[This essay continues an attempt to define and offer a critique of Progressive Theology.]
The Hermeneutics of Listening and Creative Appropriation
In matters of interpretation,
Progressive Theology is characterized by listening and creative appropriation. ‘Listening’ in postmodernity replaces
interpretation and research in traditional, Renaissance, and Enlightenment scholarship. It does not seek some objective truth,
whether held by tradition or subjected to rational and scientific enquiry. Its goal is much more experiential, diverse,
and empathetic, listening to the experiences of a variety of persons invited to
the discussion, particularly those whose voices have not been heard. The intended (or pretended) goal is non-judgemental
love and compassion, as in the latest document of the Church of England—‘Living
in Love and Faith’, rather than faithfulness to Scripture or the orthodox
Church.[1] Scripture is used (isolated quotes, values,
themes) to present an ethos made up of largely abstract, undefined values that
can then be filled in with very specific content from the culture that is
diametrically opposed to consistent, Biblical teaching. A value like ‘love’ can be made to mean
anything, and when it is made to support interpretations of sexuality that
Scripture consistently defines as sin but the culture embraces, only the most
naïve among us will be persuaded that the Bible has been rightly interpreted
rather than intentionally manipulated. One
way to understand this ‘hermeneutic’ is
in terms of ‘appropriation’.
In art, appropriation involves
the use of existing objects in new and creative ways. The objects are not themselves art, but the
use to which they are put, being creative, meaningful, aesthetic, or emotional,
is where the artistic component arises.
Here again, Picasso and Braque provide examples in their art. They appropriated objects—cloth or newspaper,
e.g.—into their art. Like collage, appropriation
in theology locates the use of whatever one wishes from others or the past in
order to produce something new. Postmodern
Art continues with these earlier forms of appropriation.
Appropriation involves, firstly,
a devaluation of authors and sources. Their
meaning and authority are devalued because what they produced (texts or
doctrine) is simply reappropriated by readers for new purposes. As in Postmodern Art, what is valued is the
artistic contribution of the artist in a new context and for a new audience. ‘Clever’ interpretations are lauded. Creative, new, and relevant appropriation of
familiar objects, such as Scripture or the Church, drown out any original
meaning located in the Biblical author’s intentions or in the Church’s
tradition. Progressive Theologians may
not even examine a commentary on the text in their appropriation of the wording
of a verse for their own purposes, let alone have any classical education to
allow them to examine the texts in their original contexts. They quite possibly have no familiarity with tools
of interpretation, such as Biblical languages, and no understanding of ancient
cultures, literature, and history. They
speak on about the importance of culture—multiculturalism, global contexts, and
diversity—without having knowledge of or much concern about the original
culture of the written text, Scripture, or the context in which doctrine was
determined—historical theology. Like the
Sophists of Socrates’ day, they place their emphasis on persuastive speech,
rhetoric. They grasp a verse for its
rhetorical effect at this point in time with this particular audience. They happily choose a translation—or even a
paraphrase of Scripture—that best suits their purposes, undistracted and
unhampered by bothersome issues like Greek grammar or textual criticism.
There is already a long history
of this sort of purposive interpretation of texts in Liberation Theology. The purpose is located in a value:
liberation. This Modernist ideal came to
be understood in a more Postmodern way when it was attached to more defined group
identities. Interpretation moves into
the realm of ‘reading’ instead, and reading is a task that serves the goal of
liberation, that is, political, social, and economic justice for the oppressed
community.[2] If the reading is economic, the liberation
reading can pick up on the many texts that advocate justice for the poor and
extend this trajectory into contemporary situations—although all too often this
has been confused with socialism and Marxism.
