Participatory Biblical Exegesis: A Theology of Biblical Interpretation

THREE: Participatory Biblical Exegesis and God the Teacher

C H A P T E R T H R E E Participatory Biblical Exegesis and God the Teacher The previous chapter sought to document the shift in the understanding of history. This shift corresponds to another one, namely with respect to the goal of exegesis. Whereas modern exegetes, with notable exceptions, tend to focus on the biblical texts—the origins of their composition, what seems to have been consciously known and intended by the authors/redactors, and so forth1 —the patristicmedieval tradition of exegesis reads the texts with a focus on the divine Teacher. In this tradition, the texts are read primarily in order to learn from and to come to know the Teacher, a knowledge that uncovers the deepest meaning of the texts themselves. Such biblical interpretation, R. R. Reno has noted, is a conversation with God mediated by the texts’ participatory historicity that unites “hermeneutical discipline” with “spiritual discipline.”2 Understood in this way, exegesis is primarily a participation in the Teacher, Jesus Christ, in and through participation in the realities that Christ, by the Holy Spirit, communicates to his Church. As Alister McGrath states, “Scripture is read in order to encounter Christ.”3 However, is this understanding of sacra scriptura as God’s sacra doctrina, whose purpose it is to mediate our participation in Christ — 63 — Levering-03 2/11/08 11:29 AM Page 63 the Teacher, possible today? Can humanly authored texts, written in particular historical contexts by authors whose understanding of reality did not possess comprehensiveness, communicate the Wisdom that is God’s providential Love? If the human authors/redactors of biblical texts teach in human genres and from a particular historical context, will not the human authors/redactors’ limited knowledge and purposes restrict the possibility of readers encountering the divine Teacher?4 The standard way of engaging such concerns is to probe ever further , by means of linear-historical tools, into the texts as historically constituted documents. By contrast, I am proposing that linear-historical tools alone will not suffice; instead the participatory-historical quest must be restored to its proper position. Linear-historical tools should be taken up from within the participatory-historical frame rather than seeking to validate (an unending and never-fulfilled task) the participatoryhistorical frame by means of linear-historical tools, which, as we have seen, are incapable of reaching beyond themselves to establish truth claims about divine being and action. Does this approach open up the biblical texts to true exegesis by drawing exegetes into the realities described by the Bible, or does it, on the contrary, make of the biblical texts a mere screen on which to project , eisegetically, our ideas about God and his action in the world? In order to shed light both on the primacy of God the Teacher in exegesis and on the potential of this exegetical mode for contemporary exegesis , this chapter places two patristic-medieval expositions of biblical exegesis—Augustine’s De doctrina christiana and Aquinas’s Inaugural Sermon “Commendation of and Division of Sacred Scripture”—in dialogue with two efforts to unite patristic-medieval and modern exegesis , namely Luke Timothy Johnson and William Kurz, S.J.’s The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship and the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum.5 I hope to show that renewing the tradition that sees biblical exegesis as a deifying participation in God the Teacher (sacra scriptura as sacra doctrina) offers believers precisely the theocentric model of biblical interpretation that is needed for exegesis rather than anthropocentric (and thus, from the Bible’s perspective , idolatrous) eisegesis.6 — 64 — Participatory Biblical Exegesis Levering-03 2/11/08 11:29 AM Page 64 St. Augustine, Scriptural Teaching, and the Divine Teacher In his De doctrina christiana, begun in 396 and completed in 427, Augustine7 sets forth “certain precepts for treating the Scriptures,” grounded in his reading of Matthew 22:34–40 in which Jesus teaches that on the two commandments of love of God and love of neighbor “depend all the law and the prophets” (22:40). In this way Augustine seeks to assist students in their efforts to teach Scripture.8 After granting that the unlearned can understand Scripture by the Holy Spirit, and that the learned can fail to understand Scripture, Augustine emphasizes the importance of mediation, of learning from others . Even Paul, he points out, though taught directly by a divine voice, “was nevertheless...