Lecture 13 Outline

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— filed under: Lecture 13 Outline, social justice, Hermeneutics, Biblical

Outline of the 13th lecture in part one of the course. Part four of the course is entitled Faith and Justice.

Lecture #13--Faith and Justice: Scripture

Reading the Bible in Spanish: Biblical Hermeneutics (based on Justo González)

To read the Bible profoundly, we must see it as a non-innocent history (just like we must see the history of the United States in a non-innocent way). What are some examples from the Bible that show its major actors are “beyond innocence”? As people who have learned to “read” U.S. history in a non-innocent fashion, Hispanics may have a hermeneutical advantage to read the Bible in a non-innocent way.
The consequence of a non-innocent reading of the Bible is that we tend to read it as “Bible stories” in a manner parallel to the reading of “American stories” in history classes: we present our “heroes” as having pure and unmixed motives in a way that justifies the present order as morally correct and intermingles our conception of national and Biblical heroes. Of course, a non-innocent reading of history does not mean an exclusively “academic” reading: in fact, the “objective” readings of academics often mask the bias of our position of privilege and predisposition to justify the current order of things. Do we tend to see the Bible mainly as “Bible stories”? Is there any way to avoid this with children? How can we go beyond this approach to Bible reading as adults?
Christians have often disparaged the word of God in the Older Testament; the earliest major example of this is Marcionism (2nd century). Among other things (like the belief that matter and the body are evil, thus Christians should not believe in a creator God, the incarnation, or the resurrection of the body), Marcion distinguished the God of the OT as an evil creator God from the God of love revealed by Jesus. He thus rejected the canonicity of the OT and restricted the NT to a few select works and an abbreviated version of LK (a position which early church leaders rejected as heretical). González claims that many Christians today are still guilty of Marcionism, or at least semi-Marcionism, which he depicts as the tendency to read the OT in light of Jesus but never on its own terms, e.g. the prophets are only read as foretelling the coming of the Messiah. This leads to the unfortunate consequence that we make Jesus out to be a purely “spiritual” savior whose only concern is to save our souls for the afterlife. This “apolitical” Bible reading is in fact very political indeed: by focusing solely on an “otherworldly” message it implicitly supports and endorses the current order of things. Discussion question: Is the God of the OT the same as the God of the NT?
González’s response to the above is to claim that we need to “read the Bible in Spanish,” i.e. read the Bible fully conscious of its implications for politics and power relations as much as our “spiritual lives.” He outlines four guidelines for such a reading and claims that many Hispanics in fact read the Bible in this way:

To say the Bible is a political book means that it is about power and powerlessness, so we must read texts asking questions about power and powerlessness within the texts
Read and discuss scripture in public, as it was intended to be read
Hermeneutical privilege of the poor and marginalized in reading the Bible
Read scripture in the “vocative.” The purpose of our reading is not primarily to understand the Bible better but to understand ourselves, our situation, and the demands of discipleship better. In other words, our goal is not to interpret the Bible but to let the Bible interpret us (i.e. avoid the common temptation to find the Bible passages to support what I wanted to believe and do from the very beginning)
Example of reading the Bible this way: parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37. Often this is read in a “Bible story” way that encourages us to all be “good Samaritans.” We could also read the parable as a prophetic demand to see the world and faith from the perspective of the victim.

Copyright 2008, by the Contributing Authors. Cite/attribute Resource. smata. (2006, June 22). Lecture 13 Outline. Retrieved August 20, 2008, from Notre Dame OpenCourseWare Web site: http://ocw.nd.edu/theology/latino-theology-and-christian-tradition/Lecture%2013%20Outline. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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	Info Lecture 13 Outline Document Actions — filed under: Lecture 13 Outline, social justice, Hermeneutics, Biblical Outline of the 13th lecture in part one of the course. Part four of the course is entitled Faith and Justice. Lecture #13--Faith and Justice: Scripture Reading the Bible in Spanish: Biblical Hermeneutics (based on Justo González) To read the Bible profoundly, we must see it as a non-innocent history (just like we must see the history of the United States in a non-innocent way). What are some examples from the Bible that show its major actors are “beyond innocence”? As people who have learned to “read” U.S. history in a non-innocent fashion, Hispanics may have a hermeneutical advantage to read the Bible in a non-innocent way. The consequence of a non-innocent reading of the Bible is that we tend to read it as “Bible stories” in a manner parallel to the reading of “American stories” in history classes: we present our “heroes” as having pure and unmixed motives in a way that justifies the present order as morally correct and intermingles our conception of national and Biblical heroes. Of course, a non-innocent reading of history does not mean an exclusively “academic” reading: in fact, the “objective” readings of academics often mask the bias of our position of privilege and predisposition to justify the current order of things. Do we tend to see the Bible mainly as “Bible stories”? Is there any way to avoid this with children? How can we go beyond this approach to Bible reading as adults? Christians have often disparaged the word of God in the Older Testament; the earliest major example of this is Marcionism (2nd century). Among other things (like the belief that matter and the body are evil, thus Christians should not believe in a creator God, the incarnation, or the resurrection of the body), Marcion distinguished the God of the OT as an evil creator God from the God of love revealed by Jesus. He thus rejected the canonicity of the OT and restricted the NT to a few select works and an abbreviated version of LK (a position which early church leaders rejected as heretical). González claims that many Christians today are still guilty of Marcionism, or at least semi-Marcionism, which he depicts as the tendency to read the OT in light of Jesus but never on its own terms, e.g. the prophets are only read as foretelling the coming of the Messiah. This leads to the unfortunate consequence that we make Jesus out to be a purely “spiritual” savior whose only concern is to save our souls for the afterlife. This “apolitical” Bible reading is in fact very political indeed: by focusing solely on an “otherworldly” message it implicitly supports and endorses the current order of things. Discussion question: Is the God of the OT the same as the God of the NT? González’s response to the above is to claim that we need to “read the Bible in Spanish,” i.e. read the Bible fully conscious of its implications for politics and power relations as much as our “spiritual lives.” He outlines four guidelines for such a reading and claims that many Hispanics in fact read the Bible in this way: To say the Bible is a political book means that it is about power and powerlessness, so we must read texts asking questions about power and powerlessness within the texts Read and discuss scripture in public, as it was intended to be read Hermeneutical privilege of the poor and marginalized in reading the Bible Read scripture in the “vocative.” The purpose of our reading is not primarily to understand the Bible better but to understand ourselves, our situation, and the demands of discipleship better. In other words, our goal is not to interpret the Bible but to let the Bible interpret us (i.e. avoid the common temptation to find the Bible passages to support what I wanted to believe and do from the very beginning) Example of reading the Bible this way: parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37. Often this is read in a “Bible story” way that encourages us to all be “good Samaritans.” We could also read the parable as a prophetic demand to see the world and faith from the perspective of the victim. Copyright 2008, by the Contributing Authors. Cite/attribute Resource. smata. (2006, June 22). Lecture 13 Outline. Retrieved August 20, 2008, from Notre Dame OpenCourseWare Web site: http://ocw.nd.edu/theology/latino-theology-and-christian-tradition/Lecture%2013%20Outline. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.	Reuse Course Download this course or reuse in OpenOCW. Download this course Export into OpenOCW

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