The Rising Stock of Visual Exegesis

Byzantine Job manuscript, c. 1200

Theological interpretation (an old concern 'round these parts) is here to stay not because it is new, but because it is normal.  One of the testimonies to its normality is the abundant evidence for the method in art history.  A hot-headed art historian might even go so far to say that theological interpretation of the Bible is primarily a visual phenomenon, in the sense that it constitutes the earliest form of Christian art, and that art is a remarkably more immediate and effective way of "spiritually" reading the Bible.  Consider, for example, Jesus appearing to Job on the right.

Herman's visual typology

This is less known than it should be, but one sees the marks of a rising academic stock worth investing in now.  An intriguing session at the Society of Biblical Literature in Chicago this year thoroughly scratched the surface of this enormous topic.  There, one contributor wisely suggested that "visual criticism" should be added to the more familiar repertoire of redaction, comparative, or canonic criticism of the Bible.  Though some scholars consider this kind of thing "Bible criticism on holiday," such scholars themselves seem to have been on holiday, failing to notice that the De Gruyter's Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception includes a visual arts section (to which I've contributed), and Blackwell's "through the centuries" commentary series is incorporating visual art as well, not to mention a growing number of studies, and an Emory University postdoc to boot.  So let me throw down here:  Criticize historical criticism all you want, but if your interpretive method still unthinkingly limits itself to text, you're still beholden to the historical critical paradigm.

There is little discussion of visual exegesis in evangelical circles, despite the exciting talk surrounding theological interpretation (so well introduced by Dan Treier).  However, one could suggest that the phenomenon first happened visually in the evangelical arena as well, as evidenced by Bruce Herman's typological paintings made in collaboration with the Old Testament scholar Gordon Hugenberger, on offer long before theological interpretation caught on more widely.

All this is by way of bringing up the current issue of Comment, edited by Peter Leithart (who has written in this area himself).  Therein your humble scribe has penned an introductory article to the phenomenon of visual exegesis, concluding with a meditation on what is probably the most interesting Byzantine fresco I've ever seen.  To poke fun at the Anchor Bible commentary series (that bastion of historical criticism), the article is entitled "Anchors Aweigh!  The Neglected Art of Theological Interpretation."  If that's not enough of a motivation to purchase the issue, consider the lineup of contributors, including Marilynne Robinson, my colleague Lynn Cohick, Matthew Lee Anderson, Dan Siedell, Mako Fujimura, and other worthies.  It's more like a book than a magazine actually, and definitely worth ordering (but I'm biased).

update: I've put up the full article at academia.edu

You May Now Resume Loving

You'll be delighted to know that after 572 pages of the fourth volume (!) of his Anchor-sponsored masterwork, A Marginal Jew, historical critic John Meier concludes (against his initial suspicions) that the command to love God and neighbor may very well have been uttered by the historical Jesus himself.  Who says we don't still need the historical critical method?

But it gets even better on page 573:

The one thing that cannot be found anywhere int the ancient Mediterranean world prior to Jesus is the terribly terse, totally unexplained, in-your-face demand 'love your enemies.' Consequently, while the argument from discontinuity is more tenuous in this case, I am inclined to allow that the Q command to love enemies, as well as the Marcan tradition of the double command, goes back to the historical Jesus.

Your heard the man - he allows it!

one jot and one tittle shall in no wise pass

"It is really only through an appreciation of the original idea of Scripture, and the apprehension of God that underlies it," declares Kugel, "that those [historical critical] difficulties can be put in proper perspective" (687). Likewise Brevard Childs contends that today, "the role of the Bible is not being understood simply as a cultural expression of ancient peoples, but as a testimony pointing beyond itself to a divine reality to which it bears witness" (9).

But Harvard [Kugel] and Yale [Childs] backing the move toward theological interpretation is infinitely less important than the fact that theological interpretation is nothing new. It may therefore be less a "movement" than a resumption of the norm. Here's Stephen Fowl:

I take the theological interpretation of scripture to be that practice whereby theological concerns and interests inform and are informed by a reading of scripture. In this respect, throughout Christian history it has been the norm for Christians to read their scripture theologically... Indeed, until relatively recently it would have been unusual to suggest that scripture might be read for other purposes (xiii).

If theological interpretation aims to be not a fad, but a genuine resumption of ancient practices, the second part of Fowl's definition must be kept in mind. It is theology "being informed by" scripture - wedded to it, devoted to the jot and tittle - that Ireneaus, Origen, Augustine and Gregory of Nyssa understood so well, and that "theological interpreters" today so easily miss.

