Too Much Bible?
28 September 2005 by Gil
I’m still trying to recover from a Hauerwas quote that has lodged itself in my brain. He says, “The single most important task of the church today is to get the Bible out of the hands of individual Christians.” My Biblical Theology class batted that question around for over an hour last week prior to heading down to Regina. The quote sounds ridiculous on first glance. How could getting the Bible out of the hands of Christians be a good thing?
Basically he’s reacting to two observations:
- North American Christianity is more ‘biblically literate’ than any other generation of Christians that have gone before us. I use that phrase carefully. I do not mean that we understand the Bible better than other generations, I mean that we have more access to the Bible than earlier generations. Every Christian has a Bible or could have one if they wanted one.
- North American Christianity (as a rule) does not exhibit the level of transformation we should expect if simple ‘access to the Bible’ was the solution to our problems.
His basic idea is that the Bible needs to be read in the context of committed discipleship within the church. He’s essentially saying that the Bible makes no sense outside of a prior commitment to the church, therefore the answer is not all of us reading our Bibles individually but all of us standing under the authority (to use a dirty word) of the church. People will object to how ‘authoritarian’ this sounds (like a return to Catholicism for those of us in the Protestant tradition). But Hauerwas rightly points out that the way we think about and read Scripture is deeply influenced by our democratic way of understanding the world. Just as each citizen gets an equally weighted vote, so each church member gets to read an interpret Scripture, whether or not they live lives that demonstrate any kind of lasting commitment to Christ.
Not sure I buy all these arguments but I think he’s on to something. The answer isn’t just more Bible reading, it is something deeper.
I think he might be RIGHT! :O … the difference is that I belive the community hermenutics is the ideal, but i do understand the problems within that theory, as that idea gives everyone a say and vote, which sometimes can be dangerous…
Would this actually be an attempt to ban books from certain types of people, or am I way off base here?
I’m also curious about what kind of qualifications would be stated for the purpose of recognizing who’s in and who’s out of this circle of bible interpreters.
thank you jerry i was just feeling a slight breeze from the motion of the pendulum…
Yes I think the case may be a bit overstated here. There’s certainly no desire to ‘ban books’ or anything else like that. Jerry you ask a good question about who gets to interpret. That would be the big weakness in Hauerwas’s argument here. When is a person ’sufficiently transformed’? When can a person be trusted with the Bible? I agree the pendulum is swinging here but I think most of our churches could use a little pull in that direction.
But would you or Stanley want “a little pull” in this direction if someone else suggested you couldn’t be “trusted with the bible” before (or after) considering yourselves ’sufficiently transformed’?
Hmmmm, i like where this is going. If I am understanding Hauerwas correctly, he is not only making his point around the ability of someone’s interpretation but also, and perhaps mainly, his/her individuality.
In every case of every book in the Bible, it was written for public hearing or used that way before the canon was formed. I still think Hauerwas is making a good point, why does individual interpretation seem to take precedence in North American churches over community interpretation.
But perhaps what Jerry will say next has something to do with this being “good in theory” but he has never seen it happen. Well, I don’t think I have either, and so point taken. But why are we not trying?
I would agree with Jeff…and illuminate my first post, that interpretation is the issue, not people reading scripture. So who decides: pope, pastor, professor? well we all know not Dale
But i would stress community interpretation, using the witness and guidance of the church through time. Is this to vague…probably…Dale I am kidding!
Ya, Jeff. Why is there no attempt? I’ve been wondering if it’s because exegetical scholarship has been used to exclude all other perspectives (whatever the spiritual maturity level) in the church.
Is there no room for anybody in the church to add a personal interpretation to put alongside the exegetical one? Or is there absolutely no benefit for others and oneself to explore in this way?
Has the fear of heresy limited our freedom to express outwardly, within the church, our personal thoughts and feelings about the biblical text? however crazy they may sound? Or is this too difficult for the group/community to discuss such a diverse exploration of scripture?
I agree there is a risk with how we decide who gets to interpret. Ultimately the answer is (as you say Paul) some kind of a community hermeneutic. The possibility of abuse increases when one voice dominates. The problem is we all know that not everyone interprets the Bible well.
