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Scripture: a phenomenon of excess
The writings of Christian Scripture, received
or newly written, were affirmed as Scripture through significant community use
in the spirit of Christ. These writings are to be read alongside each other, interacting
with and enhancing each other, to produce a range of effects in their hearers,
for example—prayer, wisdom, repentance, joy, decision, courage, inspiration, deed,
faith, hope and love. Such a focus on Scripture is not theologically
naïve but fulfils its most indigenous purpose. The purpose of Scripture will always
be otherwise than the conceit of knowledge that stands aloof from the joy its
pages give to sincere listeners. Scripture’s lack of weighting on some areas and
strong emphasis in others provide a perennial counter-balance to poor theological
foci. A recurring lesson of Christian history is that our theological foci will
only have durability through their congruence with Scripture. This is true for
the most controversial topics, yet impatience, arrogance or partisan alignment
can gag the excess of disclosure that Scripture has to offer. For Christians, the congruence of their testimony
with Scripture is ultimately focused in Jesus Christ and nowhere else. v As much
as we like explanations, a particular text or passage of Scripture does not need
us to justify its existence as Scripture. We do not need to alleviate its incongruity
with our logic or de-construct the audacity of its resistance to our ideals. Neither
are we obliged to construct a hypothesis of its context in order to control its
excess of meaning. We may wish to contest another reading of a particular
text but to do so will only inscribe that reading in our own reading, thereby
perpetuating the logic of the reading we seek to oppose. Our instinctive use of
binary logic will inevitably arrest our capacity to go beyond partisan conflict—this
interpretation against that interpretation—to discover new possibilities latent
in the text. Let the text contradict us, make audacious claims
or compel our response—as all biblical writings do to varying degrees. Some may
want to erase a seemingly ambiguous or twilight text as offensive to contemporary
sensibilities but its existence in Scripture will surpass our time as it has already
surpassed every other time. Indeed, the same text may also be highly valued in
another time. A text can generate its own terms of reference
as it speaks by allusion to other Scripture and in resonance with the paradoxes
of gospel. Vocative images, in which every “today” is always today, kindle imagination
between ears that hear. Tomorrow also touches today. Christian Scripture is permeated
by the strange tone of apocalypse or revelation of the future of God anticipated
and becoming present with an excess of the ever-new, compounding in a compression
of time past and reaching to the very end of all time. Scripture speaks on its own terms of reference
to human existence in the inexorable tension between human possibility in the
goodness of creation and our anxiety before the inevitability of death. Between
life and death, Scripture addresses a veritable scale of human tonalities, while
reiterating that God, who calls to be things that are not, is sovereign
in relation to life and death. What is revealed is always novel and otherwise
to human surveillance and our attempts to corral life and death in manageable
ways. Every birth is a unique phenomenon that has never
been and never again will be. Within this mystery of human identity, dignity and
freedom, Scripture evokes decisions that exceed the possibilities given within
material and social explanations of life. v As always, enmeshed in Scripture, a text can speak either directly or
obliquely: as vocative and therefore as relational; as volitional and therefore
as an imperative to responsibility; as vocational and therefore as a summons or
call to possibilities exceeding human intention yet inviting human response. If the central affirmations of Christian
faith are obstructed in our articulation, whether by neglect or embarrassment,
then our hearing of them will be distorted and confused with competing voices
from beyond Christian faith. If our deeds are not interpreted by a clear word,
they will remain either mute or others will interpret them in ways that we do
not intend. If we are to hear Scripture clearly, then by word and deed, we must
also be heard clearly—when we articulate the central affirmations of Christian
faith clearly, we ourselves then hear more clearly. The phenomenon of hearing and consequent responses
of thanksgiving, tangible deed and ultimately, love, which surpasses knowledge,
testifies to Scripture’s capacity to speak as Scripture. If we see Scripture as
we are, it will cease to speak other than as we are. By our intentions and perceptions we invest the
diverse phenomena about us with various meanings. Yet, while each person is at
the centre of a perceived world, intending the world to be a certain way, the
world is also otherwise, independent of any person’s perceptions and ideals (Husserl).
How much more with Scripture! We can see Scripture as we are or we can hear it
in its excess and therefore its capacity to speak other than as we are. Everything else arises at dusk with the owl of
Minerva—the interpretation of a day already lived (Hegel)—to connive with or resist
our adjudications of a text. Yet a text already anticipates another “today” of
hearing and response, delight and strangeness, that will exceed any assimilation
negotiated in the night. Interpretation can only articulate Scripture’s testimony
after the fact—after Scripture’s vocative address in the midst of life. v Christian
faith is anchored in the paradox of an enduring word as the source of all our
words. Yet this word refuses to be assimilated by the many words it brings into
being. A critical issue is how we interpret Scripture
with skill and intelligence without diminishing the word that calls forth human
response. How do we become interpreters amid a plethora of interpretations, without
at the same time becoming adjudicators of when Scripture can speak and when it
must remain silent? Do we posit arbitrary criteria of our own making to adjudicate
when and how we will be addressed? There is a curious contradiction here. If we adjudicate
on the word that is to adjudicate on our lives, are we not in the same position
as the idol-maker who is mocked with prophetic satire? Do we risk becoming the
idol-maker who constructs the very thing that determines everything? If the interpretive methods we deploy merely serve
to confirm existing opinions, there is no longer a word to be heard other than
adjudications arbitrarily given in dependence on these methods. Scripture is then
no longer a phenomenon of excess giving testimony to grace but a small idol for
affirming opinions. This is why the biblical satire of idolatry is central to
the incursion of a word that is eventful in human experience as it invokes hearing
and response. Scripture calls forth from us, not a particular
method for its adjudication, but an inclined ear to hear a vocative word of address.
Amid familiar human scenes, diverse forms of writing, strange visions and the
prism of human language, Scripture will always speak with a word otherwise than
our own—focused in Christ and heard in the Holy Spirit—the word of God for those
with ears to hear. Method
sources: Jean-Luc Marion In Excess;
Prolegomena to Charity. |
