MetaCatholic

Notwithstanding my often contrarian nature, I’m deeply reluctant to disagree simultaneously with two such doyens of the blogosphere as Michael Bird and Ben Myers. I might be accused of some anti-antipodean (maybe that should just be podean) bias. So rather than disagree, let me offer some further reflections on their respective posts.

Mike started off with a lament for what he saw as the subordination of biblical theology to systematics, and has some useful critiques of particular positions he instances. He argued for systematics as the end-point of biblical work. Ben responded:

It has never been the case that dogmatics is merely “the end process of exegesis and biblical theology” – nothing could be further from the truth! A better model would be that of a continuing spiral in which dogmatics influences exegesis, and then exegesis exerts a critical influence on dogmatics, and so on.

In a comment on that post Mike accepts the spiral, but still argues:

I would affirm that we had a theological creed before there was a scriptural canon; but, the earliest creeds (e.g. Rom. 1.3-4; 1 Cor. 15.3-4) have always included a reference to “according to the Scriptures” as the authorizing narrative for the emergence of a distinctive Christian theology!

Of course, the references to the scriptures (Rom 1:2, 1 Cor 15:3-4) are not to the controlling or even authorising narrative of Jesus life, death and resurrection, but to First Testament passages (and exactly which ones is not fully clear) which are freshly read in the light of the Jesus story. Experience and events prompt new readings (often entirely detached from any historical or literary context). The interplay between scripture, tradition and what God is perceived as doing now remains more complex than most systematized presentations of it.

The continuing spiral is not simply between exegesis and dogmatics with perhaps biblical theology acting as a middle term. (I leave aside for now, at least, the thought that biblical theology is a rather confusing and polyvalent term.) Events and experiences prompt new readings and new theologies, each interplaying with the other. Obviously, subsequent events lack the generative power and normative status of exodus for the people of Israel, or the Christ event for the church, but it is in events and experiences that scripture is re-read, and theology is regenerated.

I do not intend by that to decry either the analytic task of exegesis or the synthetic one of theology (a rather over-stated contrast). However, I do want to insist that the pastoral political and missionary context and impetus can’t be left out of this spiral. In those contexts theology is to be found in the readings and re-readings of our texts, the retellings of our story, as well as in the detailed and coherent reflection that teases out the implications of those re-readings and retellings, and explores whether they are are appropriate, self-consistent, fruitful and true in the light of the larger story.

(PS. The title of this post is taken from Harold Macmillan, former British Prime Minister: on being asked what the greatest challenges to a politician or statesman were, he replied “Events, dear boy, events.”