CHAPTER 6         

SCRIPTURE IN THE CONTEMPORARY CONTEXT

Like religion as a whole, scripture is bound up with power—the power to define, to lead, to set boundaries and to make meaning. These are driving forces for our species. While they can be beneficial, we do not always pursue their loftiest purposes. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza’s remarks about the Christian Bible can be applied to all sacred scriptures: “Because of the all-too-human need to use the bible in an imperialistic way for bolstering our identity over and against that of others, because of our need for using the bible as a security-blanket, as an avenue for controlling the divine, or as a means of possessing revelatory knowledge as an exclusive privilege, we are ever tempted to build up securing walls and to keep out those who are not like us.”¹ Yet the same power of scripture also serves to form the compassionate connection of communal identity, to anchor faith in an uncertain world, to inspire righteousness, to apprehend the divine, to tear down walls that divide us, to imagine a better world. How do we cultivate its constructive force without unleashing its power to oppress and destroy?

The faithful do not want to discard the idea of scripture, so one common strategy is the conscious and unconscious editing we do to make a better “Good Book.” Selections for public recitation and formal lectionaries do some of the work, selective memory some more. Christians often forget that Jesus is portrayed casting out demons, vilifying his enemies, or threatening damnation, focusing instead on his inspired ministry to the “least of these” (Matt. 25, which also contains the oft-forgotten threat of age-long punishment). Many Muslims living in multifaith contexts, even some who have memorized multiple suras of Qur’an, are surprised to learn about negative statements made regarding Jews and Christians in Muhammad’s time. Most Bible readers can tell you the story of Esther—up through chapter 8—but they conveniently overlook that the book ends in a bloody retribution of the Jews upon their would-be attackers. Never mind that it is an invented tale; the text records a mighty celebration of this literary slaughter. There is also conscious omission: when I used to study the weekly Torah portion at Stanford Hillel, people just stopped showing up for Leviticus because they disliked its preoccupation with sacrifice and ritual purity.

We can pretend those parts aren’t there. Yet the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai shared a compelling insight regarding our attempts at a “Reader’s Digest” version of scripture. As he recounted in one of his poems, he tried to edit the Hebrew Bible:

I’ve filtered out of the Book of Esther the residue

of vulgar joy, and out of the Book of Jeremiah

the howl of pain in the guts. And out of the

Song of Songs the endless search for love,

and out of the Book of Genesis the dreams

and Cain, and out of Ecclesiastes

the despair and out of the Book of Job—Job.

And from what was left over I pasted for myself a new Bible.

Now I live censored and pasted and limited and in peace.²

What was he trying to convey? Basically, he took out everything that was ethically objectionable, emotionally unbearable, or intellectually suspect—and there was not much left. A text that does not reckon with unmerited suffering and choking despair cannot speak to the human condition. A text that cannot imagine fratricide and genocide alongside liberation and holiness is more attractive, but it cannot tell the whole human story. It would leave us “censored and pasted and limited.” It is not really possible to excise the difficult texts in any event because—as long as there is scripture, someone will seize upon their message to wield their power.

Scripture is not a Boy Scout manual, my rabbinic mentor Arnold Jacob Wolf used to say. It does not lay out in easy steps God’s path of goodness. It is not to be read as a guidebook with all the answers. It has the questions. It is a syllabus for a lifelong course in advanced ethics. Contradictions within the text, the multiplicity of interpretations, the clash with contemporary values—all these irritations are designed to create dialectical tension. We read closely, consider carefully, consult history, rub the sore spots, and we produce from the irritating grains of sand precious pearls of scriptural instruction. We cannot simply spiritualize or ignore all the tough parts because that is where the ethical work really happens—texts as tools of moral development. This tension prompts the self-critical faith found in principles like Judaism’s “beyond the letter of the law,” or more broadly, Gandhi’s assertion: “As soon as we lose the moral basis, we cease to be religious; there is no such thing as religion overriding morality.” It begins by recognizing the dangers embedded in scriptures’ very existence.

