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The Goods of Reading: Theological Interpretation and Scriptural Reasoning^[1]



Rebekah Ann Eklund,
Duke Divinity School

The practice of reading texts has been scrutinized, deconstructed,
and reconstructed from a multitude of angles. Scholars have probed the
nature of texts, the perspective and presuppositions of the reader, and
the way in which meaning is produced in the interplay between the two.
These discussions have implications for the practice of scriptural
reasoning, inasmuch as it is a particular way of reading a certain kind
of text. Scriptural reasoning engages texts considered to be sacred by
those who adhere to them: the Qur'an, the Christian Bible, and the
Jewish Scriptures. Practitioners of scriptural reasoning are members of
faith communities who seek to order their lives by the wisdom in these
texts, and who come together into a shared space to read their sacred
texts together.
As Nicholas Adams writes, what makes scriptural reasoning possible is
not agreement on the rules for interpreting these sacred texts. Rather,
"The significant point of contact is a shared acknowledgement that
scriptural texts are sacred, together with a shared desire to do
scriptural reasoning."^[2]
Neither of these two points of contact are to be taken for granted.
The first one, for example, raises significant questions for the scholar
who is also a member of a community of faith. What does it mean to read
the sacred texts of Christianity from within the academy, using its set
of tools and assumptions, and at the same time to read for the end of
theological interpretation? For the purposes of this essay, theological
interpretation or reasoning is defined as reading the text for practical
wisdom – in other words, for the flourishing and nurturing of a faith
community and of those who seek to live faithfully to the God to whom
the sacred text bears witness.
This essay probes the practice of scriptural reasoning as a model for
reading sacred texts in a way that bridges the work and concerns of the
academy and the faith community; it will do so from a specifically
Christian perspective. In particular, it seeks to examine the
presuppositions and modes of reading Scripture that make scriptural
reasoning possible for Christians. To that end, we will consider the
reading of the Bible for the purpose of theological reasoning, defined
as increased wisdom that leads to a more faithful Christian life. In
other words, reading the text "theologically" may be construed as
reading for formation in identity and character, or for the
strengthening of certain virtues. Thus, it must be asked, what practices
regarding the reading of the text are required in order to read the
text in this way? In addition to certain academic strategies, are
particular "virtues" required for the reading of Christian Scripture for
greater wisdom? And finally, does the unique practice of scriptural
reasoning require or yield any virtues of its own? This exploration will
be shaped around three primary questions: for what goods does one read;
what does a text mean; and with whom does one read?

For what goods does one read?
"One does not read the Gospel of Matthew in the same manner in which one reads the New York Times,"
one of my seminary professors famously said. True enough: one does not
read the two documents for the same reasons. The reasons people read the
Bible are varied and overlapping; some of these "goods" suppose the
text to be sacred or inspired, and some do not. Some of these modes of
reading would be considered academic, some of them devotional or
confessional, and some perhaps even secular; yet the same person might
read the same text for several of these reasons all in the same day. For
example, one may read the Bible for increased understanding or greater
historical, literary, or religious knowledge. Historians turn to the
Bible, with sharply differing accounts of the reliability of its
material, for study of Israel's history and society; of the Ancient Near
East and its religions; of the Roman Empire; of Jesus and Nazareth; and
of the development of the early church and the Christian religion.
Literary critics study the Bible for its Hebrew poetry, muse over the
genre of the Gospels, and compare Jewish and Christian apocalyptic
works. The Bible may be read for religious knowledge, either in a more
universal vein (greater understanding of the divine) or a more
particular one (exploration of the identity of the Christian God:
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). The question, of course, is if reading
for greater knowledge in any of these areas is a good in itself, or if
this good in turn leads to a greater good: the flourishing of humankind,
for example, or the more thoughtful theologian, or the more faithful
Christian.
Reading the Bible is by no means limited to intellectual pursuits.
Some read the Bible for pleasure; one can easily imagine reading Esther
for this purpose, if not Joshua or Jude. Others peruse the Scripture for
insight into the human condition or the human spirit in general: the
Psalms and the book of Job are sometimes read in this way. Outside the
academy, perhaps the most commonly expected good of reading the Bible is
that of personal spiritual nourishment; reading the Bible is construed
as that which connects one personally to God in order to feed the soul,
strengthen the faint heart, and provide answers or help in times of
crisis or difficulty. Many Christians also read to seek instructions on
how to live from day to day. In other words, the good to be attained is
that of obedience, or the enabling of an obedient life. A person desires
to know what God wills for her life; reading the Bible provides the
commands to be followed. Finally, the Bible is read in another setting:
neither the academy nor the home, but the church. In the case of
liturgical reading, reading the Bible regularly and publicly is taken as
one of the indispensable acts that enables the life and witness of the
church. The good in this case is the shaping and sustaining of a
particular community.