What Hauerwas challenges me to see is that the Bible belongs to the church (as a gift from God of course). The church interprets and the church interprets FOR THE PURPOSE OF changed lives.
okay fine if interpretation is strictly a human function and we belive in no divine intervention in the interpretation process than we can debate the individual vs. the community till the snow stops falling in hepburn. and by the way i should say…
Jeff, i’m guessing that the reason this community interpretation does not work is that our ‘communities’ (churches) are often little more than exclusive clubs where we have taken the liberty to decide who is in and who is out.
what is clear is that intrepretation is not a strictly human function. scripture shows that God is not restricted in the method he chooses for revealing himself to mankind. our attempt to put confines on how he chooses to reveal himself leads to our own arrogance.
Another problem is our incresing sense that we are the climax of knowledge and wisdom. this has little to do in my view with individual vs. other ways of interpretation but more about our own selfish desire to construct a God in our own image. It bothers me that we would use this kind of thinking to further our perverse practice of exclusion in our churches. and it bothers me that we have become so glib and careless in our own personal versions of the Bible. (I predict that the next tech break through will be some form of self interpretation of the Bible software.) That said but i don’t think that’s the point at all. Does truth defend itself? Does God reveal himself in his own way? Does Paul know how to suck me into a comment?
What’s with all this pickling going on?
Anyways, Pickled Seminarian, I don’t understand why you think truth needs to “defend itself”. And I think God did “reveal himself in his own way” through Jesus.
I would like to step in and say that while I do agree with Stanley that we as North American Christians do not exhibit “The level of transformation we should expect.” And I agree that the Bible does need to be read within the context of a committed group of disciples (or a hermeneutical community to use a big fancy Bible school word). However, I think that there is a fatal flaw in the whole concept. Jeffery said, “In every case of every book in the Bible, it was written for public hearing or used that way before the canon was formed.” However this public interpretation still led to inaction and apathy on the part of the nation of Israel. If Interpretation in a hermeneutical community is going to lead people to level of transformation that God is pleased with, then the Pharisees would have been right on track. However, their actions were still in desperate need of being changed. I think before we let the pendulum swing too far back we need to remember that our past is also full of apathetic untransformed, sinners, who are doing their best to know Christ.
well i would pressume to think that the process of interpretation is a discipline to discover truth. If we think that ultimate truth resides in the very nature of God and not in the subjective whims of human beings either collectively or individually, then our role no longer becomes discovery and defense of truth (especially from our own finite perspective) but really more about getting know God in a participatory relationship. we have made truth into a science project that requires these fantastic specific skills and environmental conditions but when you look at scripture - that stuff never made difference to God. When he wanted to reveal truth he just did it. and He made sure we got it whether it was through the arrival of his son as you mentioned, through an ass, or through a burning bush. Through disciples cloistered away in prayer and fasting and individually on the road to damascus. I’m just saying this community vs individual arguement is really not what we should be talking about - cause it’s not the point. so if Gil or anyone wants to drag us one way or the other great but i think the fact that it’s about community vs. the individual points to how humanistic we are in all of this.
blah blah blah
Jesus…
What’s the difference between “discovering truth” and “getting to know God in a participatory relationship?”
I think this might be contradictory, at least for me, because I usually discover truth in my participatory relationship with God. Is there something I am missing here?
I had an unrelated question about Hauerwas…. What did he mean when he said something about that “the dea could be reconciled to eachother”… It was in his talk about war and such. Just throwing it out there. Maybe you guys can explain what he meant.
Dale,
I would hope that we would expect SOMETHING in the way of divine intervention in our interpretation of the bible. But the brutal fact is that we all know examples of people horribly misusing scripture in order to validate their own agenda. That is the value of the community, to guard against something like that.
If I understand you right you are saying that the point is not to ‘learn the facts about God’, the point is to know God. This I agree with wholeheartedly. But Jeff’s point is well taken as well. I have found myself ‘getting to know God’ during times when I have learned more about him (even in an abstract sense). The two have to go together.
In the words of a book I’m reading: “No matter how much you love theology, it will never love you back.”
for my answer i will welcome you to my own blog…
[...] wondered about this in the past, particularly in light of Stanley Hauerwas’ inflammatory words on the subject. I am not disputing the authority of the Bible over the practice of the church. The [...]