Hence Kugel's complaint that liberal commentators have "frequently sought to distance themselves from the actual details of the text (many of which seem inappropriate to modern thinking) in order to focus on its 'main ideas' or theological 'center' or overall theme" (674).

Hence Reno having to say that

Conceptual allegory will not do; one must depict the truth in and through the details, not in order to 'control' theology with exegesis, but because those details, the signa, are ordained by God to bring us into fellowship with his ineffable res... Karl Barth and Adrienne von Speyr do not turn from description of what the text says to formulate a theological conclusion. They offer a theologically ramified exposition of what the text says, and that constitutes their conclusion (405).

And hence Byassee having to remind that

When Augustine brings an explicitly Christian theological reading to bear on a psalm there is almost always a literal link between the psalm and a New Testament theme, story, or idea that directs him to make that interpretation. Allegory cannot take place without a verbal or narrative cue... (205).

And hence, yes, the ManBearPig, a contemporary way of making the exact point that Irenaeus did.

Look, I don't watch Southpark often, so when I do, I run with it for months. And don't get snooty on me. George Weigel recently revealed (on the EWTN tribute no less) that Richard John Neuhaus loved Talladega Nights.

Hegelian Bible-ectic

Perhaps invoking the Hegelian method will clarify the state of Biblical interpretation.

Thesis:

Divine wisdom has arranged for certain stumbling blocks and interruptions of the historical sense... by inserting in the midst a number of impossibilities and incongruities, in order that the very interruption of the narrative might as it were present a barrier to the reader and lead him to refuse to proceed along the pathway of the ordinary meaning... thereby bring[ing] us, through the entrance of a narrow footpath, to a higher and loftier road and lay[ing] open the immense breadth of the divine wisdom.

-Origen (185-254) On First Principles

Antithesis:

The valleys of biblical truth have been filled up with the debris of human dogmas, ecclesiastical institutions, liturgical formulas, priestly ceremonies, and casuistic practices. Historical criticism is digging through this mass of rubbish. Historical criticism is searching for the rockbed of the Divine word, in order to recover the real Bible. Historical criticism is sifting all this rubbish. It will gather out every precious stone. Nothing will escape its keen eye.

-Charles Augustus Briggs (1841-1913) General Introduction to the Study of Holy Scripture

False Synthesis:

The separation between a theological-religious experience of Biblical texts and a literary one is radically factitious. It cannot work. That is to say that the plain question of divine inspiration... must be faced squarely. The author of Job.. was not producing 'literature.' Nor were those who bore witness to the 'darkness upon the earth' the evening of Good Friday. A literary elucidation of such texts is legitimate and can be helpful, but only... if it tells us that that which it omits is the essential.

-George Steiner's critique of The Literary Guide to the Bible

Actual Synthesis:

What separates us from Origen is not his lack of historical-critical techniques. Were we to presume the scriptures to be the language of God, we would be able to retain every single specific insight of modern-historical critical study. But we would be obliged to restore in our minds a functional belief in the divine economy that could order the strange, diverse, complex, and even seemingly contradictory witness of the many ages and many communities represented in the bible in such a way that it testifies to a coherent - nay, beautiful and holy - plan. It may be an existentially deep and difficult ditch to recross, but I see no reasons other than the eccentricities of modernity why we cannot do so.

-R.R. Reno's Origen and Spiritual Interpretation

It's an exciting time to be interpreting Scripture. To recall T.S. Eliot (hat tip: kp),

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Harvard's Bible

Early twentieth century American Christians - neck deep in the fundamentalist/modernist controversy - would have difficulty believing that in the early twenty-first century, the following declaration would be made by a respected professor at Harvard:

[I]n the broad perspective, the fundamentalist - occasional anti-intellectualism and all - has succeeded in preserving much of what is most basic about the Bible, the ancient approach to reading it. By contrast, what now seems naïve is precisely the liberal faith that, despite their abandonment of a good bit of that approach, the Bible can somehow still go on being the Bible.

Kugel is referring to how liberal commentators want to "have their Bible and criticize it too."

