What Does This Mean?

Returning to Christocentric Reading of Scripture

Throughout the history of Biblical interpretation, alarms have been ringing throughout history concerning the deterioration of Biblical interpretation. You might say Luther was one. Brevard Childs was one such alarm bell who raised a warning when he introduced his canonical approach to interpretation as a means to return to theological interpretation of the Bible.

However, even he could not remove himself from the historical critical methodologies that held sway, holding to a complex redaction model of transmission. Yet, it is refreshing to see Childs interact with the final form of the text. At the very least, through Childs’s canonical approach, a theological unity across books of the Bible is once again accessible. One of Childs’s own students, Christopher Seitz, moved further away from the higher historical methods as he engaged in his own figural interpretation.

Ben Collett another scholar who has called for Biblical interpretation to take a page from the early church and return to a Christological reading of Scripture. As he dedicates his book, Figural Reading the Old Testament, he expresses the hope that figural reading will spring forth again in the land of Origen.

Collett takes the importance of history seriously. However, one needs to understand how he speaks of history, especially when it comes to creation. Collett speaks of a difference between scriptural days and human days. He writes, “Contrary to popular stereotypes of modernity, figural reading is not a non-historical strategy for reading Scripture but a species of historical reading rooted in Scripture’s literal sense.” (Don C. Collett, Figural Reading and the Old Testament, 2) He also argues through the book that “Scripture’s literal sense is not merely an authorial or historical sense but fully embedded within a creational and providential ‘rule’ for reading Scripture’s canonical, final or ‘full’ form.”(Don C. Collett, Figural Reading and the Old Testament, 3).

Rev. Jacob Hercamp
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church
La Grange, MO

Post Modern Reading of Scripture

In Post-Modern Biblical reading, reader-response methodologies have become more and more the norm in Biblical Interpretation. Many Post-modern readers of Scripture would not say interpretation. They are merely readers, or children on the playground that is a text, making up games and rules as they run along.

One reader-response interpreter is Edgar Conrad. For Conrad, there is no meaning outside the text’s present reception. The reality and meaning of the text come into existence the more the reader reads the text. There is no meaning that originates from either a divine author or a human author. Following Stanley Fish, who believes that communities dictate meaning, Conrad works through the book of Isaiah. In so doing, he, as the reader of a particular community, begins to see rhetorical devices that structure the book. However, I should stress that Conrad creates this structure and meaning as he reads. The structure is a creation of the reader, not the text or author.

Other methodologies have been conceived in recent years, holding to the idea that the ‘suppressed’ voices deserve equal representation in the task of interpretation of the Biblical text. This call for equality leads to many ‘readings’ that celebrate queer, feminist, liberation, or other curious agendas. The list of new ideas is extensive because each interpretive reading is just as valid as any other. Deconstructionism has thrown out all of the rules.

Every reader and interpreter are committed to some kind of a worldview. As demonstrated, the postmodern worldview is diametrically opposed to the Christian theistic worldview. Derrida is said to have been opposed to and committed his work toward the deconstruction of the idols of reliability, determinacy, and neutrality. For Derrida, words are never reliable, their meanings are indeterminate, and they are never neutral. This is completely opposed to the Christian theistic worldview, which relies on the Word of Scripture for knowledge.

What is certain in the creation of meaning is the continued reliance upon man’s own reason and abilities. If God is dead, as Nietzsche claimed, and words cannot convey any meaning that go beyond other signs, as Derrida suggests, then it is impossible to find meaning, or it is non-existent altogether. There is no inherent truth, only that which is created subjectively within each independent ‘reader.’ Deconstructionism lifts up every voice equally so that no single voice dominates. This is a return to Babel.

Rev. Jacob Hercamp
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church
La Grange, MO

Jacques Derrida: the Reader Decides What Scripture Means

An important lesson to take away thus far from this large series that started as “Digging into the Old Testament” and has morphed into a Hermeneutics study is the necessity of receiving the Bible as history. Humanity, up to the age of the Enlightenment, effectively stayed beneath Scripture as a student at the feet of a teacher. Scripture had something to teach humanity about God and how He reveals Himself to His creation. As time moved on, a major shift took place. Reason reigned supreme, and even as world events, such as war, raged on and human optimism waned, reason never saw its high ivory tower demolished.

