TheoPub! Does God Speak? : God s Word, Human Authors, and Divine Speech

Transcription

1 TheoPub! Does God Speak? : God s Word, Human Authors, and Divine Speech Reading= 9 pages (~4218 words)* (1) 2 nd Timothy 3:12-17 (2) Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim that God Speaks by Nicholas Wolterstorff [excerpts] *skimming is ok! There is no test! Discussion will always be more important than the readings. Reading/Discussion Questions (1) Do you think God speaks to you? If so, how and why? (2) What do you think it means to say the Bible is God s word? (3) How do you, personally, use the Bible? (4) Wolterstorff thinks that God speaks by either deputizing people to speak on God s behalf or by appropriating human discourse to say something else. What do you think about this idea? (5) Wolterstorff doesn t talk much about inspiration but 2 nd Timothy does, what do you think inspiration means? How does it inform your view of scripture/divine speech? (6) What does it mean to say the Jesus is The Word? Is Jesus a way for God to perform what Wolterstorff would call an illocutionary act (speech-act)? (7) Wolterstorff thinks that we can never be completely sure that we are interpreting scripture the right way, BUT we will can improve our interpretive skills if we: (i.) accept the fact that we might be wrong, and (ii.) get to know God better. What do you think about this idea? 2 nd Timothy 3:12-17 (NISV) Indeed, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. 13 But wicked people and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving others and being deceived. 14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, 15 and

2 how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim that God Speaks by Nicholas Wolterstorff [excerpts] Locating Our Topic My project is to reflect philosophically on the claim that God speaks. In this opening chapter I will situate these reflections within various ongoing contemporary discussions. But before I do that, let's have in hand some examples - or purported examples - of the phenomenon we will be discussing. Examples of God speaking In the year 386 CE there took place in the northern Italian city of Milan a conversation which was as fateful for religion in the West as any which has ever taken place. The participants were Augustine, his friend Alypius, and Ponticianus, a fellow countryman from North Africa who held a high position in the Emperor's household. The conversation was initiated by Ponticianus paying a visit to Augustine and Alypius at the villa in which they were staying along with Augustine's mother... Shortly after sitting down, Ponticianus picked up a book lying on a game-table nearby. He expected something from Augustine's profession as a teacher of rhetoric; instead it was a copy of St. Paul's epistles. Ponticianus smiled - he himself was a Christian and remarked how glad and surprised he was to find this book there; it was, in fact, the only book in sight. Augustine replied that he had been studying Paul's writings "with the greatest attention." That led Ponticianus into some remarks about the life of Antony, the Egyptian monk... Ponticianus could not have anticipated the effect of these reminiscences on Augustine. Augustine was a person in torment; and his torment had everything to do with the alternative modes of life described in the story of Antony... Augustine and Alypius did not know anything of monastic asceticism until Ponticianus told them about it; but they were already familiar with other forms of the ascetic life shaped by the love of God. Augustine, in fact, desired intensely to live such a life. But he could not free himself from habits of lust and ambition... After Ponticianus left, Augustine, in torment, went out into the garden, Alypius on his heels... Augustine broke down in a "deluge of tears." "I stood up," he says, "and left Alypius so that I might weep and cry to my heart's content, for it occurred to me that tears were best shed in solitude." Throwing himself down under a fig tree, he cried out in misery, over and over, tears flowing, "How long shall I go on saying 'tomorrow, tomorrow? Why not now?" Now the part of the story which we all know and which is important for my purposes:

3 I was asking myself these questions, weeping all the while with the most bitter sorrow in my heart, when all at once I heard the sing-song voice of a child in a nearby house. Whether it was the voice of a boy or a girl I cannot say, but again and again it repeated the refrain "Take it and read, take it and read". At this I looked up, thinking hard whether there was any kind of game in which children used to chant words like these, but I could not remember ever hearing them before. I stemmed my flood of tears and stood up, telling myself that this could only be a divine command to open my book of Scripture and read the first passage on which my eyes should fall. For I had heard the story of Antony, and I remembered how he had happened to go into a church while the Gospel was being read and had taken it as a counsel addressed to himself when he heard the words Go home and sell all that belongs to you. Give it to the poor, and so the treasure you have shall be in heaven; then come back and follow me. By this divine pronouncement he had at once been converted to you. So I hurried back to the place where Alypius was sitting, for when I stood up to move away I had put down the book containing Paul's Epistles. I seized it and opened it, and in silence I read the first passage on which my eyes fell: Not in revelling and drunkenness, not in lust and wantonness, not in quarrels and rivalries. Rather, arm yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ; spend no more thought on nature and nature's appetites. I had no wish to read more and no need to do so. For in an instant, as I came to the end of the sentence, it was as though the light of confidence flooded into my heart and all the darkness of doubt was dispelled. (viii, 12) Tolle lege, tolle lege; take and read, take and read: the most famous words any child has ever uttered. They were indeed uttered by a child. Though Augustine couldn't tell whether the chanter was a boy or girl, it never crossed his mind to doubt that it was a child. And after the briefest reflection, he had no doubt that by way of the child chanting these words, God was then and there saying something, performing a speech action; specifically, an action of commanding. The command was not addressed to some collectivity of human beings but addressed specifically to him: God was commanding him to open his book of Scripture and read the first passage on which his eye should fall. Perhaps the child was doing no more than uttering words - over and over for the sake of the sound of them. Or perhaps the child was also performing a speech action. If so, presumably that action was also an action of commanding or requesting. The content of the command would have been different, however, from the content of God's command. For the child was not commanding Augustine to open his copy of scripture and read the first thing on which his eye should fall; the child didn't know Augustine, and hence couldn't issue such a command. Either way, two agents: the divine agent saying something by way of the human agent either just uttering words, or saying something by way of uttering words... Three episodes of God speaking to someone - or at least, of a person believing that God was speaking to him. In one of them, God spoke by way of a child's casual sing-songing; in two of them, God spoke by way of what the addressees regarded as a sacred text. But, what does this mean?... At first, we might think that since God has no vocal cords with which to utter words, and no hands with which to write them down, God cannot literally speak, cannot literally be a

4 participant in a linguistic community. Accordingly, attributions of speech to God, if not judged bizarrely false, must be taken as metaphorical. Speaking of God speaking was taken to be a metaphorical way of attributing revelation to God. One response to this argument is that it overlooks some things - overlooks, for example... [a much] more interesting line of thought, one suggested by that position in contemporary philosophy of language commonly known as speech-action theory... When one thinks about speaking in the context of so-called speech-action theory, initiated some forty years ago by J. L. Austin, then the argument against God speaking appears patently fallacious. Fundamental to that theory is the distinction between locutionary acts and illocutionary acts. Locutionary acts are acts of uttering or inscribing words, illocutionary acts are acts performed by way of locutionary acts, and are acts such as asking, asserting, commanding, promising, and so forth. Once illocutionary acts are thus distinguished from locutionary acts, then it immediately occurs to one that though of course such actions as asking, asserting, commanding, and promising, can be performed by way of uttering or inscribing sentences, they can be performed in many other ways as well. One can say something by producing a blaze, or smoke, or a sequence of light-flashes. Even more interesting: one can tell somebody something by deputizing someone else to speak on one's behalf. In short, contemporary speech-action theory opens up the possibility of a whole new way of thinking about God speaking: perhaps the attribution of speech to God by Jews, Christians, and Muslims, should be understood as the attribution to God of illocutionary actions, leaving it open how God performs those actions - maybe by bringing about the sounds or characters of some natural language, maybe not... It remains a part of the liturgy of many branches of the Christian church for the listeners to respond to the public reading of Scripture with some such words as, "This is the Word of the Lord." There, in that response, is my topic. What is one saying in saying that? How would one go about interpreting the words read to discover what God said? And is it rationally acceptable to say, and mean it, that when sitting one morning in St. Mary's church, or one evening in Oriel chapel, one heard something God had said - or something God was saying?... The Many Modes of Discourse When we think of someone promising, asking, or asserting something, the image which comes most naturally to mind is that of someone using her mouth and tongue and vocal cords to make the sounds of some language, or using her hands to inscribe the characters of some language. So much are we in the grip of this as the paradigm for discourse that, as noted in our first chapter, a good many theologians, upon hearing talk of God speaking, have concluded immediately that this is metaphor if not nonsense, on the ground that God has neither mouth nor tongue, vocal cords nor hands... [in opposition] I propose to reflect here on the many modes of discourse. There are many ways of saying things other than by making sounds with one's vocal apparatus or inscribing marks with one's limbs... Let us dispense quickly with the most obvious point here: the media we use for saying things extend far beyond words. Once upon a time Morse Code was used for saying things at a

