‘Reading Scripture in Congregations: Towards an Ordinary Hermeneutics’
I’ve belonged to ten evangelical churches so far, ranging from very charismatic to not-at-all (and still belong to the tenth). I’ve been hearing ‘what the Bible says’ for a long time. Studying biblical hermeneutics in an academic context made me curious about ‘how the Bible says’ for most of its readers. Eventually this led to research in a local charismatic evangelical church (‘The Fellowship’) looking at how members of that congregation came to understand the scriptures – what I’ve called ‘ordinary hermeneutics’. The chapter in the book includes a summary of ordinary hermeneutics in the Fellowship, and then draws out points of wider relevance for deep church.
The deep church issue that emerged from this case study was the role of church tradition in reading Scripture. For many evangelicals ‘tradition’ is a boo word. As a member of another congregation said to me ‘I choose scripture over tradition… we are trying to get rid of tradition here’. It doesn’t help that tradition is quite a slippery term and can mean many things. I use it in the essay to refer to a church’s body of beliefs (belief tradition) and a church’s hermeneutical characteristics (hermeneutical tradition).
The Fellowship understood the Bible through their existing belief tradition (to an extent). This was not particularly surprising, given the hermeneutical insight that there can be no traditionless reading of Scripture. Admittedly, some churches can be in denial about the role of their belief tradition, perhaps claiming to ‘just read’ the Bible. If a belief tradition is not acknowledged, there is a danger that authority will be shifted from the Scriptures to particular interpretations. Therefore making one’s belief tradition explicit is a matter of hermeneutical honesty for engagement with scripture. Such a move resonates with the ancient ‘Rule of Faith’, a point I develop further in the book. The Rule incorporated a scripture-shaped belief tradition agreed by the church to be used as a theological grid for reading scripture.
But… How can one be sure that a congregation’s belief tradition is scripture-shaped? Tradition has a habit of becoming fossilised – there needs to be a means of breaking open the belief tradition through transformative encounter with scripture. In hermeneutical terms, this is the power of distancing oneself from the text, of making the familiar text strange, so that the scriptures may arrest our current understandings and transform them. This is where a church’s hermeneutical tradition features. In the Fellowship, some of their hermeneutical characteristics aided a transformative encounter with scripture. Although explicit hermeneutical talk was unusual, hermeneutical practices did provide examples which could be emulated. For example, the pastor mediated an approach to Bible studies that included grammatical, historical and literary issues – enabling participants to distance themselves from the text a little.
In putting these two types of tradition together, I point out that the Rule of Faith consisted of not only beliefs but also hermeneutical guidance. So I conclude in the book that for a wise reading of scripture both a belief and hermeneutical tradition need to be ‘passed on’ together within a congregation, even as they were within the Rule of Faith. There is a need then to make both of these traditions explicit, hermeneutics especially so.
I read somewhere ‘A good preacher knows that exegesis is like underwear – the congregation would like you to have it, but they don’t want to see it’. If true, then I have been guilty of hermeneutical flashing on a number of occasions. A member of the Fellowship cautiously agreed with the aphorism for the case of preaching, but then asked ‘if we never see [hermeneutics], how do we learn to do it ourselves?’
Andrew considers other aspects of ordinary hermeneutics in the current issue of Bible in Transmission, available online at: http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/l3.php?id=311
Andrew Rogers is writing a PhD on hermaneutics in UK evangelicalism at Kings College, London.
16 comments
4.02 pm on 6.21.2007
When reading your observations, I resonated with them deeply. For seven years, I had been a preaching pastor of two small evangelical churches. Underwear is not interesting to watch. So, even though that was my hobby horse (lots of hermeneutical flashing going on on Sunday mornings), I was encouraged to do that more during our Bible studies. But even then a few people were dissatisfied – they just wanted to be told what to believe. You are right though, if one never sees what needs to be done with the Scripture, how does one read it for him(her)self?
Oh, and Amen on the impossibility of tradition-less reading of the Scripture.
All in all, those are some very good insights.
8.15 pm on 6.21.2007
not having a tradition would be a tradition right? hehe…so yeah, good thoughts all around.
8.38 am on 6.22.2007
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9.59 am on 6.22.2007
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3.06 pm on 6.22.2007
It seems to me that we can approach the text (with our without our hermaneutical underwear showing) in a couple of ways: First, with a goal of obtaining certainty. That goal suggests, by way of the “scientific method,” that we can sufficiently abstract ourselves away from the object of study (in this case, scripture) and gain a purely objective understanding. This allows the creation of specific dogmas that become hills to die on.
Michael Polanyi (Personal Knowledge) critiqued his own scientific community and claimed that such objective certainty was not possible. All objective observation, he argued, was filtered through the observer’s subjective experience, worldview, etc. Polanyi preferred the term “participative knowledge” over the terms “objective” and “subjective.”
So maybe a second approach to hermaneutics would be with the goal of deep participation with the text, recognizing with humility (humility often gets sidelined when we think we have gained objective certainty) that our own, time-bound, experience-flavored ways of looking at reality will have to be held loosely.
But it can be difficult for we in the western world to hold things in tension and live with ambiguities, right?
10.28 am on 7.2.2007
In the book I talk about the ‘relative indeterminacy’ of hermeneutics – in other words, hermeneutical method is no guarantee of different interpreters arriving at the same results. In recognising that the ‘horizon’ or tradition of an interpreter contributes to text understanding, however, I want to avoid falling into the pit of relativism. Resonant with Polanyi’s thought is a critical realist approach, which recognises the provisional nature of knowing, yet emphasises a ‘spiralling’ dialogue between the knower and the thing known – as Tom Wright puts it (good material on Wright’s position at opensourcetheology.net). Another interesting aspect of critical realism is the idea of alethic truth – when knowledge of something is considered to be virtually settled. Not that it could never be overturned, but it marks ‘due diligence’ in terms of justifying a particular interpretation. Similar idea that I have only just come across is from Bernard Ramm who makes a distinction between ‘certainty’ and ‘certitude’ – rejecting the former term, but proposing the latter as a proper form of biblical confidence.
