I am in the midst of spending the majority of my time studying for my comprehensive exam which is quickly approaching this Saturday and I am finding myself thinking through issues that seem a bit too big for my britches. You know that feeling when you are trying to think through something that must be important to think through, but you just sense that you are becoming a heretic in the process. Oh well, hopefully it will all still fall within the realm of grace.
So, my thesis right now is on the book of Ecclesiastes and I am attempting to find a connection between classic canonical criticism (i.e. Brevard Childs, and others) and ancient Jewish interpretation from various Midrash and other sources. The main idea is just that to understand the book of Ecclesiastes you must read it in its canonical place rather than simply atomizing the book to the point that you decide it has no place in the canon. It is an attempt to place Ecclesiastes in the corpus of scripture in a similar way that James acts as a theological balance to Romans in the New Testament. Really, I am getting to my question.
In the midst of doing this I have begun to realize how closely narrative criticism and narrative theology relate to this topic. I love the idea of narrative criticism as it invites the reader to truly attempt to understand what the author was attempting to convey rather than simply idealizing scripture to fit with our own theological presuppositions. The only problem with this is that the more you read scripture as a story the faster academics are to see it ONLY as a story and revolt against any sense of historical factuality. I was reading an Old Testament theologian, Gerhard Von Rad, who believes that it is impossible to believe that all of Israel crossed the Red Sea or that the whole of Israel was at Mount Sinai. He prefers to think of the Israelite experience in the Old Testament as a beautiful sermon illustration that posits excellents points, but without any particular merit historically. Usually I am alright with this presupposition, particularly in relationship to the creation story which seems to be written in a poetic style and with an eye for metaphorical ideals, but what happens when we continue this trend and our buddy Bultmann and others see the Resurrection as something needing to be demythologized. I am just a bit confused at where the line is, or maybe my need for a line is pretty western of my anyways. I'd love any thoughts.
4 comments:
Morrow,
I raised the exact same question in my scriptures 1 class this semester. I don't really care what you explain away on th left side Malachi, but I really need the resurrection to be true.
Hey stud! It's good to see you in blogdom. I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on Denver Sem. etc.
Good question BTW. Have you read Langdon Gilkey's article "Cosmology, Ontology, and the Travail of Biblical Language" in the Journal of Religion 41 (July 1961): 194-205? I found it to be quite helpful after reading Childs and von Rad.
Here's a quote from it that I've stolen from Michael Horton's Covenant and Eschatology (49):
"Perhaps the most important theological affirmation that modern biblical theology draws from the Scripture is that God is he who act, meaning by this that God does unique and special actions in history. And yet when we ask: 'All right, what has he done?' no answer can apparently be given" (200).
Wolterstorff has some good things to say on this as well, in his Divine Discourse, another work Horton draws from.
Kevin Vanhoozer's Drama of Doctrine threw a canonical and theological reading of Scripture into a more "workable" light for me. Perhaps his work may be of some use to you.
Lastly, Oscar Cullmann interacts fairly well with Schweitzer, Bultmann and, to a lesser extent, Barth in his Christ and Time. Mark Reasoner and I are reading it together, but we aren't done with it yet. At any rate, he thinks Cullmann does a good job when it comes to a redemptive-historical (close to narrative-theology??) reading of Scripture. Though Cullmann's work is aimed at NT studies, his underlying thesis is extremely helpful when looking at broad canonical issues I think. But when it comes to OT studies I'm pretty ignorant.
Ben,
Good to hear from you. Your comment reminds me again how much smarter you are than me. Excellent. Good to be humbled often. I have slowly been working through "Drama of Scripture" and have really appreciated it. I think there has to be a legitimate line between historical-critical study and narrative/canonical work that might make sense in a uniquely situated world for both. Not only is postmodernism really into the narrative thing and attempted to see ourselves as a part of a bigger story, but the amount of inquiry being done into historical-critical study puts in such a unique place. I wish I knew how to harness those two dichotomous poles to do something meaningful.
Yeah I agree. Well...since you posed a far better question than the one I had in mind, I agree with everything except the part about me being smarter.
I really don't know how to do it either. Both poles do seem to go against each other. At any rate, seeing as how we are both too young to merely accept the status-quo, I say we just do it. Screw contradictions.
Vanhoozer does have a little bit to say about bridging the critical and theological readings of Scripture, but sadly it seemed like one of the weaker parts of the book to me. He was far better at bridging theory and practice I think (through his dramatic proposal and all that).
It just seems to me like we can and should read the Bible like any other book, as well as read it completely different than any other book. Propositionalism takes us somewhere I think, but not all the way. This is what I get when I set the Post-Liberal/Post-Conservative (Lindbeck, Watson, Vanhoozer, et. al.) emphasis on speech acts beside the Reformed (G. Vos, Ridderbos, et. al.) emphasis on the redemptive historical significance of the canon. That's not to say they seem to go hand in hand, just that they both seem valid and necessary.
Congrats on you up-coming addition by the way!
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