In the first part of this series of essays, I discussed controversies surrounding how one is to interpret Scripture, whether the words of Scripture have only one meaning, or whether Scripture is multivalent. I looked at how pre-modern Christians saw Scripture, at least what we can know from texts produced in that period. I also mentioned briefly how modern interpreters rejected their view, whether they were early modern Protestants, or twentieth-century fundamentalist and liberal Protestants.
In this part two, I will consider how the postmodern era brought about change to much of scholarship, although its impact on popular writings is less widespread.
What is the Post-Modern Era?
Western cultures today can be said to belong to the postmodern phase. Now, I fully understand that the terms “West” and “postmodern” are highly nebulous and oversimplifying, yet they are difficult to escape from. I expect most readers to know what the “West” sort of means, but “postmodern” requires a little more explanation.
Since this term can mean many different things in many different fields, in my opinion, it is best to take the term at face value. It refers to ideas and periods that take place after the modern period. In the same way we often differ from our parents’ generation, postmodern ideas can be broadly characterized as rejection, or at least improvement, of modern ideas.
One of these key modern ideas that became controversial, a legacy of the so-called Enlightenment era, is the optimism that human reason can fully understand anything if sufficient time and effort is given. It is quite likely that the success of the scientific method played a part in such sentiments. (In the first essay, I mentioned that the fundamentalists and their liberal opponents held the same assumption about Scripture. Their view, in fact, stemmed from this modern optimism.) A common thread of postmodern thinkers is the rejection of this optimism. Yet, they do not agree on what view should replace it.
One postmodern approach is to reject all kinds of structures and stability. Some famous thinkers, such as Jacques Derrida, are often described as embodying this approach. (While I am sceptical of this, I am no expert on his thoughts.) When we think of the term “postmodernism”, this is often what we imagine.
However, postmodernism is diverse and unstable by nature. As such, it should not be surprising that another postmodern approach is to look at the pre-modern era, and then take up ideas from there, whether wholesale or with some modification. Consequently, except for the most radical strain of postmodern thought, there is a tendency to look back into the past and recover ideas dismissed by modernity.
Attitude Towards the Church in the Post-Modern Era
The postmodern turn contains dangers and inherent instabilities, which I think are obvious enough not to require much discussion. It is easy to imagine what consequences can happen when one rejects all structures and refuses to settle for some kind of order and stability. This strain of postmodernism is hostile to Christianity, particularly Catholic and Orthodox (Eastern and Oriental) Christianity, given their emphasis on stable institutions and structure. Yet, I am not sure that all or even most postmodern thinkers think this way. (Of course, who can be classified as a postmodern thinker depends on how one defines “postmodern”.)
Since postmodernism is less optimistic of human reason’s ability to be certain, it is more likely to reconsider things rejected by modern thinkers. One of the things that modernity disdained, like postmodernism, is its own predecessor. For the moderns, this disdained predecessor is the pre-modern era, particularly the medieval period, which they called the “Dark Ages”. (The next time you visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, compare the lighting for rooms containing European medieval art against those rooms containing Greco-Roman and Renaissance art pieces.)
Now, this growing appreciation for the pre-modern past by many thinkers has benefited the Catholic Church in some ways. I think there is a good case to be made that our increasing interest in the past, whether it is admiration for older forms of art or popular media’s intense appetite for medieval (and Catholic) European culture, is as much a phenomenon of the postmodern era as “formless” contemporary art. (Fans of the popular card game Magic: The Gathering can vouch for the popularity of art styles reminiscent of an era long gone.)
More importantly, since postmodern thought is suspicious of straightforward narratives given its lower dose of optimism, it tends to be more sympathetic to marginalised narratives. It is often happy to recover such narratives to complicate the picture.
A relevant example for our context is that scholars of history today are much more likely to reject modern thinkers’ neat caricature of the Church, a relic of the so-called Enlightenment era, as a “villain” of progress. Catholic historians are much more welcome today in mainstream scholarship to voice out their narratives, and scholars who make little attempt to nuance their views of the Church’s past are not taken very seriously. (This is less true of popular writers, however, especially the sensationalist ones.)
This has a serious implication for the field of biblical studies, where history is an extremely important field. This change enabled more Catholic, Orthodox and Jewish scholars to join the field. As a result, old stereotypical disdain for liturgy and interpretive strategies passed down in both Christian and Jewish traditions was slowly but definitively dismantled.
Today, no serious biblical scholar would dismiss ritual texts in Scripture as late additions by short-sighted religious institutions on “original, pure text”. There is also a far wider interest in studies of traditional interpretations in mainstream scholarship, including medieval commentaries on Scripture. (Some skeptical observers might attribute this to a desperate search for new topics in an increasingly saturated field, however.)
Influence of the Post-Modern Era on the Church
All these changes and developments among thinkers and scholars in turn influenced the Catholic Church, at least in the West, since Catholic thinkers are always engaging the wider culture. I do not think it is a coincidence that the ressourcement movement, which advocated for a return to direct study of Scripture and Church Fathers, began in the middle of the twentieth century. (Certainly, a case could be made that John Henry Newman sowed the seeds for it. But he was ahead of his time.)
Studying the theology and interpretations of Scripture by past and recent theologians were no longer sufficient, important as they are. Instead, one needs to go back further in time, back to the “sources”. Even Origen, declared a heretic after his death in a process protested by many ancient Christians, became appreciated for his influential commentaries on Scripture.
This shift is most visible in Dei Verbum, an important document of the Second Vatican Council, where it declares that the study of Scripture is “the soul of Sacred Theology”. Critically, an important influence in the drafting of the document is a leading figure of the ressourcement movement, Joseph Ratzinger, who eventually became Pope Benedict XVI.
Accordingly, the Catholic Church saw increasing emphasis on the direct study of Scripture. Devotions centered on Scripture, such as the Lectio Divina, began to receive wider attention. More and more bibles were printed with notes, whether they were comments by Church Fathers or more recent biblical scholars. The medieval European idea, which is that Scripture has four senses, began to be studied in earnest again. (The evolution of this fourfold sense is complex, and Henri de Lubac’s magnum opus, Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture, explains in detail.)
Now, although the fourfold senses approach is a very important way to understand the multivalency of Scripture, I do not intend to discuss further what they are and how they can be applied, since many better writers have done so. This explainer taken from the USCCB’s website is just one of those many.
Instead, in the next and final part of this series of essays, I would like to discuss how most biblical scholars interpret Scripture today in academic settings. The model used is often called the three worlds of the text, very loosely based on the work of Paul Ricœur, a French philosopher. I think this model, less commonly discussed among lay Christians, is also very useful in helping us see the multivalency of Scripture in addition to more traditional approaches.
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Photo: Aaron Burden, Unsplash / PD-US
