Rereading scripture

A hermeneutical process

Nirmala Vasanthakumar

In order to introduce the topic, let me begin with two events from my own life. I am currently a presbyter of the Church of South India (CSI) Karnataka Central diocese. Like my male colleagues in the ministry, I fulfilled all the requirements to be ordained as a deacon in the diocese. I was ordained as deacon in the year 1976. My male colleagues who were ordained with me as deacons, were ordained as presbyters the following year. But I was not ordained since the CSI was still discussing the acceptance of women in the ordained ministry.

The discussions went on at all levels. Both proponents and opponents of the ordination of women based their arguments mainly on the Bible. After several years, the church agreed to ordain women and removed the constitutional barriers to implement the decision. I was ordained finally as presbyter in 1984, along with another sister. When the Diocese posted me as full time presbyter, I felt that it had been worth the wait. The Lord has His own way in fulfilling His promises.

While in this frame of mind, thanking God for the opportunity He had given me to serve Him as a presbyter, I encountered another event in my life. My own aunt - a pious and devout lady - commented as follows: "Nirmala, you have gone against the Word of God, since the Bible says that women should keep silent in public." I was upset not just because my own aunt did not appreciate my commitment to the pastoral ministry, but because a woman could not understand another woman's feelings. I decided to reply to her in the same vein, quoting from the Scriptures. "My dear Aunty," I said, "the Resurrected Lord told Mary, 'Go and tell my brothers that I am risen'. So the mandate to proclaim the message of resurrection was given first to women and only afterwards to men."

It is not my intention to disclose the agony I went through to become a presbyter in the church. But I do want to draw your attention to the fact that, in both events, the Bible was used to justify the position. For a Christian, whether he or she is from a liberal, traditional or even conservative background, his or her authority springs from the Bible.

Before the Reformation, the authority of the Bible and the tradition of the church went hand in hand. Martin Luther and other Reformers brought a revival to the thinking of men and women about the Bible. For them, the scriptures contained the Word of God, whereas tradition was man-made. Therefore, tradition could not be equal to the scriptures. According to Luther, a Christian derived his or her authority only from the scriptures and all other authorities should be subject to them. Hence Luther's famous slogan, sola Scriptura. Luther further liberated the scriptures from the hands of the professionals. He declared that everyone should have direct access to the scriptures, Since the time of Luther, the authority of the Bible has been taken seriously even as it has been interpreted differently by various theologians and denominations within the Christian church.

Robert Bryant defines authority as that "which is acknowledged as right and worthy commending loyalty and obedience."¹ Authority, therefore, has a sense of identity, the feeling of hope, the standard for belief and norms for behaviour. Christians look for all these in the Bible. The very fact that the proponents and opponents of the ordination of women use the same texts to justify their positions demonstrates that the authority and the interpretation of the Bible go hand in hand.

Broadly speaking, there are three views about the scriptures:

1.The Bible is the Word of God.

2.The Bible contains the Word of God

3.The Bible becomes the Word of God.

The above categories are not absolute. Within each, there are divergent viewpoints. These are not discussed here, as they do not have a direct bearing in our discussion.

The Bible is the Word of God

The proponents of this theory believe that the Bible is the Word of God because it is inspired by God. The Bible is a record of events and truths describing the eternal communication of God to God's people through the meditation of prophets and apostles.

According to this view, God chose writers in different generations and inspired them through the Holy Spirit to record God's Words for their contemporaries as well as for future generations. Thus, God is the principal author of biblical texts and the writers are only instruments of God. The proponents of this theory quote passages like 2 Timothy 3:16 (2 Tim.) - all scripture is inspired by God, 2 Peter 1:20-21 - men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God and John 10:35 - scripture cannot be annulled - in support of this position. They conclude that since God is perfect, God's words in the Bible are also perfect. As such the words of the Bible are absolute eternal truths for all generations. The Bible is perfect and inerrant in its entirety and in all its details.

The strength of this position is that the Bible in its entirety is an authoritative document. Christian life, witness, theology and faith must spring from the authority of the Bible. But the weaknesses of this position are many. If the Bible in its entirety is the Word of God, does this also refer to translations? What of the text is inspired when there are textual variations? Further, in this position, inspiration is confused with authority. Inspiration only means that the authors were divinely inspired. That does not explain how an ancient book can become an authoritative document for the modern age.

Even though the advocates of this position say that the whole Bible is authoritative, it ultimately boils down to the selective use of the text. For example, when a person asks a question like "Are you saved?", behind this question there is an underlying concept that the saving is a one-time event and it is a past event. They quote from the scriptures to argue that one needs to be "born again" in order to be a true Christian. But advocates of this position fail to recognize that the New Testament speaks of salvation in all three tenses, past, present and future indicating that salvation is a continuous process. This has not been stressed by advocates of this position. This inadequacy in the understanding of the authority of the Bible has led to another misunderstanding. 

