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Looking for plain sense
A magisterial book on biblical criticism — a very religious activity, says Anthony Phillips
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| The Nature of Biblical Criticism John Barton
Westminster John Knox Press £13.99 (978-0-664-22587-2) Church Times Bookshop £12.60 JOHN BARTON’S apologia for biblical criticism should be com-pulsory reading for anyone seeking to preach or teach the scriptures. In the face of both conservative and post-modernist criticism, Barton reasserts its primacy as inherent to Christian commitment. “Biblical criticism . . . is a rich and profound way of taking the Bible seriously, which ordinary Christians ought not to be kept in ignorance of.” For Barton, biblical criticism is concerned with establishing “the plain sense” of the text. This is a literary operation rather than a historical one. Indeed, he avoids the term “historical critical method” as inducing the unnecessary and negative idea that biblical criticism is sceptical and reductive. It is not seen as a method at all; instead, it depends on imagination and intuition. Nor is it scientific, save in the sense of wissenschaftlich — “intellectually rigorous”. But it is a deeply religious activity that has transformed the way we read the Bible. In addition to technical skills, Barton identifies three essential features of biblical criticism. There must be attention to semantics, establishing the meaning; awareness of genre, the kind of text being interpreted; and a “bracketing out of questions of truth”. The last can be addressed only once meaning has been established. The text has to be entered into and understood from within. The biblical critic is the servant of the text, not its master. Too often, texts have been made to mean what the reader wanted them to mean, particularly when taken out of context. But Barton holds that “the plain sense” does not equate with literalism. It can contain within it layers of meaning well beyond the literal. While it has been conventional to assert that biblical criticism was the product of the Enlightenment, Barton shows that it goes back to patristic times. It is also indebted to both the Renaissance and the Reformation. In origin, it was not a Protestant pursuit, though Protestants are responsible for its modern development. The real divide is not between a critical and pre-critical approach, but between a critical and a non-critical one. That is a modern phenomenon. Barton notes the charge that biblical criticism has taken the Bible away from the Church. This led to the holistic approach of both canonical criticism and advocacy readings associated with liberation and feminist theologies. In reply, Barton declares that the reader cannot discover what the Bible means if its reading is made to conform to what is already believed to be true. Most biblical critics are, in fact, believers, but they do not permit their beliefs to prejudge what the text means. Only when that has been established is it allowed to confront their convictions, which may or may not be confirmed. As Barton ironically points out, what is required of biblical critics is not more theological commitment, but less: “it is proreligious bias rather than indifference to faith that we should most be on our guard against.” Indeed, it is not always sufficiently realised that, for the believer, biblical criticism inevitably sets up a conflict of interests. Barton goes on to ask how many people question whether a text may be mistaken, distorted, or just plain wrong — a pertinent question, given current Anglican concerns over authority and sexuality. To assume that everything in the Bible is true makes a nonsense of any normal reading of the text. It is itself a disservice to the Bible, and, one might add, to the integrity of the faiths that uphold it. Happily, this magisterial book shows that, despite so much con-temporary hostility, biblical criticism is not yet dead. Canon Dr Phillips is a former head-master at King’s School, Canterbury. To order this book, email the details to Church Times Bookshop (please mention "Church Times Bookshop price") |