Thus, the primary good one hopes to obtain directs, at least in part,
the way in which one reads, and the tools which one employs in that
reading. To read the Bible for theological interpretation is also to
read for a certain good, one which might be described as transformative
knowledge of God: the increase of wisdom, further defined as "lived
knowledge" or "performance knowledge."^[3] In short, one is enabled to love God and neighbor,^[4] to live with and for God in the world, grounded within the life of a particular faith community.
Scriptural reasoning participants read from the positions of their
respective faith communities, but come together under a "tent" for a
time as a way of seeking wisdom together through the reading of their
sacred texts.^[5]
The practitioners of SR are Jews, Muslims, and Christians who do not
abandon their particular convictions to find so-called common or
universal ground, but rather hope to "bring core identities [of their
faiths] into conversation" and to "sustain them there."^[6] The anticipated goods of this mode of reading include not only wisdom, but friendship.
Scriptural reasoning is an occasional practice, not a normative one;
it assumes that those who come to the table to read texts together as a
way of reading across difference have been grounded in deep and
sustained study of those texts within their own traditions. Scriptural
reasoning requires a willingness to take scripture seriously as that
which shapes and provides wisdom for a particular tradition. That the
sacred text is a source of wisdom is taken for granted. Practitioners of
scriptural reasoning accept that a member of a faith not their own may
teach them something new about their "own" sacred text; the texts
themselves are assumed not to be univocal but to be "patient" of
multiple interpretations. Thus, what makes scriptural reasoning possible
for Christians is a set of previous assumptions about how and why to
read the Bible.^[7]
For a Christian to participate in scriptural reasoning – to pursue
those particular goods – presumes the Bible to be a certain kind of
book. Yet what kind of book is it, after all? Does the nature of the
Bible itself demand or hope for a certain kind of reader? Does the
Scripture "expect" to yield up a particular good to its readers? This
brings us to Benjamin Jowett's infamous question, which set the stage
for so much later hermeneutical wrangling: Is the Bible to be read like
any other book?^[8]
Those who read the Bible as Christian Scripture have answered
Jowett's question in at least two different ways: traditionally, the
answer has been that the Bible is not like any other book; it is
the inspired word of God and therefore special reading rules apply.
Scholars in Jowett's day tended to answer the question in the
affirmative: the Bible was to be read precisely the way in which
one read any other book. More recently, the answer has been more
cautious. If the Bible is a sacred text, it presumably has some
characteristics in common with all texts, some characteristics in common
with other sacred texts, and even a few characteristics that might be
special to its nature as Christian Scripture; what this means for the
way it should be read has been notoriously difficult to untangle. Much
hinges on one's view of the divine element: the Bible is surely human,
and it may be sacred, but if a transcendent God is somehow involved in
the writing, transmission, or interpretation of the text, then the Bible
is pretty clearly not to be read just like "any other book."
Two distinct disciplines come into play when one reads the Bible for theological reflection: biblical studies and theology.^[9]
Biblical scholars and theologians sometimes appear to be talking at
cross-purposes. Do historical-critical scholarship and theological
reasoning share the same goods? Do they share the same understanding of
what the Bible is, and what it is for? Reading the Bible
for theological or ethical interpretation has been an enterprise plagued
with so many difficulties that (historically speaking) many have simply
given up trying. It is notable in this respect that scriptural
reasoning arose out of the prior practice of textual reasoning, a
project founded by a group of Jewish philosophers as "a practice of
philosophic reasoning that would emerge from out of the activity of
reading rabbinic texts together with rabbinic text scholars and
historians."^[10]
According to Peter Ochs, this practice "stretched but did not overstep
the bounds of either traditional Jewish practice or modern academic
inquiry."^[11]
The textual reasoning project then began to encounter Muslim and
Christian text scholars and theologians/philosophers who shared
analogous concerns, especially regarding dual service in "academy and
denomination"; scriptural reasoning was born to encourage the practice
of textual reasoning in Christian, Muslim, and Jewish fellowships, as
well as to bring the three communities together.^[12]
We will return to the theme of community; here the pertinent point is
that textual reasoning (and by implication scriptural reasoning) is, in
part, the work of bridging the academic and confessional spheres.