5 distance, and semaphores, for communicating between ships. And we all know of the sign language used by and for those who are deaf. Actually all of us use conventional gestures of various sorts to say things: winks, nudges, shrugs, nods, and so forth. The media of divine discourse are even more diverse, or so at least the biblical writers claim. Words, yes; but beyond that, happenings of all sorts: dreams, visions, apparitions, burning bushes, illnesses, national calamities, national deliverances, droughts - on and on. When reflecting on discourse, be it human or divine, it's important to keep in mind this diversity of media- especially important to keep in mind that one doesn't need words to say things. Nevertheless, in what follows I will focus on the diversity of ways of saying things with words, mainly since I wish later to consider how to go about reading a text to find out what God might have said or be saying with that text. For the same reason, I will focus my attention on cases in which one person says something with words which he himself hasn't uttered or inscribed. Cases of double agency, we might call them. Double agency discourse Someone somewhere in the President's suite of offices prepares an official document; upon completion, he hands it to the President and the President signs it. Thereby the text produced by the secretary becomes the medium of the President's declaration. Examples which fit this description are relatively uncommon, since few of us are presidents; but the general phenomenon is itself common. Secretaries produce documents on typewriters or wordprocessors, their superiors sign them, and thereby those documents become the medium of those superiors saying various things. The role of the discourser in the production of the text varies. Sometimes the secretary "takes dictation," just as the scribe or amanuensis would have done. But that's by no means how it always goes. Sometimes the superior merely indicates to the secretary the substance of what she wants to say and leaves it to the secretary to find the appropriate words... The direct role of the discourser in the production of the text may be attenuated even beyond the discourser's merely indicating the substance of what she wants to say. The secretary may continue to compose letters while the executive is out of the office for several weekstraveling, ill, attending to family matters, or whatever. Without the executive even doing so much as communicating to the secretary the substance of what she wants to say, the secretary may know what the executive wants to say to one and another person and compose letters accordingly. The crucial thing is that the secretary "know the mind" of his superior. Upon the return of the executive, the secretary may then hand the batch of letters to the executive for signing. Or he may not. Often executives authorize secretaries to sign letters "for" them. In principle, the executive, without even so much as explicitly indicating the substance of what she wants to say, may both ask the secretary to compose letters in her absence and authorize the secretary to sign them "for" her... I have cited a range of cases in which texts serve as the medium of a person's discourse even though the person has not himself or herself produced that text. Looking back over those cases, we can discern two quite different phenomena coming to light. There is, for one thing, the phenomenon of variations in degree and mode of superintendence. On one end of the degree-ofsuperintendence continuum are those cases in which the discourser "dictates" to a scribe or

