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Culture, the Development of Doctrine, and the Holy Spirit
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[originally published at www.anglicanfederation.com]
by Dr. Edith Humphrey
A debated question of our day concerns the faithful “hearing” of the Scriptures and faithful expressions of the Christian life in eras subsequent to the earliest Christian community (that is, the era of the New Testament). Until recently, this topic was addressed by recourse to two questions, the first “exegetical” and the second “hermeneutical”- “What the Scriptures said” in their first writing/hearing (exegesis); and “What the Scriptures say” today (hermeneutics). Under this “modernist” paradigm, Biblical scholars who had a concern for the church were accustomed to insist upon a strictly sequential handling of these questions. Careful, contextual exegesis was to be undertaken first, and only then was the question of “application” or “contemporary expression” to be broached. The first question was considered to be a matter of impartial and careful analysis, while the second was to build on this firm foundation and engage with the problems of linking the words of Scripture to the context of today.
The writings of philosophers such as Gadamer and Wittgenstein, popularized (though not simplified!) by such writers as Anthony Thiselton (The Two Horizons: New Testament Hermeneutics and Philosophical Description) have called such a clear two-step procedure into question. Is it indeed true that readers begin with a determination of what was said in an ancient text, and then move on to creative and helpful recontextualization? Who can doubt that the reader is, from first to last, completely engaged, conditioned by presuppositions and perspective, and never on a wholly “neutral” quest for meaning? As we move from philosophy to theology, we may also note that today many Christian readers of Scripture (Methodist or otherwise!) have adopted Albert C. Outler's so-called “Wesleyan Quadrilateral.” That is, Scripture, tradition, reason and experience are now viewed by many not only as sources for theological inquiry, but as equal authorities that arbitrate one's theological interpretation of the Bible. This perspective is so pervasive in the contemporary Church that it is hardly questioned today by those who have never heard of Outler, and who do not understand the complex debates surrounding the issue of authority. Again, literary criticism, which has made its mark on today's readers of the Bible, stresses the role and response of the reader, who must “collude” with the text to “make” meaning, rather than simply discerning what the writer intended, or what the text says.
All these movements of thought come together in our “postmodernist” world as we consider the relationship between the Bible, theology and culture. At best, the two-step approach has given way to a model of reading and understanding that is more circular or spiral in shape, as pre-understandings are corrected or refined by reading Scripture, and one's tentative reading of Scripture is further refined by more wisdom or life experience within the Church. At worse, however, the emphasis upon subjectivity today has led to an abandonment of any established or careful method in favour of impressionistic reflection upon and (ab)use of the Bible (or what the reader “sees” in it.)
It is unwise, in this climate, to speak glibly about the “intent” of the original author, the “clear” meaning of the text, and the importance of methodically “applying” first century teachings to our own day. Yet it remains the case that human beings continue to write, read and converse in order to communicate with others, and Christians (in particular) are committed to an understanding of reality in which God aims not only to communicate with us, but to draw us into communion. One of the wonders of God's active word is the choice of the human person, even in the fallen state, as a means of revelation. It may be a complicating factor, but one of the glories of the Scriptures is that they are both the (inscribed) Word of God and human words. The cultural “containers” in which the Scriptures come to us are therefore significant, and not easily separable from some timeless “essence.” How should we expect this to be otherwise, given God's greatest act of communion with created human beings, the Incarnation?
A sensitive reading of the Scriptures will therefore not give in to despair that communication must misfire. Rather, it will heed the cues given in each text concerning its historical and literary context, its genre and intent, and the way it is related to the divine drama: God's creation, the fall of Adam and the cosmos, the call and history of Israel, the coming of Messiah, and the ongoing life of God's people in the Church. As Paul puts it, in concert with the perspective of Luke, Hebrews and 1 Peter, God acted definitively both "at just the right time" (Romans 5:6) and "in the fullness of time" (Gal. 4:4). To see a text as moored in historical space and time, and at the same time spilling beyond such particular moments calls for the most careful thinking. Perhaps we ought not to look for “timeless” truths but to consider that much of God's story and communication with us is “timeful.” This means that we will not discount passages of Scripture because they reflect the detail and flow of human history, but that we will see each particular moment described in the text in relation to the greater story. God works in a variety of ways, and in the Scriptures speaks a word that is at once challenging and confirming of what we have learned of reality from our experience, both personal and corporate. The biblical record is unique in its authoritative witness to God the Son, the one who is our Spirit-anointed representative. Moreover, that grace and light extend beyond the time upon which it centres, into the living tradition of God's people down to the present. God's entry point into humanity - the Incarnation - confirms and questions, illuminates and transforms all that came before and all that comes after.
