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Abrahamic Scriptural Reading from an Anglican Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

Ben Quash
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Abstract

This article offers a distinctively Anglican evaluation of the practice of Scriptural Reasoning. It draws upon personal experience, and frames its discussion with two ‘case studies’ describing SR study in action. It engages closely with Peter Ochs's positive theorization of Anglican postliberalism from a Jewish perspective in his book Another Reformation. With Ochs, the article rejects the premise that a neutral ‘common ground’ of theoretical agreement is a prerequisite for fruitful encounter across religious traditions, and claims that the traditions in question have generated their own tradition-specific resources for dialogue. The central part of the argument looks for correlations between an Anglican trinitarianism that valorizes historical process and analogical reasoning (something that, with Ochs, might be described as a pneumatological emphasis on the ‘found’), and an Anglican legitimation of SR. The value of reading commentary from the Christian, Jewish and Muslim traditions alongside scriptural texts is asserted.

Keywords

AnglicaninterfaithpostliberalismScriptureSRtrinity
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Anglican Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , November 2013 , pp. 199 - 216
Copyright
Copyright © The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2013 

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Footnotes

1.

Ben Quash is Professor of Christianity and the Arts, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King's College London, UK.

References

2. Origen, ‘Homily 19, Luke 2.40-46’, in Homilies on Luke, Fragments on Luke (trans. J.T. Lienhard SJ; Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), pp. 80–83.Google Scholar

3. This tractate forms part of the Mekhilta, which is thought to have gone through a number of redactions before it acquired its final form, probably in the later third century ce. See Strack, H and Stemberger, G, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (trans. and ed. M. Bockmuehl; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), pp. 274–280.Google Scholar

4. Lauterbach, Jacob Z. (ed.), Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2004), I, p. 333.Google Scholar

5. ‘Scripture says, “he grew.” For, “he humbled himself, taking the form of a slave.” By that same power by which he humbled himself, he grows.’ Origen, ‘Homily 19:2’, p. 80.Google Scholar

6. Tractate Bahodesh 8 tells us that ‘where something is imperfect Scripture seeks to make it complete’ (Lauterbach, Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, p. 333). The art of time-taking is an art which demonstrates how Scripture makes completion out of imperfection.Google Scholar

7. Ochs, Peter, Another Reformation: Postliberal Christianity and the Jews (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011).Google Scholar

8. Ochs points to the work of George Lindbeck and Robert W. Jenson as especially typical of this tendency; see, for example, Ochs, Another Reformation, p. 39 and p. 68.Google Scholar

9. Ochs, Another Reformation, p. 5.Google Scholar

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12. I have substituted the word ‘universal’ for ‘generalized’ here, for reasons that should become apparent below.Google Scholar

13. Anglican Communion Network for Interfaith Concerns, Generous Love, p. 4.Google Scholar

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31. Midrash Rabbah: Genesis (trans. H. Freedman and M. Simon; London: Soncino Press, 1939), II, pp. 735–44.Google Scholar

32. I think there is a valuable and potentially fascinating piece of research to be done into how different accounts of the authority of scriptural texts correspond to different modes of contribution to SR practice. This has not yet, to my knowledge, been undertaken.Google Scholar

33. Robert Jauss, Hans, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception (trans. T. Bahti; (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982).Google Scholar

34. Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, p. 30.Google Scholar