(Ana)Baptist Hermeneutics I've just finished marking a research essay concerned with "Anabaptist Hermeneutics", with Elaine I'm busy putting the finishing touches to the course outline for "Biblical texts and contexts", tomorrow we have another supervision meeting with an excellent PhD candidate (Nasili Vakauta, whose theme is "Reading the Bible Tu'a-wise: Oceanic Hermeneutics and Biblical Interpretation" - tu'a are Tongan commoners) and I am about to start reading semi-final drafts of Karen's master's thesis (her topic is the usefulness of various recent synchronic approaches to biblical studies for creating Church curriculum). So, hermeneutics is in the air round here...

My context, teaching in both Carey (a Baptist theological college) and the University of Auckland (in a School of Theology very committed to various forms of contextual reading - not least forms of liberational readings that of use varieties of hermeneutic suspicion), leaves me pondering two issues:

1. Can Evangelical biblical scholarship and what (to distinguish it, yet not use evaluative language) I'll call Western Academic biblical scholarship talk to each other?
   
2. Can a Baptist hermeneutic survive in the academy?

The first question arises, for me, from the increasing lack of significant overlap between the books and articles on my Carey and University bibliographies. The books tend in both places to come from a limited and select range of publishers. Despite some publishers, like Eerdmans, appearing strongly on both lists the Carey lists tend towards Baker Academic, IVP and Zondervan, while the University lists tend more to Fortress Press, Liturgical Press, OUP and the like. Journals obscure this gulf, but it is noticeable that I tend to choose different articles in the two contexts.

Both lists reflect my interests, combined they would reflect the much of the breadth of contemporary biblical studies. Separated they each represent communities that are unwilling, or unable, to converse. Something like this experience is reflected (unless I have badly misunderstood) in posts in the biblioblogsphere often responding to Jacques Berlinerblau's Chronicle of Higher Education piece "What's Wrong With the Society of Biblical Literature?" (subscription required). These included:

• Kevin at Blue Cord
  
• Jim West
• Some Tyler Williams
  
• Loren Rosson
• Stephen Carlson
• John Lyons
• Mark Goodacre
• Michael Pahl
• James Crossley
• John Lyons again
• and again...
• and more recently Danny Zacharias with a reply from James

Wow, something touched a nerve!

So, how does Baptist Hermeneutics, assuming there might actually be such an animal (you know the joke "four Baptists = seven opinions"), relate to all this?

There are some common threads and tendencies that run through recognisably "Baptist" interpretation of the Bible. (By 'recognisably "Baptist"' I mean acts of interpretation not merely by Baptist interpreters, but that have some character or style that makes them seem more "Baptist" than others - I know a vague, arbitrary and subjective criterion, but you do better!) Something like Stuart Murray's (from Biblical Interpretation in the Anabaptist Tradition 206 or see the summary by Stuart Murray-Williams) list seems about right:

• The Bible as Self-interpreting
• Christocentrism
• The Two Testaments
• Spirit and Word
• Congregational Hermeneutics
• Hermeneutics of Obedience

Taken together these items produce a hermeneutic which privileges the gospels, reads the Old Testament in the light of its "fulfillment" in Christ (which to me means the way Jesus fills out or completes) and understands any part of the Bible in the light of the whole. Such reading is constrained also in two ways that academic reading is not.

• It is reading in community - not individualistic.
  
• It is reading for and in obedience to Christ - not reading for its own sake or with its own value.

Such reading is therefore deeply at odds with the Western Academic tradition, which is individualistic and "proud". (By "proud" I mean the opposite of "humble", a humble reading respects the text, seeks to follow and to learn from the text, but will not judge or evaluate. Western Academic reading is most un-proud in the sense that it expects robust peer review and argument, but it is often proud with respect to the biblical text.)

Does this mean that such an (Ana)Baptist reading cannot survive in the academy, but only in the church? (Wait for the next installment of these musings...)

Labels: bible, exegesis, hermeneutics

¶ 1:20 PM [to Del.icio.us]

John Hobbins of Ancient Hebrew Poetry tried to post this comment while Blogger was "down":

Thanks, Tim,

for a finely word post. As for your question, the answer is yes, they can talk to each other.

Many people I know in the academic study of the Bible operate within a "Western academic" hermeneutical frame when writing or speaking for some audiences, and within a confessional hermeneutical frame of one variety or another in other contexts.

A hermeneutical dialogue goes on in the hearts and minds of biblical scholars even if they have no religious hermeneutic they are comfortable with. Perhaps the choice will be between a liberationist hermeneutical frame, a social-scientific frame with an emphasis on archaeological data, and a lit-crit frame like that of Bakhtin. The example illustrates a situation: hermeneutical frames are often so different that they resist combination.

Perhaps that is what you are struggling with. The (ana)Baptist hermeneutic you are comfortable with will of course find the Western academic frame, and all of the subframes within it, at best insufficient and at worst misleading. The question is how much of the writing and dialogue that goes on within the Western academic frame might serve as a foundation for what you hope to accomplish in the Baptist frame.

I can't answer for you, but I think the answer is, 'a lot.'

By  Anonymous, at January 25, 2007 4:46 PM  

Amen! I welcome all the talk about Anabaptist hermeneutics possible. You might say that this is the foundational theme of my blog. I have wrestled with it specifically in a (similarly-titled) post, from near when I started blogging. I also hope to integrate it into my thoughts on specific issues, lately it's been on the New Perspective on Paul.

Though I feel that Berlinerblau's is problematic on a number of levels (and I feel I should add to your list and give props to good responses from Chris Spinks here and here), I do think that one of his themes touches an important facet of the Anabaptist hermeneutic: How accessible is our scholarship? All this scholar-talk should be for more than just the scholars, but "real people" as well. Berlinerblau suggests that we be more "edgy" and "relevant" and I'm not sure that's the right route (depending on how you define relevance)... not that SBL doesn't have edgy members anyway! But it seems important nonetheless. Perhaps some of academe can work to be more intentional at "filtering" all the various scholarship (ideological, historical-critical, theological hermeneutical, literary, etc.) into something meaningful for everyday people.

Coming from the Anabaptist perspective myself, I would desire to figure out a way of how scholarship affects the obedience of people who live their lives according to the book. But I think that even for those outside of the collective community of faith, we should be answering their "so what?" question: what difference does it all make? I know that there are people attempting these things (Walter Brueggemann and Tom Wright spring immediately to mind), but it would be nice if that endeavor were thought of as more respectable, even central to the guild of biblical scholarship.

I hope you keep more thoughts on this a-coming. Thanks!

By  Patrick George McCullough, at January 26, 2007 6:00 AM  

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