I mention this because of your comments about humility, tension and ambiguity. The ‘but’ for me is that the provisionality of our knowing can be overemphasised. Interpretative choices in the life of the church can (or should!) carry a lot of weight, affecting church practice and members’ lifestyle. How loosely can we hold our interpretations of scripture that inform our doctrine that shape our lives? How minimal can our alethic truths be? Perhaps this is where the Rule of Faith comes in…
3.37 am on 7.4.2007
I am with you, Andrew. A movement from certainty does not necessarily require an embracing of relativism. Relativism says that truth changes and is dependent upon circumstances and preference. Perhaps our certitude (a great distinction by Ramm) rests, then, not in our firm and objective grasp of the text but rather in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. Certitude in the veracity of the biblical narrative draws us into communal dialogue and then we are summoned by the Spirit to live, act and respond missionally.
9.46 am on 6.25.2007
Clever stuff Andrew - thought provoking. I was wondering who has the responsibility for the hermeneutic: the preacher or the congregation; and what is its purpose? If faith comes by hearing, the responsibility is on the preacher, but if I am to be transformed by the renewing of my mind, it rests with me as an individual. Does tradition provide us with a starting point, or a conduit or good hermeneutics? The Church Fathers were keen to provide a responsible framework for understanding scripture to combat the numerous heresies that were springing up. Don’t we need the same today? Ouch that’s enough thinking for one working morning…
10.27 am on 6.28.2007
I really agree Andrew. It took me 4 years of theological training to finally get the idea that we don’t come to the text objectively. I was very resistant to the idea, and I have found that people in the congregation sometimes are equally resistant. There is is desire to know what the text means, but not how we got to that interpretation!
So I believe it is my responsibility as a preacher to bring the hidden work of hermeneutics into the public domain, if only to prepare people for the day when they aren’t satisfied with the answers (sometimes trite) given from the pulpit. But this is, I think, harder to do than teaching the scriptures…
I once met up with a friend who i had lost touch with for a few years, and he had been through a period of questioning about faith, and especially the Bible. When i told him how i understand scripture and some of the principles i use for interpretation his response was: “why didn’t you tell me this years ago?”
“Because you wouldn’t have heard it, you weren’t in the place to. And i would have probably alienated you.” I replied.
There is our dilemma…
Any thoughts on how to gently help people see the underwear and not be offended?
1.35 pm on 6.28.2007
Good post Rupert. Isn’t ‘getting the hermeneutic’ part of the gift of the preacher (in an Eph 4 styly)?
12.14 pm on 7.2.2007
Thanks for your comments Rupert. I agree with you that hermeneutical ‘working out’ needs to be more visible in the church – for integrity in our engagement with scripture. Sermons may not be the place for the most explicit hermeneutical discussion, but allowing key guidelines to emerge is important – it is a bit of a balancing act. So last Sunday I included some brief comments about a historical approach to Revelation 1-3, in contrast to other allegorical approaches. However, in another sermon on Leviticus 25 I put in quite a lot of hermeneutics-talk regarding moving from the concept of Jubilee in the OT to the present, which in retrospect was probably too much to hold interest.
In congregational meetings I think there is a place for an occasional special focus on hermeneutics – perhaps something like Bible Sunday in the UK (from the Bible Society) who this year are looking at ‘Going Large’ – the Big Story of scripture. And the church I studied in the book had one sermon during the fieldwork detailing an explicit Christological hermeneutics, based on Matthew 5:17f.
But if hermeneutics in the church is an apprenticeship in reading scripture wisely, then hermeneutics is a co-operative exercise. So housegroups and bible studies can be places for more explicit hermeneutical discussion. With this in mind, we had a study day for housegroup leaders on ‘The Drama of Scripture’ which was essentially hermeneutical teaching (see http://www.biblicaltheology.ca). I think this Big Story approach can be one of the most useful frameworks to communicate – and the narrative form is shared by the Rule of Faith and the Apostles’ Creed.
1.54 pm on 7.4.2007
Adrian –
I’ve been trying to get my church to do something similiar - albeit using the Vaughan Roberts book “Tracing God’s Big Picture’. Is there reasons you’d recommend one over the other ?
–
chris
9.12 am on 7.5.2007
There are a number of such ‘big story’ books / courses. One I’ve heard of is a workbook by the Good Book Company called Bible Overview. The reason we went for The Drama of Scripture was partly because of all the free downloadable resources (worksheets, ppt presentations, articles) which match chapters in the book - on the website mentioned. You need to assess which is right for your church.
4.08 pm on 7.6.2007
Also check out a new one by John W. Wright: Telling God’s Story (IVP). I’ve only looked at it briefly, but I met with John recently and think he might be a worthy addition to the conversation on narrative.
11.59 am on 7.2.2007
Yes I agree … but i think that is harder than actually explaining or teaching the scriptures…
It seems, often, people want the food prepared for them, rather than willing to the work themselves…
10.26 pm on 7.3.2007
The Newspeak for Rule of Faith is story. A good preacher knows the story of the congregation and uses the sermon to remind or teach or correct that story.
My method of sermon prep includes a bible study (i am partial to lectio divina of some sort) about the upcoming Sunday’s scripture. People who are at least ready for a bible study seem to get a lot more out of sermons, perhaps because they see themselves in the story(i.e. the ‘i said that’ phenomenon). My favorite result, however, was how frequently the sermon was the topic of conversation at coffee hour, and I wasn’t in the conversation.
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