Impetus for the Course: Communal Interpretation and Formation

Dale Martin's book of essays, Sex and the Single Savior, Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation employed an imaginative freedom in Biblical interpretation that encouraged and validated innovative and creative readings of Scripture.  These readings are bounded not by any one of these reading strategies (historical criticism) or even Scripture itself, but by the leavening presence of the Holy Spirit in the members of the Body of Christ.

Thanks to Carl Gregg (whom I met at a conference in Nashville last fall), I was inspired to read Martin's Pedagogy of the Bible: An Analysis and Proposal, which further articulated Martin's invitation to experience scripture as "a vast space of textual echo chamber, like entering... a huge cathedral" (p. 62). Martin also writes that "the interpretation of scripture builds on and reinforces truths also taught elsewhere in Christian culture and community" (p. 69).

In "Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally", Marcus Borg asserts that to survive over time, it must become "a cultural-linguistic world in its own right" having emerged in a particular culture and drawing from "the language and symbols from that culture" (p. 29). Our scriptures, Borg suggests, are the "foundation [or constitution] of the Christian cultural-linguistic world" that transcends the cultures of ancient Israel and the early Christian movement and becomes "a world in which its followers live" (p.29).

When most Christians think about Biblical authority, they assume what Borg calls a monarchical model, in which the Bible stands over the Christian community, dictating doctrine and ethics. The primary trouble with this model is that the scriptures do not speak - and the monarchical model inevitably involves self-proclaimed interpretive experts who presume to speak not only for scripture but for God. What many Christians take to be the "literal Truth" of scriptures is the voice and interpretation of these "experts". Far too many Christians read the Bible regurgitated.

Borg describes another way of defining scriptural authority: a dialogical model in which the Bible is "our primary ancient conversation partner" (p. 30). This conversation between the community of faith and the stories and writings that the ancient community of faith collected into a canon of scripture involves what Borg calls a "critical conversation" that (1) discerns what "parts of the Bible" the community will honor and will not honor, as well as (2) "allow[s] the texts to shape and judge us".

Martin calls scripture "an instrument used by the Holy Spirit mainly to reinforce Christian doctrine and ethics we have imbibed by several different sources: preaching, liturgy, music, even our parents and grandparents and our friends" (p. 70). Martin rightly sees the Holy Spirit as the guide of this ongoing dialogue between scripture (the collected voices/stories of the ancient Jewish and early Christian communities of faith) and every subsequent generation of the Christian community of faith. Scripture is not in this understanding the source of our faith understanding but a powerful resource - a confirmation of truth the Holy Spirit teaches us in many ways.

Exegesis is a world Bible scholars use to mean the ways in which we "mine" the scriptural texts for meaning. It derives from the Greek word exegesthai, which means "to lead out". In the introduction to her wonderful book, The Bible: A Biography, Karen Armstrong calls exegesis a "spiritual discipline rather than an academic pursuit" (p. 6) in which the exegetes "[continue] to make the Word of God audible in each generation" (p. 5). Armstrong also writes about this dialogue between the community of faith and its scriptures, asserting that "the truth of scripture cannot be assessed unless it is - ritually or ethically - put into practice" (p. 2).

This process is what Martin calls confirmation and what Borg calls critical discernment. Armstrong describes the conversation in this way: "the Bible 'proved' that it was holy because people continually discovered fresh ways to interpret it and found this difficult, ancient set of documents cast light on situations their [human] authors could never have imagined. Revelation was an ongoing process..." (p. 5). As with Borg, this proving process works in both directions. Armstrong quotes an early Christan exegete Philo who liked to describe "his exegesis as a 'conversion' of both the text and the interpreter" (p. 51).

But Armstrong also connects with Martin's assertion that scripture reminds us of truths "we already know". She writes that Philo "experienced knowledge as remembrance, as known to him already at some profound level of his being" (p. 53). In this way, scripture does not merely reflect what we want it to mean, but resonates with the part of our being that God created. For Philo, "the story became suddenly fused with a truth that was part of himself" (p. 53).

By exercising our imagination (and expanding our imagination) we can inhabit a realm of of story and symbol that welcomes us with comfort and confirmation (reminding us of truths we already know) and that also constantly surprises and challenges us to experience the mystery of God anew (swinging us constantly to turn, turn, turn to a place of more of God's presence, power and love).

Martin's message to me involves the recovery and validation of my imaginative freedom - which has long lain dormant under the oppression of the historical-critical method of exegesis I learned at the divinity school. He calls me not to abandon this practice of interpretation, but to move beyond its exclusive (or even primary) use. and here is where the people of Skyline will be blessed: they will also be freed from the burden of a method many of them cannot use (because of the barrier of graduate education) and welcomed to their rightful place in the communion gathered by and in scripture.

These books have inspired me to offer an 8-10 week course on Biblical interpretation that aims to welcome laity back into the community conversation in the scriptures, validating the many ways we  read, experience, and interpret the texts in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit as well as expanding our repertoire of reading and interpretive methods as a way of appreciating the vast treasure of scripture in our faith.