' approach is harmonizing or ahistorical rests upon a mistaken mythology generated by critics who have never properly engaged with it” (in “Canon, Community and Theological Construction: Introduction,” 9).

The heart of the Gospel is ontological

I named this blog "narrative and ontology" because of my interest in theological hermeneutics and my conviction that the church needs to emphasize both of these dimensions of Scripture. The text is kerygmatic, proclamatory, verbal discourse designed to do something. And the thing it does is point beyond itself to a reality, a "real" reality, something "ontological" and not just existential, psychological, or sociological. But at the end of the day, it's not the Bible but this reality that really matters. The Bible itself points beyond itself to what Childs called its "substance," its Sachverhalt, its res (Childs considers Biblical intertextuality to be "deictic"). Without the ontology the narrative is meaningless and I personally would lose all interest in the Bible.

So what is the Sache? I usually attempt to answer this by reference to the Church's traditional rule of faith. For an extended discussion on this go here. However, I read a quote this morning and then heard a sermon this afternoon which I think gets to the Sache (gets to the "point") far more succinctly. The quote is by Herman Bavinck:

The essence of the Christian religion consists therein: that the creation of the Father, destroyed by sin, is again restored in the death of the Son of God and recreated by the grace of the Holy Spirit to a Kingdom of God

Here, the substance of the Christian - I would say Biblical - faith really is ontological. It has to do with being. An eschatological being, perhaps, one that explodes all our current categories, but being nonetheless.

I then heard an impassioned sermon on this subject, fittingly preached on Easter Sunday, the day of the Resurrection. It's about Heaven, and Heaven is "Real." The preacher is Phil Hill and the congregation is the Arab Local Baptist Church in Nazareth. You can listen to it here.

[P.S. For thoughts on this issue in relation to the Piss Christ, go here].

R. Hays: Reading the Bible with Eyes of Faith: The Practice of Theological Exegesis

I'm excited to a have my first copy of the newly developed Journal of Theological Interpretation (see blog reactions here and here). In the comments below a potential parallel was pointed out between Childs' hermeneutical presuppositions and the first article of the journal by Hays (pp.5-21). I've given it a read and have decided that Hays' definition of what constitutes theological exegesis would be palatable to Childs. Like Childs he believes that we come to the text with a particular angle of vision, which can be inhibited or enlightened depending on our presuppositions. As Hays says,

"what we ordinarily take to be "real" is in fact a distorted picture of the world, and it is only the revelatory power of God's word that casts a true light on the landscape of human experience and, at the same time, heals our capacity to see" (p.6).

This is a non-foundationalist approach in that it recognises the central role of community in forming us as interpreters and thus seeks to locate interpretation of the Bible within the broader context of church tradition. I'll limit my review to what Hays considers 12 identifying marks of "biblical interpretation oriented to the knowledge of God":

1. Theological exegesis is a practice of and for the church. These texts have been passed onto us by the church's tradition as the distinctive and irreplaceable testimony to events in which God has acted for our salvation. As such the are to be regarded at the outset as Scripture, not merely as a collection of ancient writings whose content is of historical interest. These texts are to be normative for the community.
   
2. Theological exegesis is self-involving discourse. Interpreters themselves are addressed and claimed by the word of God that is spoken in the text, and we are answerable to that word. As a result theological exegesis will frequently contain pronouns in the first and second person. Such readings are closely interwoven with worship.
   
3. At the same time, historical study is internal to the practice of theological exegesis. The reasons for this are theological: God has created the material world, and God has acted for the redemption of that world through the incarnation of the Son in the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth.
   
4. Theological exegesis attends to the literary wholeness of the individual scriptural witnesses. The Bible must be read neither as an anthology of disconnected theological sound bites nor, on the other hand, as a single undifferentiated story. Rather, the Bible contains a chorus of different voices, and the distinctive integrity of each part in the chorus is essential to its polyphonic performance (cf. the fourfold Gospels).
   
5. The fifth point is the dialectical converse of the previous one: theological exegesis can never be content only to describe the theological perspectives of the individual biblical authors; instead, it always presses forward to the synthetic question of canonical coherence. We must seek the big picture, asking how any particular text fits into the larger biblical story of God's gracious action.
   
6. Theological exegesis does not focus chiefly on the hypothetical history behind the biblical texts, nor does it attend primarily to the meaning of texts as self-contained works of literature; rather, it focuses on these texts as testimony. This means we need to learn to stand where these witnesses stand and look where they point in order to learn to see as they see. In this way we will find our vision trained anew.
   
