The Bible Reader’s Tool Shop

I am curious to hear a clarification of a difference, if any, between an “interpretive claim” and a plain reading of a text. Is there such a reading of a text that is “plain” which does not require an interpretive claim to be authoritative?

Hi Brendan,

Even a reader who believes that he is reading the text ‘plainly’ (that is, without reading anything into the text, or without attempting to see multiple layers of meaning in the text) is approaching the act of reading with a philosophical presupposition that the author of the text he is reading intends for the text to be read in such a manner. That is, the reader is presupposing that the text is not given in order to communicate multiple layers of meaning. It follows from this that even a reading which the reader intends to be ‘plain’, and not ‘interpretive’, entails an act of interpretation which will affect the meaning he sees in the text, because the reader has interpreted the nature and purpose of the text [that its purpose resists any reading except a flat, referential statement], often before he has even read the text itself.

Notice two things:

1) This act of interpretation [i.e. of making a judgment about the purpose of the text prior to or during or after the reading, namely, whether the author intends the text to be read as a simple referential statement, or whether the author intends the text to communicate more than this] is one which, if it is wrongly adjudicated, stands to have significant consequences for faith (what we should believe) and morals (how we should behave).

For example, if we’re mistaken because we don’t perceive [i.e. interpret] a text to contain any normative suggestions that should affect our behavior, and yet the purpose of the text is given to make such suggestions, then we will fail to receive the teaching of the text because we have underread it. If on the other hand we are mistaken because we do perceive [i.e. interpret] that a text contains a suggestion for behavior when in fact it is not the text’s purpose to make any such suggestion, we will likewise fail to receive the teaching of the text because we have overread it.

2) This act of interpreting the purpose of a text is entailed by every act of reading the content of a text.

So the short answer to your question is that there is no such thing as a plain reading of a text which does not involve an act of interpretation at some level, which stands to have a bearing on faith and morals in some way.

In the grace of Christ,

Chad

Hi Brendan.

Thanks for raising an important question. Since this blog post engages an article which I wrote, let me jump in here with an additional thought or two about something I have been pondering.

It might be helpful in looking at this matter to consider the analogy between interpreting texts and interpreting historical events. (The biblical text is after all an historical datum.) Consider this passage in N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (82-84):

There is not, nor can there be, any such thing as a bare chronicle of events without a point of view. . . . Suppose, for example, we try to make a small but central claim about Jesus. If we say ‘Christ died for our sins’, it is not too difficult to see an obvious element of interpretation: ‘for our sins’ is a theological addendum to the otherwise ‘historical’ statement. But even if we say ‘Christ died’, we have not escaped interpretation: we have chosen to refer to Jesus as ‘Christ’, ascribing to him a Messiahship which neither his contemporaries nor ours would universally grant. Very well: ‘Jesus died’. But we still have not escaped ‘interpretation’, and indeed at this point it looms larger than ever: three people died outside Jerusalem that afternoon, and we have chosen to mention only one. For that matter, thousands of Jews were crucified by the Romans in the vicinity of Jerusalem during the same century, and we have chosen to mention only one. Our apparently bare historical remark is the product of a multi-faceted interpretative decision. Nor is this unusual. It is typical of all history. All history involves selection, and it is always human beings who do the selecting.

There is not, in my mind, anything that might be called a “plain reading” any more than there is a “bare historical remark.” Both are “the product of a multi-faceted interpretive decision.” And not to be missed: as in interpreting historical events, so in interpreting biblical texts, “it is always human beings who do the selecting.” This is true both in deciding which texts belong in the Bible and in determining how those texts are to be read, including even those places where the Bible interprets itself. To put this differently, all who read the Bible and draw conclusions on what it says are engaged in a complex interpretive activity, even if they do not call it that. No one ever “reads the Bible straight.” Some are conscious of the assumptions and the authoritative basis on which they arrive at their interpretive decisions; others perhaps not. To some this discussion is “merely academic”; to others it is a matter of life and death, an issue of whose voice speaks from the sacred page.

Vern

Vern and Brendan,

The quote from Wright gets to the heart of the matter with a very clear example. It also raises the point that until we add something to the declarative statement, ‘Jesus died,’ we have not said anything interesting or meaningful with regard to spirituality, or salvation, or theology, or ecclesiology. But I take Brendan’s question to be about biblical statements that come to bear on just those kinds of issues: spirituality, or soteriology, or theology, or ecclesiology.

