From an interview with Ben Witherington (hat tip to Ben himself):
my view is that everything has to be sifted by the word of God and so theology is a second order task. You don’t start with your theology and then do exegesis, you start with exegesis and you construct or deconstruct a theology as necessary.
I wish all theologians, also biblical studies experts and Bible translators, held firm to this principle.
On a quite different issue, it is interesting that Witherington thinks that
Luke wrote the Pastoral epistles for Paul but Paul was still alive so he is the voice behind the writing but the style, grammar, syntax and vocabulary is closer to Luke-Acts then it is to the earlier Pauline documents.
You don’t start with your theology and then do exegesis, you start with exegesis and you construct or deconstruct a theology as necessary.
Sounds like a good enough prescription. Ostensibly anti-Pharisaical and all.
But it’s The Abolition of Man C. S. Lewis warns about:
“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
Could Paul not theologize to and with Luke as they compiled second hand accounts of the man who is God? Must C.S. Lewis not make his Reflections on the Psalms of the Hebrews from a Christian theology, reading “Second Meanings” and Christian theological ones in Virgil and Plato also? Are there no Hermeneutics of Charity (as per James K. A. Smith, Henry Isaac Venema, James H. Olthuis)? No Redemptive -Hermeneutic within the the Exegesis of Cultural Analysis (as per William J. Webb)? Is Martin Luther’s “sola scriptura” solely a-theology?
Ben Witherington III would give us Aristotle’s failure: a meta-narrative ordered prescriptively: first parse “the word of god” from “the theology of man” / second parse these two now from “the exegesis of man” / third map “the exegesis of man” above all / fourth start all over now: “first: ‘the exegesis of man’ as if it’s only reading–but never a reading into–“the word of god.” (“oh, also this: there’s always only one right answer to any question. If anyone ever doubts you, elevate ‘the exegesis of man’ a little higher on the epistemological map.”).
Kurk, of course the biblical authors theologised. And it is OK for us to do so as well. But first we need to read and understand the text as it stands, as the author intended, not what we want to make it say. Yes, here I go against both the post-moderns and those who fit the text into the Procrustean bed of their own doctrinal presuppositions.
Peter,
You make some might big assumptions: that the text stands as you read it; that the author’s intentions are God’s; that various interpretations otherwise must always and only be “what we want to make it say.”
Lewis is no postmodernist and isn’t imposing any of his presuppositions on any text.
And yet he reads the Bible (especially the Psalms) correctly. And he puts those who want to make up meanings (i.e., those he lambastes in The Abolition of Man) in their place.
What do you think about ElShaddai Edwards’s problem in answering: “what scriptural foundation are you exegeting from?” Ironically–like you–boxed in with no method left, I’m afraid. How about Drew’s “dialectic relationship that works both ways”? A bit more relief, I think. They’ve commented at Metacatholic’s blog on the same topic.
And to use your phrase over there, do you really think Jesus used “a predefined interpretive grid”? Of course he did! But probably not in the way you think of it.
Kurk, I don’t assume these things, although I don’t spell them out in a brief post either, and I am not going to in a late night comment.
C.S. Lewis is welcome to his Christian reading of the Psalms AFTER he has properly understood the meaning in their original Hebrew context – which I expect he did.
Good morning, Peter. Lewis says he comes to the Psalms with not much understanding at all. He comes to them as a novice not an expert. And we, his readers, understand that he comes to them also as an anti-modernist literary scholar, a post-atheist Christian man. He says the psalmists didn’t understand, properly if you will, everything they were saying in their original Hebrew context.
I’m reading another Brit now. He wrote this:
“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”
I assume he understands the meaning of this in his original English context. History has been kind to him, I think. And I understand, literally, he can’t have written after he’s died, so he’s talking about his present influence so strong that his history in the future will just have to be kind to him. I’m somewhat of an insider and expert. Having been sure I understand, am I now free to interpret his statement any way I like? Or reinterpret it some other way? I think I follow this man’s statement until I read him writing this:
“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else.”
How do I handle that as an American, not one of “you” but one who you “always” treat the same way? Oh, is that not what he intended? Of course not, but it is what he said. And as an American, not as a Brit, I know it.
So back to his history, after I’ve begun my doubts that he really understands everything he intends, I read this:
“Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.”
Now I see that he reads, even what he writes, as Lewis in public reads the Hebrew Psalms.
Seems to me “proper understanding” cannot always mean much of what you mean it to be.
Kurk, I think you misunderstand Churchill. He did quite literally write history, especially “The Second World War” (1948-53) and “A History of the English-Speaking Peoples” (1956-58), largely after he had made it (although he was Prime Minister as late as 1955). Of course he made sure it put him in a good light. And then we Brits love being rude about Americans, and can take a bit of the same in reply, but don’t always take our jokes so seriously!
But, at risk of being considered even more of a heretic than I am for criticising adherence to the Westminster Confession, I must declare my disagreement with C.S. Lewis, if he really did claim that the psalmists did not understand what they were writing. I accept that there is a dimension beyond conscious understanding to writing poetry. But this claim of Lewis’ is about as believable as his claim that The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is not in part a deliberate allegory of the Christian faith. Yes, there was additional significance given to the Psalms through their later use by Christians and others. But I don’t accept any idea, even if Lewis did, that the Psalms were originally infused or inspired with some kind of higher meaning direct from God which did not pass through the psalmists’ minds. That sounds like a Qur’anic rather than a biblical model of inspiration.
Yep. I misunderstood Churchill indeed; and look forward now to reading his history. But can an American say that he misunderstood us? (I do love British humor, as humour, but how can I be sure?)