6 secretary the words to be inscribed... What do we find at the other end of this continuum? Presumably cases of a sort which I haven't even cited up to this point, where there is no connection between the discourser and the writer at all. For example, one comes across an interesting "fortune" in a fortune cookie, glues it on a piece of stationery, adds one's signature, and sends the whole thing off to a friend. One finds a witty birthday card in a shop, signs it, and sends it off. The examples are many - many more than one would at first have thought! The second phenomenon is authorization. In one or another way the discourser authorizes the text - that is, does one thing or another to the text such that her doing that counts as her performing some illocutionary acts, with the consequence that that text becomes the medium of those illocutionary acts. To authorize a text is in effect to declare: let this text serve as medium of my discoursing. In several of the examples I cited, the authorizing act consisted of the discourser attaching her signature to an inscription of the text. Executives in the modern world regularly exercise this authority, for letters typed out by their secretaries, by signing these letters; until the executive signs the letter, it's not a medium of discourse by her or anyone else. And normally an executive signs a letter by producing an inscription of his or her signature. But the executive may instruct the secretary to sign the letters from her, on her behalf, thus deputizing to the secretary the authority to sign Deputized discourse This phenomenon, of speaking in the name of is of central importance in the case of God's speech. Biblical prophecy, as recorded for us in the prophetic books of the Old Testament, regularly moves back and forth in just this way between the prophet speaking in the name of God by virtue of having been deputized to do so, the prophet speaking in his own voice but delivering a message from God, and the prophet speaking in his own voice and not delivering a message from God.... In any case, the biblical notion of the prophet blends the concept of one who is commissioned to communicate a message from someone, with the concept of one who is deputized to speak in the name of someone... Appropriated discourse... let us suppose - for the sake of the argument - that the apostles were understood as continuing the line of the prophets... It remains the case that the biblical writings cannot in general be regarded as record or expression of prophetic discourse. The narrative books, the wisdom writings, but especially the Psalms: the very structure of these prohibits us from taking them as that. The structure of the psalms is that of human beings addressing God, not that of God addressing human beings. So how can these be understood as media of divine discourse? Can they be? To answer these questions, let us consider a different way of speaking using someone else s words. Sometimes one person says something and another remarks, "I agree with that" or "She speaks for me too" or "Those are also my convictions" or "I share those commitments," or other words to that effect.... What decisively distinguishes these cases from the cases we have

7 just been considering is that no deputizing, no speaking-in-the-name of, is involved. Instead, the speech is appropriated. It is sometimes said that the Bible is God's book or God s word. By which is not meant that the Bible is a collection of books by God... What is meant is that, whatever its subdivisions, the Bible is one book of God. I suggest that the most natural way of understanding this claim is to understand it in terms of divinely appropriated human discourse... some of the discourse appropriated will itself be divine discourse; that will be true for those passages which are a record of prophetic utterance. Some or all of the rest, though not a record of utterances in the name of God, may nonetheless have been produced under a unique form of divine supervision - inspiration, lets say. But not even that need be true of a given part for it to belong to God's book. All that is necessary for the whole to be God's book is that all the human discourse it contains have been appropriated by God, as one single book, for God's discourse. If it is the Christian Bible we are speaking of, the event which counts as God's appropriating this totality as the medium of God's own discourse is presumably that rather drawn out event consisting of the Church's settling on this totality as its canon. If the Bible is indeed God's book, and if that claim is understood in the way I have just suggested, then the most important question for interpretation is how do we learn to separate what God has said via appropriation from the merely human meaning that was appropriated?... One method is formulated by Augustine in a famous passage from his de doctrina Christiana. His idea is this: when we are considering whether so-and-so is something that God said by way of a certain part of the appropriated discourse; if God's saying that would not conduce to our love of God and neighbor, or if its content is incompatible with truth, then it follows that God did not say that. Accordingly, if we the interpreters believe, on careful reflection, that it would not so conduce or is thus incompatible, we are to conclude that God did not say that. As a consequence, however, interpreting divine discourse is directly at the mercy of the vagaries of human belief... If the proposed interpretation is false or does not conduce to love, then God didn't say it. Accordingly, if I believe it is false or believe it does not conduce to love, I must not attribute it to God. As John Locke put it, the outcome of biblical interpretation threatens to be "that the scripture serves but, like a nose of wax, to be turned and bent, just as may fit the contrary orthodoxies of different societies. For it is these several systems, that to each party are the just standards of truth, and the meaning of the scripture is to be measured only by them." Locke describes the menace vividly. One of the menacing possibilities is that we will miss what God has said: miss the commands, the promises, the assertions. Because we firmly believe that to say such-and-such would be to speak falsely or unlovingly, we conclude that God didn't say that. But God did. Our false beliefs prevented us from discerning that God said it; they screened out the divine discourse. The other menacing possibility is that we come to believe that God said what God in fact did not say. A bit more reflection or inquiry, or reflection and inquiry shaped less by self-interest, would have made clear that if someone were to say that, he would be speaking falsely or unlovingly; and since God doesn't do that, God didn't say that. The outcome, either way, is that instead of conforming our beliefs and actions to what God says, we so

