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Engaging Scripture

Posted Tuesday, December 04, 2007 by Charlie Trimm
Categories: Hermeneutics
For anyone interested in the theological interpretatin of Scripture or just in thinking about how we read Scripture, Stephen Fowl's Engaging Scripture is a helpful place to begin (although sadly, it is not a cheap book). While I do not agree with much of what he writes, he does raise some good questions along the way that we need to interact with. Here are some of the points that I think are interesting and that are important to the book.

1. Is our interpretation determined, undetermined, or underdetermined? The first choice is what is familiar in conservative circles and evangelicalism, while the middle choice is where postmodern lands. The last choice is Fowl's attempt to moderate the two: while there is more than simply one meaning, there can be wrong meanings as well. The text leads the interpreter to a variety of meanings.

2. Fowl recognizes that we can easily use the Bible to support our sin, as has often happened throughout history. I think that this trait is especially present in the theo interp idea (although not towards sin, but towards are preconceived ideas), because theological presuppositions are to be embraced before interpretation, not ignored. Fowl's guard against this is for the reader to always assume they are being sinful and to seek to be vigilant in their reading, looking for holes. The community is to play a large role in this process.

3. The Spirit is an important part of interpretation. He gives a controversial example by going to Acts 10-15 and examining how the Spirit works there. The Spirit works in the lives of various Gentiles, which shows that God has now accepted Gentiles. But they would not have known that unless someone (Peter at first) had actually come to interact with them. Fowl applies this to homosexuals today: since the church has so little contact with homosexuals, there is no way to see if the Spirit is working in their lives.

4. He is intrigued with the mention of stealing in the midst of a series of thoughts about talking. His idea is that the members of the church still shared their goods with each other to some degree, so that the stealing was a "minor" stealing but was from each other. This signals a breakdown in communication among the community, as they would not talk to each other about what was happening with the stolen goods. He gives the example of a shared refrigerator, where the line between borrowing and stealing is very fine and where disagreements can ruin friendships. One of the points of the chapter is that the church needs to be more open with each other on a broader variety of topics. Appealing to Bonhoffer, he says that there are some things that should be kept to oneself, but that we need to think more about being in community to a greater degree.

Series: Book Reviews
The Gods of the Nations, by Daniel Block
Hebrew Poetry and Robert Alter
Creation According to Sailhamer
The Rise of Evangelicalism	Random book reviews from Charlie
Old Testament Theology Devotionals
The Dominance of Evangelicalism: The Age of Spurgeon and Moody
Rethinking Missions with Steve Saint
Neither Poverty nor Riches
The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind II
Going Places with God
A God Entranced Vision of All Things
The Meaning of Jesus: Borg versus Wright
Military History and Christianity: Do they mix?
Wright and Borg, Part 3
The Mosaic of Christian Belief
Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology
The Problem of War in the Old Testament
God is a Warrior
Holy War in Ancient Israel, by Gerhard von Rad
Yahweh is a Warrior
Is There A Meaning in This Text
Faithful Intepretation: Reading the Bible in a Postmodern World
Engaging Scripture
Does the Bible Justify Violence?
Reading Scripture with the Church
A History of Christian Thought, Volume 1
The Darker Side of Samuel, Saul and David
War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence
Golden Compass Trilogy
Israelite Religions, Richard Hess
The Mission of God
Biblical Interpretation: Then and Now
Life in Biblical Israel
Biblical Theology
Reading and Preaching the Bible in the Worship of the Church 3
Theological Introduction to the Psalms
The Tree of Life: An Exploration of Biblical Wisdom Literature