Global Intro to Bible -- chapter 11 -- Theological Interpretation of the Bible

Another day, another chapter. Today's was by Stephen Fowl on theological interpretation. No surprises here. Fowl delights in the de-throning of historical method, which had come to stand as policer of confessional beliefs, had evaluated the historical reliability of the biblical texts, and had governed the frameworks by which evidence was evaluated.

Of course to me this is inevitable. History cannot be escaped, even though we may not be able to see it clearly. History is an autonomous realm because it is what happened, even though we cannot discern it autonomously. We may or may not like it, but it simply is, despite the cloudiness of our vision.

Nevertheless, I also accept the validity of the rule of faith and figural interpretations, which Fowl gives as the two key features of theological interpretation. These are on the other side of Lessing's ditch. I'm not too fond of his sense of "literal" interpretation. I might distinguish three kinds of interpretation of texts: 1) the original, contextual meanings, 2) other "plain" interpretations that are in effect reader-response interpretations, and 3) figural interpretations that take texts metaphorically that were not originally meant to be read that way.