Monday, January 14, 2008

Perriman responds to my review of his book

The following comes from private e-mail correspondence with Andrew about his book, Otherways, which I reviewed recently here. I asked for his permission to publish the following honest response as a separate blog to facilitate discussion, especially as a couple of commentators to my review were quite negatively disposed towards his project. And he makes a couple of good points below, especially about the necessary dialogue between scripture and tradition which many of us, in practice, reduce to tradition's monologue.

"Thanks. It's a great review.

The point about valuing tradition is well taken. I guess in the back of my mind there is always a more respectful dialogue with tradition going on that doesn't always show up in the written polemic. And it's not as though there's a shortage of people out there willing to defend traditional formulations of theology! But I think what the parable is trying to address is simply the problem of over-familiarity. For there to be a genuine dialogue between scripture and tradition scripture must be seen for what it really is, independent of tradition as far as possible - otherwise it's a dialogue heavily weighted in favour of tradition.

My problem with the trinitarian statement has to do more with the problem it creates for reading the New Testament, because inevitably it gives the impression that deep down this is how scripture constructs its understanding of God. I think that's what I was getting at by the distinction between 'theologically necessary' and 'normative'. It may arise out of our reading of scripture, but all sorts of problems arise, it seems to me, if we then reverse the process and allow our reading of scripture to be shaped by our later theological formulations.

The other problem, of course, is that my outlook as a New Testament theologian is much too narrow! I need to catch up on some historical theology. I'll also look out for Bockmuehl's book.

I hope this doesn't sound too defensive. I am delighted with the review and really appreciate you taking a publication of this nature seriously."

14 Comments:

At 1/14/2008 4:34 PM, Blogger Phil Sumpter said...

This post has been removed by the author.

 
At 1/14/2008 4:46 PM, Blogger Phil Sumpter said...

This is a more coherent version of my previous comment:

The relation between scripture, tradition and theology is an issue I'm also trying to get my head round at the moment, facilitated by my recent reading of Barth.

I appreciate where Perriman is coming from - trying to stay awake to the particularity of the text and the implications of this particularity for our faith - but I think he needs to get clear on the nature of Christian faith itself first, before priviliging the Bible over tradition (how pretentious do I feel when I say that! Oh well). Here are my responses to comments:

From the previous post,Chris said:

But this makes me feel like Perriman's project runs the risk of neglecting the interpretive tradition of the church, and its central creedal statements

I think the risk is greater, it concerns the nature of Christian faith itself. Christian faith is not, in the first instance, about reading the Bible faithfully. It's a response to the Gospel, the God's work and word in Christ to which the four canonical Gospels only witness. They are not the Gospel themselves, they are signposts to the reality that preceded them, encompasses them and grasps us to make us want to read them in the first place.

This distinction between Gospel and text means that theological exegesis requires the paths in the forest, it requires tradition, for without the creedal summaries of the Church (which I define broadly, including Billy Graham's little pamphlets) we wouldn't know why we are reading and what we are reading for. The problem with the Pharisees was not that they were somehow lacking in a pre-traditional, un-mediated reading of the text but that they hadn't grasped the true substance of the text. Neither did the disciples, despite the fact that they knew the text's Substance personally on a daily basis. It took the post resurrection encounter with the extra-textual living Christ and the anointing of the Holy Spirit to open their eyes and to see what had been in the text all along. This extra-textual event "opened up" the text's true meaning (it's "spiritual" rather than "literal" meaning, to use patristic categories). It was because of this vision that the church was capable of reading the Hebrew Bible as the Old Testament in the first place. Paul's hermeneutic, so scandalous to the historical-critical mind, was informed by this understanding of what had really been going on all the time (in seiner Exegese, er hat den Text verstanden, wenn nich erklärt, to use Dilthey's categories). It didn't matter how well or sensitively he read his Bible, without meeting Jesus he wouldn't have grasped the Bibles true meaning.

Thus, if "tradition" is understood to be a systematic formulation of the essence of Christian faith, then tradition is not only helpful to exegesis, it is necessary. I don't know how we'd read the Old Testament otherwise.