In the age which we currently live, reason has continued to march forward, now to the point that Scripture is effectively irrelevant for daily life. Kevin Vanhoozer diagnoses the problem in his book Is there a Meaning in This Text. He concludes that in today’s landscape, meaning of a text comes from the reader, not the author or the text. While existentialism tried to “transcend nihilism” ( Sire, Universe Next Door, 112 ), the tenets of nihilism claimed victory, and much postmodern thought falls in line. Vanhoozer notes the death of God rang the alarm bells that the author was far behind.

Jacques Derrida is the father of Deconstructionism and possibly the postmodern age. In quick work, Derrida argues that meaning and author are not connected. In fact, there cannot be one correct meaning. Words are only signs that point to more signs, which cannot move beyond or above to some higher meaning. Not even author’s intentions are understood to convey meaning. Instead, meaning is purely subjective. The text becomes a jungle gym for readers to exercise their own creativity. Readers create whatever meaning they desire.

Rev. Jacob Hercamp
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church
La Grange, MO

Christian Existentialism

Very few Christian Existentialists argued for the Bible to be understood as factual history. Thanks to what came before in the time of the Enlightenment, they believed that Biblical history is uncertain and unimportant, yet it stands “as a model or type or myth to be made present and lived is of supreme importance.” (James W. Sire, The Universe Next Door, 139). Christian existentialism lost interest in the facticity of the Bible, and religious implications became the only conclusion that mattered.

The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most important event recorded in the Bible, but many question whether or not Jesus actually rose from the dead at all. Barth believes the resurrection of Jesus took place in space and time. Rudolph Bultmann did not, saying the resurrection was “utterly inconceivable.” (Rudolph Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth, 39) However, this is not a problem for the radical existentialist. Preaching the religious implications of the text is not concerned with the historical facticity of any particular event. Speaking of Jesus and the Christian faith Bultmann writes:

“But Christian faith did not exist until there was a Christian kerygma; i.e., a kerygma proclaiming Jesus Christ—specifically Jesus Christ the Crucified and Risen One—to be God’s eschatological act of salvation. He was first so proclaimed in the kerygma of the earliest Church, not in the message of the historical Jesus, even though that Church frequently introduced into its account of Jesus’ messages, motifs of its own proclamation. Thus, theological thinking –the theology of the New Testament—begins with the kerygma of the earliest Church and not before.” (Rudolph Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, 3)

He taught that it is not that the resurrection itself that is important, but how the preaching of it transforms the lives of the hearers. Ultimately, Biblical events are nothing more than symbols that help convey some meaning, and should not be taken literally. This is the form of allegory that should be avoided at all costs because the matter of a foundation of faith is at risk. When the preaching of the resurrection of Jesus is detached from its history, the preaching of the apostles and early church is also abandoned and all the treasures they extended to the church are lost.

Rev. Jacob Hercamp
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church
La Grange, MO

The Death of God Movement

God was declared dead by the naturalist or nihilist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in 1882. The study of the Bible became an endeavor that inevitably put the core tenets of the Christian faith in the crosshairs. One could take a few different approaches to address the problem: either completely distrust any knowledge that would seem to contradict the Scripture, or, as Nietzsche suggested, reject Christianity. Adolf von Harnack introduced an alternative view called ‘protestant liberalism.’ Within this movement, which was much more popular prior to the first world war, was to hold high view of humanity and its abilities alongside Scripture. For instance, Harnack’s teacher, Albrecht Ritschl, believed that the preaching of Jesus concerning the Kingdom of God should be understood to mean that human society would improve over time.

However, as the twentieth century progressed through war, a tremendous shift occurred. The world appeared to be sitting in the pits of utter despair on the way to nihilism. Biblical scholars tried to find an off ramp rather than follow down that same path. As different worldviews separated the text from its actual proclamation, God had been reduced to Jesus, and Jesus reduced further into a good man with a good word about good living. Theistic Existentialism, following some of the themes of Søren Kierkegaard, came into vogue with one its main proponents being Karl Barth.

Barth argues that theology had become too focused on anthropology. Barth instead focused on the ‘otherness’ of God. He also called for a return to the word of God, writing,

“Theology stands and falls with the Word of God, for the Word of God precedes all theological words by creating, arousing and challenging them. Should theology wish to be more or less or anything other than action in response to that Word, its thinking and speaking would be empty, meaningless, and futile.” (Karl Barth Evangelical Theology, 17)

While this might sound very similar to the worldview of the early church, there are distinct differences. Barth affirms that God created all that exists. However, God is holy other, so Barth contends that creation is inadequate to reveal or teach anything about God. It is only in Jesus Christ that God is connected to creation. The result of these principles is that for the theist existentialist, knowledge of God is a question of faith and not reason. There is still doubt about whether or not God could actually be known.

