What is the Bible?
What is the Bible? Obviously the question cannot be answered adequately in a blog post, but as I continue reading on the subject it seems to me that there are some distinctions that are often ignored that should be observed. Allow me to take the time to make these distinctions in order to perhaps provide some clarity of language around this question.
First, the Bible is a public document. This is an important observation because it acknowledges the formative influence this book has had on Western Civilization and thus opens up the door to audiences that have vested interests in this book beyond its function as Holy Scripture. To acknowledge the Bible's public character is also to affirm that it is a book written in human languages that can be translated into any other human languages and is thus open to be read, as a text, by any literate person.
The public nature of the Bible opens up the possibility of many ways to read the text. As a historical document, it can be read both with an eye to the historical situation from which the text arises, and its subsequent Wirkungsgeschichte. To accomplish this historical study, many text-critical approaches can and have been applied, from form criticism, to source criticism, to redaction criticism, to reception criticism. These close readings of the text point to the reality that the Bible is a literary document, which thus opens the possibility of strictly literary approaches to the text. By bracketing out the historical questions, literary and narrative approaches to the text can be applied to explore the rich world within the text and the intertextualities that create both dissonance and resonance within the canonical whole. Finally, because of the public nature of the Bible and its long history within society, it can be observed that the Bible is an ideological document. Therefore, various hermeneutics of suspicion may be applied to the text, both to deconstruct and test the intertextual relations in the text and, more importantly, to awaken us from our dogmatic slumbers regarding our so-called 'settled' interpretations. This is essential if the ideological power-structures that the Bible is used to support are to be challenged and exposed. Critical hermeneutics, whether they be feminist, Marxist, queer, etc., provide a helpful reminder that the Bible functions meaningfully in a number of different contexts, or 'language games' and that any given interpretation of the text is not a logical necessity, but rather a tentative possibility given the terms of use of the community of interpretation.
My discussion so far has been to talk about the possibilities of reading the Bible as a text. It is essential that these potential readings be defended, for if the Bible is a text radically unlike any other text, the entire history of its interpretation has been in vain. One may survey commentaries on the Bible from Origen to the present and find that they all rely on the public rules of interpretation that govern the interpretation of texts-in-general. Thus the Bible, as a text, is a text that obeys the rules of humanly composed texts.
That being said, Christians insist that the Bible, while indeed being a product of human composition and transmission, is also a holy text, it is a Scriptural document, divinely inspired, and uniquely the text for the Church. As Scripture, the Bible is the text in which God's Word is present and goes forth. How this happens is ultimately a mystery, yet some observations can, and should, be made. To claim that the Bible is a text for the Church is to suggest a context for its interpretation, a community of praxis which gives rise to the rules of interpretation. These rules for interpretation are by no means monolithic, nor absolute, and we find that in every generation of Christian interpretation there are various methodological debates at play. As I observed above, these methodological debates track with the prevailing interpretive methods of the broader public, though these are adopted and adapted in some characteristically Christian ways. Some dogmatic rules that seem to govern Christian interpretation are the insistence that God is One, God has revealed Godself in the person of Jesus, Holy Spirit in-dwelling is necessary for right interpretation, the God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament and the whole of these texts are to be read as Scripture.
I have named the Bible a public text, an historical text, a literary text, an ideological text, and ultimately, a sacred text. There is an important interconnectedness between these various identities. It would be tempting here to give an orderly account of priority among these various senses of the text in order to defend this unity of interconnection. The typical theologian's response is to note that the Bible is primarily and ultimately Word of God, and on the basis of this dogmatic claim, order the various other senses accordingly. But I want to resist this temptation, and this is for a very important reason. To make this dogmatic move ultimately privileges the Church as the primary location of Biblical interpretation. I think this is right and fitting, but, ultimately this move says more about the Church than it does about the Bible and so, does not actually answer my initial question. The very fact of the Bible's public existence means that it functions, as a text, as more than simply Word of God. In contexts beyond the Church, the Bible can and does operate in the various roles I've outlined above, and thus, the methods and rules of interpretation that are proper to those communities of interpretation in which the Bible is functioning should be given room to speak.
Of course I actually do want to privilege the Church as the primary location of Biblical interpretation, as the Bible is both the product of the Church and is best read in its phronetic particularity by those who have been so constituted as Church. This is, perhaps, what may be called the Bible's 'indigenous place.' To read the Bible in its 'indigenous place' is to enter into the form of life that transforms people into Christians. This is a pneumatological point, for transformation cannot simply occur by our mere efforts but in the Church, Christ has offered to meet us in Baptism, through prayer, at the Table, from the pulpit, and at the wash basin. We become people of that place through the indwelling of the Spirit that opens our eyes to see Jesus, it is in this seeing that we thus learn what it means to become friends with God. It is as friends of God in this 'indigenous place' that we rightly recognize the Bible as an authority for theology. The acknowledgment of this locus of interpretation does not deny the larger life that the Bible as a text possesses.
Perhaps what I am trying to argue is that the Bible has both a public life and a Christian life and that we should not use the natural priority of its Christian life to deny the intelligibility and coherence of its broader public reception and interpretation. I want to defend both the reality of infinite interpretive pluralism, and privilege Christian interpretation. Perhaps this is contradictory, but I think it may be possible to defend if we recognize the various communities of interpretation at play here, and further recognize that in the church, we enter into a form of life that is God's self-revelation wherein Christian theology may begin.