The Bible contains the Word of God

The advocates of this position believe that the writers of the Bible are divinely inspired and that they were writing the Word of God for the people of their time. Therefore, the Bible is a product of its own socio-cultural and political context. Although the message of the Bible is divinely inspired, it is given to human beings. In as much as the human beings were recipients of the message, they understood and communicated God's message in their own language and culture. The message of the Bible then is hidden in the socio-cultural and political context of that time. It may even contain some errors, as the recipients were human beings. The Bible contains the Word of God and becomes authoritative only when the Word of God is discovered in its own context.

The strength of this position is also very clear. That is, that the Bible is the product of its own period. As such it was easily understood by the people to whom it was addressed. Since portions of the Bible were written in different historical periods, different views are expressed in different passages in the Bible. This also explains why some errors have crept into the manuscripts.

The Bible should be understood in its own context. It is even necessary to discover the socio-cultural and political situation of that time so that the text may be read against this background. But then the question is how does an ancient text taken out of its archaeological confines become relevant to modern times? This is not explained in this position. 

The Bible becomes the Word of God

Proponents of this theory believe that the Bible is not identified with the Word of God because the source of the Bible is God himself. The Bible is only an instrument to disclose the revelation of God, as such it witnesses to the Word of God. When a reader encounters Christ by reading the Bible he or she discovers the Word of God in his or her existential situation. The authority of the Bible does not lie in its intrinsic value but in its capacity to address human beings in their own existential situations.

The strength of this position is that the Bible becomes the Word of God when a person meets Christ in his or her existential situation. The scriptures become authoritative because they provide an opportunity for a divine-human encounter. The impact of the scriptures upon theology, teaching and faith is taken seriously. The main weakness of this position is that it does not take into consideration the context in which the scriptures were written. So much so, that the reader is tempted to interpret the scriptures to suit his or her existential situation rather than relying on the basic principles of hermeneutics. 

Hermeneutics

What is hermeneutics? According to George Casalis², hermeneutics is the science of Hermes. Hermes is a god who was entrusted with transcribing to human beings the results of the confused and stormy deliberations of Olympus. Hermes was also responsible for getting the commodity across the border from one culture to another. He was the protector of physicians who were trained to restore the fullness of life to those threatened by death. From the above description Georges Casalis comes to the conclusion that hermeneutics has four dimensions:

1.It translates a divine message into human words.

2.It transposes what was said "at that time" into contemporary categories.

3.It reclaims possession of the text and its meaning from those who have unwarrantedly locked them away.

4.It revives the past in order to retain its value for the present.

Hermeneutics, therefore, is a principle by which the biblical text is interpreted to make the message relevant to the modern situation. It takes into consideration the text and its context as well as the reader and his or her context. If the former is taken seriously without the latter then we end up with an ancient text without any relevance for the present. If the latter is taken seriously without the former then we are in danger of advocating subjective interpretation. Both perils should be taken seriously. 

The text and its historical context

The Bible is not a collection of some metaphysical ideas. It contains events in history. It has geographical names. It has names which can be verified in history. It demonstrates how a community of faith expressed the salvic activities of God in their own lives and how generations of faith communities appropriated this experience in their historical praxis. To put it in the words of Croatto: "the whole Bible as we have it today is the result of a long hermeneutical process."³

Before the text came to be written, God's word was experienced and lived by successive generations. Finally a witness put that experience in the literary form. Hence the Word is an event, a creative act and not just a written word. The discovery of various manuscripts, archaeological excavations and scientific criticism have helped us to conclude that the biblical witness itself is time-bound and place-bound. To understand the biblical witness one has to understand economic, political, social and cultural factors in which the biblical texts first saw the day. The text is not free of the conflicts of the milieu in which it arose. Hence it is necessary to identify the theological framework implicit in a given situation. As Casalis says: "To understand the text, we must not only decode, translate and analyze what is written but also reconstruct the situation and the role that the witness played in it."⁴

For this reason the Word of God cannot be identified with the written word. Hence the fundamentalists' interpretation that the whole Bible is inspired and inerrant cannot stand the test of hermeneutical principles. One needs to go beyond the fundamentalist position to discover the Word of God for Christian obedience.

The reader within a context

No reading is a neutral reading. Every reading is done from an objective position. The fact that the proponents and opponents of the ordination of women quote the same text to justify their stand demonstrates that every reading is done from an ideological position. Such ideological positions are sometimes acknowledged but more often than not they are not openly acknowledged. Yet always the ideological bias of the reader determines his or her reading of the scriptures.

