Edmund Mackey:
A critical essay on:
An aspect of recent biblical scholarship that challenges current practice in the teaching of the Bible in a school context.
Edmund, a high school teacher in Hobart (Tasmania), wrote this article focussing “only on the interpretational section” of the document for a Grad. Certificate course.
Introduction and Preliminary Comments
This essay examines Pope Benedict XVI's apostolic exhortation, Verbum Domini, released on September 30 2010, the Feast of St Jerome (patron saint of scripture scholars). The document synthesizes and enlarges on the findings of the 2008 Synod of Catholic Bishops. The release of the 200 page Verbum Domini marks an historic moment, being the first major papal Biblical document in 58 years, and named as ‘the most important [Church] document on Scripture’ since the Second Vatican Council’s Dei Verbum 45 years ago (Rosica, 2010, online).
Although it is a Catholic document, composed by the first Bible theologian to be elected a pope, a perusal of websites of non-Catholic Christian denominations reveals Verbum Domini to have been overwhelmingly well received and welcomed—although with reservations towards such distinctively Catholic elements as the tri-partite foundation of Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium, and to definitions of the Eucharist. Fr Rosica, press attaché at the Synod, contends that the Exhortation ‘offers a deep sense of unity, urgency, relevance and spirituality to the Church today, and not only to the Roman Catholic Church’. ‘It is a document that will be of great assistance to Christian Churches who have the Word of God at the center of their life’ (ibid.). Verbum Domini includes a section entitled The Bible and Ecumenism [46][1] and the Pope addresses numerous themes of a non-denominational nature. He also appeals beyond the Catholic fold: ‘I remind all Christians that our personal and communal relationship with God depends on our growing familiarity with the word of God’. [124].
Moreover, the aforementioned Synod also included the first ever address to such a gathering by a Jew—Chief Rabbi Cohen, who explained the role of Scripture in the Jewish faith. Verbum Domini continues this dialogue by acknowledging Jews and Christians as brothers and sisters ‘in the faith of Abraham, our Patriarch’ and includes sections that examine The Relationship Between the Old and the New Testaments [40-41] and Christians, Jews and the Sacred Scriptures [43]. Elsewhere, it affirms that the roots of Christianity (and its continual nourishment) are found in the Old Testament and denounces any tendencies to Marcionism (the rejection of the Hebrew Bible and the God of Israel). While not disregarding ‘…the instances of discontinuity which the New Testament asserts with regard to the institutions of the Old Testament, much less the fulfilment of the Scriptures in the mystery of Jesus Christ’, Verbum Domini warns against setting the Old Testament in opposition to the New.
Delimitations
Verbum Domini is a comprehensive and complex document. Its quintessentially Catholic themes are not the direct concern of the present study (although they are central to the very thrust of the document). Rather, the aim here is to highlight general principles that will hopefully be of interest and use to teachers and students of the Bible —whatever their denomination or belief. Specifically, the primary focus of this study will be on the section entitled The Interpretation of Sacred Scripture in the Church in connection with the Pope’s stated intention ‘to point out certain fundamental approaches to a rediscovery of God's word’.
The title of this paper borrows a phrase from Verbum Domini that encapsulates the central thesis of Part 1: the ‘Recovery of an Adequate Scriptural Hermeneutic’. The phrase contains two inferences: firstly, the existence of other inadequate biblical hermeneutical (or interpretational) methods; secondly, the capability of realising an approach that is viewed as representing a more comprehensive correspondence between the letter and spirit of the Biblical text and its interpretation. The task will be to identify these various elements and to examine their ramifications for Biblical studies.
Crisis
The Pope names a major theme of the Biblical Synod as being ‘to confront the new challenges which the present time sets before Christian believers’ [3]. Two synod participants have enlarged upon this point.
Regarding the evangelization of today's world, Rosica writes, ‘…we are fully aware of the innumerable obstacles we face in this work due to the extraordinary changes happening at a personal and social level and, above all, to a postmodern culture in serious crisis’ (ibid.).