That is, someone who wants to claim that his reading is a “plain” reading, with no “interpretation” added, wants to make that claim [that his reading is plain] about a spiritually significant biblical statement (namely, that it should shape our relationship with Christ and his Church), or about a soteriologically significant biblical statement (namely, that it should shape our understanding of salvation), or about a theologically significant biblical statement (namely, that it should shape our understanding of God in some meaningful way), or about an ecclesiologically significant biblical statement (namely, that it should shape our understanding about the nature of the Church). Otherwise, there is nothing at stake, and no reason to assert that one’s reading is plain and should therefore be considered by others to be more compelling because it does not require interpretation.

But the statement, ‘Jesus died’, is not in the category of statements that performs any of these functions which the “plain reading” has in mind, unless by singling out Jesus, the plain reading indeed does have one of those functions in mind. But just at this point, it would no longer be a “plain” reading rather than an “interpretive” one. It would involve an interpretive claim that may be correct or incorrect.

In the grace of Christ,

Chad

Chad and Vern,

Thank you both for your responses. I am very much benefiting from the dialogue and engagement. Please correct if I am not reading you both correctly or am oversimplifying, but I think your responses lead one to realize that no aspect of faith and morals (and perhaps all knowledge?) is based on a completely non-arbitrary and universal realization of authoritative truth. If that is true, how could one begin to tackle question #2 of the original post without slipping in to the epistemic regress when it seems we will always end on the foundation of the individual?

I am sure I am over stepping since I do not have any sort of Philosophical training, but put in the form of premises in conclusions, the following would seem to be the content of this discussion. I am not at all confident in my structuring below, so be sure to correct me as I would like to improve on such things.

P1: All recognition of what is “true” (biblical, historical, or anything else) requires an inevitable judgment of the individual. (This is what we have established in the above comments.)

P2: Christ may have left us a “true” infallible authority to tell us what is “true”. (This is the content of Question #2 in the original post.)

C: The recognition of the Christ established, infallible authority will require the judgment of the individual.

It seems that this conclusion would then collapse into the individual is the infallible authority that he has been striving to recognize.

I look forward to your responses,

Brendan

Chad, agreed and well put (re: #4).

Brendan, we should probably mention here the appeal often made to the Holy Spirit’s guidance in such matters, especially in response to my earlier claim (quoting Wright) that “it is always human beings who do the selecting [or the deciding].” This appeal to the Holy Spirit’s guidance introduces an important element into the discussion, but it also raises some challenging questions. For example, is the guidance of the Holy Spirit to which Jesus refers in John 16:12-15 a hermeneutical promise, as many assume, or does it refer to something else? And is it a promise to individual followers of Jesus throughout the ages, or is there a more immediate and constrained referent in view? If Jesus means to give all of his followers a hermeneutical guarantee, how shall we account for the often contradictory and mutually exclusive conclusions to which readers arrive, each claiming the Holy Spirit as interpretive guide? And will it do simply to say, “Well, some of us listen more closely to the Holy Spirit than do others”? That might be true, but who determines this and by what criteria, and how shall we guard against arbitrariness, presumption, and arrogance in such matters?

Are we then left with the “individual as infallible authority,” as I understand your concern? I think not. Elsewhere I have set forth the threefold criteria of canon, creed, and community and their role in the interpretive enterprise (see my Interpretation of Scripture, pp. 48-58). If as an individual reader I submit to these interpretive criteria, it does not therefore put me in the role of an “infallible authority,” but of a humble and accountable member of a long and continuing interpretive tradition. Ultimately, of course, decisions will have to be made about which canon, whose creed, and what community lays legitimate claim to interpretive authority; and for that we have Christ our Lord–not the Christ of a merely mystical or spiritual existence (“No creed but Christ”), but the very Christ of Scripture who is mediated and interpreted to us by those who stood in a hermeneutic proximity to him that surely warrants more confidence than our own distant and private readings. Our best interpretive posture, I am contending, is to “rise in the presence of our elders,” honoring and submitting to those who followed on from the apostles and the prophets and pursuing a continuity with their interpretive legacy as the Church has bequeathed this to us.