Biblical theologian Brevard Childs devoted much of his life to the
work of building his own bridges between disciplines: between the fields
of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible and New Testament, and between the fields
of biblical studies and theology. For Childs, the central task in these
endeavors is "employing the common historical critical tools of our age
in the study of the Bible while at the same time doing full justice to
the unique theological subject matter of Scripture as the
self-revelation of God."^[13]
Childs names a tension in the potentially competing aims of what he
calls modern secular biblical scholarship and theological reading of
Scripture, aims that derive from competing epistemologies. Childs
critiques the tools of biblical scholarship for tending to limit reality
to the scope of the human imagination. For example, his public quarrel
with scholar James Barr in the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament could be reduced, simplistically, to a single problem: Barr reads Scripture as the record of what people think about God,^[14]
whereas Childs reads Scripture as a record about God. In other words,
the referent of Scripture for Childs is not human religion but the full
divine reality to which the text points and bears witness. Yet Childs
insists that it is imperative to use the historical critical tools; in
which case, the tools must be (at least) theologically or
epistemologically neutral, and not fundamentally incompatible, in aims
or goods, with theological reasoning. Historical critical tools,
including textual criticism, form criticism, and so on, can be used for a
variety of purposes, but one of the primary ones is to establish the
"meaning" of a text.
What does a text mean?
Reading texts for theological reasoning or wisdom necessarily engages
questions of how one determines the meaning of a text. New Testament
scholar Krister Stendahl is often named as positing a gap that, while
not quite an ugly ditch, has been bridged only with difficulty: the gap
between what the text meant, and what it means.^[15]
For Stendahl, the task of the interpreter is to determine first what
the text meant (historical-critical investigation) and then to explore
what it means (application, interpretation, theological reasoning). Here
we have, in nuce, the historic divorce of biblical scholarship
from dogmatic theology. The first task (what the text meant) became the
domain of the exegete, and the second step (what the text means) the
territory of the theologian.^[16]
According to Childs (et. al.), Stendahl's first task falls prey to a
historicist impulse: the need to find out "what really happened" by
either reconstructing the historical events "behind" the text,
reconstructing the early church (e.g., Matthew's community), or
reconstructing the person of the historical Jesus himself. A quick scan
of historical Jesus scholarship reveals a difficulty: recovering the
"real" Jesus often involves presuppositions about what belongs to the
authentic Jesus and what surely cannot. One attempts to access a reality
apart from the witness of the text: these various attempts at
reconstruction are all moves to look behind or underneath the text.
In The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, Hans Frei traces the
hermeneutical developments in the 18th and 19th centuries that gradually
sundered the meaning of the biblical texts from their character as
realistic, history-like narratives. According to Frei, biblical unity
had once been conceived as "the enactment of a single pattern of meaning
through a specific set of interactions constituting a single story
consummated over a temporal span"; with later interpreters, this unity
came to be seen as a historical rather than storied
relationship. That is, the Bible becomes a "witness" to a history
outside of itself, rather than a narrative text which itself constitutes
the real world.^[17]
Interpreters then began to locate meaning not in the texts themselves
but in something external to the text. This is a move Frei broadly calls
"meaning-as-reference." Once meaning is located externally to the text,
it could be either 1) ostensive reference: i.e., historical reference, a
space-time event outside the text; or 2) ideal reference: i.e., a
general, universal religious or spiritual truth. This first move-meaning
as ostensive reference—is directly related to the historicist impulse
to rebuild a historical reality using the data of the text.
Modern biblical scholars who attempt to read the text to discover or
nourish a theology must thus bridge two gaps: the one between the text
and its subject matter, and the one between the text's "original"
meaning and its contemporary application. The recovery of narrative or
intratextual readings (as advocated by scholars such as George Lindbeck,
Hans Frei, and so on) has been instrumental in bridging the first gap.
For the overcoming of the second gap, we might turn to the scholars of
the Scripture Project, many of whom contributed reflections to The Art of Reading Scripture, a collection of essays on what it means to read Scripture for the "good" of theological interpretation.
One of the Scripture Project's "Nine Theses on the Interpretation of
Scripture" includes the statement that "historical investigations [of
biblical texts] have ongoing importance in helping us to understand
Scripture's literal sense and in stimulating the church to undertake new
imaginative readings of the texts."^[18]
Refusing to play by the rules of Stendahl's gap – dividing biblical
study into the two discrete tasks of exegesis and theology – does not
mean ignoring what the text has meant to other communities throughout history.
