What is So Bad about Historical Criticism?

Childs spent his brilliant career attempting to chart a new course for biblical studies after the collapse of the “Biblical Theology Movement” in the 1960s that would redeem that movement's aspiration to bridge the gap between academic scholarship and the church's preaching. In his diagnosis of the movement's demise, Childs pinpointed “the conviction that revelation was mediated through history” as the main source of the trouble.Footnote ⁴ In opposition to this focus on the events lying behind the biblical text, Childs proposed a return to the canon as “the proper context for interpreting the Bible theologically.”Footnote ⁵ Childs criticized the Biblical Theology Movement for “its failure to take the Biblical text seriously in its canonical form.”Footnote ⁶ Like his mentor Karl Barth, Childs aspired to retrieve the kind of theological exegesis exemplified by Luther and Calvin without, however, rejecting the valid insights and discoveries of historical criticism.Footnote ⁷ But unlike other biblical theologians, Childs did not want to base a theological exegesis directly upon the results of historical study. In his view, this endeavor is misguided and explains why “[t]he field of biblical studies for the last two hundred years has been strewn with countless attempts to recover serious theological exegesis which have not succeeded.”Footnote ⁸ Historical criticism, by disregarding scripture's canonical context and focusing upon ever smaller units of study, has had “corrosive effects” upon theological exegesis.Footnote ⁹

Childs sought to reverse the legacy of Semler who called for an investigation of the canon unfettered by doctrinal constraints.Footnote ¹⁰ Semler “set out to destroy the dogmatic, apologetic concept of the canon”Footnote ¹¹ and “succeeded in seriously damaging the central pillar on which Protestant orthodoxy …had sought to construct its house.”Footnote ¹² For Semler, the formation of the canon was a purely historical affair that should not predetermine how modern exegetes interpret the literature found within it. Semler was thus intent on liberating biblical interpretation from the church's creedal and confessional traditions and, in this respect, he saw himself as a faithful follower of Luther. For Childs, by contrast, the canon is an eminently theological issue: “at stake in recovering a truly theological understanding of Scripture” is the demand that biblical scholars “put aside the long standing prejudice of the Enlightenment whose goal was to free the study of the Bible from the so-called heavy hand of dogma.”Footnote ¹³ This disagreement between Semler and Childs about the canon's status reflects a profound difference of opinion as to the meaning of the Reformation heritage in the modern world.

Following Barth, Childs charged that “Protestant liberalism transformed the theocentric focus of Scripture into anthropology.”Footnote ¹⁴ Interpreters now treated the Bible as a human document and no longer as a divinely revealed or inspired text; as such, it was to be studied with the same methods used to interpret any other document from the history of religion. Yet the price to be paid for anchoring the Bible so firmly in antiquity was the loss of relevant meaning in it for today. For this reason, Childs insisted: “Our modern critical understanding of the task of exegesis …needs major overhauling.”Footnote ¹⁵ His proposal that the canon serve as the sole proper context for theological exegesis is intended not only “as a rejection of the method that would imprison the Bible within a context of the historical past” but also as a restoration of the doctrine of inspiration: “the claim for the inspiration of Scripture is the claim for the uniqueness of the canonical context of the church through which the Holy Spirit works.”Footnote ¹⁶

Since the death of Childs, his program continues to be developed by Seitz who also sets clear limits to the role of historical criticism in relation to theological exegesis. He grants at least this much: “Historical work at the formal, literary level is indispensable, or we will introduce anachronisms and false questions the text never wished to entertain.” But then he draws a firm line not to be crossed: “In my view, historical criticism plays no positive theological role whatsoever. Its only proper role is negative.… It shows how the Bible is not like other books.”Footnote ¹⁷ Seitz questions the presumption of “neutrality” or “objectivity” on the part of modern historians: “It has never been entirely clear what it might mean to talk about the Bible neutrally.”Footnote ¹⁸ Although this sounds like a postmodern critique of a positivist ideal of pure objectivity in exegesis, Seitz quickly dispels this impression by adding that there can be no “objective or neutral reader” of the Bible because the “literature's own claims to privileged speech forbid it.”Footnote ¹⁹ Whereas scholars such as Gerhard von Rad sought to delineate how the biblical writers posed and answered their own theological questions, “we should reverse the order of concern.” “Instead of asking how Israel thought about itself and God,” we should be asking another question altogether: “How does the God we confess raised Jesus from the dead think about Israel and the world?” Seitz states categorically: “The Old Testament does not present itself as Israel's reflection on God. …The Old Testament presents itself from the very beginning from the perspective of God.”Footnote ²⁰

In Seitz's diagnosis, the fundamental problem afflicting biblical theology today is “not the failure of theologians/dogmaticians to talk to biblical scholars, and the reverse. This is but a symptom of a form of specialization whose more damaging strain persists at the level of biblical studies itself, namely, the relative isolation of Old Testament from New Testament interpretation.”Footnote ²¹ As an antidote, Seitz “calls for a reattachment of the Old Testament to the New Testament …and a return to older forms of typological reading, now taken up, post historical criticism.”Footnote ²² This means that Christians should not hesitate to “read the Old Testament christologically.”Footnote ²³ For Seitz, at stake is not only the integrity of the Christian Bible as comprising both an Old and a New Testament but also the complementarity existing between scripture and tradition. Prior to modernity, the church had always interpreted scripture according to the orthodox “rule of faith” (regula fidei).Footnote ²⁴ This by no means implies that an alien set of categories had been imposed upon scripture from without since, as Seitz tells us, the church's doctrine as formulated in its creeds is essentially nothing but exegesis of the Bible.Footnote ²⁵ Not only is the Old Testament to be interpreted in light of the New and vice versa, but also scripture and tradition are not to be torn asunder after the fashion of ancient heretics and modern historical critics.

