My intent here is not to say anything about 1 John or inter-religious dialogue, but to address this method of dealing with problem passages.
Every word in the Bible was originally addressed to someone else, to some situation other than our own. This point is probably a truism. But, if this is correct, then one of the tasks of those who accept these texts as normative or relevant for today is to ask how those words from the past can "leap the gap" - to use Richard Hays's phrase - and address very different situations. This leap is necessary not only when the Bible seems foreign and obsolete, but also when it sounds familiar and comforting. This leap is an unavoidable consequence of reading words addressed to someone else as addressed to us. That is, this leap is an unavoidable consequence of having Scripture.
If I'm on the right track, then the otherness of the biblical writer's context cannot, of itself, render a text irrelevant for contemporary questions. The question for those who read the Bible as Scripture is not whether a given biblical author speaks immediately to our situation - they never do. For this reason, I don't see how arguments such as the one mentioned above can avoid special pleading.
I am not saying that historical context is irrelevant for reading the Bible as Scripture. Quite the opposite. I am saying that any attempt to limit the significance of a particular passage to its Sitz im Leben implies that there are some other passages which speak immediately and simply to contemporary situations.
I know what we need. We need a method. A comprehensive method. To explain everything. Let's call it demytholoigization.
ReplyDeleteIf I were more optimistic about our ability to separate the kernel from the husk I would agree.
ReplyDeleteNathan, I think you're obviously right that the Bible's authors did not write with us in mind. But the point of a present day reader invoking a different historical context for the writer and for us is not always just to say, "that was then, and this is now," and that's enough of a difference to limit the text's meaning to "back then." If one highlights the specific ways that our context is not analogous with the context of the author and his audience, such an argument need not involve special pleading. But you're right: a simple, blanket claim of present non-applicability purely on the basis of a text's referring to a different place and time leads to problems of special pleading elsewhere. Good readings of Scripture demand more careful analysis of history in order to make the connections between the text's context and our own, and to make appropriate disconnections as well.
ReplyDeleteI think I agree with you, Celia. I would only add that disanalogy cannot, of itself, entail the inapplicability of a passage because every biblical context is disanalogous from every contemporary context (disanalogy being a necessary element of every analogy). Thus, I would argue that one must do more than highlight specific ways in which our context is disanalogous with the context of a biblical author if one wishes to demonstrate the inapplicability of a passage without special pleading – after all, specific disanalogies exist in every possible case.
ReplyDeleteYes, specific disanalogies exist in every possible case, and the point of noting what they are may be to show *how* a text speaks differently now than it did originally, not necessarily that it doesn't address our current context at all. Disanalogy shouldn't be grounds to dismiss a text as irrelevant; rather, disanalogy should serve the "translation" every text for a new context.
ReplyDeleteWhy is this blog on Pacific time?
ReplyDeleteI agree.
ReplyDeleteI don't know why it's on Pacific time.
A lecture by E. P. Sanders at Villanova, just posted on Goodacre's blog, presents one quite specific approach to historical context and the question of its constraint upon modern appropriation. It's vintage Sanders...
ReplyDeleteBWIII just made a similar move in his recent blog post Why Arguments against Women in Ministry Aren't Biblical (Oct. 25, 2009) in his analysis of 1 Cor 14.33b-36 and 1 Tim 2.8-15.
ReplyDeleteI could not figure out the exegetical basis for his particularization of these verses and his generalization of friendlier other verses.