Below is a brief assessment of missional hermeneutics in light of current interpretive practices. This is only a sketch but I trust that it will be helpful as a conversation starter.
Spiritual Formation/Lectio Divina/Premodern
Most people in our churches
read the Bible as a personal Spiritual formation primer.
Contributions of Spiritual Formation reading:
Empowers people to read the
Scriptures for themselves
Assumes the on-going
applicability of Scripture
Assumes that God continues to
speak through the Holy Scriptures
Protestantism at its
best—people encountering the Scriptures on their own in their own tongue
Problems:
Some readings do not survive
a careful reading of the context.
Self-referential. It is
personal.
Often Christendom based
rather than missionally aware.
Authority of text is rooted
primarily in the reader.
Historical Criticism
Historical criticism (a.k.a.
the historical-critical method) has long dominated biblical studies. Historical criticism brings an agenda to the
biblical text driven by Enlightenment historicism (most recently by a
philosophical positivism). Historical
critical approaches focus primarily on understanding biblical texts in light of
a reconstruction of the world that
produced the text. Thus, historical
criticism focuses its reading practices on answering questions such as: Who was
the author(s)? What sources were used in
the writing of the text? What was the
date of composition? Who were the
original recipients of the text?
Contributions:
Understanding the historical
context of a text serves as a guide to interpretation.
Demonstrated the diversity of
the biblical materials
Advances in understanding of
ancient languages and culture
Advances in understanding the
rhetoric of the Bible
Problems:
The rise of postmodern
critics of the Enlightenment have pointed out the naivety of its claims to objectivity.
Lessing’s “Ugly ditch”:
German thinker Lessing pointed out in the 18th century a fundamental
problem for those engaged in historical criticism in support of the theological
enterprise of the church. The problem as
he saw it may be stated in this manner: How
can contingent truths, i.e., the possible truths found through the tools of
historical analysis be used as the basis for the absolute truth claims of
Theology?
How does one move from a
historical analysis of a text to a theological reading of the text for
contemporary communities of faith? Pastors trained primarily in the tools of
historical criticism have struggled for centuries with how to make this
leap. This has lead to a major problem
with historical criticism—its results have not shown the ability to nourish and
sustain communities of faith.
Authority is rooted in a
hypothetical reconstruction of the world and/or author who produced the text
rather than the text itself.
Readings on the Margins: Postmodern
Critiques
In the last decades of the 20th
century, interpretive voices from previously marginalized communities began to
be heard. Biblical studies have long
been dominated by male scholars from Western Europe and the United States. In
the present milieu, the voices of women, non-Westerns, feminists,
liberationists as well as others have joined the academy.
Contributions:
Demonstrated the importance
of recognizing the social location of
the reader in understanding Scripture
Challenged the hegemony of
historical criticism, especially as practiced by white Europeans
Pointed out biases of other
readings
Emphasis on the role of
Scripture in shaping contemporary expressions of faith
Problems:
Self-referential in terms of
denying the possibility of critique by outsiders
Readings can be highly ideological
(though admittedly all reading find their root in some ideological or
theological commitment)
Elevates the experiences of
groups and sub-groups over the claims of the text itself. Thus, its conclusions
are just as fragmentary as the results of historical criticism.
Authority is rooted in the
experiences of marginalized persons.
How does a missional reading relate to and engage
these forms of reading?
1) A missional hermeneutic (MH)
does not deny the diversity of
Scripture which the historical-critical enterprise has made evident. A MH does not attempt to harmonize or ignore
the diverse viewpoints within the Scriptures.
Instead, the diversity of Scripture is understood in light of the
overarching mission of God. Mission is
the common thread that unites the Old and New Testaments into the Christian
Bible. Seeing the Big Picture is
essential for understanding the Holy Scriptures. This is not a call for a harmonizing hermeneutic that erases tensions within the Canon.[1] Rather the differing voices in Scripture
point to the missional dimension of
the Canon. Beeby argues that “mission
rarely occurs without conflict.”[2] Tensions within Scripture serve to call the
people of God in various contexts to live as faithful witnesses. Different times, contexts, and cultures call
for different emphases. Beeby writes:
This
biblical parliament includes wisdom books which differ greatly from the
prophets. Within wisdom Job does not
agree with Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes is out of tune with almost
everybody. The prophets include Jeremiah
and Isaiah who concur on much but differ considerably…No wonder that some deny
to [Scripture] any unity. But it has a
unity: a unity in tension, a harmony of conflicting forces that can speak to
all sorts and conditions of humanity, in all sorts and conditions of human joy
and anguish. At times we must hear one
voice more than others. In affluence we
must hear the vocation to poverty, in strength we must be conscious of the
power of weakness; severity must temper goodness and law nourish grace lest it
become cheap.[3]
Think about some of the more
famous tensions in Scripture: differences in created order in Genesis 1:1-2:3
and 2:4-25 or the different perspectives on faith and works found in Paul’s
letter to Galatians and the writings of James.
