Exploring Ecumenism: January 2011

Thursday, 20 January 2011

Interpretation of Scripture

I read a blog post the other day and unfortunately I've lost it! It was by a conservative theologian who divided Christians into two groups, arguing the church is splitting across all the traditions. It is a common temptation to split people into two groups; reality is usually more complex.

Apparently the church is splitting between those who believe the Bible is the Word of God, inspired and for all time. The others believe it was written by people in a particular time and place. Such people may believe parts of it are inspired.

This is nothing new. Indeed the former group is often understood as fundamentalist and the other group are labelled nominal Christians, not really Christians at all.

There are over 2 billion Christians. Do they all fit seamlessly into one or the other of these groups? I suspect in practice there is a lot of common ground between them.

Let us assume the first group, those who believe Scripture is the once and for all word of God, is right. What follows from this? My first observation is people who fit this description can be found in many traditions, definitely Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox. Each of these traditions has its own interpretations of the Bible. Even within a tradition there will be several different interpretations.

It seems some people believe their interpretation is the only true interpretation. The problem is, how do we decide who is right?

If you believe the Bible is God's final word, why is it so difficult to believe there is more than one legitimate interpretation? Our interpretations are not in the Bible and so cannot be considered inerrant. Indeed, this is the nature of God's gift of the Bible; it is ours to interpret. Not as we like; there needs to accountability. There is no need to fear new interpretations, so long as we are free to test them. So, the unchanging nature of the source text becomes a gift. We can with courage explore new interpretations in the sure knowledge that we can always press the reset button.

Now, take the other view. Perhaps it is more at ease with contextual theologies but in practice they use the reset button, returning to the original texts all the time. Their problem is perhaps less likelihood of seeing the word of God in the scriptures. Yet if we see the various texts within the Bible as in dialogue with each other, so that the truth emerges not from any particular interpretation but from the conversations between believers, we can see how the Spirit might be found in old texts.

We cannot escape the fact that what we believe about the status of the Bible is itself an interpretation. But freedom of interpretation flows from the unchanging nature of Scripture. Unchanging, because the Canon is fixed not because the writings have been ordained as inerrant by God.

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Saturday, 01 January 2011

On Memory and Forgetting

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So, here is a summary of what I'm saying about being stuck. This applies to ecumenical winter, the Anglican Covenant and many other issues that plague our thinking.

Being stuck is not a bad place to be, although it is a frustrating place to be. It is hard when everything's been tried and most actions make matters worse. Being stuck is a place where there are no manuals and no-one has any experience to offer.

Memory undermines us because all we can recall is we've tried everything. But we need memory because we need to know what has been tried. We also need to understand why we are where we are. But our memory is coloured by old models and so we also need to forget.

It is imagination what enables us to step outside the old constraints, the old models and try something new. Most likely it won't work because it isn't really new or we didn't really understand our old mindsets. So, we try again.

Trial and error or iteration; works where the only thing we can do is to keep trying until something works. The idea unsticking a problem can be done in theory first, in conversations between those with theological or some other technical expertise is simply false. Theologians will interpret whatever turns out to work, they have no foreknowledge of what will work. The academic thinks in a different way to people on the ground. For the academic there is something called truth and if only we can find it, we'll find a way forward.

For the person on the ground there is the ground. Old buildings, no money, broken relationships. Where do we go from here? And of course they are right. The doctrine of incarnation tells us God is found in the material world and not in our theories about it.

First, there is no need to move forward from here. Being stuck is a good place to be. To be stuck is to be close to God because to be unstuck we must abandon our assumptions, including the ones that we are not even aware of. For that we need prayer.

I am sure when Christians pray together, particularly enemies, those with very different views, the chances of being unstuck increase. As our assumptions fall away, perhaps we'll see more clearly the bars on our cages.

The aim is not to convert the other to my view but to find a way forward together that works for God's Kingdom.