Martin is concerned about how the Bible is being taught in theological education and sets out to provide a “critical assessment of the value of historical criticism from the inside,” as he puts it. His overarching aim is to put an end to “the captivity of Scripture to modernity and historical criticism.”Footnote ²⁶ Nonetheless, he explains that he is not advocating that we jettison the historical approach altogether but rather “that we dethrone it as the only or foundational method taught, and that we supplement it with other methods, approaches, and theories.”Footnote ²⁷

Martin believes that students preparing for the ministry “are not being taught how to think critically …about what it is they are doing, and should do, when they interpret texts.”Footnote ²⁹ By this, he means the lack of explicit training in interpretation theory, recognizing that “learning about theory of interpretation is not the same as learning to interpret,” the latter of which goes on all the time in theological education as elsewhere.Footnote ³⁰

Martin is the most philosophically oriented of these three scholars, and he takes his cues from postmodern theorists who contest the assumption underlying historical criticism that “there is ‘meaning’ inherent in the text needing merely proper excavation to be brought to light.”Footnote ³¹ He is convinced that emphasizing “the difference between exegesis and eisegesis currently does more harm than good,” since it “reinforces a notion about texts and meaning that is false in itself,” namely, that “texts simply have meaning as a property within themselves” or that “texts may constrain interpretations of themselves.”Footnote ³² For instance, he wants readers to become aware of the metaphors they use to talk about the process of textual interpretation. One such metaphor, rejected by Martin, “treats the text as if it were another human agent who speaks.”Footnote ³³ This metaphor implies passivity on the part of the interpreter, since what is required of us is that we “listen as carefully and objectively as possible, and try to avoid distorting the utterance.”Footnote ³⁴ But this metaphor is highly misleading for the simple reason that “texts are not agents who speak. No text has ever spoken.”Footnote ³⁵ We are the agents in the act of interpretation, exercising agency whenever we persuade someone else to adopt our reading of a text. Hence, Martin likes to say: “Texts don't mean; people mean with texts.”Footnote ³⁶ The ethical impulse in Martin's proposal comes to expression when he insists that “[h]uman beings must take responsibility for their interpretations.”Footnote ³⁷

Martin correctly observes that a text “means different things when approached from different perspectives.”Footnote ³⁸ So there is no reason in principle to deny the existence of multiple “legitimate readings” of texts “alongside the historical critical reading.”Footnote ³⁹ Specifically, Martin wishes to rehabilitate premodern ways of reading the Bible. When students learn only historical-critical methods, they come to their courses in church history or theology and wonder why premodern exegetes were so stupid or weird.Footnote ⁴⁰ In defense of premodern exegesis, Martin asks: “Have Christians throughout the centuries been wrong to read Psalm 22 as speaking about the crucifixion of Christ?”Footnote ⁴¹ Though Martin rejects the idea that the meaning of a text is what its author intended, he points out that for premodern Christians authorial intention referred not primarily to the text's human author but to its divine author.

Martin says that his goal is “not to argue for divine intention as providing the meaning of the scriptural text”Footnote ⁴³ but only to point out that long before the emergence of modern critical methods Christians have been making sense of the Bible in multiple ways and, therefore, it is wrong to insist upon historical criticism as a condition of correct exegesis. Martin thus affirms that “premodern scriptural interpretation was anything but arbitrary …and that it is something from which we ‘postmodern’ Christians may learn quite a lot.”Footnote ⁴⁴ Like Childs, Martin agrees with Hans W. Frei who argued that it has been a mistake for modern scholars to equate the literal sense (sensus literalis) of the Bible with its historical sense.Footnote ⁴⁵

Moreover, those Christians who insist upon the necessity of historical criticism are guilty of “reading” premodern Christians out of the church: “To insist that historical criticism is necessary for the Christian reading of Scripture is to say that no Christian before the modern period read Scripture Christianly.”Footnote ⁴⁷ Martin then goes on to pose this challenge to any who might wish to argue contrariwise:

The “main problem” today is “a lack of ability to think theologically—that is, the ability to put together a theological argument, case, or rationale.”Footnote ⁴⁹ And since this ability is essential if we are to make “appropriate Christian use of Scripture,” its lack must be remedied.Footnote ⁵⁰

History and Theology, or: What is a Theological Exegesis?

These three scholars are united in their belief that historical criticism has had a deleterious effect upon the church's ability to reflect theologically upon its scriptures. For this reason, they call for a theological exegesis or biblical theology that makes only minimal use of historical criticism (Childs and Seitz) or possibly even none at all (Martin). Since they are opposed to a theological treatment of the Bible for which the historical interpretation of biblical religion and its development is constitutive, it behooves us to ask some questions about their understandings of historical criticism as well as to introduce certain conceptual distinctions into the discussion so as to clarify what they are really saying and not saying.

Seitz is right to insist that the problem today is not the lack of conversation between biblical scholars and theologians, but that is where my agreement with him ends. Whereas he pleads for reuniting Old and New Testaments in a single biblical theology by means of typology, I seek clarity on the relation between history and theology. Childs objected to the view famously put forward by Krister Stendahl that “the descriptive task of Biblical theology should be radically separated from the constructive task of the theologian.”Footnote ⁵¹ With Childs, I agree that biblical theology should not be limited to the descriptive, historical task since “[t]here is little hope of the Biblical and theological disciplines interacting in a beneficial way unless Biblical scholars are working constructively in theology.”Footnote ⁵² Childs, Seitz, and Martin are not only historians but also theologians, and appropriately so. Therefore, the issue is not that of relating two separate disciplines within a common curriculum but of properly distinguishing between two logically distinct types of questions and asking about their possible relations, regardless of whether such questions are posed by biblical scholars or theologians. I understand a historical question about a text to be descriptive and explanatory in nature: What is being said and why? By contrast, a theological question is hermeneutical and normative in nature: How is the claim made by the text to be understood today and is it true? It is easy to suspect that this logical distinction between types of questions has been illicitly collapsed by these three scholars in their broadsides against historical criticism. Before any substantive conversation about the value of historical criticism can proceed, they owe it to their readers to clarify how they understand these questions and their relations to one another.