Feminist hermeneutics, however, typically advocates liberation from
the Biblical text itself, with its alleged patriarchy and worse. As Sandra Schneiders explains:
Whereas the
contemporary poor can make a fairly straightforward transfer from the divine
advocacy of the poor and oppressed in the Old and New Testaments to their own
situation, women who are oppressed because of their sex and the demeaning
construction of gender in contemporary church and society find that the Bible
often underwrites their oppression by its assumption of male normativity, its presentation
of sexist and even misogynist attitudes and behaviors as acceptable, and its
justification of sexually based oppression as the ‘divine plan’ for the human
race.[3]
Neither the text nor the
interpreter is considered neutral, and so having the ‘right’ purpose in the
theological task of achieving liberation is the goal. In fact, the goal does not require one to be
a Christian: Schneider notes that Mary Daly considers herself ‘post-Christian’
and that some others abandon Christianity for a goddess-religion. Indeed, there is nothing authoritative about
Scripture in this typical understanding of feminist hermeneutics. Feminism is the authority, the text is subordinated,
rejected, or appropriated for the readers’ purposes. One example of this is feminist
interpretation of the Atonement that rejects imputed righteousness and sacrificial,
penal substitution for various moral influence notions.[4]
In their support of liberation
theology, Christopher Rowland and Mark Corner do not quite advocate jettisoning
a concern for exegesis, but they put the emphasis on purposive interpretation. They advocate, for example, that the poor in
Brazil should locate Jesus’ parables in a Brazilian context to draw out a
contemporary meaning for the poor:
Throughout these
readings of the parables there runs the conviction that Bible study is above
all understanding what God is saying today. In this process there are three key
elements’: (1) reality, the social situation in which the Bible is read; (2)
the Bible; (3) the community.[5]
In their approach to
interpretation, Rowland and Corner appropriate the Biblical stories for a
pre-established purpose: The mission of the Church as the people of God is to
be on the side of the marginalized.’[6] They quote Carlos Mesters’
threefold approach to reading the Bible—see, judge, act—in Basic Christian
Communities without scholarly or ecclesiastical input:
The principle
objective of reading the Bible is not to interpret the Bible but to interpret
life with the help of the Bible.[7]
Clodovis Boff argues for two
approaches to interpretation: correspondence of terms and correspondence of
relationships.[8] He rejects the former, which is apparently
what Mesters’ allows. It finds
equivalent situations in the contemporary situation to the Biblical text: the
Sadducees are the bourgeoisie, the zealots are the revolutionaries, Roman power
is contemporary imperialism (e.g., the USA), Jesus represents the Christian
community, Egypt is oppression, exodus is liberation, the cross is political
assassination, and so on. While this approach
is at times followed by some, Boff rejects it as not respecting the original
Biblical contexts and not allowing for the complexity of the contemporary
situation or our improved social analysis in the 20th century.
Instead, Boff argues, Scripture
should be interpreted for correspondence of relationships. This involves understanding how the early
Christian community understood itself in its political context and looking for
how this corresponds to our current political context/s. For example, just as Paul applied the exodus
to Christian baptism, so Nicaraguan Christians were right to apply the exodus
story to the overthrow of Somoza in 1979.[9] Boff rejects the conviction required by
anyone locating Biblical authority in the nature of the text as God’s Word; he
rejects the belief that meaning is to be found in the author’s intention. Instead, the context of interpreters keeps
changing, and therefore the meaning of the text will keep changing.[10]
According to South African scholar, Gerald West, biblical scholars
and ordinary readers need to engage in a creative dialogue to find relevant
meaning.[11] This will involve research in Biblical
studies of a certain kind, research to arrive at social commitments, such as:
·
Liberation Theology: Liberation
hermeneutics required commitment to experience of the poor and marginalized;
·
Postmodernism: Readers should turn from
finding the elusive ‘right’ reading to the ‘useful’ reading and shift from ‘epistemology
to ethics, truth to practices, foundations to consequences’;[12]
·
Reader-Response Interpretation: The reader
‘creates’ meaning, not merely ‘receives’ it.
West concludes that Contextual Bible study requires a
willingness to be ‘partially constituted by each other’s subjectivities.’[13]
More recently, some scholars have
begun to speak of a ‘public theology’.
This is advocated by a variety of scholars in Africa as they move from a
purely liberation theology to a more extensive theology of relevance that
addresses issues of social justice.[14] These might include past theologies of the
poor, feminism, and post-colonialism, but there are many specific issues to
consider, such as corruption or race relations.