When a woman reads the Bible, the context in which she is placed is always at the back of her mind. This context shapes the ideological bias. For example, in the context of the subjugation of women in India throughout its 4000 years of history, a woman either will be very submissive, accepting her role as God-given or she will rebel against subjugation saying that it is man-made. Thus her ideological bias determines her reading of the scriptures.

The liberation motif is one of the dominant themes in the Bible, particularly in the context of women's struggle for full humanity. There are few references in the Bible about the involvement of women to affirm their human dignity and to establish equal partnership in ministry. The fact that the biblical books are a product of historical contexts in which the subjugation of women was a reality further worsens the situation. The women's struggle has not been faithfully recorded. However in the few places where references are found, they depict a liberating process. The liberating message comes out very effectively from these passages if read in their own historical context. In other words, the scriptures have to be re-read in the context of the struggle of women to affirm their human dignity and humanity. Only then is the message of the Bible recreated and reactivated, not just updated. Only then does the message of the Bible become contextualized, made relevant and not allegorized.

The task of hermeneutics in this situation is to find a correct interplay between the text and its historical context and what that text says to us in our current context. The historical context and the scriptural context are thus held in tension with each other in order to find the Word of God for our context. This process is called the "hermeneutic circle"⁵ by Georges Casalis. José Miguez Bonino prefers to call it "hermeneutical circulation". In the words of Bonino, hermeneutical circulation "creates an ongoing circulation from the text to the praxis and to the text again or from the past historical context to the present context and back again...Thus a hermeneutical circulation is between the text and its historicity and our historical reading of it in obedience".⁶ 

Rereading the Scriptures

Let us apply this hermeneutic principle to the struggle of women to affirm their humanity. We will begin with the context in which the struggle is taking place and then proceed to look at the scriptures within that context. Pauline writings will provide a reference point.

The struggle of women to affirm their humanity

As I am not conversant with the situation throughout Asia my observations are limited to the Indian context. However, I suspect similar descriptions may be found in other countries of Asia.

The situation in India is paradoxical. In some religious aspects, women are held in highest esteem in India. Many gods are female gods. The universe is created out of the shakti or power of woman. The goddess of education and learning is saraswathi, a woman; the goddess who destroys evil in the world is chamundeshwari/durga, a woman. Hence women can reach the highest possible recognition, to become gods themselves. The most powerful and dynamic leader of independent India was a woman, Indira Gandhi. She was so powerful that Hussein, a famous artist of India, has depicted her as Durga in one of his paintings. Thus it is possible for a woman to reach the highest governing position in the political arena.

Yet with all these possibilities, the socio-cultural positions prevailing in India are appalling. Historically, women have been subjugated to the authority of men. As a child, a girl comes under the authority of the father; as a married woman she comes under the authority of her husband; and as an old woman she comes under the authority of her son. At no time in her lifespan can a woman be independent of man.

Women from the middle classes and lower classes must work to maintain their families. After working hours they attend to the household work, such as, cooking the meals, cleaning the vessels, washing the clothes and supervising the children's studies, while men normally have only their professional responsibilities. The daily newspapers report many incidents like dowry harassment, dowry deaths, assault, rape and other atrocities perpetrated against women. Even though in some temples female deities are installed, around the temple the devadasi system is encouraged. This is a system by which women are married to one of the male gods in the temple and thus available for high-caste men to use as prostitutes.

It is in this context that women's struggle takes place in India. Women who are conscious of their human dignity are now raising their voices against such atrocities. They are educating other women to stand firm against evil forces who perpetuate such demeaning practices. These movements are gaining momentum. Of course there is a sizable number of women who believe in the traditional role of women. One can understand such feelings, for the oppression of thousands of years have made these people so docile that they cannot see a way out from this predicament. Therefore any movement which is set towards changing attitudes will have a difficult task of conscientizing people and especially the women themselves. The authority of the scriptures has a lasting impact in this context, so it is important to correctly interpret the texts in this complex situation. 

Paul and women

It is a general opinion that Paul firmly advocates the subjugation of women to men. Passages like Ephesians 5:22 (Eph.), Colossians 3:18 (Col.) and 1 Corinthians 14:33-36 (1 Cor.) are quoted as texts justifying the above understanding. But the hermeneutical principle would hold that Paul should be understood in his own context. Therefore, before we analyze some of these passages we should consider the socio-cultural context in which Paul was operating.