Rev. Jacob Hercamp
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church
La Grange, MO

Deism and Naturalism

In my last post, I talked about the deist worldview. However, Deism is only a pitstop on the way to full blown naturalism. Sire in The Universe Next Door writes:

“In [Christian] theism God is the infinite-personal Creator and sustainer of the cosmos. In deism God is reduced; he begins to lose his personality, though he remains Creator and (by implication) sustainer of the cosmos. In naturalism God is further reduced; he loses his very existence.” (Sire, Universe Next Door, 59)

It is during this time in particular, between deism and naturalism, that several different approaches to reading Scripture began to show up, particularly those related to the idea of scientific inquiry. Of those approaches, one of the most dynamic is called higher historical criticism. Following the queues of Gabler, a group of scholars around the beginning of the early twentieth century began close and careful study of the history of religion. Hermann Gunkel and Julius Wellhausen were two such scholars.

In reading Scripture, especially the Old Testament, Wellhausen, called the father of what is commonly referred to as the Documentary Hypothesis, argued that multiple strands of various factions from religious entities struggled with one another for superiority within the Biblical text itself. The questions began to really revolve around the composition history of the books themselves. Wellhausen’s views of Scripture are quite different from the early church and reformation era commentators. The literature is no longer deemed sacred. Scripture is the evidence of warring parties or social groups trying to gain the upper hand over one another.

It was now the job of the historical critic to ‘reconstruct’ the history and events which shaped what was written in the Bible. Another scholar Bernhard Duhm, attempted to find the historical references that best connected to the prophecies of the prophet Isaiah. Ultimately, this became the problem that many later and more recent scholars have held against the historical critical methods: if a historical reference is not easily found, there is nothing to say except that this particular section of Scripture was added at a much later date. Thus, for Isaiah and other books, like the Pentateuch, the idea of multiple authors arose.

As one can see, this historical critical method, as introduced into mainstream academic theology by the likes of Wellhausen and Duhm, has a low view of Scripture. It is no longer perceived as the very word of God, but the word of various political and religious factions. Along with that low view of Scripture, they also had an even lower view of the prophets they interpreted. The worldview that begins to show through the cracks resembles that of deism or naturalism more than the Christian theistic worldview. This worldview holds that the Bible is not God’s special revelation through which He reveals Himself to His creation. The two Testaments are not really united because of all the competing strands. There is no one united theology for men like Duhm or Wellhausen. They have placed their own rational mind above and over the text, effectively making the text fit their own mold. The methods that follow in line, such as redaction and form criticism, also seem to have the same worldview presuppositions.

Rev. Jacob Hercamp
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church
La Grange, MO

Deism

During the Enlightenment a shift (or multiple shifts?) took place when it came to the question of worldview. two major worldviews took the stage, pushing the Christian theistic worldview further off stage: deism and naturalism.

James Sire (author of The Universe Next Door: A Catalogue of Worldviews) describes deists as holding to the idea that a transcendent god created the universe, but then left it to run on its own. Often the god of deism is described as the master clock maker and the world as his clock. The creator god built the world, wound it up, and left it to run undisturbed. Deism allows for a god to exist insofar as he created what is seen. This god can be known somewhat by studying what he made. However, deism does not allow for special revelation, because the god of deism does not communicate with people.

In essence then, Scripture cannot give any additional information to man about god excluded from what is already made known via creation. The deist conception of god could not break into history, nor could he be known through history, as the Christian theistic worldview and Scripture portray Him. Also, because of the stance towards special revelation, the concept of sin and the fall into sin as presented in the Scripture is denied, as well as, the revelation of Jesus Christ being both true God and true Man in One Person.

It does not appear that Gabler held to every aspect of what is being described as the deistic worldview. It seems Gabler lies somewhere in between the worldview of Irenaeus and this deistic worldview. Certainly, it can be seen that Gabler places more emphasis on man’s capability to separate out the “unchanging truth of the bible from the mythical imagery that shrouds it.”(Ben C. Ollenburger, The Flowering of Old Testament Theology, 5)

Within the deistic worldview, interpretation of Scripture effectively becomes unwarranted. Rather than Scripture, the natural sciences emerge as the guiding principle. This strategy abandons any notion of the miraculous events of Scripture because they cannot be scientifically proven. The miracles contained in Scripture were either removed entirely as found in Jefferson’s Bible, or explained away via science.