BUILDING ON TRADITION

Tradition, which always recognized the complexity of its scriptural inheritance, opted to interpret the text rather than dismember or discard it. Many contemporary efforts to preserve the transformative power of scripture while protecting against the hazards in fact correlate with strategies honed in the histories of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Jewish scholars glorify the tradition’s multivocality; Christian authors point to the diversity of text and tradition to argue that “no single interpretation of Christianity can be conclusive and complete.”³ Muslim exegetes emphasize historical context to reshape Qur’anic teaching for the modern age. In preparing the volume Learned Ignorance (mentioned in chapter 4), the editors gathered Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholars to explore how intellectual humility could disarm scriptural and religious intolerance. An even broader assortment of religious traditions was represented in collaborating on The Myth of Religious Superiority, where there was general consensus that ultimate truth is beyond the scope of complete human understanding.⁴

Even the academy’s insistence on historical-critical analysis builds upon traditional close reading practices and recognition of apparent contradictions in the texts. Particularity, contextualization, and a sense of how interpretive communities are key in the construction of scripture’s meaning all have ancient roots as well, now echoed within contemporary perspectives. Scholars challenge modernism’s intoxication with universal truths. Marjorie Suchocki’s theological pluralism, for example, rests on the notion that truths do not have to be universal to be compelling to a particular community; God’s word can have normative authority for a self-defined group in place of absolute authority.⁵ Increasingly aware that no one is exempt from contextual biases in exegesis, many researchers recognize how impossible it is to distinguish what Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza elegantly called “the script” from “the Scripture”—what within our sacred texts and traditions is culturally influenced or historically limited, versus what is divine and eternal. Such discernment is itself culturally conditioned.⁶

There is also a growing fondness for multivocality and indeterminacy, with a conviction that “human civilization has a stake in plural readings.”⁷ In Christian thought, still dominant in Western discourse, polyphony is becoming a fundamental principle of contemporary religious ethics.⁸ Today, Christian exegetes and theologians frequently write explicitly from within specified contexts and identified lenses—e.g., scriptural reflection that incorporates Latin American or African American liberation theology, Confucian- or other Eastern-inflected spiritual perspectives, womanist/feminist/mujerista interpretation, queer or postcolonial theory. These scholars continue to discover diverse meanings through previously marginalized voices, and to challenge old assumptions of objectivity, scientific certainty, and the fixity of truth. There are ongoing debates about whether such readings demonstrate what the Catholic Church has called “creative fidelity,” and some would not even claim to stand within the framework of tradition—but they are faithful attempts to sow in the soil of scripture.⁹

However radical the reading, it belongs to the ongoing construction project of scriptural meaning. Exegetes in the Abrahamic traditions historically accepted the teachings of their ancestors but also felt free to depart from them. Describing the open-ended character of Qur’anic exegesis, Jane Dammen McAuliffe noted how generations received their scriptural inheritance: “There are instances of influence and points of confluence. There are also disjunctions or disruptions and even . . . wholescale rejection of the accumulated consequences of centuries of exegetical activity. Yet the conversation continues, the tug of the text persists and the desire for intellectual engagement with the divine word remains irresistible.”¹⁰ Their own teachings subsequently became a part of the tradition. In the words of Jonathan Brown, “Tradition . . . is built by generations of devout scholars, who shape it to fit or fight the world of their day, their learned wraiths incorporated into its edifice.”¹¹

Such pervasive interpretive pluralism is indeed a powerful tool to dissipate the dangers of scriptural ultimacy, and a significant portion of this section explored its premodern constructions. Even theological conservatives who express concerns about relativism, worrying that interpretive pluralism forfeits the idea of religious truth, should recognize that sacred texts have always prompted multiple, often conflicting interpretations.¹² The ideology that undergirds scriptural literalism is a modern invention that is out of step with the way that religious communities have read scripture in the past. People can hold to their truths, but the tradition of self-critical faith should press them to look hard at the impact of their convictions in the world. Teachings of humility make urgent the ever-present religious question that even Snoopy understood: “Has It Ever Occurred to You That You Might Be Wrong?”¹³

Yet there are legitimate concerns that contemporary claims of scriptural polysemy stake out their own ideological territory, with a tendency to view non-plural orientations to exegesis as intellectually or ethically substandard. Interpretive pluralism is hard to embody if it becomes a new absolute so it, too, requires critical self-reflection.¹⁴ The obverse concern is equally challenging: interpretive pluralism is no guarantee that the power of scripture will not be used to subjugate. Accommodating all possibilities of meaning allows harmful interpretations to flourish as well, leading Paul Ricoeur to raise a compelling conundrum about tolerating ideas we believe to be wrong: “If liberty implies a right to error, how avoid pouring intolerance into indifference, and how prevent indifference from transforming itself into a tolerance towards the wrong done to others, in particular to the most fragile?”¹⁵ Tolerance does not require indifference, of course. One can affirm the multiplicity of scriptural interpretations and still actively combat ideas that appall,¹⁶ but this approach both mitigates and perpetuates the dangers of scripture.

