Literal and spiritual (again)

Here’s the relevant extract from the Cross-Currents article:

One way of attempting to pinpoint [the distinction between literal and spiritual] is to say that ‘spiritual’ interpretation is precisely that kind of interpretation which has to find the Bible useful, or tie it into the framework of already-known truth, whereas literal interpretation is precisely that kind of interpretation which pays attention to the ways in which the Bible resists use – the ways in which it is awkward, diverse, and difficult.

Classically, spiritual interpretation arises precisely when the reader encounters something awkward in the literal sense – paradigmatically, something that is not edifying. By following strange strands of subterranean connection that link this awkward text to others, the spiritual interpreter discovers multiple ways in which the text can be woven back into edification. The text’s strangeness, registered by literal reading, becomes a doorway to the questioning and recovery of what is already known, but it will be a recovery which drives the already-known more deeply into the reader – or the reader more deeply into the already-known. Rather than aligning contemplation simply with spiritual reading per se – which might seem the obvious way to go – we might more properly say that contemplation arises within this whole literal–spiritual process: that it is driven by literal reading’s discovery of strangeness, and explored by spiritual reading’s determination to wait until that strangeness speaks edification.

An instrumentalized Church, however, lives in a broken version of this economy, in which two things have changed. On the one hand the meaning of ‘edifying’ has shifted towards ‘useful’; and on the other the spiritual reading it pursues when faced by texts which do not feed this usefulness is not a form of patience, waiting on the awkwardness discovered by the literal sense, but a form of impatience: a desire to find forms of reading which will not allow this awkwardness to intrude or distract. If literal reading is that kind of reading specifically designed to register and highlight those places where the text is awkward, where it is problematic, where it stands in the way of the uses we would made of it, then we might say that the instrumentalized Church suffers most of all from a refusal of the literal sense.

The kind of literal reading that such a Church needs to learn in order to be saved from itself is one that pays serious attention to the strangeness of the text; it is that reading which ‘resist[s] the premature unities and harmonies of non-literal reading’. Serious attention to textual questions, to grammar, to lexicography, to genre, to redaction, to historical context, to the various hermeneutics of suspicion – all the forms of questing attention which the University encourages – can serve precisely this purpose, and so make true spiritual reading (one which wrestles with the awkwardness uncovered until dawn) possible.

(The quote in the final paragraph is from Rowan Williams, ‘The discipline of Scripture’ in On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp.44–59: 47, earlier printed as ‘The literal sense of Scripture’, Modern Theology 7 (January 1991), pp. 121–134

Literal and spiritual

Let’s get this show back on the road.

Elsewhere, I have tried to relate the distinction between spiritual and literal senses, and connected it to the distinction between the use of a text and its resistance to use.

Today, I’ve been thinking about a rather different way of exploring that contrast. The contrast between literal and spiritual might map on, more or less, to the distinction between the questions, “What does this say?” and “Where does this take me?” – the first being a question expecting an answer, the second a question expecting a journey.

I don’t mean to deprecate either side.

This would, I think, mean that the old idea that you can’t prove doctrine by the spiritual sense is a sound one – because if you’re playing the ‘proving’ game, you’re playing the ‘answers’ game, and so playing the ‘literal’ game by definition. Spiritual reading is about a different sense of ‘proving’: testing, exploring.

Hmmm. Not sure how much water this holds.

Low tide

The Sea of Faith*
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

Ever since I was an undergraduate – and perhaps before – I have found that my faith, or rather my confidence in my faith, ebbs and flows. The tide is some way out at the moment, and I can hear the melancholy, long, withdrawing roar of tumbling shingle. At times like this, if I set my compass by felt conviction, I find myself heading towards a somewhat sceptical agnosticism: feeling meaningful patterns, comforting claims, fraying between my fingers. Or, better, losing any sense of rhythm or tune and instead hearing only noise.

I’m not agonising about this. I’m not particularly worried. It’s partly that, to judge by past experience, these things go in cycles for me. And it’s partly that I don’t set my compass entirely by ‘felt conviction’, and do not think that I ought to. And it’s partly that I quite like it here, on the naked shingle, standing too low down to gain an overview.