Rev. Jacob Hercamp
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church
La Grange, MO

Biblical Theology and Abiding Truth

Near the end of the eighteenth century, a man by the name of Johann Phillip Gabler spoke about the subjects of historical interpretation and Biblical theology. He proposed that Biblical and dogmatic theology are different tasks. For Gabler, Biblical theology is the primary goal when interpreting Scripture. He described Biblical theology as first consisting of historical exposition that treats the Biblical statement within the author’s historical setting. After the historical context is understood, then the philosophically informed explanation of the statement is provided that determines the abiding Biblical truth.

As can be seen from Gabler, Scripture was not taken at face value to be true and abiding on its own right by itself. That determination is now supplied by the reader. Also, as part of this proposal, Gabler “borrowed from the classical and Biblical scholars Heyne and Eichorn, that people in more primitive stages of development expressed themselves in ways suited to their limited rational powers, namely in mythical images.”

If Gabler is correct, the Old Testament was to be considered inferior to the New Testament. The unity of the Two Testaments is in jeopardy because the OT is inferior to the NT simply because it was from an earlier era. As Gabler’s one time colleague Georg Lorenz Bauer would argue, “a separate theology would have to be written for each of them.” (Ben C. Ollenburger, The Flowering of Old Testament Theology, 5) This idea certainly goes against that of the early church interpreters and those of a more conventional Christian theistic worldview. The interpreters of the late eighteenth century relied much more on their rational mind than in trusting that the words of Scripture did record accurate accounts of history.

Rev. Jacob Hercamp
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church
La Grange, MO

Faithful Ruth

Encore Post: Ruth was a gentile and as such cut off from God and His presence. When she married Naomi’s son Mahlon, Ruth became a Hebrew and one of God’s people. When Naomi’s husband died, her sons were her only means of support. When these sons in turn also died, she was a widow without sons — helpless in a society where having husbands and sons are key to survival. On top of that, she was in a foreign country, where no one cared about her. Yet all she could think about was her daughters-in-law. She tried to send them home to their families, but only one of them went back.

Because Ruth truly loved her Naomi and loved God, she refused. She would never leave her mother-in-law. Whatever would happen to Naomi, she would share her fate. So, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law went home to Naomi’s family — the Bethlehem in Judea. Does that town sound familiar?

While she was gathering the grain left in the field for the poor, she met a relative of her late husband. This man, Boaz, went out of his way to provide for Naomi and her daughter-in-law. He claimed the right to marry Ruth under the Levirate law — the nearest male relative marries a widow and their children become the legal heirs of the deceased man.

When he did this, Boaz showed the true, selfless character of a redeemer. God blessed this marriage with children. Their son Obed would later marry. Obed’s was the father of Jesse, whose son was King David. And so the self-giving nature of Ruth and Boaz was blessed. In this way, God put a gentile into the family tree of the Son of David — and his own Son — Jesus (Matthew 1:5, ).

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Concordia Theological Seminary

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Bible or Reason? The Enlightenment and Understanding Scripture

The first and major shift of interpretation and worldview came during the seventeenth century. The question rested in that of knowledge and authority. Where does knowledge come from? And who has the authority speak on it? No longer did Scripture hold the authority as the medium of knowledge concerning the divine, rather a person’s own reason could seek out God and truth without a guide. Perhaps the first man to bring this to light was Benedict de Spinoza. Spinoza shows himself to be a rationalist and seminal figure of the Enlightenment. For Spinoza, reason, and not Scripture, holds the high place in man’s search for knowledge. As a matter of fact, Scripture is not a source of natural or speculative or historical knowledge. “Scripture only seeks to inculcate piety and obedience to God.” (Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, 42)

Notice the difference between Spinoza and Irenaeus or Luther. Spinoza’s worldview is light years away from the Christian theistic worldview. Christian theism was not thrown away entirely during these later centuries, however a couple of new worldviews came on the scene in rapid succession seeking to overthrow it, specifically deism and naturalism. Both of these could be put under the larger umbrella of rationalism. In both deism and naturalism, special revelation is, to a greater or lesser extent, denied. Knowledge is gained through human reason and scientific methods. As these two rationalistic worldviews came into vogue, the historical-critical method of interpretation rose along with them. It is difficult to determine what came first, the worldviews or the method. What can be seen is that many of the interpreters of the seventeenth century and later began to move away from the conventional Christian theistic worldview as described earlier.

Frei notes too that the literal sense moved further and further away from figurative interpretation. Literal sense would ultimately come to mean the opposite of a figural sense of Scripture. The literal sense would come to be equated to the single meaning of statements.

Rev. Jacob Hercamp
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church
La Grange, MO