SCRIPTURE AND POLITICS

Differences in the way we read sacred texts continue to matter because interpretation is a political act. It has implications for the ways in which we construct society, the rules we establish for living together, and the world we try to create. It was true for the efforts of the Israelites to fashion a covenantal community, for the followers of Jesus to teach in the shadow of empire, and for the Muslim community to institute its schools of law. It remained true even when scriptural authority began to be challenged. At the same time that Spinoza leveled his critique about people making “promiscuous” use of biblical authority, he was bound up in Dutch political disputes, masterfully finding biblical texts to vindicate Republican policies and undermine the Calvinist party “with a barrage of sacred missiles.”¹⁷ Scripture still gets deployed as a trump card in political debate.

Every interpretation is arguably political—in the academy, the congregation, and the public square—because it relates to the exercise of power. Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza’s questions again come to mind: “How is meaning constructed, whose interests are served, what kind of worlds are envisioned, what roles, duties, and values are advocated, which socio-political practices are legitimated?” Ideologies that undergird interpretation are perhaps most evident in today’s highly polarized public square, which connects scripture and politics in diverse ways. It is also a space in which the dangers of scripture show. This chapter concludes with a partial review of the uses of Bible and Qur’an in contemporary American politics in order to mark the hazards, and to examine whether the tools of tradition do or can provide a measure of protection, or even improve public discourse more generally. Most of the examples relate to Christianity, given its predominance in the US public square, but the forces at work impact us all.

Scripture frequently enters the political arena as an icon, as when a Torah scroll is carried to a protest march with the implicit message that the sacred text supports the cause. More often, the iconic power of scripture is used to assert identity. For example, the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, funded by the conservative CEO of Hobby Lobby, makes a statement about the centrality of the Bible in American identity by establishing itself three blocks from the United States Capitol Building. Sometimes governmental entities are directly involved, complicating the power dynamics of iconic gestures. When Ronald Reagan declared 1983 the “Year of the Bible,” he proclaimed, “Of the many influences that have shaped the United States of America into a distinctive Nation and people, none may be said to be more fundamental and enduring than the Bible.”¹⁸ The president spoke as if the Bible’s role was always a unifying one, forging a common sense of purpose and inspiring the abolition of slavery based on its teaching of love for neighbor. He made no mention of religious diversity, choosing to reassert the Christian biblical heritage amidst the country’s rapidly changing demographics. Politically, it served as a mythos of social harmony and a powerful symbol for members of the “religious right” who had supported him.

Yet the use of religious symbols in governmental hands and on public lands has been controversial, repeatedly challenged in Supreme Court cases.¹⁹ When deployed for clear ideological and theological purpose, the courts have generally ruled against them. For example, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy Moore, stated at his swearing in, “God’s law will be publicly acknowledged in our court” and installed a monument of the Ten Commandments in the lobby of the state judicial building.²⁰ It was viewed by many as an unconstitutional effort to establish state religion. After several lawyers filed suit, a federal court ruled that the monument must be removed. Moore was eventually removed as well for refusing to comply with the court order.

The appearance of some scripture in the public square need not raise a constitutional issue to stir up controversy. When Rep. Keith Ellison used Jefferson’s copy of Qur’an for his private ceremonial oath of office in 2007, he was affirming his identities as both Muslim and American—but various pundits and leaders of the Islamophobia industry presented the move as unpatriotic.²¹ In 2010, a radical church in Gainesville, Florida, advocated burning the Qur’an to commemorate the September 11, 2001, attacks. Other groups responded by advocating “Read the Qur’an” day instead and by donating a copy of the text to the Afghan army for every one that was burned. Iconic uses of scripture almost always involve messages about who does and does not belong.