Which is why I disagree with Perriman's statement that

[Tradition] may arise out of our reading of scripture, but all sorts of problems arise, it seems to me, if we then reverse the process and allow our reading of scripture to be shaped by our later theological formulations

If Scripture is understood not to be the reality itself, but just a signpost to the reality (i.e. a "witness"), then a true theological grasp of individual texts requires that we to our reading in the light of broader formulations of what this single reality is. The two-testamental canon of scripture is a multifaceted witness to a single reality and its in our apprehension of the whole that we understand what is "really going on." The apostles experience of Jesus recalibrated their interpretation of the Old Testament. Our understanding of the Gospel should recalibrate our understanding of both testaments. We should never be content to remain of the surface, but, as Childs puts it, we need to pierce through to the true subject matter.

Which is why I find the following statement one-sided:

For there to be a genuine dialogue between scripture and tradition scripture must be seen for what it really is, independent of tradition as far as possible - otherwise it's a dialogue heavily weighted in favour of tradition.

Apart from struggling to understand in what sense Scripture "is independent of tradition", the true relationship is dialectic. Each area of discourse needs to be seen in the light of the other. It won't do to have a one way street going from Scripture to Tradition. This is an impossibility, both theologically and epistemologically.

I hope this makes some kind of sense ... I highly recommend Barth, Childs and Seitz on this topic. Frei wrote some great stuff on the need for typology in order to grasp the essential unity of the biblical message.

 
At 1/14/2008 5:46 PM, Blogger Andrew Perriman said...

Phil, not having read a great deal of Barth I find your argument really quite puzzling. Where does this pre-existent 'gospel' come from that somehow transcends the actual stories about Jesus?

Or how do you explain or justify the significant differences that exist between Billy Graham's version of the 'Gospel' and Jesus' announcement of good news to Israel? My problem is that very often when people read the Gospels, they think that Jesus is Billy Graham.

It seems to me that we have to reserve the right to critique tradition in the light of our understanding of the text - at least to the extent that if we see a discontinuity between Jesus' gospel and Billy Graham's gospel, or between New Testament language about Father, Son and Holy Spirit and later trinitarian formulations, we seek to make sense of it historically and contextually, not misrepresent the text.

And I really don't get this peculiar neo-platonic hermeneutic that says that scripture points to some reality other than itself. Why should I accept this? Why can't I just say that scripture says what it says? I suspect that the underlying issue here is not so much whether we privilege scripture or tradition but whether we read the Bible as historical narrative or, to use your metaphor, as a collection of signposts to some form of abstract and transcendent truth.

Each area of discourse needs to be seen in the light of the other. It won't do to have a one way street going from Scripture to Tradition.

Well, yes, that's exactly my point. But you seem to be arguing that we cannot properly read scripture except through the grid of tradition:

This distinction between Gospel and text means that theological exegesis requires the paths in the forest, it requires tradition, for without the creedal summaries of the Church... we wouldn't know why we are reading and what we are reading for.

That sounds to me like a one-way street going from tradition to scripture.

 
At 1/14/2008 5:51 PM, Anonymous Steven's Inner Catholic said...

I'm not familiar enough with all of Perriman's arguments re: the Bible and Tradition, but it seems wrong to elevate the Bible over tradition since in some senses Tradition (with a big 'T') has priority over scripture.

I mean this in the Orthodox sense whereby Scripture is viewed as one stream of revelation within the broader stream of Holy Tradition.

Even if one does not accept this way of viewing scripture, I don't see how once can easily separate "scripture" from "tradition", since they are inseparably dependent upon each other.

 
At 1/14/2008 6:39 PM, Blogger Andrew Perriman said...

Steven, I accept that for all sorts of different reasons, not all of them good ones, it is difficult to separate scripture and tradition. But do we have the right to force an interpretation on scripture out of deference to tradition? What is the price that we pay as a matter of theological or exegetical integrity if we insist on doing that?

Why shouldn't the community of Jesus' followers in principle come to the collective conclusion at some point on the basis of careful reading of scripture that, well, it looks as though tradition got this or that point a bit wrong? Does putting a capital 'T' in front of it really make it inviolable?

Suppose in years to come a general consensus emerged that the traditional doctrine of the Second Coming actually offers a rather misleading account of the idea of Christ's parousia in the New Testament. Are we really not allowed to modify the tradition in the light of that (I hasten to add hypothetical) consensus?