To wonder what the text once meant is also to ask to whom did the text thus mean (a text does not mean unless it means to or for someone); and when
did the text thus mean? One predominant answer has been to ask what the
text meant to the original author – what the original author intended
the text to mean. Various attempts in this vein have proven how
speculative such reconstructions of the author's mind can be, to the
extent that some scholars have abandoned the attempt altogether and
turned to the meaning supplied by the contemporary reader – in
essence, leaping the gap by skipping the first step.
On the other hand, even if the mind of the author or redactor is
essentially lost to us, historical, cultural, and linguistic information
can provide invaluable background to the way the first hearers might
have heard and understood these texts. We can explore what the text
meant to them: the earliest readers are potentially discoverable, at
least in tentative terms. Scholars also explore what the text meant to
other readers throughout history: certainly we are able to trace this
trajectory with relatively increasing confidence. Once we reach the
present—what the text means to us—we have theoretically created a
fairly open but bounded space for theological interpretation: a space in
which what the text means for us is hedged in, at least provisionally,^[19] by what the text has meant throughout its history. This could be roughly analogous to reading with the regula fidei, or the rule of faith, or as "apprenticeship to those who have become masters."^[20]
Others might conceive of it as reading the text in its history of
reception, from the time of composition to the present. New Testament
scholar Markus Bockmuehl accounts for it as apostolicity: for two
centuries after Christ, the living memory of the apostles "accompanied
and guided the writing and reading of the apostolic word—serving as a
vital historical index of the potential breadth, and the hermeneutical
limits, of authentic apostolic faith."^[21]
Reading the text for wisdom in the present faith community can mean
drawing on the accumulated wisdom of the past faith community.
What the text means in the present is not of automatic
interest to most historical-critical methods, although it is not ruled
out; rather it might fall under the purview of either a scholar of
religions (for the good of increased knowledge vis-Ã -vis human
religion, or perhaps for interfaith dialogue) or the theologian or
person of faith committed to the text as sacred Scripture (for the good
of obedience, or faithful living). For this latter person, one who
wishes to read Scripture for the good of wisdom, exploring what the text
has meant to other readers is a preliminary step; it is the servant to
the ultimately important question of what the text means to the present
reader or living faith community. If a reader employs the tools of
historical-critical exegesis, and has learned something new about a
text, does this new piece of knowledge matter, and in what way? What purchase does critical work finally offer on what the text means?
The criterion of whether or not it "matters" seems to be a reasonable
rule of thumb for the discerning use of historical-critical tools. If
the good of the tools is their contribution toward the community’s
wisdom, or theological reasoning, then the criterion for whether or not
their use achieves that good is what we might call the criterion of
fruitfulness. For Childs, for example, the fruitfulness of
historical-critical tools is always in helping one understand the final
form of the text – recovering the diachronic or depth dimension of a
text in order to better understand the historical trajectories and
developments within the tradition itself – the tradition being
understood not from what Childs decries as a history-of-religions
perspective, but as "Israel's life with God" (in the Old Testament) or
the church's life with God in the New Testament. The ultimate goal is
engaging deeply with the text in a way that leads one into encounter
with what Childs sees as the true subject matter of the text: the
Trinitarian God. For Childs, "True exegesis is basically dialectical in
nature. One comes to any text already with certain theological
(ideological) assumptions and the task of good exegesis is to penetrate
so deeply into the text that even these assumptions are called into
question, tested, and revised by the subject matter itself. The
implication is that exegesis does not confine itself to registering only
the verbal sense of the text, but presses forward through the text to
the subject matter (res) to which it points. Thus erklären and verstehen belong integrally together in the one enterprise and cannot be separated for long."^[22] The ultimate good of reading with these tools is that they serve the greater or more ultimate good of a life with and for God.
With whom do we read?
Establishing what the text means points up what seems to be an
obvious problem. People read the same texts and produce deeply
divergent, perhaps even diametrically opposed, interpretations and
applications.^[23]
As noted above, scriptural reasoning allows for flexible readings and
multiple interpretations. Yet "in-house" adjudications of faithful or
accurate interpretations take on a sharper and more urgent edge, and may
at times even impinge on the practice of scriptural reasoning. Are some
people, or some communities, simply better readers than others, and by
what standard are these judgments made?
The problem is sometimes identified as faulty hermeneutics: what is
needed is better method or reading strategies. Or, the blame is laid on
modes of interpretation, which assumes the text has a plain or clear
meaning that has simply been misapplied. Perhaps, however, the root of
the problem lies neither in hermeneutics per se nor in interpretation,
but in the interpreting community itself, and its assumptions,
practices, and prior commitments. Theologian Stanley Hauerwas has
adopted from literary critic Stanley Fish the insight that texts do not
"mean" anything apart from an interpreting community or interpretive
context,^[24] an insight that coheres well with the understanding of scriptural reasoning.^[25]
Meaning is to be found not solely in the text itself, nor exclusively
in the reader, but in the interplay between the text, its history of
interpretation, and the present reading community. As Fish might say,
there is a text in this class; but what kind of text is it, and what is
the nature of the class?
