Henry Ward Beecher (HT Creation of an Evolutionist):
The Bible is like a telescope. If a man looks through his telescope, then he sees worlds beyond; but if he looks at his telescope, then he does not see anything but that. The Bible is a thing to be looked through, to see that which is beyond.
Richard Longenecker in Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period (as with most things I quote, I could quibble over some details, but it's a good summary):
There is a great deal that was held in common by the earliest Christian preachers and the New Testament writers in their use of Scripture.... All treated the biblical text with some degree of freedom, believing that from among the various textual traditions then current they could do something of textual criticism on a theological basis since they knew the conclusion to which that biblical testimony was pointing. All seem prepared to employ not only biblical citations but also, to a limited extent, statements of truth found outside the canon, whether of Jewish, pagan or uncertain origin. And all of them, most importantly, worked from the same two fixed points: (1) the messiahship and lordship of Jesus, as validated by the resurrection and witnessed to by the Spirit; and (2) the revelation of God in the Old Testament as pointing forward to Jesus. Thus their perspective was avowedly christocentric and their treatment thoroughly christological. (pgs. 189-90)
Recently, John Hobbins of Ancient Hebrew Poetry called my blog "Christian postmodern," which puzzled me at first, but I suppose makes sense in light of various things I've said around here, not least in my sidebar and this post. The problem with nice thing about a label like "postmodern" is that it's ambiguous enough to take however I want--in this case I'll go with "hip and unconventional"--but since others may define the term differently, I wanted to clarify my position, particularly regarding how I understand biblical interpretation:
To many, "a postmodern doctrine of Scripture" (John's phrase) means a reading cut off from its original context, based on the assumption that meaning and truth are flexible and necessarily imposed by the reader. Thus you might have a feminist, post-colonial or vegan reading of a text, with little concern at all for whether such a thing was intended by the original "author." Now, on the one hand, I do have a great deal of sympathy for such an approach. The very fact that the Bible has been written and rewritten, collected and interpreted through numerous different contexts--from bronze age nomadic tribes to Imperial Rome and beyond--suggests that flexibility and reapplication are inherent to its very nature, as I suggested in the post linked above.
In fact, it is not at all clear to me that the authors of the New Testament themselves felt restricted to the "original intended meaning" in their own interpretation of the Scriptures they treasured, so why should we? They clearly believed that more recent events and knowledge, especially the life and death of Jesus but also including broader political and cultural realities, set their scriptures in new and quite unexpected light. Nor is it easy to see why such a process had to end with the New Testament authors. Thus, I not only think it is appropriate to ask new questions of Scripture, but such may even be demanded by the text itself. After all, is "the word of God living and active" (Heb 4:12), or only dull and lifeless? Doesn't Paul say we have been given "a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit" (2 Cor 3:6)?
But clearly that can only be half the story, for why bother reading in the first place if you are not willing to hear what someone else has to say? If we only bring our own questions and perspectives to the text, there is little point in reading at all, and almost no chance of reading well. This is especially the case when dealing with an ancient document like the Bible, which derives from a very different cultural context. As John's post makes clear in the case of Jeremiah 7:22, ignorance of the original context inevitably leads to distorted understandings of the text, and this is hardly excusable simply because our interests lie elsewhere. Thus, even if it is legitimate and even necessary to go beyond the text, such can only be done responsibly after we have made every effort to understand it on its own terms.
More fundamentally, has not the primary purpose of preserving and reinterpreting scripture precisely been to face these new situations in ways that are faithful to, or at least aware of, what has gone before? If it is appropriate for us to ask new questions, then, we must also learn to hear anew the questions the text itself was intended to ask and answer, as these are often enough not questions we ourselves are likely to ask. If we are not willing to do that, we might as well ignore the text altogether and focus our attention elsewhere.
Ultimately, I don't think there is just one legitimate context in which scripture is to be interpreted. Rather, there is a necessary tension between our own varied contexts and the "original" context of scripture. To read the Bible faithfully is to live into that tension, allowing our questions (and answers) to shape and be shaped by those of our predecessors, to learn from our tradition even if we refuse to be trapped by it.
James McGrath posted a short review today of a book I definitely need to read: What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious by Delwin Brown. As I noted in the comments, the book reminds me of James (or Jamie) K.A. Smith's interesting book The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic, which argues that limited perspective and interpretation are inherent to the biblical picture of humanity as created by God (not just "since the fall"), and that this means faith is necessary to knowledge. Here are a few quotes:
There is always already interpretation in every relationship, which means that there is also room for plurality, or rather, plurality is the necessary result of irreducible difference.... But if interpretation is part of being human, then its analogue is a creational diversity: a multitude of ways to "read" the world. (pg. 156)
[I]n the end I would argue that every hermeneutic judgment is a kind of leap of faith, a certain trust or commitment, a belief that gropes beyond mere presence. Every interpretive judgment, then, should be accompanied by a corresponding hermeneutic humility or uncertainty. (pg. 157)
Before knowledge there is acknowledgement; before seeing there is blindness, before questioning there is a commitment; before knowing there is faith.
While blindness is the condition for the possibility of faith, there is also a sense in which faith is blinded because it sees too much, blinded by bedazzlement, "the very bedazzlement that, for example, knocks Paul on the ground on the road to Damascus." (pg. 183, quoting Jacques Derrida, Memoirs of the Blind, pg. 112)