Let us begin with the issue of a strictly historical interpretation of the Bible. I do not think any one is actually denying that there is a “historical sense” (sensus historicus) of the biblical text and that historical-critical method is our best available means of discerning it—although I would like to be reassured of this. Nevertheless, all three scholars charge historical critics with a lack of self-criticism regarding their presuppositions. Is this a criticism of historical critics as historians or as theologians? Martin comes close to questioning the possibility of historical knowledge altogether when he decries the failure of historical criticism to secure consensus as to what the historical sense of the text is. Perhaps he is merely pointing out that we can never attain final certainty about the past because our evidence is often incomplete and that is why equally reputable scholars arrive at different conclusions given the sparse evidence at our disposal. Alternatively, maybe he is saying that historical knowledge deals in matters of probability, and thus our best historical judgments will always be subject to revision. If this is all Martin is saying, there can be no objection and, indeed, these same points were made long ago by Ernst Troeltsch.Footnote ⁵³ Or is Martin making a stronger claim that historians are deceived in pursuing historical knowledge by means of this method? In one passage he writes: “most interpreters assume (if they do not claim outright) that the proper method for ascertaining ‘what the text meant’ is historical criticism.”Footnote ⁵⁴ Is it not? If not, why not? And what better method is there for ascertaining the answer to historical questions? Would Martin say to Helmut Koester that his attempt to reconstruct the early history of Christianity by strict and conscientious application of historical-critical method is based upon a misguided premise? If so, then Martin should explain to Koester what methods he should have employed when writing his Introduction to the New Testament.Footnote ⁵⁵

But this does not appear to be Martin's driving concern since his remarks to this effect always appear in the context of polemics with other biblical scholars who move directly from the historical meaning to its contemporary application. This becomes clear in his argument with Richard B. Hays over the use of scripture in the current debate on the morality of homosexuality. Martin points to “the centrality [Hays] ascribes to historical criticism in his method,” while noting that “Hays wants to derive our ethics from a rather passive ‘listening’ to the text.” Footnote ⁵⁶ Martin correctly identifies that, for Hays, whatever the Bible says about homosexuality as this can be ascertained through historical criticism is assumed to be binding on Christians today. Martin not only doubts that Hays has accurately understood the historical sense of the relevant texts but also suspects Hays has allowed his own heterosexist bias to affect what he finds in the texts.Footnote ⁵⁷ While fully sharing Martin's insistence upon the need for ideology critique in biblical studies, I still have to ask if his is really a critique of historical-critical method as our best means for understanding the past or merely a critique of the ideological blinders with which certain historical critics operate. If Martin is only pointing out that no method—whether historical or scientific—can preclude its ideological misuse, then I fully agree with him. But this is not the same as saying that there is something amiss with historical-critical method per se. Is it not, rather, the case that the problem with Hays's approach stems from his prior theological commitment to a notion of biblical authority that stands in significant tension with, if not outright contradiction to, a consistently historical interpretation of the Bible as a human document subject to all the possibilities of ideological distortion we detect in other ancient texts?Footnote ⁵⁸ But if this is so, then the crucial issue to be debated is the nature of theology and ethics as normative inquiries (their sources, norms, and methods), not any modernist assumptions Hays brings to the task of exegesis.Footnote ⁵⁹ Strictly philosophical considerations about what it means to interpret a text would not be sufficient to dissuade Hays from his normative conclusions about the morality of homosexuality drawn directly from what he takes, rightly or wrongly, to be the historical sense of the Bible.

For the sake of clarity, therefore, Martin should explain whether his critique of historical criticism is restricted to normative uses of the Bible that axiomatically assume the historical sense to be binding on today's church or if it is also directed at disciplined attempts to understand the historical sense of any ancient religious text, whether it be Paul's Letter to the Romans or the Mithras Liturgy.Footnote ⁶⁰ To be sure, calls for historians to be self-critical are always timely. Historiography, like every other humanistic discipline, operates with presuppositions that are philosophical in nature. The best historians are the ones who not only apply their craft according to the proper methods but also can step back from their historical work to reflect upon its assumptions for the sake of a better historical scholarship. Positivistic historians who fancy they operate without bringing their subjectivity to bear on matters of historical interpretation are clearly deluded, since there is no pure objectivity in work of this kind.Footnote ⁶¹ But Martin is not the first to point this out. In my judgment, no one has done a better job of clarifying what is involved here than Rudolf Bultmann did in his essay “Is Exegesis without Presuppositions Possible?”Footnote ⁶² So the issue is not whether historians work with philosophical presuppositions but whether they are working with the right ones. How do we know which presuppositions are the right ones? That is where hermeneutics—or theory of interpretation—comes into play. It is one of the merits of Martin's scholarship that he takes this point seriously, even if I cannot follow him in much of what he says.

When Seitz talks about the inevitable presuppositions of exegesis, the way he frames the question implies that the only valid presuppositions are those of orthodox Christian faith: “[L]et there be no delusion about the willful decisions of all interpreters and the prior commitments they bring to the reading process.”Footnote ⁶³ The statement would not cause alarm were it not for the characterization of interpretive decisions as “willful.” This is reminiscent of the language used by the church fathers to disparage heretics! Would it be unfair to interpret Seitz in this light? Recall that his reason why there can be no neutral reader is not that of Bultmann for whom all readers, simply by virtue of their humanity, have to ask and answer the existential questions of what it means to be human and to be so authentically. Seitz tells us that the reader stands before a text claiming for itself to be “privileged speech” since it speaks not from a human standpoint but “from the perspective of God.”Footnote ⁶⁴ If this is indeed the case, then there can be only two responses: obedience or disobedience. After reading this passage, I began to appreciate better Martin's polemic against “the myth of textual agency.”Footnote ⁶⁵ Seitz has hypostasized the biblical text so that it is an agent who speaks with the authority of God. But if this is the only adequate presupposition with which to approach the text for what it truly is, why do non-theological biblical scholars fail to recognize it? Recall as well that, for Seitz, the legitimate role of historical criticism lies in showing “how the Bible is not like other books.”Footnote ⁶⁶ Yet historical criticism has shown precisely the opposite by identifying the many parallels to other Near Eastern and Hellenistic religions and their literatures found within the Bible. Hence, one can ask whether Seitz even grants that a historian can truly understand the Bible apart from Seitz's own theological commitments.