 
At 1/14/2008 10:13 PM, Anonymous Eric W said...

As I suggested in my comment in your earlier post on the book, I don't think Scripture can so easily be separated from Tradition, because in a sense Scripture IS Tradition.

I am nearly finished with Hengel's The Septuagint as Christian Scripture: Its Prehistory and the Problem of Its Canon, and have read most of McDonald's The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, And Authority and some of McDonald & Sanders The Canon Debate and find that one cannot extricate or separate the New Testament and the early Church from the LXX (in its larger version - i.e., including the Apocrypha), which raises the issue of what is Scripture for the Church and who makes such decisions. If one decides on the 39-book Masoretic-based Protestant canon, one has already let a certain Tradition guide one's steps in the forest and/or determine where the path must lie. And if one isn't willing to throw open the question of what is or is not Scripture, then one really hasn't let go of Tradition, since one is still clinging to a Tradition re: what is Scripture.

My 2 cents.

 
At 1/15/2008 12:52 AM, Blogger paroikos said...

I think the problem is that, as with understanding any text, the text on its own is not enough. Without a reliable hermenuetic the text can be made to say anything (e.g. Marcion). Christians have generally interpreted the Heb/LXX and NT according the message of God's salvation through the death and resurection of Christ. if you cannot at least relate your hermenuetic to that tradition (which goes back beyond the formation fo the New Testament). Grammatico-historical exegesis is fine in its own way, but it isn't what the writers of the NT would have expected. Now i dont know anyone who advocates we should use Second Temple Judaism hermenuetics today. This is why Enns is right about using a 'Cristotelic' hermenuetic, even if he is wrong ( i think he is) to use the incarnation as an analogy. Tradition is our only objective tool to unlock the meaning of scripture (as opposed to the subjective leading of the Spirit) and it is only when tradition is inconsistent or demonstrably mistaken that we have liberty to go beyond it. maybe.

 
At 1/15/2008 2:35 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is incredibly confusing. I wish someone would explain what you are really talking about.

 
At 1/15/2008 3:41 PM, Blogger Jason Pratt said...

Andrew: {{Where does this pre-existent 'gospel' come from that somehow transcends the actual stories about Jesus?}}

Phil hasn't replied yet, but I think he made it clear enough in principle that he means the historical events to which the "actual stories" are witnesses; and also the intentions and actions of God, to which the historical events point as witnesses.

That being said, while I agree with Phil that tradition in the sense of some kind of systematic understanding of the witness of Scripture to the character, characteristics and actions of God in conjunction with history (with Israel and the nations, as Jesus), is a necessary task; I think I also understand and agree with you, to be saying that tradition even in this sense must not be considered inerrant/infallible (unless there are good theological reasons for believing so, which is a whole other debate). Otherwise we won't be in a position to correct misunderstandings about the witnessing(s) given in the Scriptures; we'll be locked into a halakhah that is wrongly giving us the rule of the road.

JRP

 
At 1/15/2008 3:47 PM, Blogger Jason Pratt said...

Sorry, Anon. Technical theology is being occurred. {g}

We're discussing why, and to what extent, we should respect commentary on what the Judeo-Christian scriptures mean.

JRP

 
At 1/15/2008 6:00 PM, Blogger Phil Sumpter said...

Warning: this is a huge response!

Dear Andrew,

thanks for responding to my comments in detail. I'm still trying to get my head round these issues myself and conversations like these help me crystallize my thoughts and identify areas to be worked on. I hope my response will help bring the conversation forward!

Where does this pre-existent 'gospel' come from that somehow transcends the actual stories about Jesus?

I think we need to ask: at what point in Church history was it assumed that the Gospel is the Bible? To be honest, the only people I know making this kind of assumption are certain narrative theologians such as Lindbeck and Frei, and they've met with criticism for collapsing the word and its reference into the same category.

It helps to look at the titles of the Gospels: the Gospel according to John, according to Mark. It is not their Gospel, it is God's. Their literary creations, called 'gospels', are not theGospel. The Gospel is the external reality of God in Christ reconciling the world to himself, in fulfilment of his covenant to Israel. That, at least, is my (Barthian?) understanding. The point is, this summary isn't found in any one point of the Bible, and if we were to only read the NT we'd miss the depth dimension and true meaning of the one Gospel. The multifaceted texts of the Bible (narrative being one genre among others, though perhaps a dominating one) witness, point to, are about, this extra-textual reality.