Women did not have a positive role to play in the Judaism of Paul's time. They were considered inferior and their role was limited to their families. Although the New Testament presupposes monogamy, polygamy was legally permitted. Women could attend synagogues but had to be seated separately. They could not speak in the synagogues. However great the number of women present at the synagogue worship could not be conducted unless ten men were present. Above all women were not allowed to read Torah.

In the Hellenistic world there was more freedom. Women were involved in public life. Wives could take part in symposia, they could accompany their husbands to parties and other public functions. Women participated in sports except in the Olympics. They had women priestesses who played a very important role in cult worship. Paul must be studied within this background of the traditionalism and conservatism propagated by Judaism and liberalism advocated by Hellenism.

We will not analyze the Pauline passages where women's role is described. We will concentrate only on the undisputed letters of Paul. A majority of the New Testament scholars agree that there are only seven undisputed letters of Paul. They are 1 Cor., 2 Corinthians (2 Cor.), Romans (Rom.), Galatians (Gal.), Philippians (Phi.), Philemon and 1 Thessalonians (1 The.). On the basis of style, content and theology, some New Testament scholars believe that Eph. and Col. are not directly from the pen of Paul but from a close friend or disciple of his. We will, of course, not involve ourselves in debating the validity of this view. We will simply accept the findings as true for the time being. This means that the injunction that the wife should be subjected to the authority of her husband as found in Eph. and Col. is to be treated as deutero-Pauline injunction and not by Paul himself.

Paul advocates two basic concepts: a) the equality of men and women "in Christ;" and b) the bestowal of charismata on all the members of the community. For Paul, the phrase of Gal. 3:28 -- "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." -- is a basic text. Once a person is in Christ, all the man-made distinctions become peripheral. As a result, all the members of the community have equal rights. In contradiction to the practice prevalent in the synagogues, Paul advocates equal partnership of men and women in the ministry. So Paul uses words like "when you are assembled" (1 Cor. 5:4), "when you come together" (1 Cor. 11:18) and "when the whole church comes together" (1 Cor. 14:23) to indicate that both men and women are addressed here.

Secondly, Paul declares that all believers are endowed with charismata (1 Cor. 12 and 14 and Rom. 12). The concept of charismata runs throughout Paul's epistles. There is a multiplicity of charismata in the body of Christ. These have been given in the Lord for the edification of the community. Each one has his or her role in the church. Men and women exercise the ministry according to the charismata given to them. There is no silent partner in the Pauline community. Paul advocates such a positive role for women against the background of Judaism where women had a passive role. So for Paul, all normal categories like Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and master are broken down in Christ. This is not just spiritual virtue. It is applicable in the realm of social and religious life as well. Because of this understanding, Paul goes one step further and advocates collective leadership in his community. Out of forty fellows workers ten are female. In other words, one quarter of the Pauline missionary team consisted of females. The efforts of women in the missionary work is described in Rom. 16.

Because of this new-found freedom in Christ and the bestowal of charismata on all believers, men and women were allowed to prophesy in church assemblies (1 Cor. 11:5,6). Here we must take into consideration 1 Cor. 14:33-36 which states that women should keep silent in the churches. Many recent scholars believe this passage is a later interpolation. They argue that the text is not contextual, it contradicts the idea propagated in 1 Cor. 11, and it comes in tension with the views expressed in 1 Cor. 7 regarding marriage. Therefore the New Revised Version of the Bible puts this passage in brackets indicating that it is a later interpolation. If this explanation is accepted, then it is abundantly clear that Paul gives a prominent role to women in the churches.

Paul's injunction to women to cover their heads in public worship should be considered within that context. It is not as a theological dictum but rather an affirmation of a social practice intended to maintain decorum in the church. Paul is not only saying that women should cover their heads. He also is saying the men should cut their hair. It is a social custom which Paul is addressing and not a theological doctrine.

Even if one interprets this passage from the point of view of the subordination of women to men, he or she can discern that the equality of men and women and the exercise of charismata by all in the community are more predominant in Paul. The liberative motif is more pronounced in the Pauline epistles than the subjugation of women to men. When a person rereads the Pauline epistles in their own context and in the light of the basic concepts that he advocates, one is bound to discover the positive role for women in them. It is this liberative motif which becomes the Word of God for those involved in the struggle of women to affirm their humanity.

From the above description of Paul's treatment of the role of women in his community, it is clear that the interpretation and authority of the scriptures go hand in hand. When the reader in his or her present context rereads the scriptures in their own context, the Word of God is discovered. When the text of the Bible in its own context and a reader in his or her present context confront each other, the Word of God comes out vividly. That is the way to understand the authority and interpretation of the Bible. Thus the authority and interpretation of the scriptures in the context of women's struggle to affirm their humanity is intrinsically linked with the rereading of the scriptures. It is an hermeneutical process.

Notes