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Reading Scripture with the Church: Toward a Hermeneutic for Theological Interpretation. By A. K. M. Adam, Stephen E. Fowl, Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Francis Watson Tradition, Scripture, and Interpretation: A Sourcebook of the Ancient Church (Evangelical Ressourcement: Ancient Sources for the Church's Future). Ed. D. H. Williams Sacred Scripture: The Disclosure of the Word. By Francis Martin The Language of Symbolism: Biblical Theology, Semantics, and Exegesis. By Pierre Grelot

2008; Wiley; Volume: 50; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1468-2265.2009.00438_2.x

1468-2265

Richard S. Briggs,

Pentecostalism and Christianity Studies

Pp 155 , Grand Rapids, MI : Baker Academic , 2006 , $17.99 . Pp 189 , Grand Rapids, MI : Baker Academic , 2006 , $19.99 . Pp xix, 286 , Naples, FL : Sapientia Press , 2006 , $26.95 . Pp x, 238 , Peabody, MA : Hendrickson , 2006 , $19.95 . Continued evidence that theological reflection on scripture is alive and well, from various quarters, and with varying degrees of exegetical/hermeneutical balance. The multi-authored Reading Scripture with the Church sees four prominent Protestant theologians debating aspects of theological hermeneutics. Each contributes both a self-standing essay and a brief response to the other three, and yet the volume falls short of being an integrated discussion. It is illuminating to see where all four are at, but this is a prelude to a conversation rather than actually being one. The respective themes will be familiar to readers who know the authors. Adam argues that worries about words have obscured the need to conceive of biblical theology as fundamentally indicative of a practice. Fowl appeals to Aquinas for a ‘multivoiced’ concept of literal sense, and sees ecclesiology and theology as ‘driving’ scriptural hermeneutics. Vanhoozer reprises themes from his Drama of Doctrine regarding a ‘dramatological’ reading of scripture, also practice orientated, though more concerned over norms for ‘correct’ interpretation that Adam. Watson looks at the fourfold gospel over against the kinds of advocacy of the non-canonical represented by Dan Brown. True to form, Vanhoozer's contribution is twice as long as everyone else's, as is his response, though here he does make some particularly constructive points about issues needing further exploration in his fellow contributor's works. Quote of the book belongs to Adam: ‘Theological interpretation thrives outside the walled precincts of academic biblical theology even as biblical theologians wonder how they lost their mojo.' (p. 23, where he also notes that all the academic authority we can muster has had precisely no effect on either the scale or the phenomenon of The DaVinci Code). Although not quite the integrated discussion the participants seem to think it is, this is a worthwhile book for anyone new to the concerns of balancing out text and theology. It is better at headlines than detailed engagement. The next step, perhaps, would be for all four to provide a model of how their approach makes theological sense of one particular passage (the same one, preferably). Vanhoozer does something like this with Philemon. It would also be interesting to see how far their approaches can work with the Old Testament, where the recourse to Christology and ecclesiology is at the very least more complex. Williams' volume provides something of a convenient handbook for reflecting on just the kinds of issues raised above. After a useful 25 page introduction, he offers nine thematic collections of short citations from the period of the NT through to roughly the late 5th century, each with a brief note appended which varies between contemporary paraphrase and explication. The key issue is the interplay of scripture and tradition in the early church, and Williams provides useful source material for tracking the evolving relationship between what was ‘received’ and ‘passed on’, and the emergent canon of NT writings. Clearly the rule of faith is central in this, and duly gets a chapter of citations to itself, with plenty of space therein given to Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen and Augustine. The book as a whole presupposes something like an evangelical audience just coming to terms with the organic relationship of scripture and tradition in the early Christian centuries. Some of the selections make most sense against a background of people seeking broadly historical-critical consensus on biblical interpretation (e.g. chapters on allegory, baptismal instruction, formation of canon, etc). The whole is presented in an easy-to-read and convenient format, and will be a useful addition to libraries seeking to resource first-hand interaction with key sources in the current hermeneutical debates about scripture. Martin holds a chair of biblical studies at the Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, and offers a collection of 12 previously published papers (one in fact forthcoming), as well as an autobiographical introduction, looking at the dynamic interplay between biblical interpretation and theological engagement with the substance of