Without this reality, why would I want to read my Bible in the first place? In fact, and this is the valid point Eric W is making, why would we have a 'Bible' in the first place? The very category of 'Bible' is ideological, it already presupposes a theology in the first place in order for it to come into being. In terms of its very creation and logic, then, Scripture and Tradition (broadly understood, see below) cannot be separated. Childs, Seitz and others (for a bibliography check out Seitz's Figured Out) are highlighting the two-sided nature of this reality. The church came into being as a response to the Word contained in the Bible, and yet it used criteria of selection that were taken from that Word (contained in what was called the 'Apostolic tradition') to shape the Bible. It goes in both ways, and the danger of saying 'Bible only' is that we will fall into the trap of thinking that as long as I can switch off my faith, stop believing that Jesus is the Saviour (a theological presupposition that precedes our actual reading of the text), I will somehow have a more 'pure' reading of the text. Post-modernism shows that this isn't possible anyway, but theologically it is wrong because our starting point is always “faith seeking understanding”. This applies to exegesis too: I already believe, and so I read to understand. Hence, pure unbiased biblical interpretation, whether an epistemological possibility or not, will not lead us the the true substance of the entire Scripture which is God in Christ. We need to have the personal encounter with him first, and that requires so much more than just reading.

This is not to say that Tradition is to be absolutised. As I said, the relation is dialectic, it goes back and forth. I'm not Catholic and am grateful for the Reformation. How we are to understand the relation between tradition and scripture, however, is another question (the Orthodox solution outlined by Stephen being one attempt). But the answer is not to be found in subordinating tradition to scripture. That is too easy. It's a messy situation with no clean one-way methods. I'm content, for now, to deal with a messily unavoidable human context and trust that the Spirit is there where he wants to be and where he's accepted. Trust in Him “to write on crooked lines” (to use a German idiom) is more effective than deciding to abandon the broader understandings of the Gospel bequeathed to us by our various traditions in order to get a better grasp of the particularities of each pericope. I'm sure, by the way, that you aren't saying this. I just feel that this is where your metaphor might lead us ...

Or how do you explain or justify the significant differences that exist between Billy Graham's version of the 'Gospel' and Jesus' announcement of good news to Israel?

The way most would: we humans are historically particular and limited, so things get skewed and reinterpreted. Thank God for his Spirit, who decides to work with us anyway. I would like to highlight the continuity, however, between Graham's little cross-as-bridge-to-God diagrams to and apostolic creeds. The various 'summas' of faith have a structure that is surprisingly continuous. I'm amazed, for example, that a Southern Baptist Fundamentalist can affirm the Apostolic Creed, despite the fact that he's convinced the Pope is the Anti-Christ.

Oh, and I wouldn't go about comparing B. Graham to Jesus, as if we have access to what he though in a more unmediated way than others. I also wouldn't use Jesus as the absolute criteria for what counts as the Gospel (!!). The Jesus of the Gospels is a literary figure used to communicate a message (not that that negates the happendness of the events, I'm talking about narrative as a means of communication). The Gospel, the one we should all subscribe to, is the one witnessed to by the entire Bible, OT and NT, and not just Jesus. He was the Gospel, but the meaning of that cannot be garnered by simply reading his speech and looking at his actions. I bit of Isaiah and Moses etc. is needed before we can figure out who's construal of the Gospel is the most adequate.

My problem is that very often when people read the Gospels, they think that Jesus is Billy Graham

That's a problem. They need to read their Bibles and Church history more.

It seems to me that we have to reserve the right to critique tradition in the light of our understanding of the text

Totally. As long as we realise that this critiquing process is itself tradition in process, and as long as we remain indebted to whatever tradition it was that made us love the Bible in the first place. I'm sure how this works in practice is far more complex ... these are my limited thoughts.

And I really don't get this peculiar neo-platonic hermeneutic that says that scripture points to some reality other than itself.

