Vanhoozer - Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible

Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House Company, 2005. – 896 p.

ISBN 978-1-4412-1058-6

 

Of the making of dictionaries there would seem to be no end. What, then, could possibly justify adding one more item to an already well-stocked inventory? Neither the editors nor the contributors are under the illusion that a new reference work will change the world. Nevertheless, we believe that the time is ripe for a resource that combines an interest in the academic study of the Bible with a passionate commitment to making this scholarship of use to the church. DTIB aims to provide clarification, analysis, and evaluation of the various approaches to biblical interpretation currently in the marketplace, with a view to assessing their theological significance—in particular, their value for reading Scripture in and for the community of the faithful.

 

What Theological Interpretation Is Not

 

Initially, it is easier to say what theological interpretation of the Bible is not rather than what it is.

 

Theological interpretation of the Bible is not an imposition of a theological system or confessional grid onto the biblical text. By theological interpretation, we do not intend to urge readers to return to a time when one’s interpretation was largely dominated by one’s particular confessional theology (e.g., Lutheran, Reformed, Roman Catholic, et al.). While it may be true that exegesis without theological presuppositions is not possible, it is not part of the dictionary’s remit to take sides with a specific confessional or denominational tradition. (On the other hand, we do affirm the ecumenical consensus of the church down through the ages and across confessional lines that the Bible should be read as a unity and as narrative testimony to the identities and actions of God and of Jesus Christ.)

 

Theological interpretation is not simply what dogmatic theologians do when they use the Bible to support their respective doctrinal positions. Although so-called precritical interpretations took biblical authority seriously and sought to read for the church’s edification, they may be vulnerable at three points: They may fail to take the text seriously in its historical context. They may fail to integrate the text into the theology of the OT or NT as a whole. They may be insufficiently critical or aware of their own presuppositions and standpoints (Wright).

 

Theological interpretation of the Bible is not an imposition of a general hermeneutic or theory of interpretation onto the biblical text. Theological interpretation is also not simply a matter of imposing a general hermeneutic on the Bible as if the Bible could be read “like any other book.” There are properly theological questions, such as the relationship of the OT and NT, that require more than what is typically offered in a general hermeneutic (Watson). Stated more strongly, there are some interpretative questions that require theological, not hermeneutical, answers: “The turn to hermeneutics as a general discipline . . . has not so much offered a resolution of older theological questions, historically considered, as it has changed the subject” (Seitz 42). There is something left for interpreters to do after reading the Bible like any other book. At the same time, we believe that certain biblical and theological themes have implications not only for biblical interpretation, but for general hermeneutics as well.

 

Theological interpretation of the Bible is not a form of merely historical, literary, or sociological criticism preoccupied with (respectively) the world “behind,” “of,” or “in front of” the biblical text. Those who seek to renew biblical interpretation will incorporate whatever is true, noble, right, admirable, and useful in the various historical, literary, and sociological approaches used to describe the world “behind” the text (e.g., in the past), the world “of” the text (e.g., its plot and literary form), or the world “in front of” the text (e.g., the way in which readers receive and react to it). Theological interpretation may not be reduced to historical or to literary or to sociopolitical criticism, but it is not less than these either. For God has been active in history, in the composition of the biblical text, and in the formation of a people to reveal and redeem. Yet each of these disciplines, though ancillary to the project of interpreting the church’s Scripture, stops short of a properly theological criticism to the extent that it brackets out a consideration of divine action.

 

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Poststructuralism

 

Although structuralism itself hardly qualifies as a unified movement, the views of poststructuralists are so diverse that it is difficult to speak of “poststructuralism.” The term is often interchanged with “postmodernism” (which also defies definition); though there are many overlapping positions and figures, there is no exact congruency. Poststructuralists are probably best described by way of their reaction to the problems of structuralism: (1) its reductionistic tendencies, (2) the focus on formal structure instead of practice, (3) a lack of regard for history, and (4) the assumption of the universality and stability of binary oppositions.

 

Perhaps the earliest poststructuralist is M. M. Bakhtin (1895–1975), whose work has only become influential in the West in recent years. In his essay “Discourse in the Novel,” he speaks of overcoming the “abstract ‘formal’ approach” and does so by repudiating structuralism’s reductionism and emphasizing practice and history. The concept of “dialogue” is central for Bakhtin, since words are alive, constantly evolving, and closely related to both their referents and the persons who use them. As he puts it, “The living utterance . . . cannot fail to brush up against thousands of dialogic threads, woven by socio-ideological consciousness around the given object of an utterance” (276). Bakhtin likewise speaks of the “heteroglossia” of language, that it has a multitude of speakers and contexts, none of which can claim primacy. A similar term for him is that of “carnival,” the intersection of language, history, meanings of author/speaker and reader/listener, and genres. But this play is grounded in what Bakhtin calls “answerability,” the ethical responsibility that dialogue partners have to each other (“Art”). And that ethical responsibility is in turn grounded in Bakhtin’s theism.

 

As is typical of Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) in so many respects, both structuralist elements and the questioning of those elements can be found in his thought. Derrida would agree with Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) that language is a system of signs in which meaning is dependent upon difference. Indeed, Derrida elevates “différance” (a term of his own creation) to something like a fundamental metaphysical category, claiming that speaking, understanding, and concepts themselves are characterized by “difference.” Thus, interpretation is always a complex mixture that requires understanding words and texts in ways both similar to and different from what the author meant or previous usage or interpretation. Whereas for Saussure the play of signifiers is neat, unchanging, and self-contained, for Derrida it is complex, evolving, and without clear limits. Although he sounds much like a structuralist when he makes his famous claim “there is nothing outside of the text” (Of Grammatology, 158), Derrida later explains that this merely means that there is nothing outside of context (Limited, 136)—a markedly “post-stucturalist” claim. Derrida is sometimes read as agreeing with structuralists that signifiers have their meaning apart from referents. But making context central to meaning and connecting signifiers to references seems to indicate a view that is the opposite of structuralism. Derrida claims that signifiers are problematic precisely because they do not give us a “full presence” of that signified. But Derrida uses the notion of the “trace” to indicate that there is still some sort of presence given by signifiers.

