Hunting for Hermeneutical Humility
The following originally appeared as a guest post on “To Know This Place for the First Time”, Xenia’s blog on June 10th, 2014.
I found myself sitting at the north end of campus at the University of British Columbia, staring out at the Pacific Ocean, weeping. It was here that I would come to pray. As I sat there, I thought aloud, “What if I’m wrong? What if, in my desperate attempts at orthodoxy I’m perpetuating an oppressive system? What if I’m hurting people?”
Needless to say, I was distraught.
Then, I heard an answer which has stuck with me.
“That’s okay. I’m not calling you to be right. I’m calling you to ask hard questions. I’m calling you to love people. Above and beyond both of those, I’m calling you to be humble. I’ll handle the rest.”
* * *
In early 2014, I was working as the Grad and Faculty Ministry Intern with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship Canada at the University of British Columbia. I decided I wanted to be able to keep up in conversations with the many students I was meeting from Regent (a Vancouver theological college which just a few blocks from where I was living). This meant books. A lot of books. Which is great; I love books. But one book impacted me in a very different way than any of the others: Mark Noll’s The Civil War as a Theological Crisis. Mark Noll is a historian of American Christianity, and I found his work to be both insightful and challenging. Now, this was an odd book for me to read. My academic background is in philosophy, not history. And, to be quite honest, I have no interest in the topic of the American civil war.
Nonetheless, it hit me like a punch in the teeth. Noll describes the theological discourse around the civil war, both North and South. Now if, like me, you’re not American, you might need to be reminded that the inciting issue in the American civil war was slavery. To over-simplify a complex issue: the South was pro-slavery (of black people), and the North was anti-slavery. What’s striking about the theological discourse surrounding this issue is that, by-and-large, the pro-emancipation theology within the U.S. was…not very good. In debates, the pro-slavery side was able to point to what the Bible “obviously” said. They showed how not only was slavery assumed throughout the Biblical narrative, but there were instructions about how slaves and masters ought to relate. Did slavery need to be changed? Perhaps. But certainly not abolished. The anti-slavery arguments, on the other hand, had to either ignore problematic texts, or else rely on “the general spirit of Scripture” (whatever that means), or else hinge on very subtle bits of hermeneutics which were not understood by the general populace. It’s worth noting that this doesn’t mean that there’s not a good Biblical argument to be made against slavery (there might be. I don’t have an opinion on that, though there’s certainly a good argument against slavery as it was practiced in the United States), but instead that the argument being made was not very good.
Let me be very clear: I think slavery is bad. I think slavery as it was practiced in the United States is horrible. But I realized that, had I been living in the United States in the lead-up to the Civil War, I would likely have been arguing that Scripture sanctions slavery. That is the side in that debate which seemed to hold a higher view of Scripture, and I think of myself as someone who holds a very high view of Scripture. The arguments made more sense. The hermeneutics were more sound.
This makes me uncomfortable. If I put myself in historical shoes, I would be numbered among the oppressors (Race certainly plays a role here, too. I can’t deny that I have privilege as a white person, and that shapes how I think). In hindsight, it’s obvious that the abolitionists were in the right. But I was faced with the fact that, in an attempt to be faithful to the Word of God, I would have been deeply in the wrong.
* * *
Whether he does it on purpose or not, Noll speaks into one of the contemporary debates rocking the global Church: homosexuality (Don’t worry. I’m not going to try to solve that debate here). People who argue that the Church ought not to sanction gay marriage point out a handful of problematic texts (prohibitions in Leviticus, lists of sins in the writings of Paul, and the meaning of the word porneia as used by Jesus), and say “See? It’s obviously sin”. It seems an open-and-shut case. Their hermeneutics are straightforward. The only way, they think, one could think it permissible would be to ignore Scripture. People who think the Church ought to sanction gay marriage point to God’s character, developing thought on the nature of human sexuality, details of hermeneutical interpretation of problematic texts. They talk about cultural context.
They sound a lot like the abolitionists.
* * *
I did not grow up in the Church; I came to faith partway through my undergrad. I grew up on the political far left, and I wouldn’t trade that upbringing for the world. It instilled in me values that I would later recognize in Jesus’ announcement of the Kingdom of God (no, I’m not saying that Jesus was a liberal. I imagine He probably wouldn’t vote). I grew up among the poor and the marginalized, and I identified with them. I was mentored by ex-convicts, befriended by gay men and women, and have eaten at a soup kitchen more than once. When I thought about the Church, I imagined the opposite of these things. I imagined a largely upper-middle-class institution which was judgemental, homophobic, patriarchal, and generally not very nice. In hindsight, this (not entirely inaccurate) picture of the church was probably the biggest barrier between me and Jesus.
When I became a Christian, a lot of my views and beliefs shifted quite suddenly. There are the obvious things (I had not thought Jesus was God; then I did. I had thought the Bible merely and interesting text; then I believed it to be divinely inspired). There were also a lot of moral things (e.g. I stopped taking the Lord’s name in vain. I decided I ought to keep the Sabbath). One thing that didn’t change in me on its own is that I’ve never experienced this deep-seated intuition that homosexuality is somehow wrong. If I see two men kissing each other, I’m apt to think to myself “Aww. They’re cute” or “Get a room!”, not “Ugh, eww, that’s so not okay!”.
