ROUGH DRAFT--NOT FOR CITATION

FINAL PAPER PUBLISHED IN THE

WESLEYAN THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL 35.2 (2000): 32-48

 

Reading Theory

 and Biblical Interpretation for Postmodern Wesleyans

 

by

 

Thomas E. Phillips

 

 

Introduction

 

            Let me, in defiance of all the classical canons of rhetorical practice, begin with a little autobiography.  I, like many of you, was led by providence to a small rural church within the Wesleyan/holiness tradition.  It was within this context, and while still very much in my formative years, that I experienced Christian conversion.  Then, under the tutelage of a faithful and committed Wesleyan/holiness pastor, I learned what the Bible meant.  Life was good; God was in His heaven and all was well--until I sensed a call to ministry and went to study at a prominent Wesleyan/holiness university.

            Very shortly after I arrived at this university, I began to discover that I did not really know much about what the Bible meant.  My naive, often fundamentalistic, understandings of the Bible were quickly undermined by a group of faithful and committed Wesleyan/holiness professors.  These folks took upon themselves the sometimes daunting task of equipping me with the interpretive tools of a historical-critical exegete.  After mastering these tools, however, I quickly learned what the Bible really meant.  Life was good; God was in His heaven and all was well--until I went to seminary.

            Very shortly after I arrived at this prominent Wesleyan/holiness seminary, I began reading the work of narrative critics and I, yet again, discovered that I did not really know much about what the Bible really meant.  But, having gone this route before, I was quickly able to equip myself with the even better interpretive tools of a narrative critic and was thus able to learn what the Bible really, really meant.  Life was good; God was in His heaven and all was well--until I went to graduate school.

            Now that I have finished graduate school and been exposed to the acidic influences of postmodernism, I am tempted to say that I have absolutely no idea what the Bible means.  Instead of yielding to this temptation, however, let me suggest that my experience, an experience with which many of you can no doubt sympathize, is illustrative of the problem which postmodernism has dropped on the doorstep of biblical scholarship.  That is, postmodernism (and I am not nearly brave enough to attempt to define that slippery term) has forcefully confronted biblical scholars with the demise of the concept of a single, unified and objective (unconditioned) meaning for biblical texts.  Let me explain.

The Postmodern Challenge

            Just a few decades ago when K. Stendahl wrote his influential article on biblical theology in the Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, he could speak of “what the text meant” and “what the text means”[RD1] [1] as if the two types of meaning existed independently of one another and could be easily distinguished.  The Stendahl approach seemed to advocate a method of exegesis which sought to recover the text’s original meaning that was free from the taint of the reader’s own historical context.  The exegete’s task was twofold.  First, the exegete was to discern a meaning which was completely separate from his or her own experiences, ideas and norms.  Then, the exegete was somehow to transfer that pot of untainted meaning into his or her own world of experience, ideas and norms.

            The problem, as postmodernism (and, I would argue, the history of exegesis) has taught us, is that this pot of untainted meaning at the end of the exegetical rainbow has never, will never, and could never exist.  Any meaning that any interpreter takes from any text will invariably be ‘tainted’ by the interpreter’s Sitz im Leben.  Although our understandable enthusiasm for the task and our naive confidence in our methods have often fueled the illusion that our much sought after pot of untainted meaning would be found just over the next exegetical hill, the ever present and ever deconstructing forces of new approaches and new insights have always moved, and will always move, that elusive pot of untainted meaning to some other more distant hill.

            To speak in clear and concise terms, postmodernism has rendered the concept of a single, unified and objective meaning for the biblical writings completely untenable in the eyes of many contemporary biblical scholars.  The central insight of (and, at the same time, the central challenge from) postmodernism is the awareness of the conditioned and reductionistic nature of all statements about meaning.  That is, any statement about what the Bible means (or really means, or really, really means) is a statement about what the Bible means to a particular interpreter at a particular point in time, from a particular vantage point, and with a particular set of historical, ideological, social, cultural, religious, methodological and personal limitations.  Postmodernism has confronted us with the plausible assertion that there is no, nor could there ever be, a single, unified and unconditioned meaning for any biblical text because meaning is not a Platonic something which exists independently of human beings.

