Extending the Circle of Study:
Job and Scriptural Reasoning in the Undergraduate Setting
William J. Heckner and Willie Young
King's College, Pennsylvania
Introduction
In teaching theology at an undergraduate Catholic institution,
one faces a number of often-conflicting responsibilities that can
be difficult to negotiate. Given the mission of a school such as
King's—historically, to educate the children of coal miners
in northeastern Pennsylvania, and currently to educate many first-generation
college students—one's primary responsibility is to teach
students about the Catholic tradition of theological reflection,
how to think, live within, and understand it. At the same time,
given the cultural homogeneity of northeast Pennsylvania, one wants
students to learn how to relate to and understand those from other
religious communities, since exposure to such religious diversity
has often been minimal in their education to this point. Students
are often quite open about their frustration with the lack of opportunity
for the study of other religions, since our departmental focus is
almost entirely on Christian theology.
My concern here is not to teach them about diversity as such, but
rather how to engage in community with others, in their particularity,
as an embodied way of Christian life and practice. To this end,
scriptural reasoning can provide an alternative way of negotiating
these conflicting demands—bringing students into deeper engagement
with Catholic and Protestant readings of scripture, while also,
simultaneously, introducing them to the scriptures and practices
of Judaism and Islam. It was with these goals in mind that we organized
a series of panels at King's in the fall of 2003, so as to try scriptural
reasoning with a portion of the student body. The panels, titled
"Hearing Job", focused on the study of the book of Job
within the three traditions.
As shall be discussed further below, there were elements of the
program that were successful, while aspects of the student participation
need further refinement. In particular, how to bring students into
the world of the text, rather than leaving them alienated from it
by preconceptions and predetermined questions, is one of the most
complex and subtle aspects of the dynamics of scriptural reasoning.
To explore this further, we'll begin with some reflections by William
Heckner, a recent graduate of King's who will be entering seminary
training in the Holy Cross order. William originally wrote these
for The Crown, King's student newspaper, and has added
some additional reflections here.
A Student's Perspective
Faith and religion are two terms that are pretty sensitive in the
world. Whether in connection with tensions in Europe, the Middle
East, China, and many other areas, faith and religion are frequently
associated with the causes of war and violence. But there is a deeper
implication in faith and religion, which calls to us as communities
and individuals; it is this deeper level of faith that the King's
College community tries to foster.
On Tuesday, September 30, 2003, three speakers were brought together
for the first of two panels. The panel series, entitled "Hearing
Job: Jews, Christians and Muslims Reading Scripture Together",
was presented by Rabbi Larry Kaplan of Temple Israel in Wilkes-Barre,
Dr. Mamoun Bader, Imam of the Islamic Mosque in Wilkes-Barre, and
Dr. William Young of the Theology Department here at King's.
As the first meeting continued through the night, a general consensus
was reached. The interesting thing about Job, as found in the scriptures
of the three aforementioned faiths, is that it poses the same question
to all three: what do we do when it seems that God has left us?
As it stated from the beginning, the panel series is not trying
to solve this age-old question. Rather, it is trying to see how
we as people of these faiths can think about such a question. As
Dr. Bader noted, "It is important for people to realize the
common grounds our faiths share." Rabbi Kaplan said in passing
that he hoped students would get a deeper appreciation for not only
Job and the three faiths, but also for faith in general.
Many students and faculty members attended the first panel, some
with the direct intention of seeing how Job plays out in Christianity,
Islam, and Judaism, while others were astonished to see how these
three faiths can even get along. Dr. Bader observed, "Since
it was in an academic setting, it was particularly interesting to
see students, faculty, educated community members, etc., who were
there because they had the interest to begin with. Abby Myers, a
senior at King's, expressed interesting the panel as well. "I
think it's a great idea," Myers said. "On a Catholic campus,
and in a largely Christian community, we often forget or even ignore
other faiths. As a result, we miss the opportunity to strengthen
ourselves as a human race by learning from each other; these panel
readings give us such an opportunity."
Rev. John Reardon, C.S.C., an adjunct professor at King's who is
also involved with many other ministries in the region, agreed with
Myers. "Job looks at a basic religious dilemma," Rev.
