THE BIBLE SAYS Evangelical and Postliberal Biblicism JAMES CALLAHAN T he oft repeated phrase "the Bible says" characterizes Billy Graham evangelistic crusades as well as the history of evangelical convictions about the Bible—that to read the Bible modestly would yield the confident assurance that the word read was God's for us.1 But the attendant piety of the phrase and its implicit biblicist justification are embarrassing for some evangelicals, and biblicism itself is a subject of disdain. Christian faith seems to be healthier without biblicism. Surprisingly, as the concept of biblicism has waned among evangelicals, it is being revived by postliberalism. This story itself is fascinating and instructive. The use of the Bible among evangelicals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries engenders the charge of biblicism because of its perceived bibliolatry (confusing Scripture with its subject matter—God). And the attendant practice of Bible reading is viewed as naive; it may have worked for Augustine when he heard the children's ditty "Take up and read, take up and read," but we doubt that a child's game is greater than the language game. It is as if evangelical devotion to Bible reading had been conquered by the historical concerns of modernity and rendered hopelessly obscurantist. And contemporary evangelicals seem uncomfortable with their own past, refusing to perpetuate the lost agenda of evangelical biblicism (characterized by dispensationalism, the Scofield Reference Bible, and fundamentalism). Postliberalism (sometimes referred to as narrative theology or Yale theology), with its emphasis on biblical realism, the literal or plain sense of James Callahan is Visiting Assistant Professor of Theology at W^heaton College, WTieaton, Illinois and author of Primitivist Piety: The Ecclesiology of the Early Plymouth Brethren (1996). This essay is adapted from a presentation at the 1995 Wlieaton College Theology Conference. l The Bible Says (Minneapolis: Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, 1960). 449 450 Theology Today Scripture, or efforts to construe the biblical narrative as a linguistic world, draws the ultimate liberal accusation of fideism, and, correspondingly, a lack of historical sensitivity.2 Postliberals are characterized as using premodern hermeneutical themes or methods whereas evangelicals are simply accused of being premodern; thus the strange fellowship between evangelicals and postliberals. If evangelicalism's hope is said to be built on nothing less than Scofield's notes and Moody Press, then possibly postliberalism's hope is built on nothing less than Frei's Eclipse and Yale's graduates. Parodies of revival hymns aside, evangelicals and postliberals have traveled parallel, though discordant, routes to arrive at what may be a potential but tenuous concord regarding the practice of Bible reading. Within evangelical history, Bible reading as a pietistic apologetic is a persistent theme—advocating an appropriation of the text through the direct, though somewhat uncritical, means of reading, rather than interpreting, the text. Postliberals have seized upon the interest in biblical realism, especially as advocated by Karl Barth, as the means to lead the church back and forward by admitting to a consensual manner of reading the Bible as canonical narrative (George Lindbeck), as history-like narrative (Hans W. Frei), as a narrative depicting God's identity (Ronald Thiemann), or as one story with one author (Charles Wood). With similar degrees of solemnity, evangelicals and postliberals pursue a more modest, more traditional view of hermeneutics (or hermeneutics in the old sense) and eschew Christian theology that is somehow first or primarily dependent on a general hermeneutical theory or anthropology. What follows is an attempt to address the possible affinity between the evangelical practice of Bible reading and the postliberal interest in Bible reading under a new paradigm of postliberal biblicism. In what follows, Bible reading is taken as anecdotal in order to investigate various forms of biblicism within Protestant theology (it serves as a means to survey a host of related and more important issues). But before we commend biblicism to evangelicals and postliberals in any form, we must trace its story. EVANGELICAL BIBLICISM A conventional evangelical aspiration has been an appropriate and relevant understanding of the biblical text by means of a pietistic form of Bible reading, often individualistic and regularly conservative. While modern evangelicals have certainly become more open to and conversant with historical and critical issues and do not shy from interpretation as a necessity, there are vestiges of a Bible-reading apologetic in this century's 2 Maurice F. Wiles, "Scriptural Authority and Theological Construction: The Limitations of Narrative Interpretation," in Scriptural Authority and Narrative Interpretation, edited by Garrett Green (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), pp. 42-58; David J. Bryant, "Christian Identity and Historical Change: Postliberals and Historicity," The Journal of Religion 73 (January, 1993), pp. 31-41. The Bible Says 451 emphasis upon Bible study. The commitment to Bible reading among evangelicals sustained a series of commitments based on the conviction that "the Bible could . . . be taken as read." 3 The evangelical practice of Bible reading was merely an extension of antecedent convictions regarding the truthfulness of the text and a commitment to the universe described in the biblical text. Assumptions regarding the character of the Bible—its truthfulness and reliability—sustained evangelical confidence