Ancient interpretive methods may sometimes appear artificial, but this hardly means that abandoning them guarantees unbiased interpretation. In fact, so much of what liberal theologians and commentators have to say is typically not all that modern scholarship has brought to light, but rather represents an attempt to find a compromise between that scholarship and what the commentators themselves would like the Bible to be. Thus liberal commentators, in the face of all they know about etiological narratives and the like, often prefer to tell their readers about other things [such as] Rahab's proto-feminism.... At times, their interpretations are scarcely less forced than those of ancient midrashists (and usually far less clever).

Kugel doesn't call this phenomenon the ManBearPig, but he might as well have. Granted, I'm sympathetic to some of the interpretations that Kugel calls "Biblical Criticism Lite" (what's wrong with pointing out the glaring differences between the Gligamesh and Genesis flood accounts?), but his point stands tall nonetheless. Attempts to contort the Bible into teaching political correctness are snicker-inducing. Kugel's way to avoid such selective interpretation? "Keep your eyes on the ancient interpreters." For Christians, this means being anchored in patristics. Hopefully the fact that Christological interpretation of the Bible is the answer to the postmodern multiple readings dilemma will not be news to readers of this blog. For more on Kugel, consider Reno, who makes the important point that his book may overplay the incompatibility between faith and critical scholarship. Grace, after all, perfects nature.

Technically, I should add that Kugel is no longer at Harvard. He left his endowed professorship for the much less secure option of living in Jerusalem, being the Orthodox Jew that he is. He wouldn't be the first. Professor Nicholas Constas, a brilliant scholar of Orthodoxy at Harvard Divinity School, also left Harvard to live at Simonopetra Monastery on Mt. Athos.

Kugel and Constas: Men of serious faith who reached the highest level of academic accomplishment only to leave Harvard behind. Maybe they know something we don't.

ManBearPig Terrorizes Seminary

Theological interpretation, by which we mean the answer to the dilemma of infinite possible readings is a firmly ecclesial one, is so hot right now. This is as it should be. The flood of commentaries (Brazos, Eerdmans and Blackwell), books and articles flow from a growing realization that theological interpretation can kill two birds - modern and postmodern - with one stone.

Modernity's mission impossible to isolate the text's historical context and authorial intent is shown, by advocates of theological interpretation, to be of limited assistance for believers. The historical-critical method is, as someone has so nicely put it, "a revelationally inappropriate hermeneutic." On the postmodern end, if the Bible can be unhinged from any original context or intent, then a faithful answer to the consequent confusion is to read the Scripture through a clearly Christological lens. This is appropriate enough, as Christ has long had a facility for opening scrolls, and without him many of our readings amount to weeping (not to mention a yawn).

A few recent articles have attempted to summarize the long overdue recovery project of theological interpretation. I'm partial to Jason Byassee's entertaining roundup of selected publications. Byassee cites Ireneaus' helpful analogy:

The words of the Bible are like so many tesserae in the hands of a mosaic-maker. They can be arranged to display something disgusting... Or they can be properly arranged to show the image of a king.

Byassee refers us to Lewis Ayres' suggestion in this volume that the literal, or plain sense (as oppose to spiritual sense) of Scripture, does not amount to whatever historical critics want it to mean. The plain sense of the Bible is, simply put, God. Byassee makes a similar point in his own book on the Psalms, arguing for a "christological plain sense." Dan Treier seems to concur in his forthcoming book, an excerpt of which is available in the current Princeton Theological Review (PDF here), an issue also devoted to theological interpretation. Like I said, it's hot right now.

The ManBearPig
There can, however, be ugly consequences to the shift. In some Seminaries today, a monstrous pedagogical hybrid, one part history, one part theology, and eight parts New York Times, prowls about seeking whom it may devour. It is loosed from the moorings of history, resistant to basic Christian claims, and calls itself "theological interpretation." It dismisses historical critical method as the tired methodology of dead white modernist males, but in its place puts anything but a firmly ecclesial read. One O.T. 101 textbook suggests, nay, insists that

It is not appropriate to make... readings conform to any particular pattern of church doctrine.

I imagine the author is driven by a frustration with recalcitrant Seminarians who refuse to permit the Hebrew Scriptures their original contexts. This is indeed a besetting sin of hotheaded Seminarians, who too quickly forget that the Bible belongs to Israel before it belongs to the Church. What this textbook calls "narrow doctrinal readings" are therefore off-limits.

