Response to the Papers by Kepnes,
Richardson and Umar
David Ford
Cambridge University
I am fascinated by the difference between
Kepnes, on the one hand, and Richardson and Umar on the other, and
by the connection between this difference and the character of Scriptural
Reasoning.
Multiple Readings
Kepnes offers multiple readings
of Adam, 'the perfect figure for midrash', drawing on rabbinic and
contemporary sources. There is a rich series of interpretations:
the 'Let us…' as addressed to humans, signifying a process of co-creation;
male and female created in equality; the instrumental understanding
of 'image' as a mold or form; the likeness as the power to comprehend
and discern, or even more comprehensively as being open like God,
free to change, develop, do new things; the likeness as lying outside
the self in acts of relating to God and others that can be new moment
by moment, a relating whose tendencies toward good and imperative
to resist evil are to be informed by the heteronomous Torah; and
the likeness as 'a spark of diversity which makes us uniquely us',
even to the extent of suggesting that 'every person is equal in
complexity and unity to the creation of a whole world'.
Kepnes
then tells us what the Adam of midrashic imagination is doing in
Eden: 'admiring the
glory of creation, composing and reciting psalms, and contemplating
the majesty of God', resting, praying, studying Torah and performing
mitsvot. Eve courageously meets the serpent and interprets the word
of God, and uses her freedom to take a radical initiative.
The Point for Scriptural Reasoning
This set of readings culminates with reference to the specific
community of Scriptural
Reasoning - and it is noteworthy that Kepnes' paper is the
only one of the three that treats Scriptural Reasoning explicitly.
SR is seen, analogously to oral torah among Jews, as 'a kind of
super-midrash' requiring the courage of Eve and the piety of Adam.
And the practical point for our AAR meeting of all those references
to co-creation, equality, discernment, freedom to do new things,
responsible action, and complex uniqueness is beautifully revealed:
if scripture witnesses to that sort of humanity then there are radical
consequences for how we understand scripture itself as we grapple
with the splits and fissures in our societies and religions - 'scripture
does not want to fix the problem by itself. It wants us to live
up to our potential by figuring out the solution ourselves.' This
is a scripture that corresponds to the humanity Kepnes finds in
Adam and Eve. But it is unlikely that one set of human beings alone
can live up to this, and getting the Abrahamic communities together
in conversation about their scriptures and about the splits and
fissures is at least a beginning.
The Contrast with Richardson and Umar
The key contrast with Richardson and Umar to which I want
to draw attention will unfortunately ignore many of the fine things
they say in order to make one main point, though I will also later
find in them signs of convergence with Kepnes.
Richardson begins with two key
texts, John 1:1-18 and Colossians 1:15-20, and, by way of a range
of discussions of them and of elements in the traditions of interpretation,
concludes with eight theses.
Umar does something similar in
a more Abrahamic mode, beginning from Jewish, Christian and Islamic
scriptures, moving on to focus on some key Islamic texts and concepts,
and synthesising his understanding of common humanity shared by
all three faiths around the idea of the Universal or Perfect or
Primordial or pontifical Man, a concept that, he contends, has been
especially decomposed and disfigured in the modern West.
So the movement in both is from scriptural texts to strongly
unitary, cognitive affirmations in the indicative mood, presented
as generally true conclusions.
Questions about the Contrast
Some of the questions that this contrast raises for me are:
- What happens to multiple readings and varied traditions of interpretation
in the approaches of Richardson and Umar?
- Might there be different conceptions of scripture, text, meaning,
and hermeneutics in Richardson and Umar over against Kepnes?
- Might these different conceptions in turn be correlated (as made
explicit by Kepnes) with differing ideas of humanity, especially
human beings as responsible interpreters of scripture? Might there
also be different ideas of God?
- How do we assess the use of strongly unitary, cognitive affirmations
of a doctrinal nature within each of the three faith traditions
and in their conversations with each other?
- What is the significance of the fact that Kepnes is oriented neither
to a set of doctrinal theses nor to a synthetic general idea of
humanity but to the practice of scriptural reasoning in the specific
context of contemporary problems and divisions? What does he lose
by failing to have a doctrinal or synthetic moment presented as
'the meaning' of the scriptural texts? What do Richardson and
Umar lose by failing to relate their conclusions either to the
solution of specific problems in contemporary history or to the
practice of scriptural reasoning?