that one can and should read the biblical text. And there was also a prevalent acceptance of the Bible's perspective—the conviction that there exists a realism in the biblical text that is not foreign to the contemporary reader. Acquaintance with the Bible through sermons, devotional reading, and hymnody functioned to instill common confidence in the sincerity of a Bible read plainly and piously. "Standing behind the appeal to Bible reading in modern evangelicalism is the rhetoric of fundamentalism's rejection of modernism. " The evangelical community, diverse and multiform as it has been, makes appeal to a settled and historical regard for the role of Bible reading and the formation of a community consensus in interpretive as well as devotional matters. For Charles Hodge, the evangelical community provided the consensual context for handling the Bible: If Scriptures be a plain book, and the Spirit performs the functions of a teacher to all the children of God, it follows inevitably that they must agree in all essential matters in their interpretation of the Bible. And from that fact it follows that for an individual to dissent from the faith of the universal Church (i.e., the body of true believers), is tantamount to dissenting from the Scriptures themselves.4 These elements combine to form what may be called historical biblicism. For example, B. B. Warfield argued that the "church-doctrine of inspiration"—that "well-defined, aboriginal, stable doctrine of the church as to the nature and trustworthiness of the Scriptures"—was principally based on the church's use of the Bible as a numinous object.5 Warfield's various, and regularly contested, assertions of the Bible's own doctrine of the Bible 3 David W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), pp. 2-3, 12-14. 4 Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952), vol. 1, p. 184. 5 Benjamin B. Warfield, "The Church Doctrine of Inspiration" (1894), in The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, edited by Samuel G. Craig (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1948), p. 106. Also see David H. Kelsey, The Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), pp. 14-31. 452 Theology Today necessarily arose from—were not only consistent with but were also demonstrated by—how the church experienced the Bible in its history. Or, if the subtle spirit of modern doubt has seeped somewhat into our hearts, our memory will easily recall those happier days when we stood [as] a child at our Christian mother's knee, with lisping lips following the words which her slow finger traced upon this open page,—words which were her support in every trial and, as she fondly trusted, were to be our guide throughout life. Mother church was speaking to us in that maternal voice, commending to us her vital faith in the Word of God.... In such scenes as these is revealed the vital faith of the people of God in the surety and trustworthiness of the Word of God.6 It was the church's conspicuous and confident experience of the Bible that backed Warfield's claims, a sense that was presumed by the Bible's "readers." Warfield added: "We have the Bible in our hands, and we are accustomed to read i t . . . . The proof of this is pervasive and level to the apprehension of every reader. It would be an insult to our intelligence were we to presume that we had not observed it, or could not apprehend its meaning." 7 Warfield was often defensive, not merely apologetic, in his treatment of this theme, pitting the "simple faith of the Christian people," that which "is still thought in less enlightened circles," the church's "instinctive feeling," and the "confessional doctrine of the Christian churches" against the "theories" of the "theorizers," "would-be guides," and supposedly "advanced thinkers." Warfield contended that "the Christian man requires, and, thank God, has, a thoroughly trustworthy Bible to which he can go directly and at once in every time of need" and that "practically we must say that the condition of the persistence of Christianity as a religion for the people, is the entire trustworthiness of the Scriptures." 8 Acquaintance with the text represented appreciation for the gospel story—the power of the word to lead or direct readers to the transforming and regenerative grace of God. For better or for worse, this commitment is best described as biblicism; and this, as a positive trait of evangelical piety, affirmed "that fidelity to the biblical [message was] nonnegotiable." 9 The semblance of biblical fidelity was itself sufficient grounds to justify theological claims within evangelicalism; this was especially the case in light of the widespread and popular notions regarding Scripture's perspicuity—the Bible was clear; the message of Scripture was accessible to its readers.10 6 Warfield, "Church Doctrine," p. 107. Ibid.,p. 115. Hbid, pp. 105-107,114-122. 9 Stanley J. Grenz, Revisioning Evangelical Theology: A Fresh Agenda for the 21st Century (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1993), p. 101. 10 George M. Marsden, "Everyone One's Own Interpreter? The Bible, Science, and Authority in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America," in The Bible in America: Essays in Cultural History, edited by Nathan O. Hatch and Mark A. Noll (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 79-100; James Callahan, "Claritas Scripturae: The Role of Perspicuity in Protestant Hermeneutics," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 39, no. 3 (1996). 