            If this postmodern assertion has any claim to legitimacy (and I believe that it does), it poses a tremendous challenge to persons who wish to make normative statements about Christian faith and practice based upon their understandings of scripture.  How may one acknowledge the conditioned nature of one’s understanding of scripture and still have a reasonable amount of confidence in the normative claims derived from that understanding of scripture?  Is acceptance of the postmodern insight the first step down the road of total relativism?  I do not think so.  Let me offer some musings about reading theories and strategies that may enable us to present normative readings of scripture while at the time acknowledging the plausibility of the postmodern insight.[2]

Wolfgang Iser and the Reading Process

            Wolfgang Iser, a contemporary literary theorist, has dedicated much of his distinguished career to analyzing the reading process, that is, to understanding what one does when one reads.  In numerous books and articles,[3]  Iser has laid out a coherent and influential theory of the reading process.  Even though Iser never claimed to devise a method for literary interpretation,[4] his theories and the categories contained within those theories have played a leading role in what has come to be called “reader-response criticism.”[5]  Yet in spite of Iser’s association with the much maligned (and widely misunderstood) set of reading strategies known as reader-response criticism,[6] I would propose that the categories contained within Iser’s theory of the reading process may, in fact, provide the constitutive elements of a mature Wesleyan response to postmodernism.[7]

            Iser begins with the simple questions:  Where does meaning come from? And what happens when we read?  In regard to this first question, Iser insists that “meanings in literary texts are generated in the act of reading; they are the product of a complex interaction between text and reader.”[8]  For Iser, the meaning of a literary text results from the “coming together of text and imagination”[9] and does not have its sole point of origin in either the “author’s intention or the reader’s psychology.”[10]  Rather meaning is created by “the two-way traffic between the text and reader.”[11]  Thus, to this first question, Iser answers that meaning comes from the interaction of a reader and a text.

            In answer to the second question (what happens when we read?), Iser presents a detailed theory of the reading process.  Iser begins by reflecting upon how a reader encounters a text and by drawing the obvious conclusion that a reader encounters a text progressively, within a time sequence.  If one wishes to understand the reading process, Iser suggests that the “first problem is the fact that the whole text can never be perceived at any one time.”[12]  What the reader encounters within a text is not a neatly packaged meaning of the entire text, but rather a progressively unfolding repertoire of diverse ideas, attitudes and perspectives from which the reader is able to build a consistent meaning for the text.  For Iser, the reading process is, therefore, understood primarily as an exercise in consistency-building, that is, the process of taking the diverse ideas and perspectives given within a text and creating a consistent meaning (I prefer the word “reading”)[13] from those competing ideas, norms and perspectives.[14]

            As Iser envisages the reading process, readers build this consistency by organizing the various elements of the text within overlapping and interactive frames of reference.  According to Iser’s theory, readers employ these diverse frames of reference as a means of establishing connections and relationships between the various elements of the text.  Iser suggests that the reader’s organizational activity occurs on both conscious and unconscious levels[15] and that this activity (both on conscious and unconscious levels) is characterized by progressiveness and tentativeness.  As Iser understands the reading process, readers focus upon the themes that they find most adequate for creating a consistent meaning for the textual perspectives which they have encountered up to that point in the text.  Perspectives which the reader discerns but does not regard as central for consistency-building remain within view, but are left on the periphery of the reading as “alien associations.”  As the reading process progresses, these alien associations may either remain on the periphery of the reader’s emerging (and tentative) consistency, or they may overwhelm and replace it.[16]

            According to Iser, themes become more established and thus gain a greater degree of determinacy over the reader’s organization of subsequent textual perspectives as the reader builds consistency by organizing them within meaningful frames of reference, particularly: (1) historical and social frames of reference; (2) literary frames of reference; and (3) the reader’s personal frames of reference.

