Scripture

An Argument Against Academic Elitism from a Young Academic

~ Jessica Parks ~ 5 Comments

This is not to discredit biblical scholars and theologians with academic training–these are, after all, the people I look up to as a young scholar. There is obviously a very real benefit to formal scholastic training when it comes to biblical interpretation. If I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t have spent the last decade in an academic setting learning from biblical scholars and theologians shelling out tens of thousands of dollars to do so. I am speaking as an academic (a baby though I might be). However much credibility a Bachelors degree in Biblical Languages and Christianity, a Master’s degree in Biblical Languages, and 15 additional graduate hours in Theological Studies with a half-written thesis might give me, I am speaking as one how has academic training. And from this perspective I still argue that academics do not have a monopoly on the biblical texts. There is no room for academic elitism when it comes to reading the scared scriptures; the spirit of elitism does not exist alongside the Holy Spirit and the work the Spirit does in whom the Spirit desires. So, while formal scholastic training is beneficial to the individual reader of scripture, the lack thereof does not automatically disqualify one from the ability to grasp the biblical texts nor should it automatically disqualify one’s contributions to a discussion or argument or whatever.

Does not the Holy Spirit play the primary role in our ability to read and understand the scriptures?

Despite what some might assume, I would not argue that any and every interpretation is credible. For one, I prefer the language used in theological interpretation of “better” readings rather than correct or accurate. I might even differentiate between plausible and implausible readings. Furthermore, I am not arguing that the best way to read the Bible is alone in isolation with just you and the Holy Spirit. To the contrary, I actually believe that to read Scripture well we need to read it in conversation with tradition and with the church, not alone in a vacuum.

What I ultimately take issue with is the idea that someone can automatically be disqualified not based on their arguments and/or methods, but on their pedigree or lack thereof. This is a shame, it reeks of academic elitism and arrogance, and does not take into account the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the individual believer as well as the wide access we have to information today.

A PhD does not guarantee someone is a good reader of scripture. Unless you’re N.T. Wright, of course.

– Jessica Parks (written in 2015)

 

‘Soul-Starving Tendencies’

~ Chad Chambers ~ Leave a comment

One of the great dangers in (academically studying) theology is making our faith something we discuss rather than something that moves us. We lapse into this problem when we treat God as the mere object of the study rather than as the Lord we worship. Helmut Thielicke exposed this temptation in his delightful book ‘A Little Exercise for Young Theologians.’ He noticed that students of theology often developed soul-starving tendencies, such as the shift from reading the Bible in the ‘second person’ to the ‘third person,’ from seeing that it addresses them personally to treating it as an impersonal system of thought. ‘The transition from one to the other level of thought, from a personal relationship with God to a merely technical reference, usually is exactly synchronized with the moment that I no longer can read the word of Holy Scripture as a word to me, but only as the object of exegetical endeavors.’ Reading Scripture merely to to look for doctrinal proof texts or sermon illustrations, rather than as the blazing Word which is alive and active, kills our spirit. We should not ignore abuses of interpretation or neglect important hermeneutical practices, but at its most fundamental level, Scripture is God’s voice to his people, and by his Spirit we encounter a living, rather than a dead, letter.

Kelly M. Kapic ‘A Little Book for New Theologians’ (64-65)

The man who hunts ducks out on the weekends.

~ Jimmy Parks ~ Leave a comment

In my last post I introduced construction grammar with the help of Benjamin Bergen and his book Louder than Words. Bergen’s book, as a reminder, is an introduction to the way humans process language. In this post I want to jump to the next chapter in Bergen’s work (chapter 6) where he discusses the cause and effect of real time language processing.

Did you know that you and I can only take in language one piece of information (syllable, letter, word, etc.) at a time? I guess I knew this–it’s an observable fact. But, I never really thought about it until I started reading up on Information Structure.  Information Structure, or IS, is the interaction of pragmatics and syntax. Bergen’s work deals, not with IS, but with processes that our brains go through as we encounter language in real time.

The big idea is that there are limitations on our ability to process language due to our uptake capacity. Whenever we read or hear language we can only take it in as the string of words and sentences that it is. Our eyes have to pass over each word on down the line as we read, and our ears have to hear each syllable as it is spoken. There’s no way to mass download language. Say it ain’t so, Morpheus! This means we hear some words before others and that we can, potentially, read a bunch of words before we get the complete idea of a sentence.

The way our brains deal with this limitation is to try and figure out the whole sentence as soon as we start getting the pieces. We don’t wait to get all the words of a sentence and then process it. We process “incrementally,” making best guesses, and updating as we get more information. The process is like informed guess work where we start off with very little, but continually update as we take in–that is, read or hear–the string of language.

Since we put together sentences incrementally by making informed guesses, we have the ability to make mistakes and have to reevaluate language as we get more input. Bergen provides a few example sentences, designed to be unpredictable, called “garden path sentences” which prove this point.

(1) Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
(2) The lawyer cross-examined by the prosecutor confessed.
(3) The horse raced past the barn fell.
(4) The old man the boat.