Of these three scholars, Childs is the least ambiguous when it comes to the legitimacy of a purely historical reading of the text on the basis of historical-critical method. Not only does Childs affirm that “historical criticism is an indispensable teacher,” but he also admits:

Moreover, with respect to the notion of “authorial intention” against which Martin contends, Seitz observes: “Childs never abandoned one matter close to the heart of historical-critical inquiry: the intentionality of the text, the notion that this is a deliberately crafted narrative.”Footnote ⁶⁸ Seitz calls this “an enlarged and sophisticated notion of authorial intention” that understands “the proper legacy of historical-critical method” to consist in a concern “for intentionality in biblical texts, not so much in precanonical but rather in final scriptural form.”Footnote ⁶⁹ Presumably, what is meant here is a human, not a divine, intention: Those editors who gave the scriptures their final canonical form intended the texts to be read in one way rather than another. For Childs, historical criticism is not only indispensable but also fully sufficient for the task of delineating these editorial intentions as reflected in the shaping of the canon.

After Childs has given us an exhaustively naturalistic historical account of how Israel and the church shaped the final form of their scriptures, it comes as something of a surprise when we are then told that a doctrine of inspiration is necessary as a condition of theological exegesis. It might reasonably have been inferred that one could agree with Childs that the canon, for whatever reason, should serve as the context for a theological exegesis apart from invoking a doctrine of inspiration. Even if he does not exactly equate them in theory, in practice Childs insists upon both a canonical reading of the scriptures and an affirmation of their divine inspiration. Their close connection becomes clear when we are told that apart from commitment to his canonical approach we can never hope to recover the literal or plain sense of the text as understood by Luther and Calvin.Footnote ⁷⁰ Why not? The answer hinges on “the issue of referentiality” or “the Bible's function as a medium of revelation.”Footnote ⁷¹ For one brief shining moment the Reformers held together both the sensus historicus and the sensus literalis because, while rejecting allegorical exegesis in the name of grammatical-historical exegesis, they affirmed that the true referent of the text is the self-revelation of God. Modern historical criticism, by divorcing the sense of the text from its divine referent, delivers only the historical sense without the literal sense and thus has broken the line of continuity with the Reformation.

While much that Childs says about the canonical shaping of the scriptures and pre-modern exegesis may be on target in a purely descriptive sense, there is a logical sleight of hand going on when he moves from these observations of a historical nature to his prescriptive theological claims. As a historical critic Childs has had to surrender the doctrine of orthodox Protestantism that, in the words of one of its modern exponents, “looks upon the Bible as an oracular book,” authored by God in such a manner that “every one of its affirmations of whatever kind is to be esteemed as the utterance of God, of infallible truth and authority.”Footnote ⁷² Childs is explicit that he makes no claims for the Bible's inerrancy when it comes to historical or scientific matters. Moreover, he fully admits that the historical factors determining the biblical canon were purely human and thus fallible: “In no sense is a claim to the infallibility of the canonical process being defended.” Footnote ⁷³

Childs even allows for the legitimacy of Sachkritik (i.e., a theological criticism of biblical statements on the basis of what is taken to be scripture's subject matter or Sache), although he never gives us an example of when this might be appropriate.Footnote ⁷⁵ Given all these concessions, with what right does Childs accuse historical critics of turning from theocentrism to anthropocentrism on account of their belief that the biblical text is “no longer considered to be a direct channel of divine revelation, but rather and foremost a product of human culture whose author reflected his own historically conditioned perspectives”?Footnote ⁷⁶ All he is saying is that modern historical critics do not work with the premise that the biblical text is divinely inspired. But Childs provides no reasons or arguments why anyone, especially those trained in historical criticism of the Bible, should adopt this premise.

Childs knows that modern theology is replete with attempts to formulate a doctrine of revelation that is logically independent of the doctrine of the Bible's inspiration. Even though H. Richard Niebuhr, for example, sought to redefine revelation strictly within the limits of Troeltsch's historicism, no one can deny that Niebuhr's material understanding of biblical and Christian faith is one of the most radically theocentric in the entire history of theology.Footnote ⁷⁷ But this is unacceptable to Childs: “In terms of classic Christian theology, any appeal to a doctrine of revelation apart from inspiration must be resisted.”Footnote ⁷⁸ Why? Childs himself formulates the difficult question he anticipates any intelligent reader is bound to ask in light of his admissions regarding the purely historical and, hence, fallible character of the canonical process: “How can one place any significance on the canon when, from a critical point of view, the criteria used in its compilation are no longer accepted as valid?”Footnote ⁷⁹ Good question! But then, instead of answering the question, Childs avoids it by asserting:

The appropriate premise is to believe that “the text of Scripture, when infused by the Spirit with the full ontic reality of God, resonates with a fresh voice …which transcends its original historical origins.”Footnote ⁸¹ But we do not need a doctrine of inspiration to account for the obvious fact that the Bible has continued to speak to people down through the ages and still does so today. Childs thus wanted to have it both ways: Though a radical historical critic, he nevertheless aspired to be a good sola scriptura Calvinist. These two commitments, however, pulled him in opposing directions. Hence, his program is as internally unstable as that of Barth whom he follows.Footnote ⁸² When Childs praises Barth for insisting that “the living, unfettered voice of God in Scripture cannot be held captive to the norms of human rationality,” I have to ask: What other criteria are available to us besides the norms of human rationality?Footnote ⁸³