7. The language of theological exegesis is intratextual in character, i.e we should remain close to the primary language of the witnesses rather than moving away from the particularity of the biblical testimony to a language of second-order abstraction that seeks to "translate" the biblical imagery into some other conceptual register.
   
8. Theological exegesis, insofar as it stays close to the language and conceptions of the NT witnesses, will find itself drawn into the Bible's complex web of intertextuality. This includes citations, allusions as well as typological correspondences between the testaments.
   
9. Theological exegesis thereby is committed to the discovery and exposition of multiple senses in biblical texts. OT texts, when read in relation to Jesus, take on new resonances.
   
10. Learning to read the texts with the eyes of faith is a skill for which we are trained by the Christian tradition. Consequently, we can never approach the Bible as if we were the first ones to read it - or the first to read it appropriately. Theological exegesis will find hermeneutical aid, not hindrance, in the church's doctrinal traditions.
    
11. Theological exegesis, however, goes beyond repeating traditional interpretations; rather, instructed by the example of traditional readings, theological interpreters will produce fresh readings that encounter the texts anew with eyes of faith and see the ways that the Holy Spirit continues to speak to the churches through the same ancient texts that the tradition has handed on to us.
    
12. Finally, we must always remember that we are not speaking about our own clever readings and constructions of the text but, rather, of the way that God, working through the text, is reshaping us (cf. Hebrews 4:12). This means that theological exegesis must always be done from a posture of prayer and humility before the word.

Despite the many points of commonality with Childs' approach, there is still room for qualification (especially the overly NT emphasis of point 8!). Hays goes on to give a case study in relation to the Christology of Luke 7:18-23. I have to say, I find it hard to see the difference between his exegesis and that of a more talented historical-critic in tune of intertextual issues and the implications of the text for the bigger picture. For an example of theological exegesis which more seriously works with the two testamental nature of the Bible, I recommend Seitz's essay "Isaiah in New Testament, Lectionary, Pulpit" (1998:213-228).

Nevertheless, this is promising stuff and will definitely be a reference point for work to come.

Inner-referentiality in the New Testament and the Scriptures as "divine vehicle"

In response to my claim that the canon of Scripture is not just a useful source for historical reconstruction but a vehicle of ongoing divine revelation, a commentator has pointed out that such a view is not found within the Bible itself.

Granted this point, how does one respond to it?

The answer is the one does not draw a doctrine of Scripture form propositional statements made within the individual texts themselves, but rather from an overall understanding of the function of these texts within the life of the community of faith that treasures them and that claims to have been formed in response to them. When one pays attention to the functional dimension of the texts, one sees that they were not only treated as a lens for perceiving the divine reality that had broken into their lives, but as an ongoing source for deeper understanding. This can be seen in the intense intertextuality that characterises the entire Bible. At both earlier and later diachronic levels of the text, one sees a constant dialectic at work in which, on the one hand, the divine reality is understood in terms of sacred tradition and yet, on the other hand, that tradition is "critically shaped" in terms of a deeper understanding the God who had thus revealed himself. Traditions are collected, juxtaposed, subordinated, streamlined etc. to form a coherent whole. At a later stage we have the literary shaping of entire blocks (e.g. torah, prophets, writings), in which the parts are constantly related to each other in order to gain a deeper impression of the whole. The theological implication is that God makes himself known in history, yet this revelation is interpreted within a larger theological framework brokered by tradition (later canonical Scripture).

One example of this intertextual activity is David Trobisch's interesting analysis of the nature of the church's search for a holistic and unified grasp of its scriptures in his The Final Redaction of the New Testament: An Investigation of the Formation of the Christian Bible (probably translated as this one). I take my summary from Childs in his article "Jesus Christ the Lord and the Scriptures of the Church" (1998):

Trobisch argues that there is evidence to show that there already was a definitive edition of hte entire New Testament by the end of the second century. One piece of evidence is the presence of a conscious inner-referentiality within the entire New Testament canon, in which the titles of authorship assigned to each of the writings - Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, James, Peter, and Jude - are consciously intertwined, thus forming a unified authoritative whole. For example, Mark is linked in Acts with both Paul and Peter and he also is greeted in the letter of 1 Peter. Luke likewise is referred to in the Gospels, Acts, and the Pauline collection, and is linked with Mark. John is named in the Fourth Gospel, the synoptics, Acts, and Revelation. Similarly, the Genereal Epistles are consciously linked through cross-referencing to James, Peter, and John. Childs concludes:

The effect is that a knowledge of the whole New Testament corpus emerges as an actual literary force in shaping once independent writings into a unified composition.