7 The Bible Says 453 Biblicism was an evangelical standard in the nineteenth century, funda­ mental to the "communal, popular dimension of evangelicalism... one of the factors nurturing the traditionalism of the movement."11 As Charles Hodge insisted, "the Bible is a plain book," "intelligible by the people," and it was addressed to "the people"—"to them are directed these profound discussions of Christian doctrine.... They are everywhere 12 assumed to be competent to understand what is written." This populist sentiment characterized evangelical attitudes toward the Bible throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, across the diverse spectrum of evangelicalism. BIBLICIST DISSENT Evangelical diversity also included discord. Confessionally and histori­ cally minded evangelicals became uncomfortable when the rising tide of fundamentalism exploited the practice of Bible reading. It was too easily transformed to justify various extremes: proof-texting or simply quoting a biblical text in order to demonstrate the bases for various assertions or to silence dissension from evangelical doctrine. For instance, Bible-reading meetings strung together biblical texts, usually based on prominent and similar words, to render a conclusive statement of what the Bible stated on a given topic and thereby to hear what the Bible said rather than what humans maintained regarding the faith. This practice was based on a general claim that laypeople were better able to understand and appreciate the Bible's message than the so-called higher critics. The tone of fundamentalism's defense of Bible reading was more polemical than we are accustomed to at present. Standing behind the appeal to Bible reading in modern evangelicalism is the rhetoric of fundamentalism's rejection of modernism, a significant element of which concerned efforts to rescue the Bible from obscurity (the agenda of 13 modernists) or from modernism itself (the reaction of conservatives). While the practice of Bible reading antedates modernity, it is not exclu­ sively antimodern; yet, within evangelical circles, the literalistic superstruc­ ture that defines biblicist dissent is thoroughly modern, avowedly scien­ tific, and thoroughly fundamentalistic—it took the shape of an apologetic battle. Standing behind this battle was the initial reaction by evangelicals to historical and critical studies, and behind this, the response to various forms of the Enlightenment. As an example, it was the publication of Reuben A. Torrey's 1898 volume entitled What the Bible Teaches that caused Β. B. Warfield to lament the distortion of the evangelical exercise of Bible reading prevalent n Mark A. Noll, "Bible Scholarship and the Evangelicals," Religion and Intellectual Life 6, nos. 3/4 (1989), p. 121. On British biblicism, see James Callahan, Primitivist Piety: The Ecclesiology of the Early Plymouth Brethren (Metuchen: Scarecrow, 1996). 12 Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, pp. 183-184. 13 William R. Hutchinson, The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), p. 2; Martin E. Marty, Modern American Religion, vol. 1, The Irony of It All, 1893-1919 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 32-43. 454 Theology Today among revivalists; Bible readings did not yield theology per se. Warfield suggested, "If we are to regard it as a contribution to dogmatics, we must needs look upon it as moving over the surface of its subject—as incomplete, insufficient and occasionally erroneous." All Torrey had done was to string together a "series of sublimated 'Bible readings'," and he did not thereby proffer what Warfield would be pleased to call theology. But, Warfield added, "If, on the other hand, we may accept it for what it is—a series of thoughtful Bible-readings on selected doctrinal subjects . . . we may gladly recognize it as an admirable example of an admirable method of teaching, from which we may all learn much."14 The baby of Bible reading was not to be thrown out with the bathwater of Bible readings. Torrey's method implied what was explicit in the fundamentalist movement: the antithetical nature of human authority and Scripture's authority. When fundamentalists practiced Bible reading, they were listening to Scripture's authority, but when so-called theologians commented on the text, they were substituting human words for God's word. C. I. Scofield counseled the readers of his pamphlet Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth to act "like the noble Bereans (Acts 17:11), to search the Scriptures daily whether these things are so. No appeal is made to human authority." And, he added, " The anointing which ye have received of HIM abideth in you, and ye need not that any MAN teach you' 1 John 2:27."15 Yet, Scofield was no pioneer in his method; his biblicism was tainted with a polemical tone that was to capture the imagination of fundamentalists. Behind this prophetic literalism stood a century of apocalyptic biblicism—a century of unanimity—in both Great Britain and North America. Their creed was prophetic literalism: The Bible was to be read literalistically (which was synonymous with reading the Bible as true). This commitment grew into a sweeping apologetic directed against historical criticism; and this literalistic apologetic tapped into the conscience of evangelical regard for how the Bible could be handled and understood, not merely convictions regarding the nature of the Bible itself. There is still another variation on the theme of evangelical biblicism; various forms of primitivism and restorationism, which were prevalent throughout the nineteenth century, were found among a variety of evangelical sectarian movements.16 Primitivist and restorationist themes provided biblicists with a historical perspective to support claims to a direct access to the pure, simple, and primitive church or Christian lifestyle. Either through an outpouring of God's grace or a renewed piety, primitivist evangelicals claimed a profound sense of disparity between the primitive 14 Warfield's review of Torrey's work is found in The Princeton Theology, 1812-1921: Scripture, Science, and Theological Method from Archibald Alexander to Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, edited by Mark A. Noll (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983), pp. 299-301. 