See my first response above. This isn't 'neo-Platonic'. A witness in a courtroom saying “I saw it happen”, who understands the thing he's referring to as being outside of himself, is not being neo-Platonic. Perhaps one could see this as neo-Platonic if the reality was seen to be greater and independent that the reality. Whatever the case may be, Christians are stuck in the bind of having no access to this reality other than through tradition and text. So the Bible is indispensable. I'm also not assuming that this Gospel is a static eternal truth, hovering in fuller form behind the text, such that the text can be dispensed with once we've got to the reality. I think ongoing dialectic is the key here.

Why can't I just say that scripture says what it says?

You can, but what Scripture says is not the same as the Gospel. The Gospel is not to be found in any one text, as if it could be identified, cut out and safeguarded.

I suspect that the underlying issue here is not so much whether we privilege scripture or tradition but whether we read the Bible as historical narrative or, to use your metaphor, as a collection of signposts to some form of abstract and transcendent truth.

The entire Bible cannot be read as historical narrative, and it is the entire Bible that is Scripture, not just the Gospels. In addition to that, we need to grasp the nature of the Christological centre of the Bible. In one sense it is narrative. Jesus appeared at a given moment in the life of Israel – Gal. 4.4. speaks of the “fullness of time.” However, Jesus doesn't just relate to the OT temporally, he relates to it “ontologically” (hence my blog title: narrative and ontology). Jesus christ was the eternal Word who was with God in the beginning, “the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created” (Col. 1.15f). In these Christological formulations, temporal sequence (the 'narrative' element) is disregarded.

On my use of the metaphor of “signpost”, see N.T. Wright.

”Each area of discourse needs to be seen in the light of the other.” ... Well, yes, that's exactly my point.

Getting rid of the paths in the forest doesn't sound like it, though I know it's a metaphor on your part so I may be overreacting. Sorry. However, I'm not suggesting that the inevitable grid of tradition be absolutised. It's dialogue, or dialectic.

I first came on this track of thought ages ago when I asked myself: “Why do I believe in the Bible? For it's own sake or because of the Gospel which makes me turn to the Bible?” If you take the second option, I'm not sure how 'tradition' can be excluded.

Oh, and all of this has implications for Erics thoughts on LXX vs MT, but I've run out of time. I recommend Childs' Biblical Theology.

 
At 1/15/2008 7:57 PM, Blogger Phil Sumpter said...

This is a rather long quote, but I'm writing an essay on the subject so please forgive me if I seem over-keen. Barth says things far more eloquently than I, so here's a quote on the nature of the Gospel as a reality other than the text which has implications for how we read the text. The word "one" is important, given the diversity of the texts of the Bible. I find the quote beautiful, so I hope it can ease the aching bones Mr Tilling mentioned in his most recent post:

“The object of theological science in all its disciplines is the work and word of God in all their fullness, but in their fullness they are also the one work and word of God. This work and word are Jesus Christ, the one who was crowned as king of the Jews and Saviour of the world, who represents the one God among men and and man before the one God. He is the one servant and Lord who was expected, who arrived, and is now truly expected. Oriented to him who is its starting point and its goal, theological knowledge becomes a knowledge that articulates the unity of the manifold.”

As such,

“The intellectus fidei is engaged in gathering, although it abstains from equalizing, stereotyping, or identifying. While it gives every point of the circumference its special due, it brings together all parts from their own individual centers to their common center. ... In the theological act of knowledge, seeing is doubtless an attentive and exact gaze toward one or another special form of the object; as such, it is also sight that views one form together with the others. What is decisive is that it is an insight into the one object which presents itself now in this, now in that, form, or an insight into one particular form which has become a form of the one object. In the act of theological knowledge, every view, insight, and vision is attentively and accurately concentrated on this or that form. But also a syn-opsis, a seeing together of different forms, takes place. And finally, above all, each form is discovered to be a form of the one object. This is the sense of biblical exegesis, as well as the stocktaking and analysis known as Church history, or the history of dogmatics or theology.” Barth, Evangelical Theology, 88—89; orig. 98—99.

 
At 1/16/2008 2:48 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Blogger Jason Pratt said...
Sorry, Anon. Technical theology is being occurred. {g}

Thanks for clearing it up...I thought it was babble.

 
At 2/05/2008 11:56 AM, Blogger Phil Sumpter said...

I've brought this issue in relation to the Emmaus Road story here.

 

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