Does not reading these in the larger framework of God’s mission place
the relationship of these texts in a new light?
Rather than seeing the Bible as hopelessly diverse, an emphasis on the mission of God serves as the light that
brings out of the true beauty and unity of the kaleidoscope of Scripture.
2) A missional hermeneutic
focuses on reading the Bible as an invitation to outsiders. Part of this involves the active engagement
of the world with the message of Scripture.
We listen to the critiques and criticisms of men and women not
defensively or argumentatively but as an avenue for bringing the Scriptures
into conversation with lost persons. We
assume a “faith seeking understanding” stance of humility. This is not a denial of the trustworthiness
of Scripture, but instead a profound confidence in God’s word.
3) By reading the Bible as an
invitation to conversion, a missional
hermeneutic alleviates some of the risk of a self–referential treatment of
Scripture. The Bible invites its readers
to understand and find themselves in terms of its narrative and its story
rather than their own. The call of the Scripture is to live for something
larger than the self, i.e., the mission of God. The text itself becomes a canvas. Authority derives from the
ability to make sense of the discrete data of the text rather than in the reconstruction
of the world behind the text (historical criticism) or in reader’s personal
experience.
4) A missional hermeneutic is
an advocacy hermeneutic like a postmodern hermeneutic in the sense that the social location of the reader is taken
seriously. A MH assumes that the Church
exists for the sake of the mission of God.
Since the Scriptures are the story of God’s mission, a reader participating
in God’s mission in the 21st century shares some common ground with
God’s people in the Scriptures. In other
words, if as a missional approach suggests Scripture is the story of God’s
mission and the participation of God’s people in it, then a contemporary
community of faith that consciously defines itself in terms of God’s mission
and acts on it stands in continuity with original readers/recipients of the
text. Gruder describes this in terms of
the New Testament materials in his essay, “Missional Pastors in Maintenance
Churches”:
“Missional hermeneutics” is a way of interpreting
Scripture that starts from the assumption that the NT communities were all
founded in order to continue the apostolic witness that brought them into
being. Every NT congregation understood itself under the mandate of our Lord at
his ascension: “You shall be my witnesses.” The work of apostolic witness was
not only to proclaim the gospel of salvation and to establish congregations of
believers. Their work was not done when there was a community of Christians now
growing in their faith and moving towards its promised outcome, “the salvation
of your souls” (1 Pet 1:9). Their mandate was to found congregations where
their shared experience of God’s saving love equipped them to become witnesses.
They were empowered by the Holy Spirit to spread the word and the evidence of
the gospel of new life and hope, and they did it! To that end, the NT documents
were all, in some way, written to continue the process of formation for that
kind of witness. They intended the continuing conversion of these communities
to their calling—and that is how the Spirit used (and still uses!) these
written testimonies.[4]
5) A missional hermeneutic
shifts the Scriptures from serving as an individualized Spiritual formation
primer to an invitation to participation with the people of God in the mission
of God. Scripture transforms its readers/hearers for mission. Spiritual
formation is not separated from God’s mission to extend God’s blessing to the
nations (Gen 12:3, Exod 19:4–6, Matt 28:18–20, Acts 1:8).
6) A missional hermeneutic is
an approach to Scripture that focuses primarily on the text itself. It is the text that serves as the arbiter of
interpretation. Discovering the artistry
and voice of the world that the text creates is the goal of a MH. However, MH
does not give a blind eye to issues of historical-criticism, but it does not
begin with these. Historical data is
deployed as an aid to reading the text to for its message rather than as an end
in itself. Likewise, as noted above, a
MH does not deny the importance of the reader.
What do you think?
© 2015 Brian D. Russell
[1]For an
excellent study on the diversity within the OT see John Goldingay, Theological Diversity and the Authority of
the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987).
[2]Harry
Daniel Beeby, “A Missional Approach to Renewed Interpretation” in Renewing Biblical Interpretation, eds
Craig Bartholomew, Colin Greene, and Karl Möller (Cumbria and Grand Rapids:
Paternoster and Zondervan, 2000), 279.
[3]Ibid.
[4]“Missional Pastors in Maintenance
Churches” Catalyst 31.3 (2005): 4
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