15 Cyrus I. Scofield, Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth (New York: Loizeaux Brothers/ Bible Truth Depot, n.d.), p. 6. 16 Richard T. Hughes, ed., The American Quest for the Primitive Church (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988); Richard T. Hughes and C. Leonard Allen, Illusions of Innocence: Protestant Primitivism in America, 1630-1875 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). The Bible Says 455 church represented in the pages of the New Testament and the contemporary church. The historical distance between divine text and the Christian reader was overcome by the Spirit and piety, and the presumption was that the text was clear and accessible, rather than obscure and distant. The Bible should be read, simply read rather than interpreted. In 1838, an evangelical primitivist argued that the "simpleminded Christian" should not "be stumbled" by the claim that interpretation is necessary because "Jesus Christ has said, 'If any man is willing to do his will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God.' And the Holy Spirit has said (notwithstanding all criticisms on the passage), 'All Scripture (not 'all comment') is inspired of God.' " 17 In principle, biblicist primitivists claimed that the simpler one is in approaching the Bible the more likely one is to acquire its true message. This contrast between reading and interpreting was used to defend prophetic literalism, to justify ecclesial primitivism, and occasionally both. "At its worst, biblicism isolates the biblical message from historical circumstances in order to suit the reader (andjustify various anti4ntellectual and anticritical convictions). " Primitivist and biblicist evangelical movements customarily distorted the principle oí sola scriptura by means of the principle solitaria scriptura. One need simply recall the sanctimonious tone of tracts such as The sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures; in the Memoir of William Churchman a poor cripple, who never read any book but the Bible1* and D. L. Moody's statement "I will read no book that will not help me understand The Book." There is a radical form of historylessness to these claims, based in great measure on the presumption that Bible reading as a pious exercise is sufficient for all varieties of Christian teaching and spirituality. At its worst, biblicism isolates the biblical message from historical circumstances in order to suit the reader (and justify various anti-intellectual and anticritical convictions). It runs the risk of obliquely sanctioning a ghetto existence for those with biblicist attitudes toward the Bible. Biblicist dissent has negative connotations for many evangelicals, just as it is characteristically berated by liberal theologians frustrated by its simplicity, its naivete. In a word, evangelicals find their ancestors' biblicism embarrassing. It is described as contributing to the "scandal" of the 17 William H. Dormán, Principles of Truth on the Present State of the Church Addressed to Christians of All Denominations. Also Reasons for Retiring from the Independent or Congregational Body, and from Islington Chapel (London: Central Tract Depot, 1838), pp. 54-55. 18 Thomas Bingham, The sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures, in the Memoir of William Churchman a poor cripple, who never read any book but the Bible (Philadelphia: Religious Tract Society of Philadelphia, 1817). 456 Theology Today evangelical mind.19 It may be precisely the case that because evangelical attitudes to the Bible are popularly defined that a commitment to Bible reading is transformed into the extremes of biblicist dissent—prophetic or scientific literalism, or the literalistic hermeneutic of older dispensationalists, or an anti-intellectual bulwark against the academic study of the Bible. Biblicist dissent advocates an isolationist view toward the use of the Bible, an attitude that is exclusionary and individualistic and that views reliance upon factors external to the clear text and the reader as the height of impiety. Evangelical piety associated with Bible reading maintained that reading (reciting, reenacting, and applying the biblical message to establish contemporary Christian existence) was distinct from supposedly manipulative schemes of interpretation. Evangelicals never lacked themes that brought unity to the pluriformity of the book, but whatever strategy they employed to read Scripture—covenant, promise, dispensation, law and gospel, or christological typology—was itself thought to be justifiable on the basis of a legitimate reading of the text or of a biblical image within the text, the narrative, or the canon. In a broad sense, this intratextual justification is biblicist in nature; it lacks the historical sensitivity that evangelical academics have long struggled to develop within their own communities. Evangelical biblicism drifted across ecclesial boundaries, and its presence helps explain both the diversity and the sense of community enjoyed by evangelicals. BACK TO THE BIBLE, AGAIN While historians and theologians struggle to understand if and why the Bible is "strangely silent" in