These examples trip us up because there are pieces that we analyze one way (‘raced’ in (3) as a verb) which end up needing to be reanalyzed (the verb in (3) is ‘fell’… ‘raced’ is a passive participle modifying the noun ‘horse’). Because we guess at what a sentence will be as we encounter each word, we build expectations of what the entire sentence will be as we process it. When we run into something that doesn’t match what we expect to come next, if it doesn’t fit the guessed pattern, we have to go back and reevaluate everything that we have taken in.

This phenomena is not limited to English, or to modern languages. It even happens in scripture.  I would like to look at an example from the book of James which uses this very phenomena on purpose.

James 1:2
Πᾶσαν χαρὰν ἡγήσασθε, ἀδελφοί μου, ὅταν πειρασμοῖς περιπέσητε ποικίλοις,

Consider it all joy, my siblings, when you encounter various trials

The word order of the original greek is extremely important here (as if it’s not important everywhere!). In fact, the word order is actually what creates the effect that I want to look at. Now, I am not talking about information structure. I only want to look at the expectations that are created by incremental processing. The very first words that we encounter are πᾶσαν χαρὰν (all/complete joy) which is followed by the verb ἡγήσασθε (BDAG sense 2: to think/consider). Next is a phrase directed directly to the audience (ἀδελφοί μου my siblings). Last of all is the subordinate clause ὅταν πειρασμοῖς περιπέσητε ποικίλοις (whenever you fall among various trials).

The noun phrase πᾶσαν χαρὰν (all/complete joy) is first in the sentence, and that doesn’t provide a whole lot to go off of for a reader or hearer. Being a Greek reader–I am assuming the intended readers of James held fluency in Koine and could read Greek in the same manner that you and I can read English–the reader’s mind is constrained to start filling in some of the empty information. The reader knows that this is probably the object of a verb since it is in the accusative case. So, somebody or something is doing some action where complete joy is the direct object.

Next comes ἡγήσασθε. Now the reader knows who is doing the action (s/he is), and what is being done (s/he is being commanded to ‘consider’ something). ἡγέομαι is a verb that takes two accusative nouns. In my last post I used English examples of the ditransitive construction. That construction can be divided into two patterns. The first indicates that one object noun is changing possession from the subject to the second object noun.

(5) John sent his landlord the check.

The second indicates that there is a predication between the two object nouns.

(6a) I found the guard sleeping
(6b) The guard is sleeping, and I found him.

(7a) We painted the room red.
(7b) The room is red because we painted it.

ἡγέομαι follows this second pattern. It takes two accusative nouns, and indicates that there is a predication between them. Phillipians provides several examples of this pattern and ἡγέομαι.

Phil 3:7
[Ἀλλὰ] ἅτινα ἦν μοι κέρδη, ταῦτα ἥγημαι διὰ τὸν Χριστὸν ζημίαν.
Yet, whatever gains I had, I consider these things loss because of Christ.

Here there is a a predication between ταῦτα and ζημίαν. “I consider these things to be loss.”

What we have so far in James 1:2 is, “Consider ____ complete joy.” There is only one noun phrase mentioned. We learned from Bergen that a reader will fill in these sorts of gaps with something that s/he thinks fits this space while reading. We don’t wait until we have all the information to put things together. We build with what we have and fill in the gaps with what we expect to fit until we come to that information.

No one knows what the first readers of James would fill in here, but if I was filling in the gap, I may think something like, “consider waffles complete joy”, “consider knowing Jesus complete joy”, “consider the love of God complete joy”, and so on. The presence of πᾶσαν χαρὰν constrains the reader to consider something, well, joyful! The reader will naturally fill in this space with something that they consider joyful. This builds an expectation for what is coming, and when it comes the reader is going to be befuddled.

But the reader has to wait to fill in the missing piece. James doesn’t fill in the gap immediately. What comes next in this string of words is a phrase addressing the audience directly, ἀδελφοί μου. Because this is the next set of words in the sentence, the reader has no choice but to continue to guess at what s/he is to consider total joy. The vocative phrase adds nothing new to the sentence, it only serves to delay the reader.

What fills the space in James 1:2 is the subordinate clause ὅταν πειρασμοῖς περιπέσητε ποικίλοις (whenever you  meet trials of various kinds). Wow! I wasn’t expecting that. And I’m willing to bet that the first readers weren’t expecting that either. Who would? To consider all kinds of trials to be total joy is counter intuitive. Trials and joy don’t go together…usually. But that is what James wants the readers to think. And as if the thought itself wasn’t dramatic enough, he uses the readers own expectations of what is joyful to add more effect to the command.

Had you ever thought about the limitations of language uptake and the way it affected meaning? It is something that I find fascinating, and hopefully I have demonstrated that it is useful in the study of scripture as well. I would love to go through other passages where this sort of devise is being used. If you have come across one please let me know.

Thomas Aquinas – Doctrine of Scripture III

~ Chad Chambers ~ 2 Comments

For me, the doctrine of Scripture (what one believes about the nature of scripture) is the most fascinating topic in Christian theology. I enjoy reading contemporary works on the subject but I find that I most identify with ‘older’ works where the debate does not center on defining, qualifying, accepting, rejecting inerrancy and/or infallibility. Therefore, over a series of posts I am going to examine doctrines of Scripture found in various ‘older’ writings.

