What does Gregory of Nyssa have to do with preaching today?
So expository preaching is fine. I mean it is great to sit through an hour long sermon on Song of Songs chapter 4 and feel like you can atomize the whole thing to a person walking down Broad Street, but is it really that benificial? I mean, in a society that values image and emotion over word and reason (if it doesn't offend you, read "postmodern") should we really be doing this expository stuff all the time? I feel like the pastors should be wearing WWBRP (what would Bertran Russell preach) braclets. How should we preach? What is the most effective way of getting "the Word" out today?
I have been reading a bunch of Gregory of Nyssa for my essay due Monday (The influence of Plato and Plotinus on Gregory of Nyssa's conception of the soul - awesome) and one of the books Gregory wrote is called The Life of Moses. This book is amazing and I recommend it to anyone who wants to get a feel for this fourth century mystical theologian (the founder of mystical theology?). The book is a discussion of Moses' life centred around three key events - the burning bush, the Mt. Sinai experience, and God's passing by Moses in the cave (Exodus 3,19, and 33-34 respectively). Gregory takes us through these events historically but then goes into the "spitirual" meaning of all these things. This is what I want to discuss.
The "spiritual" interpretation of Holy Scripture is something very ancient in the Church, and something totally lost to us today except in some bootlegged form (above pastor saying the Song of Songs is about the Church). This was called the allegorical method of preaching, and I would like to make a short case for why it might be helpful to bring back to the Church today. First off though, it needs to be said that the allegorical interpretation is a difficult thing to do well. Just take a look at Augustine's interpretation of Genesis 1-2 or Thomas Aquinas' interpretation of the Good Samaritan. Unbelievable. I think there is a right way to use this method and a wrong way. Gregory of Nyssa strikes me as the best example of the right way to do it. He clearly emphasizes the historical meaning of the passages, but he goes on to discuss its spiritual significance. I think this comes from his very healthy understanding of "overflow of Being." Gregory is a philosopher-theologian in the strongest sense and feels free to use Plotinus whenever the Scripture warrants it. His greatest achievement is the understanding (or lack thereof) of the Divine infinity. Gregory as a Cappadocian Father is clear about God being beyond finitude, beyond comprehension, beyond reason. This leads later theologians to the via negativa (we can only say what God is not) and also leads the Eastern Fathers to talk about God's essence and His energies (we can't know His essense, only His energies - His actions). I think this is incredibly realistic and not well understood by the Western tradition where we are confident in our reason's power over creation (and the Creator).
So Gregory uses this understanding of the Divine infinite to undergird his exegesis - there is always more to say about God then we can ever say. So for instance in the section of Moses going up the Mountain to see God and entering the "dark cloud", Gregory sees a perfect time to talk about God's essential "darkness" (cf. Isaiah 45, "the hidden God"), His unknowability and His being beyond comprehension. Did Moses intend to write about God's infinite and transcendent being when he dictated Exodus (or it was passed down or what have you, but no JEPD please)? I don't think so, but it is certainly part of the text. You can never say enough about God, you will never exhaust His meaning from the Scriptures. This is what I mean by "overflow of Being." There is more in the text than could ever be spoken about.
Another example: in the event of God passing by Moses He only lets Moses see his back side, for "You cannot see my face, for man cannot see me and live." On one level this is fairly straightforward - God is too Holy to be seen by mortals. But is there more? Gregory goes on to says the following
"Scripture does not indicate that this causes the death of those who look, for how the face of life ever be the cause of death to those who approach it? On the contrary, the Divine is by its nature life-giving. Yet the characteristic of the divine nature is to transcend all characteristics. Therefore, he who thinks God is something to be known does not have life, because he has turned from ture Being to what he considers by sense preception to have being."
He goes on to say that "True Being is true life. This Being is inaccessible to knowledge." Gregory is pointing us away from carnal desires and reasonable desires to contemplate and seek God by faith - to seek Him through the very gift He has given us to see His face - faith in Jesus Christ. Again, was this the purpose of Moses "writing" this story? Probably not, but clearly it is more than an application of this text. It is a true reading of the Holy Scripture.