            First, in regard to historical and social frames of reference within the reading process, Iser explains that texts assume a repertoire of historical, cultural and social norms that

consists of all the familiar territory within the text.  This may be in the form of references to earlier works, or to social and historical norms, or to the whole culture from which the text has emerged.[17]

 

Iser believes that the reader must organize the elements of this repertoire into coherent (but not necessarily familiar) images in order to discern a comprehensible setting for a text.[18]  Although a text’s repertoire is often familiar to the reader, Iser acknowledges that a text’s repertoire may in fact contain norms, values and practices which are familiar to a particular reader.  When readers are faced with a familiar repertoire, their readings are informed by familiar norms and values.  But when readers are faced with an unfamiliar repertoire, their readings must be informed “by a historical reconstruction of then prevailing values.”[19]  Thus readers may draw upon familiar historical frames of reference or may be compelled to create unfamiliar (though coherent) historical frames of reference for a text.  However, whether the historical frames of reference are familiar or unfamiliar, the text’s repertoire forces the reader to begin building consistency by understanding the elements of the text within the historical frames of reference appropriate to the text itself.

            Second, in regard to literary forms of reference, Iser acknowledges that the reading process is not exhausted by creating coherent historical frames of reference within which to read a text.  Because the elements of the repertoire have been placed within a new literary context, consistency-building must also take place within literary frames of reference.  Whereas the historical frames of reference are external to the text and can only be inferred from the elements of the repertoire, the literary frames of reference are internal to the text.  Iser suggests that the literary frames of reference which readers find within a text provide connections between the various elements within the text and relate those elements to another.  Readers employ these literary frames of reference (which Iser calls textual strategies) in conjunction with historical frames of reference in their consistency-building.[20]

            Third, in regard to the reader’s personal frames of reference, Iser acknowledges that a broad range of plausible historical and literary frames of reference may be constructed for most texts and textual segments.  He, therefore, suggests that readers are always involved in a process of selection.  That is, readers are constantly forced to choose which of the text’s potential meanings are excluded from actualization.[21]  Iser insists that this process of selection is unavoidable because “with all literary texts…the potential text is infinitely richer than any of its realizations.”[22]  Inevitably, therefore, a reader’s “acts of understanding will always result in an unavoidable reduction of the potential contained in the literary text.”[23]  Iser insists that consistency-building is thus not only creative but also reductionistic because a consistent reading (i.e., a statement about meaning) “can only be created if one possibility is selected and the rest excluded.”[24]

            Iser suggests that this process of selection and exclusion involves both conscious and unconscious interpretive judgments.  First, on the unconscious level, Iser argues that interpretation begins as soon as the reader begins to perceive the text, that is, before the reader makes any conscious decisions about the meaning of the text.  The implications of the reader’s unconscious acts of interpretation are important for understanding Iser’s relationship to postmodernism.  Iser, in a postmodern fashion, makes the painfully obvious acknowledgment that the reader’s unconscious acts of perception render it impossible to appeal to “the text” as the sole (or primary) basis of authority in the reading process.  Any such appeal is completely invalidated by the obvious inaccessibility of an uninterpreted text to serve in this authoritative capacity.[25]  In other words, a reader cannot plausibly claim to employ a “text-centered” reading strategy because he or she can neither have access to the text apart from his or her own unconscious interpretations of the text nor even know the degree to which those unconscious interpretations are influencing the manner in which he or she is perceiving the text.[26]  One could employ a text-centered reading strategy only if one somehow had access to an uninterpreted text.  But access to an uninterpreted text is, of course, impossible and, because of the inaccessibility of this uninterpreted text, the designation “text-centered” is little more than a naïve misnomer.

            This discussion about the reality of unconscious acts of interpretation may make Iser sound like an advocate for a radically “reader-centered” reading strategy, but Iser clearly distinguished himself from such radical proposals by insisting that the text does inform the reader’s unconscious acts of interpretation.  In a well-publicized debate with Stanley Fish,[27] who is perhaps the most eloquent advocate of reader-centered reading strategies, Iser insists that the text provides readers with ‘givens’ and that the presence of these givens ensures that the text

exerts some control on what we can do with it.  Professor Fish would argue that because it [the text] is never perceived in an unmediated manner, it can offer no guidance to us.  I disagree.[28]

 

Thus, for Iser, even though the reader cannot claim to interact consciously with the givens of the text, the reader’s response is influenced by the givens of the text.  In regard to meaning, therefore, Iser argues that even as it is formed on an unconscious level, meaning is the product of an interaction between the text and the reader.