But can such scholars not see their own theology, a new kind of Creed imported directly, without amendment or reservation, from the secular academy that trained them? The Bible, selectively interpreted, becomes a morality tale illustrating the pitfalls of the politically incorrect. In short, selling one's birthright for a mess of passé pottage is what often passes today for "theological interpretation." Byassee provides a few examples in his article, and a typical O.T. student today at a Protestant Seminary could likely provide many more.

The shift toward theological interpretation, therefore, has its downside, and puts an increasing amount of pressure on the achilles' heel of Protestantism: ecclesiology. For without the firm doctrinal milieu the church provides, "theological interpretation" is anything but Christological. Consequently, biblical studies today provides something of a return to what was best described in John Dryden's famous send-up of sola scriptura in Religio Laici (hat tip to Edward Oakes for the citation).

The tender page with horny fists was gall'd
And he was gifted most that loudest bawl'd...
Each was ambitious of th'obscurest place,
No measure ta'en from knowledge, all from grace.
Study and pains were now no more their care;
Texts were explained by fasting and by prayer.
This was the fruit the private spirit brought,
Occasion'd by great zeal and little thought.

That Stuff They Found
The chaos of any and all possible readings (except Christological ones) is enough to prompt longings for the fleshpots of Anchor Bible-style historical-criticism, and its trusty handmaiden, biblical archaeology. The claim is often made that such tools have been hurtful to the average believer, hence all the more reason to shift to theological exegesis. Rowan Greer tells a story, cited by Byassee, about the dean of Chichester Cathedral "who was reading the first book of German higher criticism he had ever encountered. As he read, the churchman paused to look out of his window - precisely at the moment when the spire of the cathedral collapsed to the ground!" A good story to be sure, but has this actually been historical criticism's effect?

As Brian Fagan makes clear in his numerous writings on the subject, 19th century archaeology was driven by a powerful Victorian public interest in the veracity of the Scriptures. And, like Heinrich Schliemann finding Troy, Ninevah was not proven to be myth - it was found. Anyone can walk through Assyrian ruins today at major museums (hopefully keeping in mind that one century and a half ago, all we knew of Assyria was from some obscure Biblical references). Babylon, too, was found. Additional examples of the Biblical record's archaeological confirmation are so numerous that one best limit oneself to the top fifteen finds (PDF file).

Or consider the famous Egyptologist Bob Brier. In two of his lectures in his extensive Egypt course, he performs an external audit on the Penteteuch from a secular Egyptologogical perspective. His results? Genesis' Joseph account, strangely enough, is concordant with Egyptological data on mummification, hieroglyphs, magic, and the long tradition of Egyptian dream interpretation. We even have a stela found on Sehel Island that tells of seven-year famine. Exodus fares just as well. The cities of Pithom and Ramses referenced in chapter one check out with Moses' supposed time period, the "heart-hardening" rhetoric is thoroughly Egyptian, even Ramses II's first-born child is known to have died. The only gripe Brier has with Exodus is the number of slaves who might have escaped.

Of course it's a mistake, a very un-postmodern one, to expect any of this data to do too much. None of these verifications "prove" Judaism or Christianity. But seeing that they do confirm both, pardon me if I permit myself a little old fashioned encouragement. Indeed, following Ayers, Byassee and Treier, God may be the literal sense of Scripture. But He is the God of history.

In short, the age of archaeology, broadly understood, has been good to Christians and Jews who believe their faith is not a fable. That devastating discovery that disproves the Bible has yet to be unearthed (though I have hired three assistants to be constantly tuned in to the Discovery, History, and National Geographic Channels at ALL TIMES just in case). On the literary side of things, exhaustive textual analysis has complicated, but not unseated Christian faith. Far from the church crumbling under the weight of the 19th German intellect, the Bible seems to has held up rather well. If anything has crumbled, it's the notion of individual authorship, but as Old Testament scholar Gary Anderson has remarked, if the Holy Spirit is the primary author of Scripture, why should we be so concerned to pin it down to one particular writer? Do we not believe in the Holy Spirit guides the people of God (which includes oral tradition, authors, redactors and canonizers)?

Theological interpretation is, then, a positive and long overdue turn in biblical studies. Avery Cardinal Dulles remarked (in 1966!) that it is only to those "earnestly seeking communion with God will the Gospels yield their full message" (p. 34, hat tip again to Oakes). Dulles is right, and we could say the same of the Old Testament. Still, as the troubled field of biblical studies makes this inevitable shift, be it duly noted that

1. Theological interpretation does not work without good theology.

2. History does not belong to historical criticism. It belongs to God.