Are there any practical reasons for using an allegorical interpretation (done well of course) today? I think so. Firstly, people are captivated by story, not straight fact telling. I think the allegorical method is a great way to display the truth of God's Word to those listening in an easy way to understand and remember. I bet that whenever you hear Moses' story of the mountain you will always be reminded of God's "beyond rationality, His unknowability and true life." Allegorical preaching may be a wonderful way to remind people of both God's eternal truth and also keep them close to the Biblical story (you can't talk about God's "cloud of unknowing" without being drawn deeper into the text of Exodus 19). Secondly, I think in an age of image over word, this method has a better ability to imapct people's minds. It is based on a deeper meaning, something that requires a inner vision of the story to keep it grounded. Anything that involves people's imaginations is bound to stick better than rote fact telling. It is much easier to paint a picture with the allegorical method than the expository method because it is itself totally about behind reality and pictures within a narrative. We see God's nature being revealed through another picture. Thirdly I think this approach is a Biblical one. Not just because Jesus taught in parables (alright, but not too powerful on my watch) but because it is very similar to what Matthew does in his Gospel.
A bit more on this. In Matthew we find tons of "fulfillment" of prophecy. But the serious issue is that most of these "prophecies" aren't prophetic at all. Take the Hosea one: "Out of Egypt I have called my son." (Hosea 11:1). This is a historical statement in the Old Testament talking about the exodus and reminding the people of God's kindness to those in exile (which at the time the nation of Israel was). What has Matthew done? Clearly he is not ignorant of the fact that this is not a prophecy, rather he is using the Rabbinical tradition of Midrash - using Scripture as a "jumping off point" to further truth. Matthew is using Hosea 11:1 to remind people of how God always works. No Jew would have though Jesus was fulfilling a specific prophecy in Hosea ("check Hosea 11:1 off the list, now on to Micah and Zechariah, etc"), but Matthew would have reminded them that just like when YHWH brought His people out of Egypt before, again He has brought His people out of exile, for in Jesus the whole nation of Israel is wrapped up - past, present and future. So allegorical interpretation is just like this, using the text as a spring board, a jumping off point to discuss something always true about the covenant and eternal God.
So I think there is someting rich in the allegorial tradition, something which might be important in the Church today. Now all I need to do is figure out a way to preach allegorically on divorce (my sermon coming up). Any suggestions?
posted by Hans-Georg Gadamer @ 3:34 am
7 comments
7 Comments:
Wow - this post is way too long! Sorry about that. If anyone actually reads the whole thing I will send them a quid or something. Maybe a squid.
Also, in this "Instructions for American Serviemen in Britain 1942" there are tons of amazing quotes. Just one for now:
"The British don't know how to make a good cup of coffee. You don't know how to make a good cup of tea. It's an even swap."
So true.
I read it all - please send me a quid.
I don't know about this. The bit at the end about Matthew seems pretty sound, but the rest sounds dangerously close to extrapolating whatever meaning you want out of passages in the Bible. I mean, if we can agree that the pupose of God turning his back is NOT to allegorically describe his "unknowable-ness", then there doesn't seem to be any good reason to use this when preaching it. Unless you're going to give a heavy disclaimer about how "now, this isn't the intention of the passage, probably, but it reminds me of this other thing about God....", then people are going to go away thinking that this is the purpose for the passage. When they hear an "allegory" that's stretched too far (such as eldridge's interpretation that the exodus passage about Jacob renaming Benjamin being about how fathers haev to take their sons away from their mothers and give them a true masculine identity) then it starts to bring the entire topic of scriptual authority into question.
To sum up, I won't say this is always bad, because it might sometime be good. But none of those examples from Gregory sound good to me. It sounds like twisting the language of scripture to mean whatever the hell you want to preach about, which is the sort of thing done by fad preachers like Joel Osteen or Wilkerson's "Prayer of Jabez" garbage and not really very instructive at all.
Why is scripture a better jumping off point, anyway? I mean, if I can use parts of the Bible to "allegorically" talk about whatever I see, why not start using Harry Potter as a jumping point, and talk about how Jesus is the fulfillment of the potter prophecy?
This "allegorical" interpretation sounds like relativism. It sounds like the dark side of postmodernism, where we deny the absolute in pursuit of exegeting whatever we want through "personal interpretation", and talking about what biblical passages "mean to you" rather than what they actually were meant to mean - which is to say, what they mean absolutely.
so cut it out, you weird relativist postmodern liberal.
now if you read my entire comment, I'll have to send you a quidette, and then we can bread our quids into a family that will support us in our old age.
Wow! relativist postmodern liberal. Eat your heart out Charles!