A faithful reading of Scriptures thus means that we seek to understand how the passages that we are reading at the moment, and the questions that we are presently asking, fit into this forgiving, healing and life-giving drama that has been initiated by God himself. While the meaning of the Scriptures is often obvious, all of us interpret the Bible from a particular time and place. Perhaps the danger is greatest in reading when we are influenced by unacknowledged sources, confounded in our reading because of "blinkers" that have been given to us by our formation or by the company that we presently keep. There is no such thing as “simply reading the Bible." Thus, there is a challenge for us to reflect seriously on the strengths and weaknesses of the particular traditions by which we have been formed and informed. The promise that the Church would be led into all truth should strengthen our minds and imaginations as we read the Scriptures together.
For these reasons, we may with confidence speak about the Bible and culture, and not simply (as some have done) about the gospel and culture, an important subset of the first discussion. We need not look to a human distillation of the gospel message in order to get a handle on God's concern for human culture; rather, it is the very story of Scripture that communicates God's character and love to us. So, then, we need to question some of those, Some, confounded by the strangeness of the Biblical words, insist that it is the job of the contemporary church to discover within the Scriptures its pure and universal “core” of truth and “translate” it for today. It is an insolent thing to say, as some have done, that “every age has the task of writing its own 'fifth gospel.'” Alternately, there are those who say that there is no harmonious or “irreducible core” of the faith, but rather that the Scriptures and various cultures provide multiple and contrasting revelations of God, some of which contradict others.
Neither approach, the search for a “core” meaning within the Scriptures, nor the relativization of God's “Word” so that it speaks in Babel voices, does justice to the rich story we have been given. Rather, we must watch that our approach to the Scriptures includes reverence and respect for the God who speaks through them and who is illuminated by them. Next, we must have respect for the particular character of the books of the Bible that we read, acknowledging their shape and signaled purposes. Finally, we must heed the way that such passages have been read and are read by the entire Church, across time and geography. Narrative, poetry, exhortation and vision communicate in different ways and ought to be read in their own terms. Frequently obscure stories or images are interpreted for us at the very place where we read (e.g. the parables of Jesus and their interpretation); at other times we must read difficult passages in the light of more transparent ones found in other Scriptures. For example, narrative frequently needs to be interpreted in the light of the more “propositional” passages of the Scriptures, so that we do not come to eccentric understandings of God, humanity and reality. How are we to read Paul's injunctions to celibacy in 1 Corinthians? Paul himself gives the cue, agreeing that marriage also is good, speaking in terms of his contemporary crisis, but also honouring the state of celibacy in terms that forbid us from dismissing this “gift” as a first century exigency. How are we to read Jesus' seemingly harsh refusal of the Gentile woman, that he is sent “only to the lost sheep of Israel”? (Mat 15:24) Here, the gospel of Matthew as a whole offers the interpretive clue, with its inclusion of Gentile women in the beginning genealogy, through its parable of the vineyard and in its closing injunction to baptize “all nations.” Jesus' words to the SyroPhonoecian are an historical statement, not an absolute proposition concerning the privilege of Israel.
Other topics seem more difficult, either because the interpretative cues are not apparent within the immediate text concerned, or because the Scripture challenges our twenty-first century propositions. In the twentieth century Bultmann was certain that a “core” meaning needed to be retrieved from “impossible” and “archaic” narratives of miracle: his rejection of these passages is not so self-evident in a post-modernist climate. Today, we may have difficulty in reading and understanding the significance of Paul's injunction that women cover their heads in worship: certainly this is culturally conditioned, but Paul also gives theological reasons for his words. The careful reader will attend both to the cultural and theological aspects of the text, and not instantly neutralize the passage on ideological grounds. Though head-coverings may make no sense in our context, we should be interested in the theological import of Paul's first century discussion.