The Bible is a sacred text, with a particular history of production,
that imagines a specific type of reader. The anticipated reader of the
Bible is not in fact a disinterested reader; instead, these texts were
produced in, preserved by, and addressed to particular communities:
Israel and the church. Markus Bockmuehl argues that the implied reader
of the New Testament is a disciple; one might add that the implied
reader of the New Testament is a disciple in community.
Reading as a disciple (and a scholar) positions one in a certain
community with particular preexisting commitments and beliefs. We have
already skirted around this issue by exploring briefly the nature of the
Bible as a sacred text. For example, the church reads what it calls the
Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible or Jewish Scriptures) along with the
New Testament as Christian Scripture. Both are read from the position of
the church, while recognizing that the Old Testament is also read as
sacred Scripture from a different position, by another faith community:
Judaism. While Christians cannot directly position themselves to read
from inside that community, Christians surely have much to learn from
those who read from there – a belief the practice of scriptural
reasoning reflects.
In scriptural reasoning, the participants enter into what Ford calls
"three-way mutual hospitality"; each religion's practitioners serve in
turn as host, welcoming the two guests into its scripture and its
tradition of interpretation.^[26] The ground where the group gathers to read is not neutral ground; rather, it is shared space.^[27]
The practice of scriptural reasoning points compellingly to another
"good" of reading sacred texts with other communities: not just the
seeking of wisdom, but also the fulfillment of God's purpose of peace.^[28]
When practicing scriptural reasoning, one deliberately reads from a
particular position - a unique three-part community – and in an
intuitive mode that can produce unexpected insights as participants
share their texts with one another and learn from their interactions.
If reading Scripture as a disciple requires one to be situated in a
community, one could envision such space not as a single place but as
gradually widening, overlapping circles.^[29]
The scholar who is also a person of faith is already a dual member of
two spheres – the congregation and the academy – and is a
participant in both who can bring the respective resources of the two
communities to bear on one another. The sphere of the congregation
begins with a local worshiping community: "A faithful interpretation of
Scripture invites and presupposes participation in the community brought
into being by God’s redemptive action – the church."^[30]
The circle then widens to include a broader community of Christians,
the holy catholic church throughout history and in the present day. This
might involve reading John Calvin and St. Teresa; it might also entail
Catholics reading with Moravians, Methodists with Baptists, and Orthodox
with Lutherans. Finally, one might read together within the kind of
inter-faith community envisioned by scriptural reasoning (Muslims, Jews,
and Christians). In this model, friendship is not a tool or
precondition for reading the text, but it is an anticipated good that in
turn nourishes the practice of reading.
The practice of reading for wisdom: forming and being formed
Theologian David Kelsey has argued that every theologian (in Kevin
Vanhoozer's words) "makes an imaginative judgment as to what
Christianity is all about based on his or her participation in the
Christian community.... what is of decisive importance is not textual
exegesis but a 'pre-text' imaginative judgment" – i.e., what Kelsey
calls the sensus fidelium or "the sense of the people of faith as to how God is present in their community through Scripture."^[31]
Kelsey highlights the rather common observation that everyone comes to
the Bible with a "pre-text" – whether one calls it social location,
pre-understanding, ideological stance, or presuppositions about the
nature of the text and what one is supposed to find there. In order to
read Scripture for theological reasoning, with what tools and pre-texts
ought one approach the text? What are the necessary preconditions, if
any, for careful theological reasoning with the text? One might imagine
this as the set of virtues that form a person and a community into one
who has been enabled to read for the good of wisdom.
Discipline. This could be termed the virtue of scholarly hard work.
Scriptural reasoning practitioners bring what Aref Nayed calls their
"internal library" to the SR table with them.^[32]
These internal libraries include the diligent work scholars have done
in language, textual study, philosophy, history, theology, and so on; to
lack the depth and breadth of these internal libraries is surely to
impoverish the reading of the Bible. One may argue (and many do) over
how the divine and human elements are intertwined in the sacred text,
yet the truth remains that the Bible is a gloriously messy collection of
human writings, all quite ancient, produced in remarkably different
cultures and social locations over the course of hundreds of years. If a
tool will enable one better to understand it in order theologically to
reflect on it, then let that tool be employed in due service to the
hoped-for good: increased wisdom for right living with God and for the
world; greater justice and peace; faith, hope, and love. This includes
the historical-critical tools as well as literary ones: Stanley Hauerwas
argues that Richard Hays is a good reader of Scripture in part because
he reads poetry.^[33]
In other words, the general rules that make for good reading of any
literary text apply to the Bible, too. Narrative and intratextual
readings of Scripture have prompted much fruitful (although sometimes
contentious) overlap between literary criticism and biblical
scholarship.