I don’t want to make you disagree with Lewis too soon. Here’s what he says. (But I have to say if we follow his logic, he always also has “second meanings,” saying things that he never thought he, at first, intended).
He says: “any writer may say more than he knows and mean more than he meant.” Jesus, Lewis adds, uses this principle on “that famous journey to Emmaus [during which] He found fault with the two disciples for not believing what the prophets had said. They ought to have known from their Bibles that the Anointed One, when He came, would enter his glory through suffering. He then explained, from ‘Moses’ (i.e. the Pentateuch) down, all the places in the Old Testament ‘concerning Himself’ (Luke 24,25-27). He clearly identified Himself with a figure often mentioned in the Scriptures; appropriated to Himself many passages where a modern scholar might see no such reference. In the predictions of His Own Passion which He had previously made to the disciples [sic]. He was obviously doing the same thing. He accepted–indeed He claimed to be–the second meaning of Scripture.” (pages 117-18).
Lewis has led up to this particular paragraph with a chapter on pagans’ second meanings, which some authors would, if they could review them, deny such meanings and in which other authors would readily admit them. “One can, without any absurdity, imagine Plato [writing ‘about the fate of goodness’ in Socrates ‘in a wicked and misunderstanding world] . . . if [Plato] learned the truth [later about ‘the Passion of Christ’], saying, ‘I see . . . so that was what I was really talking about. Of course. That is what my words rally meant, and I never knew it'” (pages 104, 108).
Another example please:
“If a man who knew only England and had observed that, the higher a mountain was, the longer it retained the snow all the year round, the similarity between his imagined mountain and the real Alps would not be merely a lucky accident. He might not know that there were any such mountains in reality. . . But if that man ever saw the Alps he would not say ‘What a curious coincidence’. He would be more likely to say ‘There! What did I tell you?'” (page 105).
I could go on about reading Churchill about Americans as an American, and how his intentions and my interpretations cannot easily meet.
But I want to say the American Ben Worthington has some logic problems. His pri-ority assumes both an impossible objectivity and a false dichotomy between theology and exegesis. Whether we’re Churchill, one of his Americans, or Worthington, or Plato, or Jesus, or an original Hebrew psalmist, or a contemporary Jewish scholar on the psalms–none of us can assume we have the objective position on even the “first intention of the psalmist.” And to call “theology” a set of merely subjective interpretations that ought, therefore, only to follow “exegesis” is to relegate the latter only to some higher plane of objectivity–somehow without hermeneutics–that would separate it from the former. In other words, theology is that which is fraught with frail and fallible interpretation while the exegetical method speaks ex cathedra.
Now let me disagree with Lewis. He tries to pretend he has absolutely no authority on the matter of exegesis or theology. Although he’d incline to Worthington’s error when assuming his literary naiveté, and his readers’ too, is the best position from which to read the psalms. Of course, to Lewis’s defense, it really may be the only position he has (until he is more willing to dialog with the “experts”):
“I write for the unlearned about things in which I am unlearned myself . . . as one amateur to another, talking about difficulties I have met, or lights I have gained, when reading the Psalms, with the hope that this might at any rate interest, and sometimes even help, other inexpert readers. I am ‘comparing notes’, not presuming to instruct” (pages 1-2)
Peter, Pardon my long comment here (and Lewis’s comments). But if we’re going to disagree with his text, we have to understand it first, right? Or next time won’t I (and you) trust my paraphrase and interpretation?
Yes, Kurk, we misunderstand you, and you misunderstand us. “Two nations divided by a common language” – who said that?
Was Lewis a precursor of postmodernism, saying that anyone’s interpretation of its text is its meaning? Or is he saying that only Jesus’ interpretation of an earlier text is its meaning? Maybe Plato would have embraced Jesus’ teaching as the real deep meaning of his own (although I am not that sure!), but that is not the same as saying that the teaching of Jesus was what Plato actually meant when he wrote. The problem is that the word “meaning” has so many meanings.
As for Witherington (the correct name), he is perhaps simply assuming as I do a pre-postmodern way of understanding a text, that its meaning is what the author intended to communicate to his or her readers. As a translator, that is the meaning I was taught to understand and translate. Now I realise that that author-intended meaning does not exhaust the significance of a text. But my real point is that to interpret a text properly one must first investigate that author-intended meaning, as well as it is possible to do so, before rushing on to deeper levels of interpretation.
Don’t worry about the comment being long, but I don’t have the energy to reply to it all.
“Who said that”? Yes indeed: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=146783
“The problem is that the word “meaning” has so many meanings.” 🙂
Sorry to Mr. Witherington for my misspelling of his name.
Peter, Reading the last comment you wrote, I really think I do finally understand your meaning! Thanks for spending so much time and energy. It pays off for me. Sincerely, Kurk
I agree with JK Gayle, if I have understood him correctly. To separate exegesis from theology so completely that the former can be undertaken without the latter is to repeat the approach of modernists and 19C scientists who seemed to think that they could identify facts without any interfering presuppositions. Yet as Heidegger and others have commented, it takes a very peculiar kind of mind to hear pure sounds (one hears creaking wheels or cars backfiring etc), or see pure shapes (one sees chairs of birds etc). Scientists see things but through lenses; they do not have immediate access to what they see. In the same way, our reading of scripture, in other words our exegesis, coloured but also informed by our theology. It is the challenge also to allow scripture to change that theology that the theologian must meet. There is what Schleiermacher called the hermeneutical circle and it is as important in theology as in any subject.