the contemporary church,20 there is general agreement that the significance of the Bible is both essential and uncertain. For example, the Bible metaphor appears regularly in sentimental and moralistic songs in this century's country music with titles such as: "Dust on the Bible," "Brush the Dust from That Old Bible," and "Let's Go Back to the Bible." The clearest symbol of piety is a well-worn Bible, usually Mom's, and includes a nostalgic look at what is lost when the Bible is ignored.21 Concern for the loss of the piety of Bible reading, as a constitutive exercise, animates both the diagnoses of and correctives to the present ambiguous attitudes toward the Bible. Postliberals share the evangelical lament over the neglect of the formative role of Bible reading within the Christian community. Consider the 19 Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), pp. 160-173. Noll characterizes this as "Bible-onlyism." 20 James D. Smart, The Strange Silence of the Bible in the Church: A Study in Hermeneutics (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970). 21 Charles Wolfe, "Bible Country: The Good Book in Country Music," in The Bible and Popular Culture in America, edited by Aliene S. Phy (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), pp. 85-102. The Bible Says 457 following from George Lindbeck: Knowledge of the Bible (which is transmitted through general culture, folklore, proverbs, catechesis and liturgy, as well as direct Bible-reading and preaching) is in decline. The use of Scripture is not part of people's lives, and thus reading and hearing it (when they do read and hear it) has little impact. However one diagnoses its causes, the need for more and better knowledge of the Bible is not likely to be denied.22 What went wrong? Popular appreciation of the text eroded. But why? Because forces beyond the control of the church obscured the performative role of Scripture within the Christian community, and the church acquiesced to the academic elitism of critical studies. Simply put, Protestants "lost the Bible."23 Now, according to Stanley Hauerwas, the Bible must be "unleashed," in part, "from its academic captivity," and Walter Brueggemann offers that "the tyranny of academic criticism is no real improvement over the hegemony of ecclesial authoritarianism."24 Postliberals may be surprised by the parallels between their analysis of the captivity of the Bible to learned critics and that offered by popular fundamentalism. First, notice George Lindbeck's comment: "It is now the scholar rather than the hierarchical clerical elite which holds the Bible captive and makes it inaccessible to ordinary folk."25 Compare this with fundamentalist Arthur T. Pierson's complaint: "Like Romanism, [so-called higher criticism] practically removes the Word of God from the common people by assuming that only scholars can interpret it; and, while Rome puts a priest between a man and the Word, criticism puts an educated expositor between the believer and his Bible."26 Both deplore the concession to critical studies as mediator of Christian understanding, both wish to censor the hubris of modern scholarship, and both lament the loss of an appreciation of Bible reading among Christians. From the perspective of defending a form of biblicism or a classical reading of the biblical narrative, critical studies receives a modest appreciation from postliberals. It contributes to Christian understanding by "unmasking misuses," especially eisegetical biases among both liberals and fundamentalists, but its applicability is typically negative and limited to a corrective role. While it is true that critical knowledge and skills are indispensable to Christian reflection, and obviously specialization and professional exegetical abilities greatly enhance the opportunities to understand the biblical text, an appropriate reading of the Bible "cannot be 22 George Lindbeck, "Scripture, Consensus, and Community," in Biblical Interpretation in Crisis, edited by Richard John Neuhaus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), p. 75. 23 Harvey Cox, Religion in the Secular City: Toward a Postmodern Theology (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), pp. 168-169 24 Stanley Hauerwas, Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America (Nashville: Abingdon, 1993), pp. 7-8; Walter Brueggemann, Texts under Negotiation: The Bible and Postmodern Imagination (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1993). 25 Lindbeck, "Scripture, Consensus, and Community," p. 90. 26 Arthur T. Pierson, "Antagonism to the Bible," Our Hope 15 (January, 1909), p. 475. 458 Theology Today wholly delegated to specialists."27 Not every profitable or appropriate reading is solely historical critical (nor for that matter is every profitable reading confessional or theological rather than critical). The historical and critical approach to the text and a theological or canonical approach to the text are not incompatible (Wood), and there may be historical-critical grounds for reading the Bible in unitive terms (Lindbeck).28 Stanley Hauerwas goes so far as to challenge the distinction between a critical approach to the text and the presumption that Bible reading is noncritical, and he distrusts the distinction between exegesis and eisegesis.29 Celebrating critical studies, to the exclusion of theological hermeneutics, is anecdotal of a lost sense of Bible reading as a communal enterprise. Historical criticism, like modern conservative criticism, tends to praise factuality (historically or literalistically) to the detriment of a unitive reading of Scripture. With the dawn of critical studies, textual and historical