Synod relator, Cardinal Ouellet, adds that the Church itself is not immune to this very same crisis: ‘The relativization of the Bible, which denies the value of the Word of God, constitutes a genuine crisis that is both external and internal to the Church…It would seem that, in the name of secularism, the Bible must be relativized, to be dissolved in a religious pluralism and disappear as a normative cultural reference’ (2011, online).
In the context of ‘the secularization of the Christian West and of Christianity's identity crisis in pluralist environments’, the Cardinal explains that the 2008 Synod of Bishops was held precisely ‘to confirm the Church's answer’ to the ‘disturbing questions’ that arise from these circumstances: ‘Is Sacred Scripture no more than a human word? Isn't it true that the results of the historical sciences invalidate the biblical testimony and, hence, the credibility of the Church? How can we continue to believe? And, finally, whom should we listen to?’ (ibid.)
A Theological Response
Verbum Domini’s initial movement is a theological, poetic and almost mystical invocation of the Prologue to St John’s Gospel. Part One entitled Verbum Dei: The God who Speaks cites various analogical expressions of ‘the word of God’. These are likened to a symphony of many voices that raise a polyphonic hymn consisting of one word.
‘In the beginning was the word the word was with God, and the word was God.’ Here is described the inner life of the Trinity before creation. The Logos, the eternal Word, is first revealed as ‘begotten of the Father before all ages and consubstantial with him’. Then follows the beginning of history, by the power of that same Word, ‘through whom all things were made’. Creation itself is ‘the liber naturae: the book of nature. God also speaks his word in salvation history; he has made his voice heard; by the power of his Spirit ‘he has spoken through the prophets’’ [18].
But John also relates that the word ‘became flesh’: Jesus Christ, made man. ‘God's word is thus spoken throughout the history of salvation, and most fully in the mystery of the incarnation, death and resurrection of the Son of God’. The culmination of Jesus' mission in the paschal mystery brings us to the ‘word of the cross’ (1 Cor 1:18). ‘The word is muted; it becomes mortal silence, for it has "spoken" exhaustively, holding back nothing of what it had to tell us; God's silence prolongs his earlier words’ [37]. The final note of the symphony, which marks the definitive and complete revelation, is Christ’s command to the apostles to preach his word throughout the earth.2
Next, the inspiration of the scriptures is considered in terms of God speaking in a unique way through the instrument of a fully free human author:
2 Such is the culmination of the “new and everlasting covenant”: Verbum Domini hereby rejects current notions of new or ongoing revelation.
Although the word of God precedes and exceeds sacred Scripture, nonetheless Scripture, as inspired by God, contains the divine word (cf. 2 Tim 3:16) "in an altogether singular way" Sacred Scripture is "the word of God set down in writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit". In this way one recognizes the full importance of the human author who wrote the inspired texts and, at the same time, God himself as the true author. [19]
The Interpretation of Scripture
This brings us to the section that critiques models of scriptural interpretation. God’s Word is not a monologue, but rather a dialogue with humanity which is invited to respond.3 Faith is named as the first requirement in our personal dialogue with the Word: ‘… without faith there is no key to throw open the sacred text’ [84].
But there exist other types of human responses. Among the more specialised of these is theology. Theologians guide others by translating, so to speak, the Word of scripture within the context of the faith. ‘The study of the sacred page should be, as it were, the very soul of theology’ [95]. Detrimental to this theological approach are other exegetical forms that pose new challenges to an adequate interpretation of scripture.