So, what is the Bible? I don't know, but we should probably keep reading it!
First, the Bible is a public document. This is an important observation because it acknowledges the formative influence this book has had on Western Civilization and thus opens up the door to audiences that have vested interests in this book beyond its function as Holy Scripture. To acknowledge the Bible's public character is also to affirm that it is a book written in human languages that can be translated into any other human languages and is thus open to be read, as a text, by any literate person.
The public nature of the Bible opens up the possibility of many ways to read the text. As a historical document, it can be read both with an eye to the historical situation from which the text arises, and its subsequent Wirkungsgeschichte. To accomplish this historical study, many text-critical approaches can and have been applied, from form criticism, to source criticism, to redaction criticism, to reception criticism. These close readings of the text point to the reality that the Bible is a literary document, which thus opens the possibility of strictly literary approaches to the text. By bracketing out the historical questions, literary and narrative approaches to the text can be applied to explore the rich world within the text and the intertextualities that create both dissonance and resonance within the canonical whole. Finally, because of the public nature of the Bible and its long history within society, it can be observed that the Bible is an ideological document. Therefore, various hermeneutics of suspicion may be applied to the text, both to deconstruct and test the intertextual relations in the text and, more importantly, to awaken us from our dogmatic slumbers regarding our so-called 'settled' interpretations. This is essential if the ideological power-structures that the Bible is used to support are to be challenged and exposed. Critical hermeneutics, whether they be feminist, Marxist, queer, etc., provide a helpful reminder that the Bible functions meaningfully in a number of different contexts, or 'language games' and that any given interpretation of the text is not a logical necessity, but rather a tentative possibility given the terms of use of the community of interpretation.
My discussion so far has been to talk about the possibilities of reading the Bible as a text. It is essential that these potential readings be defended, for if the Bible is a text radically unlike any other text, the entire history of its interpretation has been in vain. One may survey commentaries on the Bible from Origen to the present and find that they all rely on the public rules of interpretation that govern the interpretation of texts-in-general. Thus the Bible, as a text, is a text that obeys the rules of humanly composed texts.
That being said, Christians insist that the Bible, while indeed being a product of human composition and transmission, is also a holy text, it is a Scriptural document, divinely inspired, and uniquely the text for the Church. As Scripture, the Bible is the text in which God's Word is present and goes forth. How this happens is ultimately a mystery, yet some observations can, and should, be made. To claim that the Bible is a text for the Church is to suggest a context for its interpretation, a community of praxis which gives rise to the rules of interpretation. These rules for interpretation are by no means monolithic, nor absolute, and we find that in every generation of Christian interpretation there are various methodological debates at play. As I observed above, these methodological debates track with the prevailing interpretive methods of the broader public, though these are adopted and adapted in some characteristically Christian ways. Some dogmatic rules that seem to govern Christian interpretation are the insistence that God is One, God has revealed Godself in the person of Jesus, Holy Spirit in-dwelling is necessary for right interpretation, the God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament and the whole of these texts are to be read as Scripture.
I have named the Bible a public text, an historical text, a literary text, an ideological text, and ultimately, a sacred text. There is an important interconnectedness between these various identities. It would be tempting here to give an orderly account of priority among these various senses of the text in order to defend this unity of interconnection. The typical theologian's response is to note that the Bible is primarily and ultimately Word of God, and on the basis of this dogmatic claim, order the various other senses accordingly. But I want to resist this temptation, and this is for a very important reason. To make this dogmatic move ultimately privileges the Church as the primary location of Biblical interpretation. I think this is right and fitting, but, ultimately this move says more about the Church than it does about the Bible and so, does not actually answer my initial question. The very fact of the Bible's public existence means that it functions, as a text, as more than simply Word of God. In contexts beyond the Church, the Bible can and does operate in the various roles I've outlined above, and thus, the methods and rules of interpretation that are proper to those communities of interpretation in which the Bible is functioning should be given room to speak.
Of course I actually do want to privilege the Church as the primary location of Biblical interpretation, as the Bible is both the product of the Church and is best read in its phronetic particularity by those who have been so constituted as Church. This is, perhaps, what may be called the Bible's 'indigenous place.' To read the Bible in its 'indigenous place' is to enter into the form of life that transforms people into Christians. This is a pneumatological point, for transformation cannot simply occur by our mere efforts but in the Church, Christ has offered to meet us in Baptism, through prayer, at the Table, from the pulpit, and at the wash basin. We become people of that place through the indwelling of the Spirit that opens our eyes to see Jesus, it is in this seeing that we thus learn what it means to become friends with God. It is as friends of God in this 'indigenous place' that we rightly recognize the Bible as an authority for theology. The acknowledgment of this locus of interpretation does not deny the larger life that the Bible as a text possesses.
Perhaps what I am trying to argue is that the Bible has both a public life and a Christian life and that we should not use the natural priority of its Christian life to deny the intelligibility and coherence of its broader public reception and interpretation. I want to defend both the reality of infinite interpretive pluralism, and privilege Christian interpretation. Perhaps this is contradictory, but I think it may be possible to defend if we recognize the various communities of interpretation at play here, and further recognize that in the church, we enter into a form of life that is God's self-revelation wherein Christian theology may begin.
So, what is the Bible? I don't know, but we should probably keep reading it!
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