            Second, on a conscious level, Iser again insists that meaning is created by the interaction of a text and a reader and then he suggests that, as a matter of practical criticism, we can analyze only the interaction which occurs between the reader and text on this conscious level.[29]  On this conscious level, Iser suggests that readers encounter perspectives with different degrees of determinacy for the reader’s consistency-building.  He speaks of points of “determinacy” and points of “indeterminacy.”  Points of determinacy occur where the reader consciously discerns that the text is both calling for the reader’s active consistency-building and guiding the reader toward specific patterns of consistency-building.  Points of indeterminacy occur where the reader discerns that the text is calling for the reader’s active consistency-building, but that the text is not guiding the reader toward specific patterns of consistency-building.  Points of determinacy, therefore, limit the reader’s interpretive freedom in the creation of meaning, while points of indeterminacy enhance the reader’s interpretive freedom in the creation of meaning.[30]

            Therefore, as Iser understands the reading process, readers engage a text most actively at points where they sense the lack of determinacy, that is, at points where readers become conscious of their need to freely select among the potential meaning of a text.  Iser designates these points of textual indeterminacy “gaps.”  At such gaps, the reader is impelled to create consistency by making conscious interpretive decisions which draw upon, and sometimes, revise, earlier interpretive decisions.[31]  In Iser’s theory, these gaps take two different forms: blanks, points at which the diverse elements of the text fail to have clear connections to one another, and negations, points at which some element of the text seems to negate the text’s existing norms without clearly formulating new replacement norms.  Each type of gap calls for the reader’s active consistency-building.  Blanks call upon the reader to establish connections between divergent elements within the text when the reader does not clearly discern determinate patterns of connections between these divergent elements.  Negations call upon the reader to formulate new norms to replace norms which the reader has preciously used for consistency-building but which the reader senses have come to be negated by subsequent reading.[32]

Iser Among Contemporary Literary Theorists

            To the question which is now raging through literary and hermeneutical circles (i.e., what is the source of meaning and interpretive authority, the text or the reader?), Iser answers “both.”[33]  For Iser, meaning derives neither from the text alone nor from the reader alone, but rather it derives from both as the reader interacts with the text.  The text, because it provides the givens, is, in some indemonstrable way, a source of meaning, but the reader’s conscious and unconscious acts of interpretation are also, in demonstrable and indemonstrable ways, sources of meaning.

            Because Iser takes the middle ground in this literary and hermeneutical debate over the source of meaning, he receives criticism from both sides of the debate.  On the one hand, Iser’s insistence that the text provides the reader with ‘givens’ has led some critics to argue that the reader is eventually overwhelmed by the text in Iser’s theory.[34]  On the other hand, both Iser’s insistence that the reader does not have direct access to these givens themselves (that is, before the reader begins unconsciously interpreting those givens) and Iser’s insistence that texts contain indeterminate elements which call for the reader’s active participation in the creation of meaning have lead other critics to argue that the text (the givens) ultimately gets lost in Iser’s theory.[35]

            Although this is not the place to settle the ongoing debate over the source(s) of meaning, I would suggest that this foray into Iser’s thought yields two important insights.  First, I suggest that Iser’s three categories for use in the analysis of the reading process are helpful: the givens (the uninterpreted text to which the reader has no conscious access), the determinate (the textual perspectives which the reader senses are directing and limiting his or her active consistency-building) and the indeterminate (the textual perspectives which the reader senses are calling upon and promoting his or her active consistency-building).  Second, I suggest that Iser’s observation that critics can discuss only the two categories of the determinate and indeterminate is also important for discussions of meaning in a postmodern world.  We cannot discuss the givens to which we have no conscious access.  We can only discuss the determinate and indeterminate as we are aware of them.  Although we may wish to learn the degrees to which our readings are influenced by the givens, we simply cannot know or demonstrate these degrees.  However, we can and should discuss how we handle the determinate and indeterminate within our consistency-building.