In one definition of public theology, the aim is to remove the sacred
secular divide so that the Church is relevant in and for the wider community,
including in concerns for social justice.[15] Public Theology is, however, something of a
wax nose, capable of being shaped one way or another. It advocates holistic theology and relevance,
which is fine in itself, but without clarifying commitments to Biblical authority,
orthodoxy, ecclesiology, and methods of interpretation. It can, therefore, be assumed to be one thing
by Evangelicals and quite another thing by persons with beliefs at odds with
orthodox Christianity. Activism is able
to turn questions away from theology and Biblical authority and to activities
and their results instead of being concerned with their connections through
hermeneutical clarity and authoritative convictions.
Throughout this
discussion of hermeneutics, the ideological interests of readers, framed in
terms of liberation and social relevance/justice, have been highlighted as the major
characteristic for Progressive Theology’s interpretation. Also highlighted has been what might be
called ‘listening’. This is not the
mid-twentieth century’s New Hermeneutic, which, in the face of existential
readings of Scripture, advocated listening to the Biblical text. Progressive Theology is concerned with listening
to the readers. ‘Listening’ was a
feature of South Africa’s Reconciliation Commission immediately after the
Apartheid era. It has been called ‘Indaba’
in an attempt to locate it in a non-Western context, but it is very much the
stuff of Western philosophical and cultural commitments, as discussed in Part
Two of this essay in particular. The Church
of England, facing division between orthodox Christians and Progressives (including
some claiming to be ‘Evangelical’), has been engaged in ‘shared conversations’
in which people are supposed to hear different views on sexuality. This dynamic involves an intention of hearing
the stories of ‘victims’, seeing them as human, having empathy for their
circumstances, and igniting a desire for communal embrace rather than
exclusion. This illustrates well the
role of experiential listening in Progressive Theology. It replaces commitments to Biblical
exposition and ecclesiastical teaching and is eager to reform both in light of
the community’s shared conversations. In
this way, such positive terms like ‘shared’, ‘listening’, ‘welcoming’, ‘conversations’,
‘empathy’, and so forth become vehicles for undermining the clear teaching of
Scripture and the witness of the Church for the past two thousand years. Like the Modern Art form of Futurism, as
noted in Part Two, Progressive Theology is an angry rejection of the old and an
embracing of a future—in this case, the sexual revolution of Western society.
[1]
See ‘Living in Love and Faith,’ The Church of England; online at: https://www.churchofengland.org/resources/living-love-and-faith
(accessed 12/12/2020).
[2]
E.g., James H. Cone, A Black Theology of
Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990; originally pub. 1970).
[3]
Sandra M. Schneiders, ‘Feminist Hermeneutics,’ in Hearing the New Testament: Strategies for Interpretation, ed. J.
Green, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), pp. 349-369; here pp. 349-350.
[4]
Joseph Morgan-Smith, ‘Incarnational Friendship: A Feminist- and
Womanist-Inspired Revision of Luther’s “Happy Exchange” Theory of Atonement,’
Priscilla Papers (January 30, 2017); online at: https://www.cbeinternational.org/resource/article/priscilla-papers-academic-journal/incarnational-friendship-feminist-and-womanist.
[5] Christopher Rowland and Mark Corner,
Liberating Exegesis: The Challenge of
Liberation Theology to Biblical Studies (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John
Knox Press, 1989), pp. 12-13.
[6]
Ibid., p. 15.
[7] Carlos Mesters, ‘Como se faz
Teologia hoje no Brasil?’ Estudos Biblicos
1 (1985), p. 10. Quoted in Rowland and
Corner, p. 39.
[8]
Clodovis Boff, Theology and Praxis (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2009).
[9]
Cf. Rowland and Corner’s discussion of Clodovis Boff, Ibid.., p. 64.
[10]
Ibid., pp. 66-67.
[11] Gerald West, ‘Reading the
Bible Differently: Giving Shape to the Discourse of the Dominated,’ Semeia 73 (1996): 21-41.
[12] West, p. 27, quoting Cornel West, Prophetic Fragments (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1988): 270-1.
[13]
West, p. 38.
[14]
See the first article in the following new journal: Sunday Bobai Agang,
‘Integrating Public Theology into African Theological Institutions’ Curricula,’
African Theological Journal Vol. 1.1 (2020): 3-21.
[15]
Ibid.
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