In addition to this, the conflict between Peter and Paul, referred to in the letter to the Galations, is brought to a conscious harmonious end in Acts 15. Likewise, Paul and James are joined in a shared plan in Acts 21 to unite Jewish and Gentile Christians in a common collection for Jerusalem. In fact, the major function of the book of Acts is to provide an introduction to the Catholic Epistles and the historical background for the Pauline letters. It also is not accidental that in the last letters of both Paul and Peter the public reading of Scripture within the community of faith is highly recommended.

Though at the time of writing Childs was still not sure of the full implications this work, it illustrates a fresh turn in New Testament studies of seeking to understand the nature of the Church's search for a holistic and unified grasp of its Scriptures.

No doubt Childs discusses this in his posthumous How to Read Paul.

The intertextual reader-writer

The following is a quote taken from Beth LaNeel-Tanner's helpful The Book of Psalms through the Lens of Intertextuality (2001). It represents her own understanding of how exegesis of the Bible should proceed if one wishes to plumb its possibilities. Her phrase "reader-writer" references the fact that all our reading is also a form of metaphorical writing, as the text is brought into dialogue with our own personal history, and thus a meaning unique to us - in a sense "authored" by us - is created:

The intertextual reader-writer does not always look for a fixed meaning of a word or phrase, but for a more fluid possibility. The intertextual reader-writer is always looking for how a text refers to other "texts," sometimes as a simile, sometimes as a parody, sometimes as a presupposition. The intertextual reader-writer uses other texts to say more than is apparent in the printed text - words and even worlds hidden between the lines, and meanings are formed from a variety of spheres of reference.

At some point in the future I intend to engage these more postmodern approaches from canonical perspective.

For further pontifications on the subject, see my post A chat with my wife on the meaning of a story.

And in case you think post-modernism is about creating your own reality, see my post Postmodernists believe in object reality too!

And finally, concerning the question of the significance of authorial intentionality, I had a bash at it in my post Authorial intentionality and the final form.

The exegesis of B.S. Childs: an overview

This post presents an overview of the the structure of my next thread, dedicated to illustrating Childs' manner of doing exegesis. I will update it by adding hyperlinks as the thread progresses.

1. The principles of Childs' exegesis

2. Continuity in Childs' exegesis

3. The Witness

3.1 The profile of the tradents

Ex 7:8-11:10

Historical Criticism and theological reality: a case study

The tradition history of the office of Moses

The historical Isaiah and the canonical process

How do Isaiah 31:4 and 5 cohere?
Third Isaiah, intertextuality, and history

3.2 Form and function
Dealing with anachronism in Exod 16:34

3.3 The "effect" on the final form

4. The Substance

4.1 Force and Sachkritik

4.2 The res

[For a summary of posts dealing with canonical exegesis to date, go here]

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).

Diachrony and synchrony in a "canonical approach"

Halden recently posted a question that has been on my own mind for quite a while now, "what is the theological role of historical criticism?" As usual, Halden's posts generate learned and insightful discussion. I posted the fascinating response of one particular commentator yesterday. I've since written a fairly long piece myself, so I'll include it in its entirety today:

I’ve spent the past year and a half reading almost nothing but Brevard Childs in a desperate attempt to get my head round this issue. Seeing as I am a relative new comer to theology, I’ll take a deep breath and hope my thoughts past muster with those who are more trained than I.
My first thought is that “historical criticism” isn’t a self-contained concept in itself, it takes on all sorts of forms depending on the broader ideological/theological context in which it is used. So asking whether we need historical criticism begs the question what kind of historical criticism. As Tim F. pointed out, historical criticism played a role in the exegesis of the Church Fathers (Jerome is usually the parade example, but it played a role for Origen too). But for them, it was only one element in a longer process which lead somewhere else, it was the vehicle, so to speak, that enabled access to what the text was really about. For those immersed in the Enlightenment tradition, that can be no “something else”: the meaning of the text is one, and it is that of the intention of the author.

The example of the Fathers brings us to the crucial question, which I think Tim F. and Geoff point out well, namely that the validity of historical reading is dependent on our views of the nature of reality as a whole and thus its role within that reality. As I have been slowly pointing out in an ongoing thread of mine, for the Fathers the truth of God involved a history of progressive divine revelation, one which breaks into our history and is witnessed to within that history by concrete, particular prophets and then apostles. The testimony of these individuals, then, has a particular function (can one call it an illocutionary stance?), namely to point beyond themselves to this profound reality of redemption from within their particular positions. For Christianity, the truth is not only “objective,” in the sense of being external to us and therefore in need of being revealed, it is also “prophetic and apostolic,” i.e. it is revealed through particular channels. As Geoff says, “Do we even really need it at all? Uh, only if the texts in question are historical (having history in them, or having been written in history) in nature will I answer yes.”