evidence was regarded as determinative of the meaning of the biblical text. Reading itself is not innocent but endemic to participation within a community skilled in reading (its) texts; so, rather than pursuing a general theory of hermeneutics or even reading, Hauerwas advocates a close reading of the text. Bible reading, in this light, is a critical skill concerned with how a text should be read, not that it can be read like any other text. "Evangelicals must repent of their modernity, cast off the dichotomy of critical and theological interpretive agendas, and abandon their destructive interest in propositional certainty. " Postliberals censure evangelicals and liberals alike for their tendency to make the meaning of the Bible independent of the historical and contemporary Christian community. Bible reading at present is individualistic and divisive; its approach to the text accords with "a world obsessed with the kind of certainty which comes from factuality, from immediate experience."30 The search for the original author's intent, individualistic or private access to the meaning of the text, the claim to factuality in historical claims, a rigid literalism, and hermeneutics as an application of a theory of being in the world all presuppose that the Bible's message is severed, for example, from the sensusfidelium.The postliberal concern is whether the "Bible can again become followable, not only for individuals (it has never 27 Charles Wood, The Formation of Christian Understanding: An Essay in Theological Hermeneutics (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1981), pp. 45-46,116-117. 2S Ibid., p. 72; Lindbeck, "The Story-Shaped Church: Critical Exegesis and Theological Interpretation," in Scriptural Authority, edited by Green, p. 164. 29 Hauerwas, Unleashing the Scripture, pp. 150-151. 30 Lindbeck, "Scripture, Consensus, and Community," pp. 82-86. The Bible Says 459 ceased to be that), but also for communities, and in ways that are unitive rather than divisive."31 To make reparations, evangelicals must repent of their modernity, cast off the dichotomy of critical and theological interpretive agendas, and abandon their destructive interest in propositional certainty. Extreme forms of biblicism equate the practice of uncritically parroting biblical statements (verbatim, desirably) with theological intelligibility, and by this means, the results are viewed as propositions that exhaust what God says.32 Whereas evangelicals continue to suffer from the persistent tensions associated with historicity and factuality introduced by critical studies, postliberals advocate a recovery of classical theological interpretative habits and historicalcritical awareness in a friendly and generous alliance. In this way, postliberals' critique of evangelical biblicism, and of the critical enterprise itself, is an amalgam of historical and ecclesial concerns. According to postliberals, a revival is necessary, but what is to be revived is in question. Lindbeck notes that in the circles "in which serious Bible reading is most widespread—conservative Protestant, charismatic . . . communities—[they] are often fundamentalists and almost always precriticai in their hermeneutics. They also need to recover the classical pattern."33 The corrective is not to be found in a return to premodern ways; there is no turning back in this direction. The postliberal critique of Bible reading at present is not merely a lament over its fading prominence but includes the historical conviction that the practice of Bible reading, if it is to be revived, must be revitalized under a new critical and ecclesial standard. POSTLIBERAL B I B L I C I S M It is reported that when Karl Barth was asked what was the essence of the Christian gospel, he responded: "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so." It seems ironic that Barth would cite that typically evangelical Sunday school ditty, and to do so with solemnity seems biblicist. Barth's biblical realism, although avoiding the extremes normally associated with critical studies and fundamentalism, betrays a form of biblicism that inspires postliberal attitudes toward the Bible.34 In Frei's words, the bequest of Barth is bound up with the priority of "communal Christian language molded by the Bible."35 And Frei himself is heralded as a theological practitioner who advocated the adequacy of the biblical lan31 Ibid, p. 94. Hans W. Frei, Types of Christian Theology, edited by George Hunsinger and William C. Placher (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 4,46-55. 33 Lindbeck, "Scripture, Consensus, and Community," p. 101. 34 Mark I. Wallace, "Karl Barth's Hermeneutic: A Way beyond the Impasse," Journal of Religion 68 (1988), pp. 396-410; George Hunsinger, "Beyond Literalism and Expressivism: Karl Barth's Hermeneutical Realism," Modern Theology 3 (1987), pp. 209-223. 35 Hans W. Frei, "An Afterword: Eberhard Busch's Biography of Karl Barth," in Karl Barth in Re-View: Posthumous Works Reviewed and Assessed, edited by H.-Martin Rumscheidt (Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1981), pp. 110-111. 