In the “question du jour” of the Church today (homoerotic behaviour and the drive to “bless” same-sex “unions”) we have to do with scattered Biblical passages (from Leviticus, the gospels, Romans and 1 Corinthians) that speak in harmony. There is not a single passage in the Scriptures-command, narrative, instruction, description of human nature-that can be construed as confirming a physical union between persons of the same sex. The controversy therefore has emerged because of the clash between Scripture's words on the topics of marriage and porneia and our contemporary mindset, strengthened by a certain construal of the Biblical story as presenting an emerging and developing “gospel of inclusion.” Faced with this cognitive dissonance, the exegete or interpreter of the pertinent passages has two alternatives-
1. To delimit the passages that speak about homoerotic behaviour by narrowing their scope (they speak only of certain debased forms of homoeroticism)
2. Or, to declare that the principle of the gospel is open to a wider interpretation unforeseen by its human authors, an application that we can see more clearly today than was the case in the writing of the NT passages or their interpretation in the Church up to this point in history.
The St. Michael's Report acknowledges that the matter of same-sex unions is doctrinal in character. This is certainly the case, and may be comforting to those who are unconvinced by those who have dismissed Scriptural prohibitions as mere cultural expressions of the first century, inappropriate to today. However, the words of the Report are ambiguous, and seem also to leave open both of the strategies named above, thereby neutralizing the prohibitions of Scripture and the long-standing traditions and canons of the Church, east and west. Though introduced as a debatable point, careful attention is given in section 23 of the Report to the plea of some Anglicans that “the biblical passages usually cited as prohibiting same-sex relationships do not contemplate the contemporary ideal of lifelong committed same-sex unions.” Again, the Report speaks at length of the Church's changed understanding of slavery (section 11), segregation (section 12), baptism (section 13), children as the normal fruit of holy matrimony (section 38). Indeed, though the Report speaks in terms of “development of doctrine,” it at times describes the leading of the Holy Spirit in a way that goes far beyond development: “Sometimes this means that when we seek to be faithful to scripture and doctrine in changing circumstances, we may find ourselves led by the Spirit to new insights that…contradict our past practices” (section 11).
To be sure, section 13 reassures that “such development may never contradict the heart of the gospel.” However, the begs the question of how the gospel is to be construed, and which particular “practices” might be reversed without the Holy Spirit contradicting what has been revealed in the past. Indeed, in the “Study Guide” prepared by the Faith, Worship and Ministry Committee of the General Synod, congregants are led to ask questions regarding changes in practice, without being asked to distinguish between “external” differences such as language used in ceremonies, and “internal” or substantive differences of ideal, doctrine or ethic. After listing all the many changes in the church that they have seen, those participating in such a study may easily come to the conclusion that “the times, they are a-changin”, without regard for the quality or character of the changes.
Again, the emphasis upon “originality” and “creativity” in the missional re-articulation of Christianity (section 15 of the Report) is balanced only by a plea for caution and unity. This impression is amplified in the study guide, where the question is asked, “Is it …responsible to accept unity as the value which transcends all others, and therefore for a member church of the Communion to refrain from making a decision when it believe[s] it has an urgent gospel mandate to proceed?” Indeed, the opposite piece to “originality” is not “care for unity” but “anomaly” or “distorting novelty.” The most pressing question is therefore not whether any particular new move should be expedited, though unity might be disturbed. Rather, the question is whether the gospel actually affirms that move as a native development of the faith in a particular context, or whether the gospel in this case is sounding a correcting, chastising and transformative voice over against the changing mores or ideals of our culture.