From Literary Theory to Wesleyan Theology

            If Iser’s theory of the reading process has any plausibility and if meaning is in fact the product of the conscious and unconscious interaction of a reader and a text, then, as a consequence of the reader’s role in the creation of meaning, there is no pot of untainted meaning at the end of the exegetical rainbow!  The traditional hermeneutical distinction between “what it meant” and “what it means” is not tenable.  Like it or not, we can only talk about the meaning which we discover.  We may wish to believe (or we may even be naively confident) that the meaning which we discover is, in some direct and significant way, influenced by the intention of the original author, or by some supposed meaning inherent within the text, or by the intention of the framers of the canon, or even by the God who inspired the biblical writers, but that influence simply cannot, in the absence of an uninterpreted text, be clearly demonstrated.  Our readings cannot, therefore, be validated by appeals to any of these supposedly objective external standards.  Because meaning exists only in the presence of a reader, we are faced with the demise of the concept of a single, unified and unconditioned (objective) meaning for any biblical text.

            In light of this demise, it would seem that we as biblical scholars and theologians are faced with three closely related tasks.  First, we need to develop a reading strategy which is sufficiently complex to accommodate “the demise of the concept of a single, unified and unconditioned meaning for biblical texts.”  I am not calling for us to develop a new and improved set of interpretive tools which will help us to discover what the Bible really, really, really means.  On the contrary, I am suggesting that we must develop reading strategies which will allow us to offer our normative readings of the biblical texts even in the midst of our honest acknowledgment that our readings—and, indeed, all readings—of the scripture are selective, conditioned and tentative.

            One useful manner in which to present our readings is, I suggest, to adopt the categories of Iser’s theory of the reading process.  We can simply state what elements within the text we can find to be determinate and what elements within the text we find to be indeterminate.  Then we can explain how we have responded to the determinacies and indeterminacies which we have found within the text and we can clarify the frames of references within which we are reading the text.  We can, without appeal to the inaccessible givens, explain and defend the literary frames of reference (e.g., Johannine irony, synoptic hyperbole, Pauline diatribe, Hebrew parallelism, etc.), the historical frames of reference (e.g., Greco-Roman patronage traditions, early Christian eschatological expectation, Israelite royal theology, etc.) and personal frames of reference (e.g., a liberationist perspective, a redactional perspective, a canonical perspective, an environmentalist perspective, etc.) which we are consciously employing in our consistency-building.  Within the context of the Wesleyan Theological Society and the context of our holiness churches, colleges and seminaries, I would argue that we should consciously and unapologetically adopt a specifically Wesleyan frame of reference, a frame of reference which begins with the assumption of God’s universal prevenient grace and which has its goal the perfection of love in individuals and communities.  This approach, if accompanied by an honest acknowledgment of the conditionedness of our readings, provides us with the best hope of offering distinctively Wesleyan readings of scripture without engaging in anachronistic and unpersuasive efforts to present the whole of the biblical text as a document written from a Wesleyan theological perspective.

            No doubt many professional theologians and biblical scholars would loudly protest against these proposals as the thin edge of the wedge of “uncontrollable subjectivism.”[36]  Although I would insist that I am merely advocating that we publicly and consciously acknowledge what we already routinely do (that is, make decisions about the determinacy and indeterminacy of textual perspectives and make decisions about the frames of references within which we will read those perspectives), I think that I understand the perils of standing on the slippery slope of idiosyncratic or even injurious readings.  Thus, I would suggest that our second task as Wesleyan theologians and biblical scholars is to develop a set of criteria by which our readings may be evaluated.  Just as our integrity as scholars in the postmodern world calls us to rethink our reading strategies, out integrity as theologians in the Wesleyan tradition calls us to reflect upon the criteria by which good and bad readings can be distinguished.[37]

            I would briefly offer two criteria: credibility and appropriateness.  The criterion of credibility demands that I, as a reader, am obligated to demonstrate of my reading to the community.  I must be able to demonstrate the plausibility of my consistency-building and to defend my selections.  I must be able to convince other readers that the reading which I am offering is, in fact, an adequate construction of meaning based upon the text as they see it.  The criterion of appropriateness demands that my reading be appropriate to the community.  Since the biblical texts are normative for the Christian community, the community must reserve the right to reject credible readings which are inappropriate for Christian faith and practice.  A reading may, in fact, be entirely credible to a community (that is, it may satisfy the community’s norms for consistency-building) and still may be entirely inappropriate for the community when examined in light of the community’s historical identity.  The community’s task is to determine a response to scripture which is both credible in light of the text and appropriate to the contemporary Church.