32 460 Theology Today guage—according it an appropriately privileged status within the theological task. Postliberal theologians regard this task as intertextual, offering a redescription of "reality within the scriptural framework rather than translating Scripture into extra-scriptural categories. It is the text, so to speak, which absorbs the world, rather than the world the text."36 This pattern of theological regard for the biblical text is, like evangelical biblicism in its extreme representations, accused of sectarianism and fideism. What relevance to a postliberal use of the Bible, we may inquire, has the characteristically pedestrian practice of Bible reading? Within postliberal theology, Bible reading is the serviceable means to acquaint, rehearse, delimit, and encourage the primacy (adequacy and sufficiency) of the biblical language and its understanding within the Christian community. Within the "communal phenomenon" of theology construed as culturallinguistic idiom, Bible reading behaves in a dialogical manner to orient and establish Christian identity.37 Postliberal Bible reading calls for a reappropriation of the communityforming and normative role of a privileged text within a privileged community. When postliberals advocate a return to the "classical pattern of biblical interpretation" (Lindbeck) and a consensual hermeneutical status accorded to the literal sense of the biblical text (Frei), they make appeal to the shared, but eclipsed, lost, or neglected, tradition of Bible reading within the Protestant church.38 The literal sense can be characterized "as that which a community of readers takes to be plain, primary, and controlling signification of a text (a less problematic move than appealing to authorial intention or to some property ingredient in the text)."39 This is a historical and ecclesial assertion. For postliberals, the literal sense is an exercise in reading, not a literary aspect of the text itself. And unlike the inclination of biblicist dissent to view the meaning of the text in terms of a conflation of literalistic and historical senses, postliberals recommend reading the Bible intratextually rather than by means of an extratextual historical convention. Perhaps no one more than Hans Frei has advanced the ecclesial and historical traits of a Christian understanding of Scripture, primarily with regard for its literal sense, and characteristically in its narrative form. The church, Frei offered, is like a culture (a context and structure of meaning), with a sacred text that is to be understood by means of "informal rules and conventions governing" the relationship between church and text. An appropriately Christian understanding of its sacred text—to Frei, in its literal sense—is governed by "informal rules that the members of the community follow with regard to the reading of the sacred text." The literal 36 George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984), p. 118. 31 Ibid, pp. 80-84. 38 Lindbeck, "Scripture, Consensus, and Community," p. 74; Frei, Types of Christian Theology, pp. 140-141. 39 Lindbeck, "Story-Shaped Church," p. 164. The Bible Says 461 sense of Scripture is rendered within the historical and ecclesial context: It is "that meaning whichfindsthe greatest degree of agreement in the use of the text in the religious community. [Thus] the literal reading stems from the use of the text in the Church." And the text is taken as a realistic unity whereby its textuality is primary and self-referring; thus we read what is said as what the (author of the) text was "trying to say."40 Theflexibilityand applicability of such rules suit the actual use made of the Christian text—its venerable and varied but constant role in liturgy and sermon, in reading and recounting its stories. "In the self-description of the Christian community, the function of 'scripture' as a concept—it does not contain a 'meaning' apart from interpretation or use in the Church—is to shape and constrain the reader, so that he or she discovers the very capacity to subordinate himself to it."41 This ecclesial and historical setting for reading and understanding the Bible is confined to the hermeneutical level (its intratextual referent), eschewing general theories of reading (of which Bible reading is but a regional instance of a more general explanatory theory) in favor of a "low-level" use of rules, skills, or abilities that make understanding possible.42 A fondness for Bible reading is attractive precisely because it is a modest (and imprecise) means to ponder and appraise the text. "Properly qualified, postliberal interest in intratexualism is biblicist in character, if not also in temperament. " Thus, Charles Wood suggests, Bible reading is that manner of regarding the text as God's Word that recognizes the literal sense "intended by God and comprehensible to the reader who, by participation in the community of faith, is furnished with the basic conventions governing its understanding." Acquaintance with the text—a habitual and attentive reading—is acquaintance with the natural, plain, and obvious meaning acknowledged by the community of faith: "it is the sense whose discernment has become second nature to the members of the community."43 That is, the meaning of the text is accessible to the enlightened reader (for Calvin according to Frei), to those transformed and standing within the community skilled in its reading (for Hauerwas and Wood), or among those who employ an implicit and explicit trinitarian rule of faith (Lindbeck); the text can be read as followable (for Thiemann and Frei against Kermode) and perspicuous (for ^Frei, Types of Christian Theology, pp. 13-18, 86. 4l Ibid, p. 86. 42 Hans W. Frei, "The 'Literal Reading' of Biblical Narrative in the Christian Tradition: Does It Stretch or Will It Break?" in The Bible and the Narrative Tradition, edited by Frank McConnell (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 36-77. 43 Wood, Formation of Christian Understanding, pp. 39-40. 