Reardon said, "[that is] how to reconcile the goodness of God
with the suffering of good people. It was really interesting to
see how that question is viewed through the prism of three different
communities." Dr. Young explained that these panels do indeed
foster communities interdependent upon one another. "In sharing
the practices internal to our communities," Dr. Young commented,
"we can learn to become more responsible to one another, as
part of being faithful to God, and learn to hear God's guidance
both from the scriptures, and by hearing how our neighbors read
the scriptures. "And, as we learn to read together," Dr.
Young continued, "we also begin to think about the limits of
our own readings, recognizing the social, historical, and philosophical
limitations of our interpretations, and we thereby become more conscious
of the limited way our reading may reflect and disclose what the
scriptures mean, while also recognizing that other readings may
reflect the abundant depth of meaning that the scriptures continue
to hold for us today."
From a student's perspective, at least one who is fairly well acquainted
with theology, these panels were very informative, wonderful forums
for individual and community growth. However, I realized that some
students at the panel did not have much knowledge about the book
of Job or about theology, and so were at a disadvantage when three
theologians started to discuss theological issues concerning the
book of Job. I found that the panel, whose purpose was to educate
those students about Job and the possible theological problems it
raises, was actually contradicting its purpose by befuddling those
who did not have sufficient education in the field. While this may
not be a problem on a university level campus, where one could argue
that people should have the proper education before attending a
professional conference, this panel took place in an undergraduate-level
setting. The purpose, as aforementioned,
was to educate via discussion, not to argue about the particulars.
I am not saying the latter occurred, far from it, but I think before
delving too deeply into a subject, and using terminology that may
not be understood by those less educated in the field of theology,
panel organizers need to consider those people who are attending
merely out of curiosity.
A foundation is therefore required. I would suggest a crash course,
so to speak, on whatever the issue is – in this case, Job.
A basic explanation or outline of what happens in the book of Job
would be helpful. I think the organizers of this panel did extremely
well, especially considering this was the first time something like
this was attempted. Handouts were given out, questions were answered
thoroughly, and so on. However, putting much of the theology of
Job, and even the plot, in layman's terms would probably be very
helpful to students in the future, especially when dealing with
three different faiths. For example, some students may not know
the various attitudes toward God throughout the Bible or Qur'an.
Various biblical passages show very different attitudes toward God.
These may suggest that God changes over time: for instance, readers
may wonder if God was a punishing being and then reformed into a
forgiving one. Was Lucifer (i.e. the Adversary) evil at this point
in Job? Did the Adversary make God punish Job? Is God punishing
Jesus in the New Testament? This is only a fraction of one thought
process of a hypothetical person with minimal knowledge of the present
topic. If it is not explained that some of these issues are actually
the great questions that plague theology daily, while other questions
can simply be answered with a ‘yes' or ‘no', students
and others will be preoccupied with unnecessary thoughts and questions
that take away from the issues the panel wants to address directly.
This, of course, is no easy task. Unless they are mind-readers,
organizers cannot possibly know ahead of time how much knowledge
the audience will have on a particular subject. The problem is even
less tangible when crossing over to other colleges. Overall, the
panels at King's gave students at least a taste of how Christianity,
Judaism, and Islam work together. In this way, the panels were very
successful, for they informed the college community about the diversity
found in faith; maybe those who did not know much before were able,
after the panels, to understand why different faiths and religions
collide on particular issues. The general message I am trying to
get across, though, as a student, is that organizers of any panel
or discussion at any undergraduate college should be sensitive to
their school's overall understanding of the topic they want to discuss.
Whichever ways organizers do this, I guarantee that the panel, if
planned to accommodate the students' educational levels, will be
much more fruitful and dynamic.
The Challenges of Student Participation
We structured the sessions so as to give students both some in-depth
knowledge of the scriptures and communal hermeneutics, as well as
the opportunity to read and discuss the scriptures with one another.
The first part of each session was a presentation by one of the
panel members. Dr. Bader discussed the importance of Job in the
Qur'an, as a figure of patience and trust in God. Rabbi Kaplan discussed
how we deal with the problem of suffering, and in particular how
the book of Job poses difficulties for readers in its presentation
of God as intentionally permitting evil to happen to Job. As he
explained, this problem had led rabbinic commentators to treat the
book as fictional. My presentation discussed how the book of Job
has been appropriated in recent reflections on liberation theology,
focusing on Gutierrez's reading in On Job: God-Talk and the
Suffering of the Innocent. The central issue for Gutierrez
is how Job reciprocates God's "disinterested faith", loving
God for God's sake. This allows the problem of innocent suffering
to emerge in a way that Job's friends cannot see, and provides the
mysterious answer that God allows human suffering as the effect
of God's wanting creation to participate in God's freely-given love
and generous pursuit of justice.
