Friday Review: Hauerwas--"The Way the Words Run"

Chapter 1 of the Richard Hays Festschrift: The Word Leaps the Gap. This chapter is by Stanley Hauerwas, "Why 'The Way the Words Run' Matters: Reflections on Becoming a 'Major Biblical Scholar.'" The "major biblical scholar" of the title is none other than Hauerwas himself, who has just published a theological commentary on Matthew in the Baker series.

I've never read Stanley Hauerwas' Unleashing the Scriptures, but I've read enough references to it to know I am at least half sympathetic to Hauerwas' hermeneutic--that is, except that Hauerwas is a far truer postmodern than I am. And as such, he strongly resists laying out any "superdescription" of how his readings work. As a true postmodern, he would like you catch the way he reads Scripture, to apprentice with him and be trained.

Of course he is not really interested in you watching him per se. He wants you to follow Jesus with the biblical text as you read it situated in the church. I offer not a summary, but a response to some interesting quotes from this piece, at least half of which is long footnotes. The essence of the piece is a response to critique Richard Hays offered in his Moral Vision of the New Testament. Hauerwas recognizes that Hays' thought has evolved somewhat in the more recent compilation he coedited with Ellen Davis, namely, The Art of Reading Scripture.

1. "Hays was kind enough to attend to my account of the role of the Bible in theological and ethical reflection" (2). "I use the word 'role' to avoid the word 'use'" (2 n.2).

It is going to hurt for me to suggest that use is way more accurate to what actually takes place in the relationship between Christians and the biblical text. This is way more true of theological hermeneutics than even original meaning interpretation, in my opinion.

2. "fundamentalism and historical criticism are but two sides of the same coin: they are both developments of the Protestant stress on sola scriptura, transformed by the printing press into "sola text." These developments were given ideological formation by democratic social orders that created something called the individual citizen, which presumed the ability to read the Bible without spiritual formation and moral guidance. As a result, the Bible was separated from the community necessary for it to be read as the word of God, that is, the church" (3).

This is Hauerwas' own summary of his earlier book, Unleashing the Scripture. I would agree with the bulk of this statement.

3. In Moral Vision, Hays suggests that Hauerwas' argument should lead him to become a Roman Catholic (4), a question Wieland Willker raised of a post of mine this week.

Hauerwas is not concerned to work out a finely tuned method, of course. He is truly postmodern. This comment is reflective: "Attempts to develop a hermeneutical theory that can resolve such differences in advance are doomed to failure. The church did not develop a theory to resolve conflicting readings; rather, the church was given an office to ensure that one church's readings would be tested by other churches. The name of that office is 'bishop'" (7 n.15).

In my own hermeneutic, it is neither Scripture nor the Church that are the final answer but the Spirit. The consensus of the Church reading Scripture is as sure as any indication of the Spirit's direction we might have. In that sense I reflect the emphasis of my revivalist roots, now balanced with the emphasis of the evangelical (Scripture) and catholic (Church).

I've written it up in popular form in my self-published, Who Decides What the Bible Means?

4. "contemporary preaching too often takes as its task to find 'applications' for the text, when its task should be to lead a congregation away from one narrative world and into another" (6 n.12).

"I avoid using the language of 'interpretation,' because I think such language suggests that the text has a 'meaning,' which must then be interpreted" (7 n.14).

"There is, moreover, no 'original historical sense,' and it is not at all clear why the 'literal sense' should be identified as that which the 'original' authors and readers understood. The very presumption of 'original' needs to be left behind" (6 n.13)

"I remain unconvinced that the so-called historical knowledge is a trump or even is necessary for how the Scripture is to be read by the church" (9).

While I agree with the legitimacy and primacy of Hauerwas' theological reading of Scripture, my main disagreement is his apparent denial of an original meaning for the biblical text. A theological reading without any reference to the original meanings of the Bible will be prone to run away into the celibacy of the clergy and purgatory. In this respect I remain a pietist Protestant--the consensus of the church at any point in time is not definitive or preclusive of reformation. I believe in meta-language, even if it is ultimately itself metaphorical or expressive.

5. "That historical critics will not let the church avoid the bits of Scripture that do not confirm our contemporary sensibilities is also a contribution we dare not ignore. Of course, I do not believe that historical criticism was necessary for the recovery of the significance of Jesus' life or for forcing us to attend to the unpleasant parts of Scripture. It just worked out that way" (12).

:-)

All true truth is God's truth, so our faith is always potentially enriched by any true pursuit of truth for its own sake.

6. Hauerwas refers to several co-conspirators in this movement that is significantly in play in Christian biblical studies. They should be mentioned.

a. Hays himself in the Art of Reading Scripture.
Hauerwas mentions some of the nine key theses of this book: "Scripture has multiple complex senses given by God," "Scripture is rightly understood in light of the church's rule of faith as a coherent dramatic narrative," and "Though the Bible contains the voices of many different witnesses, the canon of Scripture finds its unity in the overarching story of the work of the triune God," seem particularly relevant.

b. The Baker theological commentary series:
"this commentary series is based on the assumption that the Nicene tradition, in all its diversity and controversy, provides the proper basis for the interpretation of the Bible as Christian Scripture" (13).

Again, I affirm the legitimacy and primacy of this way of reading Scripture. I also affirm without reservation that hermeneutically this is a reader-response approach to the text of Scripture in which the words are not read in context and that the contextual, "original" meaning of Scripture will regularly diverge with this manner of reading, often simply being something almost completely different and, indeed, at times directly conflicting with the meaning thus found.

7. "the way the words run" names the way a community has learned to read texts through training..." (15).

"Christians so naturally read scriptural texts as shaping a form of life... moral readings" (15 n.36).

Reminds me of a comment by Keith Drury, something like "the only real function of the Bible in the life of the church is to create a holy people."