Childs is certainly correct to specify that a theological exegesis not only attends descriptively to what the text says but also seeks to engage normatively with what it means: “The object of biblical exegesis is the text itself as well as the subject matter of which the text speaks.”Footnote ⁸⁴ But we can surely engage in a theological exegesis in this sense without adopting Childs's larger canonical program. Take, for instance, the question of the literal sense of Gal 2:16 (“a human being is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ”). Clearly, the literal sense of the text is independent of whatever was going on in Galatia or Antioch since it makes a theological claim about how persons are appropriately related to God. According to Childs's own statement, a theological exegesis of Gal 2:16 would be less interested in reconstructing the original historical situation that occasioned Paul's letter and more interested in exploring the meaning and truth of Paul's claim about human existence coram Deo. Childs would no doubt agree that to understand this claim we might have to do some historical labor to grasp clearly not only what Paul meant by terms such as “justified,” “works of the law,” and “faith,” but also why he drew this sharp contrast at all. Nonetheless, the major focus of a theological exegesis is to place this yeoman labor in the service of interpreting the text's normative theological claims.Footnote ⁸⁵ This, of course, was the pivotal point made by Bultmann in the epilogue to his Theology of the New Testament.

For Bultmann, the Bible is of more than mere historical interest because it addresses the existential question of how we are to understand ourselves religiously as subjects in relation to God and morally as agents in the world. That is why its main religious and moral insights can be grasped apart from expertise in historical-critical method. Anyone who has ever preached a sermon knows that the question with which the preacher approaches the biblical text is not that of a historian writing a Hermeneia commentary.Footnote ⁸⁷ Schubert M. Ogden develops Bultmann's point by clarifying that a “theological interpretation of the biblical writings is a way of understanding and explicating their meaning that is oriented by the same existential question to which they themselves intend to give answer.”Footnote ⁸⁸ Ogden adds that this notion of a theological exegesis provides “a way of construing the Bible that is authentically theological and yet respects the integrity of critical biblical scholarship.”Footnote ⁸⁹

Yet Childs will have none of it, even though Bultmann's statement and its elaboration by Ogden correspond exactly to the formal requirements of Childs's own definition of what constitutes a theological exegesis: “The object of biblical exegesis is the text itself as well as the subject matter of which the text speaks.”Footnote ⁹⁰ Much to my amazement, Childs asserts: “The literal sense of the text is the plain sense witnessed to by the community of faith. It makes no claim of being the original sense, or even of being the best.”Footnote ⁹¹ Would the Reformers ever have agreed that the meaning of the literal sense was neither its original nor its best sense? This statement does, however, reveal why Childs judges all attempts to base a theological exegesis upon historical criticism as a series of brilliant failures. For Childs as for Seitz, the orthodox tradition dictates what the literal sense is: “the church's regula fidei encompasses both text and tradition in an integral unity as the living Word of God.”Footnote ⁹² Childs is forthright in “calling biblical studies back to confessional roots”Footnote ⁹³ and thus he has to set strict limits to the theological implications of historical criticism precisely because it has dissolved the theological unity of the canon that was an essential presupposition of the Reformers’ method of basing doctrine on “scripture alone.” Jon Levenson has portrayed the dilemma now faced by Protestants as vividly as anyone can when he notes that Matthew, or at least the Sermon on the Mount, “is guilty of the heresy of ‘Judaizing.’ …And so the possibility emerges that the church has canonized a heretic,” in which case “the Pauline doctrine of justification through faith by grace alone, so central to Protestantism …stands indicted sola scriptura.”Footnote ⁹⁴ Levenson correctly notes that “historical criticism of the Christian Bible has shattered the Protestant dream of an orthodox church founded on biblical authority alone.”Footnote ⁹⁵ The proposal of Childs is, in truth, more classically Catholic than Protestant insofar as his reversal of Semler's legacy requires prior acceptance of the ancient church's authority in establishing the canon.Footnote ⁹⁶

Although Martin is not concerned to uphold biblical authority so much as to open up new vistas of biblical interpretation, it is surprising how traditional his view of theology is in spite of his postmodern mode of argument. For him, a theological exegesis means “interpreting the text of the Bible as Scripture, as ‘the word of God.’”Footnote ⁹⁷ To be sure, Martin candidly admits that it is an important theological question in itself to ask “What do we mean by ‘the word of God’?”Footnote ⁹⁸ Still, whatever it means, theological exegesis requires that we view the Bible as “a divine communication” and not merely as “a historical artifact.”Footnote ⁹⁹ He goes on to say that “Scripture lives in different and constantly new meanings in the readings of Christians led by the Holy Spirit.”Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Nonetheless, in spite of this robust affirmation of pneumatically inspired diversity and novelty of interpretations, there is a countervailing undercurrent that rises to the surface in Martin's repeated—and puzzling—use of phrases such as “a Christian reading of the Bible,” “to interpret Scripture Christianly,” or “the Christian meaning of the text.”Footnote ¹⁰¹ I have to confess that I do not know what a “Christian reading” of a text is. Presumably this means something like a “special hermeneutic” as distinct from a “general hermeneutic.” Although he restricts his discussion to the Bible, is Martin willing to grant the applicability of a “Christian reading” to other texts besides the Bible, say, non-Christian or secular texts?Footnote ¹⁰² What exactly is the content of the adjective “Christian”? Who defines it and how? For me, a troubling feature of Martin's particular brand of theological postmodernism is the similarity of his rhetoric to the authoritarian and hegemonic tones sounded by Childs and Seitz. All three speak about the church or Christians in highly idealized terms as though in principle there is one and only one true Christianity that could and should be realized were it not for ancient heretics or modern theologians under the spell of the Enlightenment. Time and again Martin employs certain characteristic locutions (“a Christian could argue…”; “Christians legitimately derive correct Christian meanings…”; “For Christians, the meaning of the psalm…”; “Christians have legitimately refused…”) that are striking for the monolithic presumptions they imply and reinforce. Have Christians always been and are they now of one mind as to what constitutes a “Christian reading” of the Bible? Do they invariably derive the same “Christian meanings” from it? Which readings of scripture are “led by the Holy Spirit” and which are not?