Christian faith. The whole is deeply (and wonderfully) informed by his knowledge of Aquinas and the best of 20th century Catholic philosophical and hermeneutical wrestling with framing epistemological issues, though notably it is a quote from Luther which looms large in his introduction: ‘The one who does not understand the realities cannot draw the meaning out of the words’. Drawing on his experience of both the monastery and the academy, Martin argues that ‘language is always revelatory, not representational’, and thus that Scripture is, in the words of his sub-title, ‘the disclosure of the Word’. The opening four chapters explore the theoretical issues in some detail, and probe the limits of historical criticism (which he practices and affirms in its due place) by way of Auerbach and Frei's pointed critique of the collapse of biblical language into representation. A recovery of figural reading, he urges, allows OT and NT events to be placed properly in relation to their ‘vertical’ connection with the God of Christian faith. If this theological dimension is obscured, then the ‘interiority of history’ is lost, or in other words: the sense of theological depth and perspective is sacrificed to mundane, bystander-like accounts of what (may or may not have) happened. As such, then, an adequate reading of scriptural texts requires an appropriate philosophy of history as well as of texts. Explorations of specific texts amply demonstrate the power and importance of this approach (especially a figural drawing out of the NT emphasis on the imitation of Christ), culminating in a renewed turn to theoretical issues in a chapter which looks at ‘the contribution and challenge of Dei Verbum’. Time, language and divine reality are all to be understood in Christ, says Martin, and only thus can the papal appeal to make full use of critical scholarship sit alongside the need to make biblical study theologically constructive. The whole adds up to an ambitious and challenging collection with many exegetical riches along the way: all in all one of the most successful attempts to date to do more than just suggest the importance of theological interpretation, but to both model and theorise it. Interesting, and perhaps significant, that this approach emphasising a traditional Catholic framework seems to move quite easily further along the very path that the Adam/Fowl/Vanhoozer/Watson volume is seeking to appropriate in other terms. The success of both of these volumes is thrown into relief alongside Grelot's work, which is a new English translation of a book originally appearing in French in 2001, but which in the introduction is situated in a slightly older milieu, as Grelot acknowledges that the basic thinking and resourcing behind the book goes back some 50 years. There are ways in which this shows. The book is in large part an extended analysis of four different kinds of symbols which permeate scripture, and my guess is that this ‘thematic study’ approach is roughly understood as the old ‘biblical theology’ noted in the subtitle. The results read like a series of dictionary articles on biblical themes, but are too taken with somewhat tired frameworks for describing scripture in terms of human perceptions and images. The four kinds of symbols are analogical, mythical, figurative and relational, although this last is described as a form of analogy too. Some conceptual rationale for this four-fold distinction might have been helpful. There are various problems with the results, such as the over-emphasis in the last section on human actions of seeking for or searching after God, rather than on revelatory divine activity. As a result, I suspect, we are told that ‘The stories of the patriarchs have a very clear religious goal: to establish and illustrate by example the faith to which the Israelites must hold' (p. 107), but this is simply not so, since Patriarchal faith is manifestly not the same as Mosaic Yahwism at many key points. Reading the stories as part of the human construction for the divine has perhaps led Grelot astray here. Many points of detail also fail to convince: the suggestion that tiamat lurks behind the tehom of Gen 1, or the failure to judge the dragon imagery of Rev 12 against the python and Apollo myth. A final chapter on ‘literal exegesis and symbolic exegesis’ addresses the rest of the book's subtitle, and pursues the thesis that the primary principle of biblical textual interpretation, from the perspective of Christian faith, is the contemplation of Christ Jesus in the totality of his ‘mystery’.' (p. 201) Here Grelot makes good points about multiple literal senses, though he likes to talk about ‘surcharge of meaning’ and ‘sensus plenior’ in ways which make one wish that this chapter was the bulk of the book and allowed space for exploration. An oddity is the use of the terms ‘First Testament’ and ‘New Testament’ in opposition throughout, although the theological implications of this are not really explored. At the risk of an unfairly reductive comparison, Williams' book documents where the discipline has its roots, Grelot models where it has been of late, and the works of Adam et al, and of Martin, indicate more interesting paths ahead.