Yet, as Steven says, “there is also a need for theology which surpasses time and space.” Ebeling may have pointed out the significance of the historicity of the Bible (within a particularly existential framework, as I remember it), but I don’t think that simply finding analogies between then and now is a viable option (i.e. it’s not possible). In addition to that, if it’s true that the function of the diverse texts of Scripture is to point to their single referent, the reality of God, a reality which alone constitutes the unity within this diversity, ecclesial interpretation cannot be satisfied with uncovering the discreet witness of just one of these texts (the theology of Paul for example, check out this quote and this one). It must find a way to relate them in order to arrive at a faithful construal of the whole. One of Childs’s contributions to this debate (I’m surprised his name has not been mentioned above) has been to show how the texts of Scripture are not just historical, they are also kerygmatic in a particularly “canonical” way. In other words, the reality of God’s ongoing relation with his people in history in which he has progressively revealed himself is registered within the development of the texts themselves. Editorial shaping and juxtapositioning of various traditions was done not only to point (“witness”) to this single divine reality—as if the editors were prophets of the same calibre as Isaiah—but was done within the context of a broader understanding of the reality of God himself, gained through history, experience and refracted through the lens of prior prophetic tradition. If exegesis is to facilitate a meeting with God (as the Childs quote above implies), then it is the quest for this reality which should drive our interpretation. And if the texts really are “canonical” in the particular way that Childs meant (and if they really are undergirded by the self-revealing God testified to by the rule of faith), then it means that the final form of the text as a literary, relatively self-referential product, is the only arena within which this God can make himself known. Hence the relevance of the apparently “anti” historical-critical approaches of the New Criticism and certain forms of intertextuality.

This “canonical” construal (or whatever term is most appropriate) encompasses both the diachronic and synchronic dimensions of the text, leading to the complexity and subtleness of Childs actual (usually misunderstood) position. Throughout his commentaries is the call for the requisite skill in keeping these two dimensions in necessery tension. A focus on the diachronic runs the risk of historicizing something which is ultimately incarnational (see Tim F.’s great comments on ontology and time above!), an overemphasis on the synchronic runs the risk missing the thrust of the text. The truth of scripture is in its referent (Christ, see Halden’s point on Christology as a check against bibliolatry), yet this referent is such that it is “mediated” (the text is a “vehicle”) through the concrete historical witness of Israel and the Church. The interpretative move, then (for the Church, at least) is always through or along the diachronic to the synchronic and on to the referent. That’s how I see it anyway. This is just made more complicated by the fact that the final form has a tendency to consciously “sweep over” what has gone before it an attempt to focus our gaze on a more ultimate horizon.

This, by the way, is why “allegory” and patristic exegesis became more interesting to Childs later on in his career.

To summarize, a Childsian canonical approach challenges the nature of historical criticism in the same way that Barth’s category of the text as “witness” did. It asks us to reconceive what history really is in the first place and how the text would funciton within that history is this history were true.

A dialogue on Childs

It's not often that I get an dialogue partner who understands Childs' work as well as Brad of bradandgeo. He recently wrote an interesting critique of certain points in my post Some critiques of Childs (in that place made by another competant reader of Childs, John Lyons of Reception of the Bible). I've taken time to respond, and think the exchange is worth its own post. But do read Brad's entire post in the comments section here!

His comments are in italics, my response below:

it ... seems that his exegesis never quite lives up to what is expected based on his methodological work.

I totally agree with you, and I think he knew that himself. He was a pioneer, cautiously, very cautiously, trying to spy out the promised land from the wilderness, not wanting to forget all the lessons that have been learnt along the way. To that end, I think his exegesis often has the feeling of one pushing forward in a direction, yearning to get there, but not wanting to betray the route that is set out for us. He kind of says this in the intro to his book Struggle:

I have recently finished a technical, modern commentary on the book of Isaiah. The task of treating the entire book of sixty-six chapters was enormous, but in addition, the commentary had necessitated restricting the scope of the exposition. That entailed omitting the history of interpretation and relegating many important hermeneutical problems to the periphery of the exegesis. After the commentary had been completed, I was painfully aware that many of the central theological and hermeneutical questions in which I was most interested had not been adequately addressed” (emaphsis mine).