Whereas Childs at least insists that a historical reading of the Bible is necessary if not sufficient for theological exegesis, Martin denies this. Furthermore, Martin never tells us what criteria are to be used in discerning what constitutes a “legitimate reading,” nor does he ever spell out what an “ethical use” of a text is and why.Footnote ¹⁰³ Prior to reading Martin I was uncertain as to where I should place myself on the modern/postmodern divide since I fully share the moral and political concerns of postmodern thinkers; yet I am too much of a historian to say that we can dispense with the historical meaning altogether when considering the question of a theological exegesis. Consider this illustration given us by Martin.

I wonder how Michael Servetus would have responded to such a comment after he had been sentenced to be burned at the stake for trying to argue, on Calvin's own terms, precisely this historical point that Martin has just conceded! There is something morally offensive about this statement when one considers just how many people suffered exile or lost their lives trying to argue against an orthodox interpretation of scripture, whether Catholic or Protestant. While I certainly agree that “premodern exegetical interpretation was anything but arbitrary,” it is impossible for me to think the same about Martin's statement.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Moreover, one can surely question the adequacy of Martin's portrayal of both premodern and modern interpretation when he locates the source of our present troubles in our “Cartesian anxiety” about getting it right.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Martin tells us that premodern exegesis “helps us imagine how Christians read Scripture without suffering from our normal anxiety about finding the right meaning of the text.”Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Aside from the observation that Martin's likening of historical-critical inquiry to modern philosophical “foundationalism” is an instance of what Aristotle meant by a metábasis eis állo génos, I seriously doubt that either Athanasius or Calvin would have found their exegetical practices mirrored in Martin's postmodern jouissance.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

As a historian I have to ask: Do the dead have any rights? When Martin reminds us that “no text has ever spoken,” he neglects to mention that no text has ever written itself.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ All texts were written by someone who wanted to communicate something to somebody else. While I would not defend historical interpretation by appeal to a shaky psychological notion of authorial intention, I cannot dismiss the idea that every author had a communicative purpose in writing a text. Hence, I have to reject Martin's assertion that texts do not constrain their meanings.Footnote ¹¹⁰ In her explication of an “ethics of historical reading” Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza rightly insists that

A few years ago the school where I teach invited Martin to deliver a lectureship on biblical interpretation. After one of his lectures someone asked him what he thought of Mel Gibson's movie The Passion that had just been released and was unleashing a storm of controversy, not least on account of its presentation of the role played by the Jews in Jesus' crucifixion. Surprisingly, Martin criticized Gibson's film for its lack of historical accuracy even though there was nothing in his lectures about interpretation that would have prepared a listener for this critique.Footnote ¹¹² After all, Martin insists on the non-necessity of historical criticism for correct exegesis, on the legitimacy of multiple readings, on blurring the distinction between exegesis and eisegesis, on the lack of constraint exercised by texts over their possible interpretations, and on the inability of historical criticism to deliver “the Christian meaning” of the text. So what is wrong with Gibson's ultra-conservative Catholic reading of the Passion story? In its own way it, too, is a theological exegesis, designed to narrate an ancient story so that its immediate religious relevance to contemporary movie-goers is made fully transparent. On Martin's own grounds, I fail to see how he can object to it. If, however, he had invoked his category of an ethical use of a text in order to accuse Gibson of slandering the Jews as a consequence of violating historical truth, Martin would have found himself backed into a corner. Either there is a moral obligation to tell the truth about history or there is not. In spite of Martin's many fresh observations about the processes of interpretation, his theoretical arguments are confusing in the extreme.

Martin charges those who insist upon the necessity of historical-critical method with “reading” premodern Christians out of the church since that was not how they read the Bible. But this is completely illogical.Footnote ¹¹³ If “ought implies can,” as is clearly the case, then premodern persons cannot be held accountable to the requirements of historical-critical exegesis since they had no access to a mode of interpretation that had to await modernity for its emergence. This is no different from saying that premodern people were not stupid simply because they believed that the sun revolves around the earth, but that does not justify us in holding that belief today given what we know through modern astronomy.

Martin also fears that an insistence upon the necessity of historical criticism for theological interpretation leaves students preparing for the ministry with the false impression that premodern exegesis was arbitrary. Since Martin is primarily concerned with theological education, it will not be inappropriate here if I draw on some of my own experiences as a theological educator. Every year I teach a required course for first-year seminarians entitled “Introduction to Historical Theology.” At the top of my syllabus is a maxim from Gerhard Ebeling that serves as the motto for the course: “The history of the church is the history of its interpretation of scripture.”Footnote ¹¹⁴ If students enter my classroom thinking that the classical theologians were stupid or weird, they certainly do not believe that after completing the course. As they engage the classic texts of the Christian tradition, they learn both the exegetical methods and the hermeneutical principles informing premodern interpretations of the Bible. Moreover, they come to understand the interrelation between doctrinal conflicts and their roots in divergent exegetical warrants. But I ask Martin: What is the proper method for teaching this course so as to engender in my students a genuine appreciation of the premodern tradition about which he cares so much if not the historical-critical method? Are we free to give an allegorical exegesis of Augustine's or Calvin's texts? Or is it only the Bible that we are permitted to interpret allegorically?