* and no, I’m not aligning myself at all with another theologian who famously quoted this poem…

Baptised at the beginning

κηρύσσων βάπτισμα μετανοίας εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν

Mark 1:4

Perhaps one reason why Jesus’ baptism by John stands at the beginning here (one reason why it was found fitting for a Gospel to begin like this; one reason why the idea of Jesus’ ministry starting with his baptism took such strong hold) is that baptism was the beginning for Mark’s community as well. Baptism was what had happened when they heard the voice crying in the wilderness: it was their making-straight, their crossing of the Jordan. It was where they repented, confessed their sins – and were drawn into the orbit of Jesus, the coming of YHWH. That this stands here establishes (wittingly or unwittingly) a connection between the readers/hearers and what they are reading/hearing: the baptized reading the story of one baptized – those who have repented, and prepared themselves for the coming of God, reading/hearing of the form taken by the coming of God. One way of summarising the import of this whole text, therefore, could be: This is what you have let yourself in for.

Supersession again

Another thought that has been disrupting some of my earlier conclusions:

If we take seriously the idea of the history of ancient Israel involving an ongoing series of ideological constructions of the identity of ‘Israel’ – an ongoing series of abductions, to use the terminology I was using a few months back – what does it do to our assessment of that (series of) abduction(s) involved in early Christianity?

Person and text: different depths

One thing that struck me a while back is that I have too easily, when thinking about Christian reading of the Gospels, glossed over the difference between the inexhaustible richness of these texts and the inexhaustible richness of the human being Jesus of Nazareth.

So, for instance, a few years ago I wrote something about the doctrine of providence. At one point, I said:

[H]uman lives are not well captured by sets of principles, or by generalities…. [H]uman lives are, if you like, as particular as existence gets…. Human lives above all are realities that call us to keep on paying attention, realities which undermine and question and irritate and complexify any diagrams or systems we might have. If you’re trying to understand a human life, you never get to a point where your understanding, your grasp of that life, can stand in for the life itself. If you’re trying to understand a theory or a set of principles, maybe you can get to a point where you’ve thoroughly internalised them; but you can’t internalise another person, another life. So to commit to letting one’s understanding of providence be shaped and challenged by a human life – by Jesus Christ – is to relativise reliance upon abstractions; it is a commitment which undermines glibness.

Before very long, however, the piece finds me talking about the disruptive unfinalisability of scriptural reading:

[I]f Christians approach the doctrine of providence in this way, what it points to is not a set of answers to questions about what is going on in the world, nor primarily to a feeling of assurance (and certainly not ‘comfortable assurance’) that the world is in good hands, but to an ongoing process of questioning and inquiry and learning. So, I think constructing the doctrine of providence in this way leaves Christians with, to draw on a famous image used by Karl Barth, the Bible (the primary witness to Jesus Christ) in one hand, the newspaper in the other, and no way of putting either down.

It’s not that I can think of no way of making this transition. But the more I think about it, the more I find that I’m sounding to myself like some combination of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Martin Kähler, and Rudolf Bultmann – which is not who I thought I was at all!

Getting going again

Well, that was a long gap.

The main practical reason? Unbelievable quantities of work. Becoming Head of Department, preparing for an internal pilot Research Assessment Exercise, organising the 2006 Society for the Study of Theology conference. and trying to finish the SCM Study Guide to Christian Doctrine. Amongst other things.

This has meshed, however, with some deeper reasons. I tend to find that my attitude to what I’m doing, theology-wise, goes in cycles – and since October or November last year I’ve been experiencing a loss of confidence: one of those times when I’m sustained only by various habits, practical commitments, and deadlines – rather than by any strong sense that what I’m doing makes sense or is worthwhile. (It’s not depression, not even mildly: the last few months have also been amongst the most cheerful of my life, I think.) I’ll talk about some particular aspects of that in some separate posts, particularly as they affect the kind of stuff I have been doing (or not doing recently) on the blog.