For the first session, we gave the students a range of texts to
work with.1 This led to some
strong discussion, but the strangeness of the texts posed a major
hurdle for many students. There were enough questions about the
opening scene of the book, the "wager" between God and
the adversary, that we could have spent the whole session on one
text, let alone relate it to the others! As one might expect, there
were also numerous questions about the text from the Qur'an, which
was least familiar to most of the participants. Intrigued but overwhelmed,
students recommended a sharper focus, with less text, for the second
session. While the session was fruitful, William's comments above
on the need for more background highlight the difficulties many
students faced in the initial encounter.
For the second session, the presentations developed the earlier
themes, and also discussed in more depth how God's response to Job
shows that God wants humanity to reciprocate the divine generosity
of creation. For the student reading session, in response to their
suggestions, we focused on shorter passages from scripture, allowing
students to study them in more detail.2
We also gave the students some discussion questions, to help guide
them to the central issues of the passages.
There were both constructive outcomes and disappointments in the
sessions. Students were clearly moved and inspired by the positive
engagement of Jews, Christians, and Muslims in study, and grasped
its potential for developing community. Students grasped the central
points of the presentations very well, and many were also quite
interested in learning more as a result. One of the more interesting
moments in the first session was when Dr. Bader drew parallels between
Gutierrez's reading of the text and a Sufi understanding of faith.
Additionally, a couple of Muslim students who attended expressed
gratitude for the recognition of Islam on the campus of King's,
and they were active participants in the second discussion.
However, there were also difficulties. In both reading sessions,
student pre-judgments about theology and scripture posed obstacles
to close work with the texts. For example, the opening scene of
the wager looks ‘mythical', or primitive, to students, precisely
because it imagines a scene that we could not directly see. Moreover,
students preconceive God's omnipotence in a way that removes God's
action from the world and history, such that the depiction of God
as permitting Job's suffering, or responding to Job, can only appear
startling. Such preconceptions posed particular problems when reading
about the wager in the opening chapters of the text; likewise, many
students had questions as to why God would feel it necessary to
reward Job at the end of the text, when others are not rewarded
(underlying these questions, one can see that students read the
ending as a reward, or a pay-off, rather than as a divine gift).
The language and poetic form of Job also posed difficulties. For
instance, if the text is poetic, then students assume that it is
fictional, and thus not really true. Students don't often consider
the possibility that while the text is poetic, it is really not
so foreign to our experience, since in our world innocent suffering
is all around us. All of these questions are legitimate, important
questions, and when one discusses these issues with students one
can lead them into the text from these starting points. The problem,
though, is that given a setup in small groups, where not every group
has a teacher or students versed in the practice of scriptural reasoning,
it can be very difficult for students to find a way through these
questions to a closer reading of the texts, and to a consideration
of how reading the biblical and Qur'anic texts together could allow
new insights to emerge. In brief, under small-group conditions the
students bring such questions and issues to the table in ways that
make textual study more difficult, rather than seeing reflection
on and through the text as a way to think through the issues in
a new way.
The question then becomes what sorts of pedagogical interventions
can enable students to become effective scriptural reasoners—working
intertextually, drawing the deeper sense out of the text, and reflecting
on the text in light of both their own tradition and other traditions
of commentary. William's comments in the earlier section of this
paper are particularly appropriate for consideration here. An important
issue to consider, then, is the range of backgrounds that students
will bring to such sessions. For the purpose of generalization,
I would describe them as follows. First, there are some students
who are well-versed in theology and the reading of scripture, formed
by religious community and tradition. For some such students, the
practice of biblical reasoning, thinking from and through the text,
may seem familiar. For others, who hold more firmly to a traditionalist
position, the idea of questioning through the text may be very foreign,
and even antithetical to their faith. Third, many students, both
within and without religious communities, will have little to no
experience in working with scriptural texts, such that both the
form and the content will be foreign and perhaps off-putting. Some
of these students may be confused; others, without a sense of trust
toward either the texts or traditions, can be hostile to the very
idea of engaging the text as a source of truth or guidance, seeing
it only as an authoritarian, arbitrary imposition. Given the range
of attitudes toward, and levels of comprehension of, scriptural
study at the undergraduate level, a patience in cultivating student
learning is required—perhaps not Job's patience, but patience
nonetheless. An ongoing weekly or biweekly series of short, intensive
meetings, perhaps dealing with one approach to the texts at a time,
may be initially more effective than a panel that brings the three
traditions together at once—though that may be significant
at later stages of the process. Building through intensive work
with each tradition, and each set of texts, may be a necessary step
on the path towards scriptural reasoning among the three traditions.