462 Theology Today Frei and Kathryn Tanner); therefore, the Christian interpretative tradition is expressly concerned with what is written as sufficient in and of itself.44 The strongest objections to characterizing postliberal attitudes toward the Bible as biblicist most likely come from postliberals themselves. Biblicism is an indictment; it is viewed as synonymous with premodern ways and incurably precritical. But, properly qualified, postliberal interest in intratextualism is biblicist in character, if not also in temperament. While postliberal biblicism is not "used to further . . . an obscurantist anticritical reading of the text," it is sustained by an "assertion of the fitness and congruence of the 'letter' to be the channel of the spirit."45 For this reason, among others, postliberal use of the Bible is accused of being "too focused on the text."46 When taken in a sense akin to Mark Wallace's suggestions, this "new" biblicism acknowledges that "there is no ahistorical, nonlinguistic, neutral, 'objective' Truth that allows us to escape from the web of words to which all of our inquiries are inextricably bound: we are all dwellers and detainees within the house of language."47 Postliberals see hope in retrieving a confessional and premodern practice of reading the biblical text that is coupled with a postcritical understanding of texts as constitutive of a linguistic world. This textuality is biblicism of a sort: The text is self-interpreting, it is sufficient, perspicuous, and accessible to initiated readers. CONVERGENCE AND CONCLUSION The common affection of postliberals and evangelicals for premodern Bible reading offers an interesting, if uncertain, prospect for potential consensus. Evangelical Bible reading typically embodies biblicist attitudes toward the text and is often sustained by premodern attitudes toward the text, for historical biblicists, or isolationist and ahistorical attitudes toward the text, for biblicist dissenters. Postliberals provide a revealing critique of such attitudes, a critique that many evangelicals themselves find appropriate. But rather than repudiating biblicism altogether, postliberals advocate the difficult task of rescuing Bible reading by means of a redesigned biblicism—textual sensitivity and sufficiency linked with ecclesial and historical interests. Postliberal biblicism offers an intriguing, as well as uncertain, means of recovering a voice for the Bible (or, the voice of the Bible) in a postmodern church and culture. ^In addition to the material cited above, see Hans W. Frei, "Theology and the Interpretation of Narrative: Some Hermeneutical Considerations," in Theology and Narrative: Selected Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 106-108; Kathryn E. Tanner, "Theology and the Plain Sense," in Scriptural Authority, edited by Green, pp. 59-63; and Ronald F. Thiemann, Revelation and Theology: The Gospel as Narrated Promise (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985). 45 Frei, "Theology and the Interpretation," pp. 106-108. 46 L. Gregory Jones, "A Response to Sykes: Revelation and the Practices of Interpreting Scripture," Modern Theology 5 (1989), p. 346. 47 Mark I. Wallace, "Postmodern Biblicism: The Challenge of René Girard for Contemporary Theology," Modern Theology 5 (1989), pp. 309-311. The Bible Says 463 With their own approval of Bible reading, postliberals offer the means to untangle the issues of modernity, historical criticism, and ecclesial and theological consensus. They seek to restore the role of imagination within the Christian community, imagination that is built upon biblical literacy and the sufficiency of biblical language. Postliberals wish to resuscitate the practice of Bible reading within the Christian community rather than sacrifice it to the reproaches of the intellectually and critically elite. The biblicism that sustains this revived interest in Bible reading is a serviceable tutor to those weighing the indispensable but ambiguous function of the Bible in contemporary Christian churches. The Bible may, once again, provide its constitutive service within its own ecclesial context—a privileged community handling a privileged text by means of a privileged mode of interpretation. This essay proposes to re-commend the practice of Bible reading, coupled with a rejuvenated biblicism, as an essential means for the evangelical community to remain faithful to its own identity as biblicists. The historic evangelical practice of Bible reading was never the simplistic act of a nonpartisan and dispassionate reader or the regional application of a general hermeneutics of reading but an exercise in confirming, forming, and conforming the reader mentored by the community of faith. Postliberal biblicism beckons us to read the Bible as this Christian text (certainly it can be and often should be read otherwise, but that it should be read, and read Christianly, is restorative). In this light, the concerns of biblicism and the practice of Bible reading are of vital interest, rather than matters of discord and disparagement. ^ s Copyright and Use: As an ATLAS user, you may print, download, or send articles for individual use according to fair use as defined by U.S. and international copyright law and as otherwise authorized under your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement. No content may be copied or emailed to multiple sites or publicly posted without the copyright holder(s)' express written permission. Any use, decompiling, reproduction, or distribution of this journal in excess of fair use provisions may be a violation of copyright law. This journal is made available to you through the ATLAS collection with permission from the copyright holder(s). The copyright holder for an entire issue of a journal typically is the journal owner, who also may own the copyright in each article. 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