Intimately connected with the question of development is of course the place of the Holy Spirit in inspiring Scriptures, illuminating readers, and leading the Church. Some have understood the leading of the Holy Spirit as God's possibility to reverse the divine will, and the Church's ability to act in utter abandon, with confidence that she is Spirit-led. The great tragedy in our communion has been that its members have come to the point of “praying” against each other and pulling in opposite directions, all in the name of a Spirit whose delight is to unify, and not to scatter. Some might understand the present controversy as analogous to the question in the first century Church regarding the keeping of kosher and circumcision, and point to the result of that question as a place where God seemingly “reversed” in directives. This great “change” was part and parcel, however, of the “turning point” of the eras, and carefully worked through as the likes of Paul contemplated the universal promise to humankind through Abraham's seed, the appropriate temporary purpose of the Torah, and the ultimacy of Christ. Nor was the non-circumcision party, led by the Holy Spirit, suggesting something immoral or unhealthy be adopted: rather, what had been unclean had now been rendered clean by God (Acts 10:15) through the crucifixion and resurrection. (For the same reason, the question of women's ministry is clearly more ambiguous than that of blessing same-sex unions, and depends upon our reading of various Scriptures that suggest different roles for women, our understanding of the nature of ordination, and our grasp of the “creational” and re-creational roles of men and women. Though the worldwide Church continues to be in disagreement as to whether contemporary ordination of women is a natural development of the organism or not, the question is of a quite different order, and the debate may continue in good faith. From such a discussion may emerge clarity on anthropology, ordination and ecclesiology, rather than a confusion of what is immoral with what is holy.) Though our Scriptural story has a shape and a direction that allows for organic change, there are episodes of the story, or discordant notes, that never will fit into the drama, or the symphony. Sometimes a discord may turn out to be simply a suspension in the process of resolution; at other times a discord must be removed or tuned. Our participation by the Holy Spirit must be played out in such a way that we remain in harmony with the composer of the piece, the other players, and the general tenor of what is being played. If not, we are not being led by the Spirit, however “creative” and “free” we may feel ourselves.
To make the above discussion more concrete, consider the plea that Paul, in Romans, allows that the Gentiles, against nature, may be grafted into God's vine (Romans 9-11). Some have argued that this same dynamic should be extended to the same-sex question, where Paul in Romans 1, calls same-sex erotic behaviour (and desire) “against nature.” If God can graft in Gentiles, who are naturally not part of the vine, could he not also graft in homosexuals who are, according to some accounting, un-natural? Perhaps Paul's gospel is more inclusive than even he knew, and though he was unaware of such an application, we, led by the Spirit, perceive more. The argument here is wrong-headed, and leads not to liberty and inclusivity but to confusion and marginalization. After all, the Gentiles were not grafted in, complete with all their devotions to pagan practices and confused morality: the in-grafting was connected with repentance, transformation and changed lives. Both splicing and pruning are involved in conversion and maturation in the faith. Paul's principle of grafting would therefore envision the grafting in of those involved in same-sex practices, as they are healed and turn from this (as indeed Paul himself declares to be the case in 1 Corinthians 6).
The Holy Spirit has a characteristic way of acting: this includes conviction, leading to the truth, pressing home the wonder of the gospel story, and showing the nature of the holy Father and the anointed and transforming Son. Not to declare these aspects of God's nature and the gospel story to those involved in the same-sex lifestyle is to marginalize, rather than to “include” them. God yearns to enfold all within his very own story, the very good creation that he has made, and to “naturalize” all his children within this drama, making of us true and whole sons and daughters. The first principle, God is one, must be kept firmly in mind. To acknowledge and worship this God means that we will receive creation at God's hands with thankfulness-creation as it truly is, and not as we fondly think it must be, to fit in with our own weaknesses. (Note how in Romans 1:18-32, it is refusal to acknowledge God and to be thankful, that leads to confusion regarding the nature of humanity). In the end, however, understanding “about” God, about our own nature, and about reality, is not the same as communion, or “knowing” in a personal sense-the greatest purpose of Scripture is to call us into communion with God and each other. If this is so, it is emphatically not “for the church [now] to decide whether or not the blessing of same-sex unions is a faithful, Spirit-led development of Christian doctrine.” It is for those who number themselves among the called of God to listen to the nearly unanimous voice of Christians in ages past, and to the faithful voice of suffering Christians in developing countries. Through these the Spirit's voice may be faithfully heard, telling us to receive what God is given, to repent of our desire for an alternate reality, and to be thankful, together, as we worship in Spirit and in truth.
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