John, the voice in the wilderness

καθὼς γέγραπται ἐν τῷ Ἠσαΐᾳ τῷ προφήτῃ

ἰδοὺ ἀποστέλλω τὸν ἄγγελόν μου πρὸ προσώπου σου
ὃς κατασκευάσει τὴν ὁδόν σου
φωνὴ βοῶντος ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ
ἑτοιμάσατε τὴν ὁδὸν κυρίου
εὐθείας ποιεῖτε τὰς τρίβους αὐτοῦ

ἐγένετο Ἰωάννης βαπτίζων ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ καὶ κηρύσσων βάπτισμα μετανοίας εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν

Mark 1:2-4

In what sense is John the ‘voice crying in the wilderness’? In what sense is he YHWH’s messenger? At first sight, the connection between John and the prophecy appears to have been made with uncritical literalism by early followers of John and then of Jesus – followers who found a verse about one proclaiming in the wilderness, and grabbed it to speak about this Jordan-based preacher, and who had to change the syntax of the verse from Isaiah in the process (to attach ‘wilderness’ to the ‘voice’ rather than to the ‘making straight’).

I suspect, however that this is a secondary, accidental and in its way playful connection dependent upon a deeper connection that had already been found: John’s ministry of repentance was, I suspect, a ministry that self-consciously performed a preparation for the coming of YHWH as already understood in ways shaped by verses like these from Isaiah. John prepares for the coming of the Lord – and when the Lord comes in ways unexpected even by John, John’s ministry of repentance does not cease to be a preparation for it.

“Proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins”: Proclaiming a washing, a purification, a rite of passage, a way through the Jordan, a return to the true Israel – for or into the forgiveness of sins: into a renewed Israel, an Israel whose sins have been taken away, an Israel made straight, levelled for the coming King. If John proclaims (consciously? despite himself?) Jesus, he does so only by proclaiming the renewal of Israel.

Back from AAR

I’m back from AAR, and from a Scriptural Reasoning pre-meeting. Jetlag and babylag are still holding me under, and I have a ferocious week or so ahead in order to get my timetable back under control – but I have a backlog of posts to make some time soon.

Abducting John III

Just one quick post to finish this line of thought off for now. There is a dialectic between interpreting John and registering John’s resistance to interpretation – you might say, a dialectic between theological interpretation and historical-critical interpretation. And this dialectic can be seen as a way of paying homage to the two sides of the idea that John’s true identity is ‘hid with Christ in God’ – the theological interpretation witnessing to the ‘in Christ with God’ side, the historical-critical to the ‘hid’.

I think I want to say slightly more than that, though. On the one hand, I can say that John’s true identity is hid with Christ in God only because I trust that the God who addresses the world (and John) in Christ has no ‘interests’ – that this God is not bending John to some personal need, and distorting him in the process. It is only in relation to such a God that there is any freedom, any true identity – only such a God can tell us who we are without distortion. On the other hand, I hesitate to say that John’s true identity is hid with Christ in God because I know that the Christians who say this certainly do have interests, in fact are never free of interests, and are quite capable of bending John to some personal need.

To the dialectic of interpretation and registering resistance, then, I want to add a third element: such a hermeneutical trajectory can only be pursued with integrity in the context of interpreters, interpreting communities, that are pursuing the purification of their interests – that are pursuing holiness. It can only be pursued with integrity by individuals and communities that are discovering their true identities, hid with Christ in God.

When we’re talking about John the Baptist, that point may sound somewhat abstract – or, worse, like a bit of rather demonstrative breast-beating. If we start thinking about the topic that’s been (not very far) in the background through this discussion: interpretation of the Hebrew Bible – well; I think the point becomes rather more urgent and important. To read the Hebrew Bible as Old Testament – that seems to me to involve a dialectic between theological interpretation, and registering the resistance of the text to theological interpretation (by means of historical criticism, certainly, but also I think by reading alongside Jewish readers) – and can only be done with integrity by individuals and community in pursuit of holiness – and that must include especially holiness in dealings with the people of this book.

Hmmm. I’m not sure I’ve quite convinced myself with all this – but it will do for now.