3 Sin is seen as a refusal to hear and respond to this dialogue.
Historical Criticism
The Development of Biblical Studies section addresses two such challenges. In the first place the discussion considers historical-critical exegesis, acknowledging the benefits that this and other recently-developed methods of textual analysis have brought to the life of the Church. The great merit of historical-criticism is cited as being its correspondence with that ‘love for the study of the "letter"’. Hitchcock expounds this ‘crucial scholarly insight’:
One of the great achievements of modern scholarship, now trivialized to the point of caricature by Deconstructionism, has been the realization that it cannot simply be assumed that the texts of the past are immediately accessible to modern minds and that a certain effort is necessary to retrieve authentic meanings. (2005, online)
The historical-critical school is a progressive movement that traces its philosophical roots to the Enlightenment’s exultation of reason over tradition and religious belief. Its first application to the Bible was instanced in the enormously influential Graf-Wellhausen Documentary Hypothesis, whereby the Pentateuch was analysed in terms of the fourfold JEDP theory. This theory has multiplied into a series of related methods which have become firmly entrenched academic norms. Basically, the scheme amounts to a deconstruction of data followed by a reconstruction along highly prescribed guidelines.4
Kugler and Hartin describe the many outcomes of the documentist methodology as ‘daunting in their complexity’ to the lay person.5 The same authors define the theory precisely as an ‘…overarching concern’ to treat texts with attention to ‘two basic angles of vision from which to make sense of the Bible’: those of its “implied and actual authors” and “implied and actual readers” as well as the narrative voices in them’ (2009, cf. pp. 2 & 37).
The Pope welcomes the findings of scientific criticism insofar as it remains within the legitimate limits of its own discipline, but is wary of ‘preconceived opinions that claim to be based on science, but which in reality surreptitiously cause science to depart from its domain’.[102]
It is argued that, when this theory operates without reference to a hermeneutic of faith, there results another secular hermeneutic that impoverishes understanding of the scriptures: ‘According to this hermeneutic, whenever a divine element seems present, it has to be explained in some other way, reducing everything to the human element. This leads to interpretations that deny the historicity of the divine elements’.6 Ouellet elaborates:
…a certain rationalist exegesis has seized the Bible to dissect the different stages and forms of its human composition, eliminating the prodigies and miracles, multiplying the theories and, not infrequently, sowing confusion among the faithful. (, 2005, online)
Consequently, Scripture ends up being a text belonging only to the past: ‘One can draw moral consequences from it, one can learn history, but the Book as such speaks only of the past, and exegesis is no longer truly theological, but becomes pure historiography, history of literature’.
Therefore, the document calls for investigations of the historical elements present in the Bible to be marked by an openness which does not reject a priori anything beyond its own terms of reference. This call is especially valid to critical scholarship, its characteristic philosophy or epistemology being the Kantian tendency to apriorise (Mackey, 2000, p. 29).
4 Wellhausen himself in fact acknowledged that the result of all of this dissecting was ‘an agglomeration of fragments’ (quoted in Wiseman, P.J.,'Clues to Creation in Genesis', 144).
5 The complexity of the theories creates a domain for “experts” but alienates and confuses the uninitiated. Although modern education stresses the tenets of criticism, few students would be able to articulate the fundamentals of a critical approach, and fewer still would dare to question its premises. Even ‘a lack of clarity in the preparation of homilies’ is attributed to the profound gulf that can arise between scientific exegesis and lectio divina.[112].
6 One need only consider the undermining, devastating and discrediting of Genesis of possibly the most contentious part of the Bible Genesis.
Fundamentalism
The fundamentalist approach is a counter-reaction to the extreme scientism of critical scholarship. Verbum Domini critiques Biblical fundamentalism as faith which has lost its proper relationship with right reason and has degenerated into fideism. Therefore, this spiritualist position is presented as a second main challenge to a comprehensive hermeneutic. Fundamentalism is inadequate: while it is a faith response, it fails to fulfil the incarnational paradigm of the Word made flesh whereby the spiritual is manifest in the material and the rational.
Due to its subjective and individualistic nature, fundamentalism has also been classified as an aspect of secularism. Echoing St Paul’s dictum that the letter kills but the Spirit gives life, Synod participant, Cardinal Ouellet explains that, ‘With Biblical fundamentalism material fidelity becomes infidelity to the content’ (2005, online)
Fundamentalism is grounded on the doctrine of sola scriptura (by scripture alone). Yet the Pope makes the quite arresting statement that, “The Christian faith is not a ‘religion of the book’: Christianity is the ‘religion of the word of God,’ not of a ‘written and mute word, but of the incarnate and living Word’” [7]. The logic of this position is exemplified by the fact that fundamentalism relies on a dogma that is itself non-Biblical. (Similarly, the definition of an agreed Biblical canon itself depends on a non-scriptural authority.) Because apparently focused on the spiritual or mystical, the term fundamentalist is often mistakenly applied to those who seek traditional theological interpretations or foundations.