The scope of Isaiah is one reason why he couldn't go as deep as in Exodus (both commentaries are roughly the same size), but as I said: I think he was incredibly cautious and wanted to restrain himself from “rushing to the referent.” My doctoral thesis is an attempt to do what you are looking for (and which Childs himself has done in a haphazard manner), and make the move from text to referent and back again (on Psalm 24).

[rather than recommend his Isaiah commentary, I think it is better] to see what he does with exodus

Agreed, this is the best model for a commentary and it is the one I will follow.

Concerning the Isaiah commentary, I agree with you that he focusses a lot more on the text than the substance, but I think for various legitimate reasons. One is the reason of caution given above; another belongs to the genre of "commentary." Though I think Childs would ultimately like to get to the allegorical intensity of Luther or Augustine, he wants to do it through intensive exegesis, and it is the role of a commentary to prioritise the literal rather than the spiritual sense. And I would call his redactional analyses “throat clearing” only in the positive sense of the phrase … Close analysis of the text always precedes talk of its substance, at least in a commentary. There are places where his diachronic analysis has direct repercussions on his perception of the substance. See his critique of certain redaction-critical trends in Isaiah studies on p. 462:

First, Third Isaiah remains a prophetic collection, both in form and content, which means there is an encounter with actual historical realities, albeit seen in the light of the divine. This dimension dare not be flattened simply into a type of learned scribal activity dealing exclusively with literary texts. Second, not every occurrence of a parallel can be assigned to an intentional reuse. A critical assessment must be made that reckons with the theological substance at stake beyond merely identifying formal parallelism discovered by the perusal of a concordance.

It's these kinds of nuanced insights and his constant straining to hold everything in correct proportion, always in light of the text's res (which figures more, I think, than in Exodus), which makes his commentary so exciting for me. But it certainly isn't a commentary to end all commentaries. It's a call to persevere on a journey in a certain direction!

This [focus on redactional issues] was frustrating, not least because at that stage in his career you would think we could have taken some of those arguments as read.

My impression is that his balancing act between diachrony (Westermann) and synchrony (Beuken) was quite unique, and so by no means read. Perhaps I've not read enough other commentaries …

i know he says we need to take the compositional history seriously alongside of the canonical shape, but he also states that those issues will only take you so far. so why give them so much space?

I asked myself this. I had the feeling it was more like light shining through the cracks then standing in front of a text turned transparency to the divine (a metaphor he used for Barth's exegesis). But then I think the reasons I gave above account for this, along with his comments in Struggle …

what sets this commentary apart from other offerings on isaiah?

I think I've answered this: his straining to keep balance and proportionality in light of the text's subject matter, given its genre as canonical scripture.

if, as you claim, childs's exegesis is consistently misread and not adequately understood, how so?

Not his exegesis. In fact that's the remarkable thing, I'm not sure his exegesis is read that much at all. Otherwise, people wouldn't make the comments they do about him advocating a hermetically sealed, self-referential canon (e.g. Barr). When they do, they usually act bemused and call him schizophrenic because they can't see how theory and practice fit together.

his volume on the history of interpretation i thought was much better, and actually dealt with more of the substantive issues of understanding and reading isaiah than the commentary did.

Well, again, I think it belongs to the genre of such a book that the move to the referent is easier, especially when the bulk of exegesis was ecclesial. See his comments in the intro to Exodus! Ideally things wouldn't be so divided, but that's the way things are.

it seems to me a bit of a double standard to say that childs's work was not a method, was not methodologically programmatic for others, but then for childs (and some of his followers) to be constantly upset at what passes for 'canonical' interpretation.

I'm not sure I get your point here. Why can't people's approach be critiqued too? For example, regardless of the soundness of G. Steins' philosophical theories concerning Bakhtinian intertextuality and their applicability to interpretation, Childs still critiqued his proposal and exegesis for not taking into account the theological nature of Christian-scriptural referentiality (i.e. allegorical and not midrashic). I'm not sure allegory is a method … it's a stance within a community guided by a rule of truth (regula veritatis).

if what he wanted to do was, as you say, 'articulate the hermeneutical implications of a certain stance vis-à-vis the text', it seems to leave the door quite open regarding what the use of those 'hermeneutical implications' might look like.

The door swings on a hinge, but there is still a hinge on which it turns, and so there is room for diversity (Childs appreciated an extraordinarily diverse range of interpreters, ranging from Augustine to von Rad!) as well as critique (again, applied by Childs to a diverse ranger of interpreters).