            Finally, I would say that our third major task is to rethink the nature of revelation.  If meaning is, in fact, a relational category, that is, if meaning is the product of the interaction of a reader and a text,[38] then, it seems to me, revelation must be a relational category.  Revelation must not be strictly equated with the written Word (the Bible), nor even with the message of the written Word (the gospel), but rather it must understood as an encounter with the Living Word (Christ).  That is, revelation is the Church’s encounter with Christ, an encounter which occurs as a result of the Church’s interaction with the Bible.  This understanding of revelation is, it seems to me, consistent with the insight that meaning resides neither in the text alone nor in the reader alone, but rather is created by the interaction of the text (the scripture) and the reader (the Church).  We need to develop an understanding of revelation that is relational and that  proceeds from the all important foundation that revelation occurs when the Spirit enables the Church to encounter the Living Word.  That is, we need to think of revelation not only as an event (or as a witness to an event) which happened in the past, but, more importantly, as something which has happened anytime the Spirit has enabled the Church to find meaning in the scripture.  The Church’s discovery of meaning, even if that meaning changes substantially over time (as indeed it has!), is revelation.

            Let me briefly sketch out some of the implications of this relational understanding of revelation by returning to the opening paragraphs of this paper.  Each time that I relearned what the Bible really (or really, really) meant, I sensed some uneasiness about the implications that my act of relearning had for my understanding of revelation.  Each time I came to a new and different understanding of scripture, I wondered about the revelatory status of my old understanding.  I would ponder whether or not an understanding of the entire Bible which I had previously valued, but which I had come to completely reject as hopelessly “wrong,” was in fact ever revelatory.  Was, I wondered, the Bible only revelatory when properly understood?  If so, what constituted a proper understanding?  This problem is, of course, much bigger than my individual experience.  The history of the Church is replete with examples of the Church discarding readings of scripture which had long been treasured by large sections of the Church for extended periods of time (e.g., how many of us believe that the inn in the parable of the Good Samaritan should be understood as the Church?).  Simply put, if revelation is envisaged as an unified and objective message which God gave humanity (“what it meant”) and which humanity should seek to understand and appropriate as an unified and objective message (“what is means”), then the history of the Church’s interpretation of the Bible becomes both a threat to the legitimacy of the historic Church and a scathing indictment against the adequacy of the idea of revelation.  If, however, revelation is understood as the community’s encounter with the Living Word which occurs as a result of the community’s encounter with the written Word and which is validated by the activity (witness) of the Spirit within the community,[39] then the history of the interpretation of the Bible becomes a testimony of the self-revealing grace of God within the Church.

            For those of you who suspect that I have lost all regard for Wesley and his concern to make Scripture the norming norm for faith and practice, let me conclude by briefly quoting and commenting upon a passage from the introduction to Wesley’s Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament:

I cannot flatter myself so far (to use the words of one of the above-named writers) as to imagine that I have fallen into no mistakes, in a work of so great difficulty.  But my own conscience acquits me of having designedly misrepresented any single passage of Scripture, or of having written one line with a purpose of inflaming the hearts of Christians against each other.  God forbid that I should make the words of the most gentle and benevolent Jesus, a vehicle to convey such poison.  Would to God that all the party names, and unscriptural phrases and forms, which have divided the Christian world, were forgot; and that we might all agree to sit down together, as humble, loving disciples, at the feet of our common Master, to hear his word to imbibe his Spirit, and to transcribe his in our own![40]

 

            May we, like Wesley, fight the temptation to flatter ourselves by endowing our individual readings with a normative status that can only be obtained when we “sit down together” and read in community.  May we, like Wesley, realize that revelation, as it is experienced in the reading of scripture, is a christological and pneumatological experience.  And, may we, like Wesley, be willing to admit the legitimacy of having our readings consciously informed by appropriate personal commitments (like Wesley’s commitment to Christian love and unity).[41]