As Martin well knows, one of the biggest issues in contemporary New Testament study is whether Luther correctly interpreted Paul. Yet how are we to answer a question like that apart from strict application of historical-critical method? Is it obligatory to apply historical criticism to the exegesis of Luther but optional in the case of Paul? I should add that I am in complete agreement with Martin regarding the absolute importance of being able to formulate a cogent theological argument for one's positions, and thus my class is not only about the history of theology but also about how to think systematically as a theologian. Students learn the distinction between a historical question and a theological question so as to become aware when they are moving from one logical type of inquiry and mode of argumentation to the other. Hence, the question cannot be avoided: What is—or should be—the relation between historical description and explanation, on the one hand, and normative theological interpretation, on the other hand? If on strictly historical grounds we should become convinced that Luther misunderstood Paul, do we continue to read Paul through the lens of the Lutheran Confessions? Lest I be misunderstood, let me hasten to add that this need not entail a categorical rejection of Luther's interpretation of Paul, which is surely one of the most insightful in the history of exegesis. Students can learn how someone asking a sixteenth-century question found his answer in a new reading of a first-century Jew, and Luther's example can stand as a model of creative yet responsible appropriation of an inherited tradition given the intellectual possibilities available to him in his time and place. But the crucial difference for us has to be our explicit awareness of the distinction between historical exegesis of Paul and a normative theological argument about Paul's significance today, a distinction of which Luther or any other premodern interpreter was innocent.Footnote ¹¹⁵

When Martin argues in defense of christological readings of the Old Testament, he avoids the question whether such readings are justified today if we no longer share the exegetical methods, hermeneutical principles, and theological beliefs on the sole basis of which such christological readings were once intelligible.Footnote ¹¹⁶ My students realize that they can expect to flunk their Old Testament classes if they exegete the texts of the Jewish Bible the way Paul did. But they do not think that Paul was weird or stupid. They understand that he was different from us because he lived in a cultural and religious world far removed from our own. Does Martin really believe that there is a divine intentionality behind the biblical texts that allows us to interpret scripture as Paul did? On the one hand, he disavows any aim “to argue for divine intention as providing the meaning of the scriptural text.”Footnote ¹¹⁷ On the other hand, however, he sets up as a condition of theological exegesis the premise that the Bible is “a divine communication.”Footnote ¹¹⁸ If Martin truly believes it is a divine communication, he should have no hesitation affirming that the divine intention is what the Bible communicates. But is this really Martin's view? I doubt it, but if so, he should be forthright about this belief. His claim, then, becomes an explicitly theological one, no different in principle from that of Childs regarding scripture's divine inspiration or that of Seitz about the Bible as privileged speech articulating the perspective of God. Such a theological claim for the Bible hardly depends for its force upon postmodern theories of interpretation. Indeed, I have difficulty imagining that nontheological postmodern theorists would ever endorse a claim granting supernatural authority to a text.

Martin asks us to be aware of the metaphors we use when speaking about what goes on in interpretation. My chief metaphor is that of “conversation” or “dialogue,” which I derive from the hermeneutical tradition of Bultmann, Gadamer, Ricœur, and Tracy.Footnote ¹¹⁹ The conversation between reader and author is focused on the subject matter of the text (die Sache selbst), not on the world behind the text. When one teaches at a seminary, even a liberal one as I do, it is necessary to justify why the historical study of religion is important given the antihistorical bias of American culture shared equally by theological students on both the right and the left. Yet two concerns dear to the hearts of my students provide me with examples with which to illustrate what is involved in historical method and why they should care about learning it. The first is related to cultural diversity and interreligious dialogue. Appreciation for non-Western cultures and non-Christian religions is a deeply-held value at my school. I explain to students that what we are trying to do as historians is similar to what goes on when trying to understand people from another culture. Unless we can learn to speak their language and to see the world through their eyes, we will always be in danger of misinterpreting them through our own lenses and preconceptions. The difference, of course, is that we cannot travel to ancient Rome or medieval Germany to meet these people whose texts we are reading so as to ask them if we are correctly interpreting them.

The second illustration comes from pastoral care. Martin objects to the presumed passivity implied in the metaphor of listening for what a text is saying, but I think he misunderstands what is involved in real listening to another person. The kind of listening that goes on in pastoral care is anything but passive; it is active in the sense of being attentive both to what a person is saying and not saying so that the pastor can ask just the right questions to move the conversation forward. Any seminarian who does a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education learns that listening is a skill that has to be mastered. To use language rejected by Martin and other postmodernists, the reason why historical interpretation is “foundational”—or, in my terms, “constitutive”—is that there can be no genuine dialogue with premodern theologians about the normative questions of theology if they are not allowed to speak for themselves. Thus the chief task of a historian is to insure that the dead get to have their say in our contemporary conversations. I fail to see how a postmodernist can argue against this insistence upon the necessity of historical interpretation since a non-negotiable commitment of postmodernism is respect for the other as other and not as just another instance of more of the same. Scholars who lift up the value of difference, the ambiguity of language, suspicion of grand meta-narratives, and concern for those whose voices have been silenced in official accounts of the past have every reason to insist upon the utter necessity of a truly historical understanding of our traditions with all of the critical implications for the evaluation of these traditions such understanding implies.

