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Published by the
Orthodox Church in
America, May 2005
Meaning or
Meanings of Scripture? |
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Written by the Very Rev. John Breck
Can a reader read
the same text twice?
This is an odd question, one that has been asked
many times since the beginning of this
“postmodern” age. Yet the thought behind it is as
ancient as the pre-Socratic philosopher who asked
if a person can step twice into the same stream.
Now, as then, the answer is both Yes and No.
This is an important question for those who read
the Old and New Testament Scriptures, since it
provides us with a key to answering other related
questions. Just how do those biblical writings
convey meaning? And what exactly is the meaning
they convey?
Ever since the 18th century Enlightenment, people
have tended to become polarized over the issue of
reading the Bible. On one side we find “biblical
literalists,” those who read the sacred writings
as though they were primarily history books that
present us with a series of facts and events on
everything from the creation of the world (in six
calendar days) to the Second Coming (with trumpets
from Heaven, a place “up there”). On the other
side there are scholars who adopt a
historical-critical approach that has little
confidence in the historical accuracy of biblical
texts, but focuses rather on the content and
argument of a given writing, the circumstances
that gave rise to it, and its function within the
community of faith.
Although these approaches seem to be poles apart,
they are identical in one major respect. They both
assume that the only real meaning to be found in
Scripture is the “literal” one. This is usually
defined as the meaning “intended” by the biblical
author: the sense he understood and attempted to
convey. Biblical interpretation (exegesis),
therefore, should concentrate on what the text
“actually says.” From this perspective, the
literal sense of the text is typically reduced to
its “historical” sense: either “what really
happened” (in the eyes of the biblical literalist)
or “what the text claims happened” (as discerned
by historical criticism).
The earliest Christian theologians, however, knew
better than to limit the work of biblical
interpretation to either of these extremes.
Against a literalist or purely historical
approach, for example, Origen in the third century
asked rhetorically regarding the creation stories
in the book of Genesis: “What intelligent person
would believe that the first, second and third
day, and the evening and morning, existed without
the sun, moon and stars…and heaven? And who is so
silly as to believe that God, after the manner of
a farmer, ‘planted a paradise eastward in Eden’?”
This is not skepticism. It affirms rather that
biblical accounts often have more than one
meaning, and that the primary meaning is
rarely what is referred to as the “literal” or
“historical” sense.
Therefore Origen continues: “When God is said to
‘walk in paradise in the cool of the day’ and Adam
to hide himself behind a tree, I do not think
anyone will doubt that these are figurative
expressions which indicate certain mysteries
through a semblance of history and not through
actual event.” 1.
Nevertheless, Origen, with the whole of the
patristic tradition, will see in Scripture
historical facts and events as well as figures or
symbolic images: facts including the birth of
Jesus from a virgin, together with His miracles
and His resurrection from the dead. Biblical
interpreters of the early Church understood in a
“literal” and “historical” way virtually every
affirmation that makes up the Nicene Creed. Yet
even those affirmations point beyond the literal
meaning to a “higher” or more spiritual, more
“mystical” sense. They can be understood not only
as statements about what happened in history, but
as images of what can transpire in our own life
and in the life to come.
Accordingly, the Church Fathers often
distinguished between several different senses of
Scripture. A good example is the way some of them
read the Exodus tradition. In this account of
Israel’s liberation from slavery in Egypt they
found at least four different levels of meaning:
1) the “literal/historical,” which speaks of
Israel leaving Egypt for the Promised Land; 2) the
“allegorical” or “typological,” which sees Old
Testament images (e.g., Moses and Joshua, the
manna and rock in the wilderness) as figures or
“types” that are fulfilled in Christ and the
Church’s sacraments; 3) the “tropological” or
moral, which sees in Israel’s journey an image of
the soul’s conversion from sin and death to grace
and “newness of life” (Romans 6:4); and 4) the
“anagogical” or mystical sense, which speaks of
the believer’s journey toward eternal glory
(“anagogical” means “leading upward”).
This brings us back to our original question: Can
a reader read the same text twice? On the one
hand, the answer is Yes. The text (a biblical
narrative) is an objective reality in itself. It
was produced at a moment in the past and, as
canon, it has come down to us in a fixed and
immutable form. Although translations may differ,
the original (Hebrew or Greek) text remains the
same. What we read once we read again, each time
we take up the Bible. The words do not change.
The meaning of those words, however, can
and does change depending on our immediate,
personal circumstances and what message, under the
guidance of the Spirit, we are seeking in the
biblical witness. This will determine which words
make an impression on us – and what the text will
in fact convey – at any given time. If we read
Psalm 22/23, for example, we may encounter Christ
the Good Shepherd, who “leads us beside still
waters” and restores our soul with His presence,
grace and peace. Read it again in times of acute
anxiety or before a major operation, and our
attention may be drawn to the psalmist’s
reassuring cry, “though I walk through the valley
of the shadow of death, Thou art with me!” The
psalm has not changed, but our way of reading it
most certainly has.
Then again, the way we approach the accounts of
Christ’s Passion will determine whether we see in
the Cross the magnitude of Jesus’ physical and
emotional agony, or an image of His redemptive
sacrifice, or an invitation to struggle and remain
faithful to Him through ascetic discipline and
works of love, or a promise that “through the
Cross, joy has come into all the world,” a joy
that will be ours as the Risen Lord welcomes us
into the glory of His Kingdom.
Can we or do we read the same text, the same
biblical passage, twice or even repeatedly? Yes,
insofar as Christ and His Word are the same today,
yesterday and forever. Yet no, insofar as the text
is a living reality, constantly changing because
it is charged with the presence and inspirational
power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit “rewrites”
the text, as it were, at every moment of our life,
at every step of the tortuous journey that leads
us through our daily experience and toward the
fullness of life to come.
It is that constant “rewriting” that makes of the
Bible not simply an historical record or a
document to be deciphered and analyzed, but a
living Word that conveys both truth and life.
1. On First
Principles (ed. by G.W. Butterworth, NY:
Harper & Row, 1966), p. 288.
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