Patience. Nicholas Adams describes scriptural reasoning as a "non-hasty practice."^[34]
One of the joys of scriptural reasoning is that it is a slow, close
reading of a short section of text; every word is carefully savored and
examined. Likewise, biblical scholars Ellen Davis and Richard Hays often
note that one of the virtues of reading in Greek or Hebrew is that it
forces one to slow down and read carefully and deliberately, one word at
a time. Martin Luther writes, "We shall not long preserve the Gospel
without the languages [Greek and Hebrew]. ...[T]here must always be such
prophets in the Church, who are able to treat and expound the
Scriptures and also to dispute; a saintly life and correct doctrine are
not enough. ...[L]anguages are absolutely necessary in the Church."^[35]
Imagination. Brevard Childs worries about the role of the imagination
in interpretation, because he fears a style of exegesis that leaves one
"lost and confused in a sea of indeterminacy."^[36]
At the same time Childs repeatedly admires theologians who seem to
read well "as if by reflex." Scripture scholars (including Hays, Dale
Allison, and Glen Stassen) often refer to Scripture as that which shapes
the moral imagination. In turn, theologians such as Hauerwas draw upon
the virtue ethics tradition to argue that the practices and worship of
the church community form a person in a way that enables right reading
of Scripture and the living out of its ethical demands. For Ochs, Jewish
Morning Prayer can serve as a means of nurturing alternative habits of
thinking: "Morning Prayer nurtures logics of judgment that are
irreducible to propositional logic and that inhibit the tendency to
overgeneralization that often accompanies propositional logic."^[37] In other words, Morning Prayer nurtures "redemptive thinking"^[38] through formation of a different kind of logic (moving past the limits of purely propositional thinking).^[39]
The imagination can be trained by the practice of prayer. Similarly,
scriptural reasoning resists the standard academic mode of textual study
by emphasizing intuition and even a certain kind of playfulness with
the text. It also demands a certain charity: the belief that one might
be surprised by even a familiar text, and that a Christian might be
taught something new about the Christian Scripture by a Jew or a Muslim.
Faith. To claim that this is a virtue of scholarship is certainly
counter-intuitive – even anathema – to a dominant stream of the
academic community. Yet must it be so? Athanasius took for granted that
right understanding of Scripture requires "a good life and pure soul";^[40] Karl Barth wrote that the first task of the theologian is constant prayer.^[41]
In other words, the default position of most strands of Christianity,
pre-Enlightenment, was that a holy life was requisite for good reading.
Theological interpretation of Scripture "requires not only careful
historical research, but, even more, our willingness to be morally
formed in a manner appropriate to the claims of those texts."^[42] This is obviously not all
it requires. Athanasius and Barth were deeply learned scholars. Nor is
this to say that reading Scripture in general requires the reader to be a
disciple – but only that reading the text for theological reasoning
does require it. One reads to be challenged, changed, and overturned by
the text: not that one masters it, but that one is mastered by it.
Community. Stanley Hauerwas argues that the Bible should be read only
by "those who have undergone the hard discipline of existing as part of
God's people" – i.e., only by those within the community of the
church.^[43] This is another way of arguing that the ideal reader of the Bible as
sacred text – the theological reader of Scripture – is a disciple
in community. It also returns to Kelsey's point that church communities
shape or predispose people to read Scripture in a certain way. Of
course, it is a dialectical relationship: Scripture shapes the
imagination and life of the church, which in turn shapes the reading of
Scripture. The point is, theological reading of and reasoning with
Scripture requires—or is supported by—a certain kind of community,
or communities, reading together.
Joy. If one attends a scriptural reasoning session with Peter Ochs, one
will likely hear him claim that the joy of Scripture study is an end in
itself. If one knows the pleasure and the joy of studying the text for
its own sake, then one will have something rich to offer to one's fellow
scriptural reasoning participants.