And yet, as I read through the Bible, I became convinced that the thing it says repeatedly is that believers ought not to have sex with people of the same gender as themselves. I’m not going to claim that this is “obvious” (lots of people disagree that this is what it says. If many people don’t see something, then by definition, it’s not “obvious”). But it is what I think the text is saying.
This is hard for me. It seems like the Bible is saying something that I don’t feel ought to be true. Throughout my life, I’ve prided myself on being someone my non-heteronormative friends can come to for support and non-judgment. More than one person has come out to me long before doing so more broadly, because they trusted me in this regard. And here I am, stuck with the fact that I read the Bible as saying something I really don’t want it to.
* * *
So I found myself at the north end of UBC’s campus, staring out at the Pacific Ocean, weeping. What if, in my insistence that Scripture prohibits sex between believers of the same gender I was like the anti-abolitionists in the American civil war? It certainly doesn’t feel right to me, but I can’t change the fact that that’s how I read the text, and I’m not willing to ignore the text.
And then God spoke to me, and gave me three instructions:
– Ask the hard questions, seek the truth.
– Love people.
– Be humble.
The first instruction is something I think is an important call for all Christians. There are no bad questions. There is nothing which is so crucial to orthodoxy that it cannot stand up to question. On the contrary—the more important it is, the more we ought to poke and prod at it, examining it from all angles. If it’s true, then closer inspection can only serve to illuminate more of life. When it comes to Christian doctrine, I take this to mean that I (and, indeed, we) ought to probe for what the right answers, right passions, and right actions are. We need to ask about the things that make us uncomfortable. And, if and when we are convinced that something is the right answer, when we think we know “what Scripture says” about something, we should argue for it. If you’re convinced that a given position is the orthodox one, you need to argue that position with other people. Orthodoxy is important. This is where the next two instructions come in.
Matthew 22:34-30 contains a story in which a lawyer of the Pharisees comes to Jesus with a theological question: “What is the great commandment?”. Jesus nails the answer by quoting Deuteronomy: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” All the law and the prophets (i.e. all of Scripture) depend on love of God and neighbour. All hermeneutics, then, must begin and end with love. I’m not going to claim to know the full extent of what that means, but here’s a start: When someone comes to you in great confusion, theological orthodoxy must consist, first and foremost, in love for that person.
Third is a call to humility. Humility is the key to productive theological discourse. The American anti-abolitionists had good reasons to think that Scripture supported their position. There were even those who wanted to oppose slavery, but didn’t think that the Bible would let them. And they were wrong. I think it’s important, even (especially) in our most treasured, crucial, theological positions to know that we might be wrong. We are not God. We are not infallible. Even if the sky itself opened up, we beheld the Lord face-to-face, and He told us “The Answer”, we might have misunderstood. Or hallucinated. Does this mean we don’t hold our views, or even argue for them? No, of course not. But it means it’s worth starting our argument by saying, “Now, I might be wrong, but it seems to me that the text says…”.
* * *
So this gives rise to what I call Hermeneutical Humility. Hermeneutical Humility says “I have read the texts, I have asked the questions, I have thought about context…I have done good hermeneutical work, and I think I know what the text says…but I’m open to the possibility that I might be wrong, even though I don’t think I am.” Hermeneutical Humility allows for discourse. If two people are certain that they’re right, and disagree with one another, then they talk at one another, and conversation never progresses. Hermeneutical Humility allows for people to count another as more significant than themselves (Philippians 2:3). If I might be wrong, then I need to listen to what you have to say, and if you might be wrong, you’ll listen to what I have to say. And if we do this in love, out of a desire to care for one another, we will actually desire to reach truth. The desire to reach truth is completely different from the desire to be right. Indeed, I think those two desires are incommensurate—one cannot hold both of them.
* * *
If we were to approach biblical texts with Hermeneutical Humility, it is my contention that the Church would benefit from a sort of Corporate Hermeneutical Grace. That is to say that if you or I, having taken a close look at the Scriptures come to a conclusion on what they say on such-and-such a topic, and hold that view, and articulate it well, in love, and with the awareness that we might be wrong, we will actually be a helpful part of moving the conversation in the Church forwards—no matter the size of our platform. If we dialogue in this way, then we will bear fruit whether or not we’re right. If you’ve got the correct read on the Scripture, then you will be bringing forward arguments towards the truth, which will help other people get there. But if you’re wrong, you will spur the correct answers in others, guiding them towards the truth. By the grace of God, even error, if committed in the right spirit, will serve to guide the Church towards truth.
* * *
I don’t know what the answer is on the question of how to exegete Biblical passages that talk about homosexuality. I still know how I read the text, and I still know what I feel, and these things still don’t line up. But I’m no longer afraid I’m “part of the problem.” I know what I think the texts say, and I will continue to talk about it, and argue from that perspective. But I have the confidence that if I do so from a place of putting others before myself, and an awareness that I might be wrong, that I am then part of the quest for truth among God’s people. I have confidence that even if I don’t live to see the answer agreed upon among God’s people, that I can have been part of the process of getting it there. This gives me the freedom to be wrong. To be wrong boldly, and to know that that’s okay. This yields a powerful experience of freedom.
And this doesn’t apply just to this one question. And this doesn’t apply just to me.
Thanks be to God.
Notes
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