Points well taken, but my only defense would be that what we are "allegorizing" would not be pulled out of thin air. Example: you can't use the parable of Jesus casting out demons to mean that demons are actually God's true offspring and need to be freed from sinful humans. That has never been taught and never should be taught. What is allegorized is nothing other than the doctrines of the Church, which are themselves derived from Scripture. So it is a kind of hermenutical cirlce (nice), the text informs our theology and then our theology can inform the text more, which goes back to informing theology and so on. An upward spirial as we get closer to contemplating what is true and what is revealed. Again, a bit dangerous, but something that does have tremendous precedent in the Church's history.
Also, I think we tend to allegorize anyways, just not as explicitly as Gregory does. I mean, with the example of Jesus casting out demons, what gives us any right to say that they are evil? Jesus doesn't call them evil in that passage, he just casts them out. Besides, that happened 2000 years ago, why should we take it as something important or meaningful today? This goes for tons of other passages as well. We all have a theology that informs our reading of the text, the question is how sound is that theology. Allegorical interpretation at least brings that theology front and center, and lets you evaluate it with some criteria, wheras most of our theological undergirding stays just that - underneath and unexamined.
So in short, I agree that we need to be careful, and I will probably never use this method more than once for fun. but at the same time, a liar is the person who says "I just read the text and get the meaning." What? Where in the world did you learn about the meaning, especially since someone had to teach you how to read? That is probably more postmodern, but there you have it.
I think you hit on something here:
"What is allegorized is nothing other than the doctrines of the Church, which are themselves derived from Scripture."
Right - so if we have scripture that clearly teaches the topic in question, why not use that scripture to teach it, rather than inferring meaning onto other parts of scripture, especially if these clearly were not intended to convey the meaning you're inferring? I really think the only appropriate way to do this would be to start off saying, "this passage reminds me of" or "this passage helps me to remember how", but clearly explain that this is something you can remember from the passage because of similar circumstances, and NOT real exegesis.
To your last paragraph, are you trying to deny that words have meaning? That those meanings can be absolute? I read your blog post, and I got it's meaning, and hope you're getting the meaning from what I'm saying. I agree that the Bible is often quite complicated, and careful scholarship should be employed to understand the many levels of meaning in certain passages. But I can't agree that we can go about teaching things clearly not intended from a passage, even if that being taught is defined elsewhere in scripture.
I think allegory could be quite beautiful if it's well defined and clearly represented as only allegory, and not exegesis. I just don't have enough faith in the modern congregation to understand the difference.
You would never look up "ardvark" in the dictionary to define "telephone".
Right - I think I understand where you are coming from, and I don't deny your points, most of them. I do not think allegorical preaching should replace expository or exegetical preaching, only that allegorical interpretation can be very powerful. Gregory's account of Moses is totally accurate and very impressive because he uses the Biblical story to convey a truth not explicitly taught in the story. I don't think this replaces he original meaning, rather it is supplemantary to it, a going deeper in a sense.
As far as practicality I think you are absolutely right. You would have to make clear that this was allegorical interpretation otherwise less skilled interpreters would go home and "give it a go" by themselves with no theological training or research. The product - totally scrwed up passages and doctrines. I think that is a good point and I wonder how much that affected Christians back in the days. Then again, Christians back in the days couldn't read and didn't have Bibles, so it probably was not as dangerous. Point well taken. I think for practicality's sake, you are right and maybe allegorical interpretations should be avoided except in extreme (!) cases. Pastoral emergencies?
On the language bit - I think words are probably not as absolute as we think they are. Take for example that time I was using "service" in a post on your blog a bit ago. We had serious confusion because what I meant by service was different by what you meant. And you couldn't puzzle it out by context, you needed me to explain the use of it. Everything went along smoothly after that, but there was a confusion around language and not in thinking (I was sure in my meaning, you were sure in yours - the problem was language).
I had a long debate about this in Florida about swearing, whether it is okay to redefine words and meanings or whether words have intrinsic or absolute meaning. I took the absolute position, but I am not so sure it is the right one anymore. This gets well past this post and past my own reading as well, but just to say that words are a lot more elastic than we think.
Just in case Charles is reading this, words may be elastic, but concepts are not! cf. our discussion in your room two years ago about "globe" and "brown." Just in case. Not a relativist.
So a telephone isn't a "burrowing mammal of southern Africa, having a stocky, hairy body, large ears, a long tubular snout, and powerful digging claws." That would explain why it doesn't eat the ants I feed it...
I would agree that words don't have meaning in themselves, but I wouldn't go so far that they can be willingly redefined as anything.
How many legs does a dog have if you call a tail a leg? Four, calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
Post a Comment
<< Home