If Christians are enabled to fully participate in the practice of
scriptural reasoning by a certain set of virtues or modes of reading,
then scriptural reasoning in turn may nourish certain virtues in the
Christians who practice it. Just as some of the "virtues" named above
may be seen as prerequisites to reading texts for theological reasoning,
these same virtues may in turn be strengthened by the specific practice
of scriptural reasoning. The imagination, for example, is exercised by
scriptural reasoning; a new and creative kind of community is made
possible. Scriptural reasoning seems to nurture three virtues in
particular: humility, friendship, and hope.
Humility flows from the openness to surprise frequently cited by
scriptural reasoning participants, and connects to the virtue of
imagination (and the charity contained therein) named above. To be
enabled to see old texts with new eyes, to be changed in unexpected ways
through encountering one's own text as well as the other faith's sacred
texts, are ways in which scriptural reasoning encourages the formation
of humility in the scholar as she approaches the text.
It may seem strange to name friendship as a virtue. Yet it is both a
"good" (if not an end, certainly an anticipated and hoped-for result) of
scriptural reasoning, and it is also a deliberate practice encouraged
and even demanded of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims who sit down at
one table to read their sacred texts together. The relationships created
and gradually strengthened by ongoing scriptural reasoning groups point
to the way in which SR may also foster the virtue of hope.
When David Ford speaks of the potential of scriptural reasoning for
collegial engagement in the public sphere, and David Hardy refers to
repairing the suffering of the world and the possibility of hospitable,
peaceful relationships among the Abrahamic traditions, they both reflect
the careful hope that scriptural reasoning nourishes in its
practitioners.^[44]
Scriptural reasoning is not naïve about the challenges of such hopes,
but it is, perhaps, a reminder of the way in which the Abrahamic faiths
all point to, lean into, and long for God's good and peaceful purposes
for God's world.

Conclusion
Reading the Bible, like reading any text, entails making decisions
about what good is being pursued by reading it. Although the Bible may
obviously be read in many different ways, toward different ends,
construing the Bible as Christian Scripture invites a certain kind of
reader (a disciple within a community) to read toward a certain good
(wisdom, or transformative knowledge). The Bible can be read fruitfully
from a variety of positions, toward a number of different ends. But to
read the Bible as Christian Scripture, and to read it for the good of
greater theological wisdom, is to read from a particular place, within
certain communities, committed to specific goods, and nurtured by
particular virtues.
The goal of reading sacred texts theologically is, simply put, the
seeking of wisdom: transformative knowledge that enables greater love of
God and neighbor. To this, the unique practice of scriptural reasoning
adds friendship – a kind of friendship that is the embodiment and
pursuit of peace and healing in a world that is hungry for healing and
desperate for peace. For scriptural reasoning, in the end, the ultimate
good is not merely wisdom that leads to right living, but a deeper good:
"...the final goal is not only returning to right 'habit' or the
'right' way of life but also and more importantly, redemption....
Healing signs (the act of scriptural interpretation) leads to healing
people, and healing people leads to redemption."^[45] And that is a good worth pursuing, with all the tools at our disposal.

Notes
^[1]
Many thanks to Dr. Richard Hays, who graciously read and commented on
an earlier draft of this essay. Any remaining errors or shortcomings are
wholly mine.
^[2] Nicholas Adams, Habermas and Theology
(Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); online at
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/journals/jsrforum/writings/AdaHabe.html.
^[3] Kevin Vanhoozer, First Theology: God, Scripture and Hermeneutics (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity; Leicester, England: Apollos, 2002), 39.
^[4] Augustine describes this as his guiding hermeneutical principle in On Christian Doctrine; Christian Classics Ethereal Library, http://www.ccel.org.
^[5] David F. Ford, "An Interfaith Wisdom: Scriptural Reasoning between Jews, Christians and Muslims," in The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning, ed. David Ford and C.C. Pecknold (Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 1.
^[6] Ibid., 2.
^[7]
This essay examines what makes SR possible for Christians specifically,
and does not make similar claims for what might enable it as a practice
for Jewish or Muslim communities.
^[8] Benjamin Jowett, "On the Interpretation of Scripture," in The Interpretation of Scripture and Other Essays (London: Routledge & Sons, 1860).
^[9]
Many have lamented the historical split between the two disciplines and
suggested ways to repair it; this essay follows Hans Frei's narrative
of the split, but see also Ed Farley, Theologia (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2001).
^[10] Peter Ochs, "Response: Reflections on Binarism," Modern Theology 24 no.3 (July 2008): 495.
^[11] Ibid., 496. Ochs also notes, however, that some of his colleagues demurred this judgment.
^[12] Ibid.
^[13] Brevard Childs, "Critical Reflections on James Barr's Understanding of the Literal and the Allegorical," Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 46 (199): 8.