Conclusion
The above sections of Verbum Domini both delineate and reject the human but characteristically modern tendency to compartmentalise reason and science as against faith, theology and religion. ‘Dualism’ is Verbum Domini’s designation of this dichotomist, exclusivist and essentially subjectivist attitude. An exaggerated attempt to interpret all things in terms of a single extreme position tends to the destruction of its opposite. As one summary states: ‘The one group uses reason to destroy faith. The other group uses faith to destroy reason’ (Sammons, 2005, online).
By contrast, Verbum Domini closely follows philosopher Jacques Maritain’s principle of complementarity: distinguish in order to unite.7 Such an inclusivist ideal harmonises disparate elements and holds the entirety in a delicate but comprehensive balance, without rejecting any legitimate contributions:
In this regard we should mention the serious risk nowadays of a dualistic approach to sacred Scripture. To distinguish two levels of approach to the Bible does not in any way mean to separate or oppose them, nor simply to juxtapose them. They exist only in reciprocity. [109]
Unfortunately, a sterile separation sometimes creates a barrier between exegesis and theology, and this ‘occurs even at the highest academic levels’ (ibid.).
7 This is not to be confused with Syncretism (the attempt to unify or reconcile differing schools of thought: Concise Oxford Dictionary) ‘…which would dilute the uniqueness of the Gospel in an attempt to make it more easily accepted’.[368]
Elsewhere, Pope Benedict explained:
"Religion contributes by 'purifying' reason, helping it not to fall prey to distortions, such as manipulation by ideology or partial application that fails to take full account of the dignity of the human person. At the same time, religion likewise recognizes its need for the corrective of reason in order to avoid excesses, such as fundamentalism or sectarianism." (2011, Online)
Finally, the document proposes the methodology of the Church Fathers as a pre-eminent exemplification of the ideals which it has elaborated:
A significant contribution to the recovery of an adequate scriptural hermeneutic, as the synodal assembly stated, can also come from renewed attention to the Fathers of the Church and their exegetical approach. The Church Fathers present a theology that still has great value today because at its heart is the study of sacred Scripture as a whole. [117]
Verbum Domini is more than a restatement of traditional themes. It offers a critique of current positions and a dynamic synthesis of old and new in aspiring to present an exegesis worthy of the Bible. This ambitious work of modern scholarship is deserving of serious attention for its clear exposition of the present state of biblical study. Where it takes issue, it also points the way forward, while focused not on the divisions but on the unity of the Bible.
References:
Benedict XVI. (2010). Verbum Domini: The word of the Lord abides forever. Retrieved from http://www.zenit.org/article-30942?l=english
Hitchcock, J. (2005). The Divine Authority of Scripture vs. the "Hermeneutic of Suspicion".
Kugler, R., and Hartin, P. (2009). An introduction to the Bible. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Erdmans.
Mackey, D (2000). Moses as compiler of Genesis. Sydney: unpublished.
Sammons, E. (2010). Verbum Domini.
Retrieved from http://ephesians4-15.blogspot.com/2010/11/verbum-domini.html
Zenit. (2011). Cardinal Ouellet warns against Bible crisis: Decries threats from inside and outside Church. Retrieved from http://www.zenit.org/article-31692?l=
Zenit. (2011). Pope highlights religion’s need for reason: Encourages journalists in search for“daily truth”. Retrieved from http://www.zenit.org/article-32459?l=english
Zenit. (2010). From the Synod to the Exhoration, Part 1: Interview with Father Rosica on“Verbum Domini”. Retrieved from http://www.zenit.org/article-31038?l=english
Wiseman, P.J. (1977). Clues to creation in Genesis. London : Morgan & Scott.
[1] Disclaimer: Square-bracketed references correspond to the numerous section numbers in Verbum Domini. Unacknowledged single quotation marks also relate to quotes or paraphrases from this document.
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