Signs of Convergence
The above simple contrast fails to do full justice to Richardson
and Umar, and in fact there are signs of convergence between them
and Kepnes, some of which will be noted now.
Blessing and the Holy Spirit
Richardson quotes
richly from Patristic writers, in particular Gregory of Nyssa and
Irenaeus. The quotation from Nyssa speaks of humanity as 'a second
blessed by participation in the Truly Blessed, having come to be
in the likeness of that blessedness' and, being 'an image of the
transcendent blessedness', 'is imprinted by the same goodness and
beauty, when in itself it shows forth the characteristic qualities
of that blessedness.' If this image of superabundant blessing is
linked with Kepnes' reference to the blessing of Abraham through
which all nations are to be blessed, then it might be possible to
imagine that one form of the manifold richness of historical blessing
flowing from Abraham is to be seen in the flowering of midrashic
interpretation in which Kepnes revels and upon which he improvises.
This might be reinforced by Richardson's second quotation from
Irenaeus about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit perfecting humanity.
The effects of the Holy Spirit might be seen in Richardson's first
key text, John 1:1-18.
If the author of the Fourth Gospel is (as we must assume) seeing
himself among those who, as he writes, are being 'led into all the
truth' by the Holy Spirit (John 16:13), then the Prologue to his
Gospel might be an example of what being led into all the truth
by the Holy Spirit might involve. Those eighteen verses are an extraordinary
interweaving of references to his scriptures, above all to Genesis,
the Wisdom literature and Exodus. But they are by no means simply
quotations: they might best be seen as Christian midrash, daringly
improvising on the very first verse of Genesis, and reconceiving
God, creation and redemption in the light of Jesus Christ. As if
that is not enough he also inspires a complex tradition of engagement
between Christian theology and the best thinking beyond Christianity
by using as his key term 'logos', which has profound resonances
in both the Septuagint and Greek philosophy. If the Holy Spirit
continues to lead into all the truth through such daring midrash
and intellectual engagement then one challenge for Christian interpreters
today is not only to say and synthesise what the Fourth Gospel and
its later interpreters say but also to do something comparable today
to what it did in its context. Might Kepnes' account of the practice
of scriptural reasoning be in line with this?
Opening Up to Infinite Possibility
Umar has similar signs of a superabundance that is
hard to imagine being contained in any human synthesis and must
therefore be continually open to new flowering of non-competitive,
complementary or contrapuntal meanings. He stresses that the Qur'an
works as 'not a closing down, but an opening up' and refers to 6:125:
'Whomsoever God desires to guide, He expands his breast to Islam;
whomsoever He desires to misguide, He makes his breast narrow, tight.'
He interprets this as opening up to 'everything good, positive,
praiseworthy, and lovable'. He further speaks of one aspect of Islam's
vision of human perfection being 'infinite possibility' in line
with the reality of God. There is much else in Umar's fascinating
paper that might point in this direction, but with regard to scriptural
reasoning I will conclude with a comment on the importance of 'possibility'
in our dialogues around our scriptures.
Conditions for the New Collegiality of Scriptural
Reasoning
Might
it be that at this stage in the encounter between Jewish, Christian
and Muslim scriptural reasoners the leading 'moods' (in the grammatical
sense) should, besides the pervasive interrogative mood, be those
most associated with possibility, the subjunctive, midrashic mood
of 'may be' and 'might be' and the optative mood of longing and
desire, 'if only…'? The other
leading moods, the indicative and imperative, are of course of enduring
importance, but there are risks of breakdown in dialogue if they
become dominant at this stage. Each of our hermeneutical traditions
has abundant resources for interrogative, subjunctive and optative
engagements with each other.
It
is hard to think of precedents in history for Jews, Muslims and
Christians coming together year after year, in settings that are
recognised as 'mutual ground', in order to share their scriptures
and their traditions and theories of hermeneutics. The problems
between the three have built up over centuries and are being accentuated
in many contexts today. The magnitude of the task of peaceful conversation,
centred on scriptures and leading into all the spheres to which
the scriptures are relevant, is daunting; but it would not be surprising
if it required a mutually respectful collegiality shaped by the
desire for a peace that God desires and by an exploration that is
prepared to be open to many possibilities and resist (in the name
of God's future) the temptation to premature closure.
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