| Who can read Scripture?
Scripture is often read with its message already determined before listening has begun. This can occur behind a text as well as by impositions on a text. By locking-in a conjectured sociological or political issue behind a text, the key to unlocking the real message of a text is supposedly secured. Scholars are adept at this; there are nearly as many conjectured contexts as scholars! Whether through text or context, Scripture is made to conform to another reality as its determining principle. In the emerging modern era with its elevation of reason to unchallenged status, very slim gospels were forged by editing away much of New Testament testimony. Scripture was not read but presumably, a more plausible gospel instead. This tendency still lingers. In other approaches, some scholars imagine Scripture is always hiding something sinister that must be ferreted out. Almost anything detested is here hunted in Scripture. In biblical testimony, the reality of God who calls to be things that are not is given definitive focus in Jesus Christ. Humanity is invited into this reality with its distinctive life and purpose—an invitation that is heard by faith not by suspicion or presumption. Many things can be read into Scripture, yet will Christian Scripture have been read, much less heard as invitation? In listening for and responding to the surprising, even audacious reality conveyed in Scripture, we approach the possibility of reading Scripture. Scripture exists because many who heard its testimony to human folly and God’s grace—the gospel—also proclaimed it. Scripture is valued because the gospel is heard. Without grace and truth being received, Scripture ceases to be a living word. Scripture is only begun to be heard as it is approached deferentially in listening for the word of God toward faith, hope and love. In this approach, Scripture has been read as heard by many as a word otherwise than our own in the relay of Christian testimony. We do not read Scripture as we might assume. The crucial issue, as faithful interpreters within the relay of Christian faith have reminded us, is being interpreted by Scripture through the prism of gospel. By exposure to its grace and truth, we become transparent; we are read in our compromises, which are generated by illusions; yet we are also read in our integral human possibilities in grace. Neither of these will become apparent if we presume to stand-over Scripture rather than allow Scripture to interpret our lives. v The perennial possibility that the word of God can be made void for the sake of tradition or by some doctrine or precept of humans is consistently announced in Scripture’s prophetic spirit, whether in parable, psalm, gospel or epistle. Tradition can include specific benchmarks for presumed credibility and tacitly, be conveyed by attitudes expressing approval or disapproval. Tradition can also include certain scholarly methods assumed to be self-evident. Scripture is replete with testimony to expressions of human pretentiousness that obscure rather than illuminate, block rather than open a way, legalise rather than liberate, burden rather than alleviate—in the guise of approved protocols or tradition. The gospels depict Jesus in various intensities of conflict with those who invoke a constant refrain in biblical testimony—presuming to be wise, humans embrace folly; similarly, hubris allays fear of the lord, which is the beginning of wisdom. Whether scholarly or not, the effect of elevating a tradition as assumedly self evident in its veracity and incumbency, is to neutralise the word of God. The word of God is neutralised by making it conform to some received or imposed value that is given legitimacy as trustworthy tradition, as if the mystique of precedence and its tacit reception by a majority is impervious to scrutiny of its claims and their effects. It is possible, by seemingly plausible methods, merely to pay lip-service to some notion of the word of God, while promoting selective, even if tacit ideals. The word of God can be skirted around with extrinsic paraphernalia, its impetus corralled within an adjudicating approach that is deemed necessary for “proper” interpretation, even if this silences the word it purports to adorn. Interpretation that gags the word by turning selections of Scripture into mere ciphers for other agendas, offers no new word as partisan possibilities are sanctioned or privileged through received methods for adjudicating the relevance of texts. The word of God is made void when it ceases to be an imperative to human decisions as transforming and responsible events of faith. Interpretation can become a case of the blind leading the blind, for how can the non-seeing as non-hearing guide anyone? Neutralising the word through a received but select value hinges on an assumption that we can see clearly to read Scripture, instead of Scripture reading us through the gospel in the Spirit of Christ. Only by being read in grace can we begin to see in our hearing. v Texts with clear imperatives can be interpreted to mean the very opposite; this conveys an impression that God invariably thinks like us in condoning well-rehearsed, yet detrimental proclivities. This is similar to making truth a lie and a lie truth by sophistry. By muddying the clarity of its imperatives or the very character of God who calls to such imperatives, no genuine word of address and challenge is heard, only more of the same by personal or partisan connivance. The Psalmist speaks the truth of our perennial propensities: You hate discipline, and cast my words behind you. A word otherwise than our own calls us to discipleship; it invokes discipline and discipline requires listening. We are called to hear and to heed, sometimes against habitual inclination, yet if we realised it, toward our integral life in grace and truth. Resisting discipline and casting the word of God behind us implies conceit in an adjudicative stance whereby we assume we are in a position to swear by a particular inclination or ideal forged from selected texts rather than being addressed in receiving a new word from Scripture. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus speaks of not swearing falsely in our assertions—not by heaven, God, earth or Jerusalem. These cover the whole gamut of possibilities by which we can assert anything as a prism for interpreting Scripture: by heaven or some form of spiritual abstraction, by God or religion, by earth and therefore phenomena or by Jerusalem and so by politics. We are not to seek such leverage for the veracity of what we assert or interpret. The response of “yes” or “no” is adequate as a vocative response to another word by which we are addressed. A vocative “yes” or “no” does not adjudicate but locates us within a relationship that is responsive and responsible. This first vocative response informs every subsequent aspect of reading and interpreting Scripture. To swear by or to insist on spiritual abstractions, religion, phenomena or politics is a failure to respond to the vocative call that invokes from us a decision of “yes” or “no” rather than assuming that we think as God thinks, asserting these thoughts through the interpretive prism and imprimatur of some other principle. The sermon tells us that only evil can come from such insistence. No word from God is heard if we are its source: my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the lord. Scripture is heard by listening for a word with willing hearts in a discerning intelligence of faith, without which, we become implicated in a labyrinth of motivations, conjectures and expressions of partisan connivance rather than inviting the gospel to speak into our lives. By interpreting our lives, the gospel of grace and truth in Jesus Christ guides us in how to read Scripture.
References: Matthew 5:33-37; 15:6-9; Psalm 50:17; Isaiah 55:8. |