Sometimes candidates use scripture to demonstrate spiritual bona fides to religious voters. This exercise often backfires, as they get the verse wrong or apply it in clumsy ways.²² Aside from promulgating poor understanding of sacred texts, the main danger here is that politicians feel it is required even though there is officially no religious test for public office. Religious and political leaders also cite passages as prooftexts, hoping to use scripture’s moral authority to advance their policy position. At times, the strategy is so naked that the agenda is exposed and becomes part of the conversation. When Jeff Sessions was serving as Attorney General, for example, he invoked the New Testament to justify separation of families when asylum seekers and other undocumented migrants were picked up trying to cross the border. “I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes,” he opined during a speech to law enforcement officers.²³ Legal experts cried foul, since there was no law authorizing the separation of families and the administration was actually looking for a way to circumvent the rule that families with children could not be incarcerated for more than twenty days. Historians quickly noted that it was a favorite verse of British loyalists during the Revolutionary War and of slaveholders in the antebellum South.²⁴ Theologians argued that he missed the biblical context of trying to avert a nationalist revolt against Rome; he also neglected the conclusion in which Paul asserts that love is the fulfillment of the law because it does no harm to neighbor (13:10), as well as the broader scriptural commitment to the stranger in your gates. Interfaith activists worried what furor would arise in conservative Christian quarters (and beyond) if a US official tried to cite the Vedas, Confucius, or the Qur’an that way. Defenders of the separation between religion and state claimed there was no place for such arguments in public policy discussions. There were others, however, who thought it was fair game since many religious leaders were vocal about the ethical implications of the policy, citing scripture to demonstrate its profound commitment to the stranger.

My own response exemplified the joke about the rabbi who listens to two contradictory positions in an argument and agrees with both of them. An observer points out how illogical that is, and the rabbi says, “You’re right too!” I thought that the verse, for all its problems, captured something important in Paul’s dilemma of acquiescing in the rule of law even when it violated his conscience—although Sessions suggested no such complexity. It is also a summons to radical discipleship and could be read as a sign to keep religion out of politics, but he did not interpret it that way either. Rather, Sessions cited it as a prooftext to defend against criticism from “our church friends,” and it rightly stoked robust public discussion.

More fraught are the broad, sustained debates about same-sex love, environmentalism, and a host of other political issues, with competing scriptural verses drawn to support the different sides just as they did in the case of slavery during the antebellum period. These arguments represent conflicting worldviews. For some individuals, the sacred texts shape their perspective; for others, they reflect and re-inspire convictions that are fashioned by other forces. Usually, it is a combination of the two. The positive and negative potential of scripture is evident as it motivates people to work for change. It has helped to catalyze entire movements across the political spectrum, including social gospel, temperance, civil rights, anti-abortion, and the Poor People’s Campaign. Yet, as people generally cite sacred texts to insist that God is on their side and often portray their opponents as soulless and selfish, the dangers of ultimacy abide.

It sounds naïve to suggest that we make our “heart of many rooms,” as taught in the Tosefta, in order to appreciate conflicting claims—or that we see differences of opinion as a sign of God’s grace, as taught in the Hadith. It is difficult to grant Origen’s premise that, in our most urgent disagreements, we all seek to benefit human life and that people are “led by certain plausible reasons to discordant views”—when the arguments of the other side seem only to magnify the dangers of scripture. Yet the religious traditions have taught that we gain a better understanding by considering the negation as well. Embracing a learned ignorance, where no one is in perfect possession of ultimate reality, we might recognize the need for each other’s voices to raise questions that would not occur to us. We can cultivate what Intisar Rabb called “the doctrine of doubt.” As Abelard taught, doubting will lead to deeper inquiry, which can guide us in our collective decisions.

To admit the embedded ambiguity of scripture, to accept Nachmanides’s insight that there are no incontrovertible arguments, to apply al-Ghazali’s hermeneutic of grace, or to allow for Kierkegaard’s “objective uncertainty” even while we articulate our highest truths, would certainly change the conversation. Instead of prooftexting to win an argument, people would share how their reading of scripture connects them to this world. These are the truths-to-live-by—not absolutes—where every adherent is free to discover the core of meaning as they see it. In Ahad Ha’am’s words, “For if not, the truth would not be the truth and the Holy Scriptures would not be holy.”²⁵ Wayne Meeks’s thesis that we require moral confidence, the conviction necessary to act on our beliefs—not moral certainty—is foreshadowed in the three traditions as they grappled with the limits of faith and knowledge.²⁶ These principles can moderate the use and abuse of scripture’s power today and improve public discourse more broadly.