Plug for reading (of the prolegomenal stripe)

re Alan Torrance, “Auditus Fidei: Where and How Does God Speak?”

Part of the audaciousness of biblical theology is the inherent claim to understand the Word of God, and in a particular way.  Despite the historical debate regarding Ramist presuppositions and Enlightenment leanings in the WCF, there are lower prolegomenal considerations that support the higher exegesis.  

“Just interpreting the text” brings a tidal wave of presumptions to bear on the interaction between human and text or Spirit and human.  This tidal wave is what Torrance appeals to as a primary matter of concern for serious exegetical work.  While this is not a novel nor peculiar appeal, he approaches us with a robust and terse history of the theological/philosophical portals that have been brought forward in the history of exegesis.  

The reason this is advocated biblical theological reading is that he frames the discussion in God’s self-disclosure.  But he moves quickly toward a constructive approach to talk about knowers committed to that self-disclosure.  The essay does a good bit of epistemological prolegomena by elucidating entry statements like: “It is imperative to appreciate here, however, that this kind of epistemic reorientation does not assume an irrational “leap in the dark.”  

Here, he explores the roots of understanding scripture through a Christological-Pneumatological epistemology that fundamentally reorients the reader.  For Torrance, the crossroads of the self-revelation of God and the exegete meet at metanoia.  

The reason I am offering this chapter as a reading is that it cuts across several pedagogical needs.  First, it can be used to stir thought and prepare students to think about epistemological assumptions of their own presumed prolegomenon.  Second, the essay can challenge us to explore the outworking of a particular theologian in the biblical theological tradition.  Third, this essay makes active use of the philosophical traditions that have sometimes muddied the conversation, but doesn’t abandon them all to frivolity.  There are ‘ways out’ that can make use of similar biblical strands of epistemology found in certain regions of philosophy.  So there is some apologetic engagement going on.

Finally, students who are new to biblical theology (like me) might benefit from the challenge to support this approach with a beefy understanding of how we might faithfully render anything from the text at all.

 Alan J. Torrance, “Auditus Fidei: Where and How Does God Speak?” in Reason and the Reasons of Faith, eds. Paul J. Griffiths and Reinhard Hütter (New York: T & T Clark, 2005), 27-52.

The Body in Eastern Orthodoxy

I just read Scott Prather’s article in American Theological Inquiry entitled: “The Body and Human Identity in Postmodernity and Orthodoxy”.  It’s really a condensed read on somaticism’s reach into theology.  The article is roughly divided into three parts that I would call 1) why reductions and ‘isms’ won’t give Christian theology the impetus needed to work out somatic issues, 2) why orthodoxy can give us guidance on the body as a relative yet not subjective being, and 3) how our relativity to the Body of Christ is our body’s natural estate.

The first part appears to me to be obligatory for the author.  The second and third parts are a nice peer into the work of Eastern Orthodoxy of late and parsed statements about how we can view anthropology without flinging ourselves into the pure subjectivisms described in part one.  Here’s a nice quote from part 2:

“To be human is to be made “in the image of God,” a body made from “the dust of the earth” enlivened by and united with God through the soul. In this tradition, the soul is itself not a disembodied “part” of the human being, but embodied aspects of the person which reflect and tend towards the image of God (the logos of the Father) including intellect, will, and desire.”

The euangelion here is that the whole journal is free online at: atijournal.org.