Up first: Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica (Book 1, Question 1, Articles 1-10). The first two post looks at his view of the divine nature of Scripture, the connection of reason and faith, and metaphors. This third and final post examines his thoughts on plurality in Scripture.

A third aspect of Aquinas’ methodology influenced by his doctrine of Scripture is that since all parts of Scripture work together to fulfill God’s designed purpose they are unified, but not univocal.  Aquinas’ concept of unity draws upon his complex understanding of the literal sense of Scripture.  At first glance, his understanding of the literal sense seems to fall in line with the Augustinian tradition.  For example, he writes, “Thus in Holy Writ no confusion results, for all the senses[1] are founded on one – the literal – from which alone can any argument be drawn, and not from those intended to allegory” (1.1.10).  Yet, one must be careful to clarify what he means by the term literal sense.  For Aquinas, the literal sense of Scripture is related to the intention of the author.  On the one hand, the human author may have intended the words to refer to a historical fact or a material reality.  On the other hand, since God is the ultimate author of Scripture it can have several senses or meanings.  He states, “Since the literal sense is that which the author intends, and since the author of Holy Writ is God, Who by one act comprehends all things by His intellect, it is not unfitting…if, even according to the literal sense, one word in Holy Writ should have several senses” (1.1.10).  Consequently, the literal sense of Scripture, for Aquinas, can entail all four aspects of the medieval four-fold sense of Scripture depending on the intended purpose of the author, who is ultimately God.

In effect, it is precisely because Scripture “derives its certitude from the light of divine knowledge” (1.1.5) that Aquinas finds it inevitably multi-vocal.  God, whom is beyond human capacity to understand, cannot be defined plainly and as a result, Aquinas anticipates a passage will have a multitude of meanings, even on a literal level.  Thus, his understanding of Scripture as unified in purpose does not mean that Scripture is singular in meaning or that each word, verse or passage has one true meaning.  Instead, Scripture’s unity is found in that it has many meanings and through the power and purposes of God, they do “not produce equivocation or any other kind of multiplicity” (1.1.10).

[1] The Medieval period had a fourfold sense of Scripture.  The literal sense was simply the meaning of the word or its historical sense.  The spiritual sense of Scripture was subdivided into three categories: typological or allegorical sense, the tropological or moral sense, and the anagogical or eschatological sense.

Thomas Aquinas – Doctrine of Scripture II

~ Chad Chambers ~ 1 Comment

For me, the doctrine of Scripture (what one believes about the nature of scripture) is the most fascinating topic in Christian theology. I enjoy reading contemporary works on the subject but I find that I most identify with ‘older’ works where the debate does not center on defining, qualifying, accepting, rejecting inerrancy and/or infallibility. Therefore, over a series of posts I am going to examine doctrines of Scripture found in various ‘older’ writings.

Up first: Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica (Book 1, Question 1, Articles 1-10). The first post (here) looked at his view of the divine nature of Scripture and the connection of reason and faith. This post considers Aquinas’ thoughts on metaphors and the next one will look at his view on plurality in Scripture.

A second aspect of Aquinas’ methodology influenced by his doctrine of Scripture is his interpretation of scriptural metaphors as God’s deliberate means to communicate truth.  Scripture is God’s self-revelation and Aquinas states, “Sacred science is established on principles revealed by God” (1.1.2).  He is alluding to the fact that Scripture is based on premises self-evident only to God and the blessed[1] (1.1.2).  Nevertheless, God designed Scripture to reveal himself to humanity.  In other words, the very purpose of Scripture is to teach the truths necessary for salvation to humanity so it must be understandable to mankind if it is to be effective; it must act in accord with God’s designed purpose.

In order for Scripture to accomplish its central purpose, Aquinas believes God must accommodate himself in Scripture to humanity’s level of understanding, or as Aquinas writes, “according to the capacity of our nature” (1.1.9).  Therefore, since humankind naturally learns through external senses (1.1.9) Aquinas determines “it is befitting Holy Writ to put forward divine and spiritual truths by means of comparisons with material things” (1.1.9).  Thus, Scripture’s use of metaphors is not unbecoming of its intent rather it is fitting with its purpose of revealing God.  Aquinas asserts, however, metaphorical readings must be governed so that one can judge between acceptable and unacceptable meanings.  In this regard, he says that everything Scripture teaches metaphorically is elsewhere in Scripture taught more openly (1.1.9).[2]  Here again, Aquinas’ doctrine of Scripture, as divinely authored with a purpose, influences his methods of interpreting Scripture and accordingly, he treats metaphors not as barriers to truth but as a fitting channel through which God communicates His truth to mankind.

[1] “The blessed” are those who have seen God face to face.  Thus, knowledge of God is no longer veiled but fully discovered.

[2] This alludes to another aspect of Thomas’ methodology for interpreting Scripture, namely that Scripture interprets Scripture.  Even though he does not stress this in certain terms within his Summa Theologica it becomes self evident when one studies his exegetical works.