In Defense of a Historicized Understanding of Theology

All three of the scholars treated here seek to dethrone historical criticism on account of its alleged negative impact on a theological approach to scripture, yet they fail to substantiate this charge. Since they are troubled by the normative conclusions that other scholars have reached on the basis of historical criticism, they assert—or at least imply—the superiority of premodern exegesis. Moreover, they resort to a special hermeneutic that, in effect, allows tradition to set the parameters within which the Bible is to be read normatively in the church. In spite of their overall agreement, however, there are some differences between them. Seitz states as clearly as anyone does the position of the (non-fundamentalist) theological right just as Martin is the most forceful spokesperson for the theological left in contemporary biblical studies. By comparison with these two, Childs is the middle figure who, as heir to both the German tradition of historical-critical scholarship and Barthian theology, strives valiantly to do justice to this dual heritage. I judge, however, that his proposed synthesis is inherently unstable, as I have sought to show. By contrast, Seitz is much less nuanced and subtle than his teacher, but precisely for that reason he is more internally consistent. Martin's position is the most difficult to understand. Though my ethical and political sympathies lie with him, I fail to see that he has articulated a sufficiently cogent theological rationale that explains how he can insist on the need for ideology critique while denying the necessity of historical interpretation for theological and ethical uses of the Bible. The latter is the condition of the possibility of the former, since only a fully historicized approach both to the biblical authors and exegetes of the Bible allows us to raise the question of ideological biases reflecting their social and cultural locations. Indeed, it would be interesting to observe how Martin might try to persuade Seitz to take ideology critique seriously given their similar negative evaluations of historical criticism and their high views of the Bible as a communication from God.

Martin doubts that it is possible to provide a compelling theological rationale for the necessity of historical criticism. He is both right and wrong. The evaluation of historical criticism as positive or negative depends upon what one thinks a theological exegesis (or biblical theology) is supposed to accomplish. Yet one's definition of what is meant by theological interpretation of the Bible is simply a more precise application to a specific case of how one defines theology in general. In this sense, Martin is correct: There can be no compelling theological rationale in defense of historical criticism given definitions of theology that are beholden to the doctrinal contents of the premodern classical tradition. Each of these men presumes that theology's task consists primarily or solely in securing the orthodoxy or Christian character of contemporary doctrine and practice by appeal to a way of reading the Bible designed to serve that normative purpose.Footnote ¹²⁰ Since historical-criticism obviously cannot accomplish their desired end, they are compelled by the logic of their views about theology to deny or severely to circumscribe any normative implications it might otherwise have upon doctrine and practice. While welcoming their interest in contributing to theology as biblical scholars, I deem all three to be guilty of collapsing the distinction between descriptive and normative claims. One has to wonder what has become of the concern of the Reformers to free the Bible from the hegemony of the church's tradition. If, in the consistent pursuit of that concern, some of the Reformers’ cherished assumptions (say, of the theological unity of the Bible) have had to be set aside, is that a tragedy or a betrayal of the faith? I hardly think so.Footnote ¹²¹

But this is not the only way to define theology. Upholding the liberal Protestant option rejected by them, I believe that theology is obligated not only to ask whether the church's doctrines and practices cohere with our best critical understanding of the gospel, but also to ask whether these doctrines are true and these practices are good regardless of whether they are taught in the Bible or the postbiblical tradition.Footnote ¹²² Since the truth about history is simply one aspect of what is meant by truth in general, a liberal Protestant cannot accept a view of theology that insulates the Bible and the tradition from the critical challenges that a fully historical understanding of religion might occasion, just as any view of theology that excludes the secure results of the natural sciences is unacceptable.Footnote ¹²³ By insisting upon the insights of historical study as constitutive of any normative interpretation of Christian faith today, I do not imply any disrespect for the classical tradition and its ways of reading the Bible, nor do I thereby disqualify premodern Christians from membership in the church. Nevertheless, I do not see how we can in good conscience rehabilitate premodern ways of reading the Bible after two centuries of historical-critical labor. In showing the Bible to be fully explicable as a human product of the history of religion, historical criticism has made it very difficult for post-Enlightenment persons to continue to regard the Bible as the repository or criterion of all religious and moral truth. Hermann Gunkel made the point well when articulating the basic premise of all historical-critical investigation: “the Bible is in the first instance a book produced by human means in human ways. …Research has brought it down from heaven and set it up in the midst of the earth.”Footnote ¹²⁴ On this view, claims for the Bible's divine character or authority are nothing short of idolatrous. In all honesty, this is exactly what I think of Seitz's claim that the Bible speaks from the perspective of God.Footnote ¹²⁵ This is not to deny, of course, that there is truth, wisdom, and insight to be found within its covers. Indeed, the very act of taking the Bible seriously as a religious and theological document implies that its meaning is not locked in the ancient past, just as philosophers today continue to read Plato and Aristotle on account of their enduring contributions to philosophical debate and not as mere period pieces. But this recognition of the Bible's permanent value and existential significance for later generations need not depend in any way upon doctrines of biblical inspiration or even a special theological hermeneutic.

I realize this rationale for the indispensability of historical criticism is not going to carry any weight with Childs, Seitz, or Martin, but that is not because it is incoherent in itself; rather, it presupposes a notion of theology that is rejected by them from the outset. For my part, I judge their main failing to be an inability or unwillingness to think through consistently the normative implications for theology (and ethics) of a thoroughgoing historical approach to the study of religion, including Christian religion. Such an approach acknowledges that understandings of Christian faith have changed over the centuries and that not even within the New Testament is there unanimity as to its proper interpretation.Footnote ¹²⁶ Moreover, the later doctrinal positions articulated in the ecumenical creeds or the Protestant confessions cannot be drawn directly out of the New Testament, as Martin has conceded in the case of Paul's relation to later trinitarian doctrine and as critics of Luther's exegesis of Paul have argued. In this insistence upon an understanding of theology's task that fully incorporates the results of historical labor, I follow Troeltsch who observed that “the application of historical criticism to religious tradition must result in a profound change in one's inward attitude to it and in one's understanding of it.”Footnote ¹²⁷ John J. Collins has aptly stated what the implementation of Troeltsch's insight would entail for biblical theology:

And so, until better instructed, I see no reason to abandon liberal Protestantism's classic commitment to a mutually enriching dialogue between the ongoing and thus corrigible traditions of the Reformation and the Enlightenment for the sake of both a self-critical understanding of faith and a self-critical understanding of reason—including historical reason.