^[14] James Barr, "The Literal, the Allegorical, and Modern Biblical Scholarship," Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 44 (1989): 12.
^[15] Krister Stendahl, "Biblical Theology, Contemporary," in Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, A-D, ed. George Buttrick (New York: Abingdon Press, 1962), 418-432.
^[16]
The practice of textual reasoning (TR), in a roughly analogous way,
reflects an attempt to repair a similar kind of gap in the Jewish
academic disciplines, by bringing together text scholars with
philosophers and theologians in order to reflect on the interpretation
of texts alongside theological reasoning (David F. Ford, "An Interfaith
Wisdom," 3).
^[17] Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 181, cf. also 153. Ochs reads
Frei as having a reparative interest – i.e., his work attempts to
repair the extremes between "'dogmatic' orthodoxy and 'sceptical'
naturalism"; see Nicholas Adams, "Reparative Reasoning," Modern Theology
24 no.3 (July 2008): 455. George Lindbeck seeks to repair a similar
failure, by replacing the rule "What the Bible refers to is something
'behind' it" with the new rule "What the Bible refers to is displayed by
how the community of interpreters perform the scriptures, in narrating
the person of Jesus Christ, and narrating its own identity as the
community of his disciples" (Adams, "Reparative Reasoning," 456).
^[18] The Art of Reading Scripture, eds. Ellen F. Davis and Richard B. Hays (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans), 3.
^[19]
This approach does not assume, naively, that past interpretations of
what the text means were all unqualifiedly faithful readings.
^[20] The Art of Reading Scripture, xvi.
^[21]Markus Bockmuehl, Seeing the Word (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 188.
^[22]Brevard Childs, "Toward Recovering Theological Exegesis," Pro Ecclesia 6 no.1 (1997): 123.
^[23]I
am not concerned with a multiplicity of interpretations per se, but
mutually exclusive interpretations, or interpretations that can be taken
to fall out of the bounds of the "orthodox" faith, even as generously
interpreted by the faith's adherents. In other words, I take it that a
text can mean a variety of somethings, but it cannot mean anything.
^[24]Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class: The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980); Stanley Hauerwas, Unleashing the Scripture (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993), pages 19-28.
^[25] See, e.g., Adams, "Reparative Reasoning," 456.
^[26]Ford, "An Interfaith Wisdom," 5.
^[27]Ibid., 10.
^[28]Ibid., 5.
^[29] Samuel Wells argues that the diversity of Scripture itself demands a diverse reading community, in God's Companions: Reimagining Christian Ethics (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 158. This diversity could be accomplished most fully in multiple reading communities.
^[30] The Art of the Reading Scripture, 3.
^[31] Vanhoozer, First Theology, 30. See also David Kelsey, Proving Doctrine: The Uses of Scripture in Modern Theology (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1999), 167.
^[32] Steven Kepnes, "A Handbook for Scriptural Reasoning," in The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning, 31.
^[33] Stanley Hauerwas, "Why 'The Way the Words Run' Matters: Reflections on Becoming a 'Major Biblical Scholar,'" in The Word Leaps the Gap: Essays on Scripture and Theology in Honor of Richard B. Hays, ed. J. Ross Wagner, C. Kavin Rowe, and A. Katherine Grieb (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 2.
^[34] Nicholas Adams, Habermas and Theology; http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/journals/jsrforum/writings/AdaHabe.html.
^[35]
Martin Luther, "To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany That They
Establish and Maintain Christian Schools," 1524,
http://www.godrules.net/library/luther/NEW1luther_d9.htm, accessed March
2009.
^[36] Brevard Childs, The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 164.
^[37] Peter Ochs, "Morning Prayer as Redemptive Thinking," in Liturgy, Time, and the Politics of Redemption, ed. Randi Rashkover and C. C. Pecknold (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), 57.
^[38] Ibid., 58.
^[39] Ibid., 69-70.
^[40] Stanley Hauerwas, Unleashing the Scripture (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1993), 36.
^[41] Frances Rice McCormick, "Sabbath Rest: A Theological Imperative According to Karl Barth," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 62 no.2 (1994): 545-546.
^[42] Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 70.
^[43] Hauerwas, Unleashing the Scripture, 9.
^[44] Ford, "An Interfaith Wisdom," 19-20; Daniel W. Hardy, "The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning," in The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning, 207.
^[45] Steven D. Kepnes, "Peter Ochs: Philosophy in the Service of God and World," Modern Theology 24 No. 3 (July 2008): 500.

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