Again, I think this is an important discussion, and not one that can be shuffled off to the academy, as a topic for endless debate among those who have nothing better to do with their time. Or at least the Church’s Fathers obviously did not think so. Thanks for engaging.

Vern

Vern:

Thanks for the response. I have been stewing on it a bit and it seems that the posture of honor and submission that you mention is an essential piece of the puzzle. Once we begin to take on this posture, it seems that the focus of authority would start to shift from the individual by expecting from the start that the said authority lies outside of the individual. This posture may not directly reveal the infallible authority that Question #2 of the original post sets us looking for, but perhaps it does give us a position where upon its discovery it could be recognized. 

Thanks again,
Brendan

Hi Brendan (re: #5),

You wrote:

I think your responses lead one to realize that no aspect of faith and morals (and perhaps all knowledge?) is based on a completely non-arbitrary and universal realization of authoritative truth. If that is true, how could one begin to tackle question #2 of the original post without slipping in to the epistemic regress when it seems we will always end on the foundation of the individual?

While it is the case that every [cognizant] act of reading entails an act of interpretation, it does not follow from this that all acts of reading (and thus all acts of interpretation) are arbitrary. Nor does it follow that the attempt to anchor interpretive claims on ‘the foundation of an individual’ is necessarily arbitrary, if we can identify in an objective way which interpreters are endowed with the Holy Spirit’s guidance (and which of their interpretations are given under that guidance) and which interpreters are not (and so which interpretations are open to dissent by the faithful without compromising their status as ‘faithful’).

If we can identify in an objective way which interpreters God has endowed with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, then we will have found interpreters who are qualified to guide the faithful, and we will have found interpretations, when they are given under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, which are not arbitrary. The interpretations of others who may not be so endowed with the same guidance may still be weighted in proportion to the degree that their interpretations stand in accordance with the interpretations of those endowed with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The salient point is that the fact that an individual has presented an interpretation or made a judgment is not in itself sufficient to render authority as the province of the individual. This is what is at issue in your syllogism, where you write as your conclusion (C):

The recognition of the Christ established, infallible authority will require the judgment of the individual.

This is actually a tautology that is functioning as your preliminary conclusion from P1 and P2. A tautology is a statement that is true by virtue of its form. To see how this is so, subtract the variable in the prepositional phrase from the middle of (C) and replace it with anything you like. The assertion will still be true.

The recognition [that Mount Everest has been moved to Nebraska] will require the judgment of the individual.

It does not matter that no individual ever will actually recognize that Mount Everest has been moved to Nebraska. What the sentence is claiming epistemically is that recognition—whatever it is that is being recognized—will require the judgment of an individual to recognize it. That is, if there is something being recognized, then there must be a somebody (a “cognizer”) performing the act of re-cognizing.

You then write what is your final conclusion in the sentence following (C):

It seems that this conclusion would then collapse into the individual is the infallible authority that he has been striving to recognize,

This shift of authority from an external object (infallible or otherwise) to the individual’s subjective judgment does not actually follow from your conclusion (C), because again, (C) is not claiming that the existence of an infallible authority established by Christ depends on the [arbitrary] judgment of an individual [such that without the individual’s approval, the authority would not exist, in which case it would follow that the individual is in fact the authority]. It is only claiming tautologically that the recognition of such an authority entails the agency of an individual to recognize it.

Consider the following sentence:

Mount Everest has not been moved to Nebraska, but lies on the border between Nepal and Tibet.

The sentence is true whether or not an individual recognizes it to be true. And more importantly, it is not rendered arbitrary by an individual’s recognition of it, because its truth is not attached to recognition, but to an objective historical reality. Similarly, the claim that Christ has given the Holy Spirit to guide some interpreters and not others would be true—if it is true—even if neither of us recognizes it, and ‘Jesus Christ was raised from the dead’ is true even though a host of atheists deny it, and a host of others have never heard of Jesus Christ. But neither of these claims is rendered arbitrary simply because many people do appeal to them and have made them part of their own thinking. What would render such claims arbitrary is their dependence [if in fact they did depend] upon an individual’s agreement, such that there is no basis for them to be true when the individual does not agree. That is, they would be arbitrary if they could not be shown to have the capacity to bind their adherents in instances in which their adherents find them objectionable.

In the grace of Christ,

Chad