One of the more effective ways to develop student participation
is through reflection papers. With the time for close attention
to the texts, students can begin to develop connections between
the various texts, and reflect upon their meaning in more depth.
For example, one student who attended the first session wrote a
reflection paper exploring the link between Job's disinterested
religion and the "pure religion" of the book of James,
as both texts call for a faith with integrity, attending to and
caring for the widow and orphan in the pursuit of justice. Follow-up
writing assignments give students the time for reflection on the
texts that a panel session cannot provide. While a hospitable welcome
to whichever students show up for an event may be the standard practice
for on-campus events, it may be the case that requiring students
to work with the texts before the discussion session would be conducive
to stronger student participation. The logistics of effective teaching
remain an open issue.
From Scripture Reading to Scriptural Reasoning
Another issue that is important is how we teach students to move
from reading scriptures together to the more interpretive dimensions
of scriptural reasoning that focus on the interplay between the
texts and the communities. In particular,
it is often a challenge to get students to ask questions about the
scriptural texts, or about interpretations that are given. Students
find disagreement and sustained debate awkward and uncomfortable,
and challenging a fellow student or a teacher appears hostile or
intolerant. Questioning another's text or interpretation, so as
to help them to elucidate and clarify their interpretation, and
to raise new questions about one's own text, is a complex practice
that requires trust and habits of listening that students may find
unfamiliar.
Additionally, for many students the idea of calling the scriptural
text into question is incomprehensible. Yet both dimensions of scriptural
reasoning come to the fore in studying the book of Job. One can't
reason about Job without such questioning, because that is precisely
what Job does. For example, take Job's lament in 10:18-22:3
Why did you bring me forth from the womb?
Would that I had died before any eye had seen me,
And were as though I had not been,
carried from the womb to the grave,
Are not the days of my life few?
Let me alone, that I may find a little comfort
before I go, never to return,
to the land of gloom and deep darkness,
the land of gloom and chaos,
where light is like darkness.
One cannot make sense of Job's questions unless questioning God
is permissible and even necessary. Likewise, Job feels it necessary,
for himself, others, and God, to question Eliphaz and friends when
they give convenient, all-too-familiar interpretations of his suffering.
For many students, like for Eliphaz and friends, questioning appears
to be a loss of faith; for Job, however, it is rather a lamentation,
struggling with the text and one another in a deeper faithfulness
that reveals the reasoner's integrity. For those of us doing scriptural
reasoning, it is texts such as Job that give us both the warrant
and the trust to pursue these forms of questioning in our shared
study.
How we teach students to reason truly about the text in shared
study is really where extending the circle of scriptural reasoning
will stand or fall. Teaching students these patterns of questioning,
and of listening to one another's questions, is a central component
of what we do. As William suggested earlier, we must more carefully
attend to students' levels of familiarity with the texts, and help
them to grow in their reasoning capacity from their respective starting
points. Still, it is important to keep the goal of intra-traditional
reflection in mind as we shape the early stages of preparation.
Scriptural reasoning will really only provide the answer to students'
search for deeper, vital engagement in religious life when it enables
their questions and reflections to emerge – when our patterns
of questioning encounter and take up the queries and forms of belief
that students bring to our shared study.
1. Texts groups could work with at the first session included the
book of Job, chapter 1, 5:17-27, 15:17-35, 31:13-37, Qur'an 38:41-50,
and the Letter of James 1:19-27.
2. For the second session, we read: Qur'an 21:83-94, Job 38:1-13, 39:1-3,
19-22, and 42:1-6 and 10-17.
3. The translation is taken from the NRSV.
2004, Society
for Scriptural Reasoning |