 

Derrida’s essay “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences” is a hallmark in the critique of structuralism; in it he claims that there is no place to “stand” outside of the structure to critique it. Thus, there is no possibility of a “neutral” or “objective” read of the structure itself, or the words and texts that compromise it. In contrast to Saussure, Derrida insists that words and texts are not ideal structures but are thoroughly connected to their historical contexts, and thus subject to temporal change. By way of what he terms “deconstruction,” Derrida undermines not only structuralism’s ahistoricality, reductionism, and the assumption that language is a closed system, but also the very binary oppositions that provide structuralism’s “structure.” While Derrida is often read as simply denying binary oppositions (such as light/dark or male/female), it would be more accurate to say that he retains them but questions any simple disjunction between them. Deconstruction has often been construed as promoting hermeneutic and ethical relativism (and there are certainly grounds for such charges). But Derrida strenuously denies that deconstruction necessarily leads to such results, describing the common caricature of the deconstructionist as “skeptic-relativist-nihilist” as simply “false” (Limited, 146). Instead, he insists that deconstruction is the “unbuilding” of a complex structure, both to examine its component parts and to consider what is assumed but left unsaid.

 

Although Derrida claims that deconstruction is something that “happens,” it is often considered to be a method for reading texts, one that can be either helpful or highly destructive. In contemporary literary and biblical interpretation, one can find examples of both. An important difficulty in providing examples is that the term “deconstruction” is often either loosely appropriated or employed pejoratively for interpretations with which one does not agree. Considering Derrida’s own reading of the Abraham and Isaac narrative (Gen. 22) in The Gift of Death is one way around this problem. Following Søren Kierkegaard’s account in Fear and Trembling, Derrida sees Abraham as suspended between the binary opposition of the demand of universal law and the absolute singularity of responsibility to God’s call. For Derrida, it is only in this moment of the paradox that true ethical responsibility can be decided. Derrida in no way denies the universality of moral law (and in his later writings he goes so far as to claim that justice is so absolute that it cannot be deconstructed). Yet he resists any reduction of the ethical to universal law. Instead, he argues that the ethical exists precisely in the tension between—on the one hand—the universal, ahistorical, and theoretical and—on the other hand—the singular, historical, and practical.

 

The move from “archaeology” to “genealogy” in the later work of Michel Foucault (1926–84) also marks a decisive break from structuralism. Archaeology is the search for basic structures or “epistemes” (ways of thinking); genealogy is simply the attempt to trace the historical development of thought and practice. Much like human genealogies, it is assumed that there is no “overarching” structure, merely a set of ideas and practices that have no essential unity and usually are partially contradictory, overlapping, and constantly developing in ways that are unforeseen and disorganized. Strongly influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), Foucault is particularly concerned with the ways in which practices and discourses are regulated: what can be said, what constitutes a discourse, and who controls discourses (see, e.g., “Discourse” and “Nietzsche”). Reading texts from a Foucaultian viewpoint involves seeking to discover what hierarchies, values, and implied prohibitions are at work both within and behind the text. Genealogy is decidedly diachronic (rather than synchronic) in nature, for it assumes that discourse develops not in a linear, purely rational way but by way of various forces that are diverse and always connected to power in one or more ways.

 

Although some have accused Foucault of envisioning a “power play” behind everything, he rightly reminds us that language, social practice, and even the search for truth are never simply benign. So images of the “objective scientist” or the “neutral hermeneut” (even of the biblical variety) are simply modern or Enlightenment fantasies. Interpretations, then, must always be subject to such questions: What is an interpreter’s point of view? Whose interpretations dominate in literary or biblical fields? What legitimates that dominance? And whose interpretations are excluded as “illegitimate”? One need not agree with Foucault’s particular stance or values to realize that such questions cannot simply be ignored. Foucault also reminds us that the very notion of the “author” has its own genealogy, shifting significantly from the Middle Ages to the present day. Although authorship was once taken to be key in scientific texts but not in literary ones, almost the opposite is true today (“What?”).

 

Further poststructuralists include Roland Barthes (1915–80), Jean-François Lyotard (1924–98), and Julia Kristeva (1941–). Barthes began his career as a structuralist but is probably best known for his poststructuralist views regarding the death of the author, the proliferation of textual meaning, and the radical openness of texts. In The Postmodern Condition (1979), Lyotard questions the very possibility of constructing an overarching “narrative” (and thus any kind of “universal structure”), though he actually finds support for this view in the decidedly “modern” Immanuel Kant ( 1724–1804). Along with other feminist poststructuralists, Julia Kristeva has turned attention toward “otherness.” For instance, Strangers to Ourselves is an examination of the phenomenon of the foreigner, as well as the experience of the “strangeness” within ourselves. Like Derrida’s questioning of binary oppositions, such analyses challenge the structuralist assumption of a clear sense of identity of the self or the alien.

 

See also Deconstruction; Dialogism; Postmodernity and Biblical Interpretation; structuralism

 

Bibliography

Bruce Ellis Benson