8 interpret God's speech as to make it conform to our beliefs. We continue to acknowledge, formally, the authority of God's speech; but what emerges from our practice of interpretation is divine speech made in our own image. Coping with the anxiety I conclude that there is no way to avoid employing our convictions as to what is true and loving in the process of interpreting for divine discourse - no way to circumvent doing that which evokes the wax nose anxiety, the anxiety, namely, that the convictions with which we approach the process of interpretation may lead us to miss discerning what God said and to conclude that God said what God did not say. The anxiety is appropriate. The risks cannot be evaded. But they can be diminished; and it is on that, then, that we should concentrate our attention. So let me close with some remarks on diminishing the risks... One minimizes the risk by doing one's best to remain genuinely open to the possibility that the beliefs with which one approached the enterprise of interpreting for divine discourse are mistaken. Interpreting Scripture is not an isolated enterprise but is to be seen and practiced as a component in one's attempt to arrive at that totality of beliefs which seems to one, on reflection, to have the greatest likelihood of being true. Sometimes that requires concluding that God was not saying what, on first reading, God appeared to be saying. But often it requires concluding that the beliefs one had about the world, about human beings, about history, about God, or whatever, were mistaken. Genuine openness to the possibility that the beliefs one had were mistaken, and creative imagining of different options for achieving reflective equilibrium, are typically nurtured by breaking out of one's solitude and comparing one's own interpretations with those of others, especially with those of others whose epistemic condition and situation is significantly different from one's own: persons of different gender, persons from different positions in the social hierarchy, persons of different nationality, persons of different race, persons from different historical eras, persons with different educational backgrounds, persons of different temperament, persons of different theological orientation or ecclesiastical location. Of course, awareness of this diversity of interpretations remains relatively useless unless one also struggles to become self-critical - self-suspicious in the modern sense of "suspicion"- so as to be able to listen to those alternative interpretations, genuinely listen. Parochialism, especially arrogant parochialism, makes it inevitable that scripture becomes a wax nose in our hands... Finally, the most important point remains: one minimizes the risk that Scripture is becoming a wax nose in one's hands by coming to know God better. I have several times made the point that though our knowledge of human beings comes in good measure from interpreting their discourse, it is also a fundamental prerequisite of interpreting a human being's discourse that one already know a good deal about that person. Interpretation of a person's discourse occurs, and can only occur, in the context of knowledge of that person. When one fears that in spite of having heard all the words a human being uttered and knowing all their meanings, one is nevertheless missing or misinterpreting that person's discourse, the thing to do is get to know that

9 person better so as to be able better to determine what they would and would not have wanted to say. So too for God: to interpret God's discourse more reliably, we must come to know God better. A hermeneutics of divine discourse requires supplementation with discussions of other ways of knowing God, and of ways of knowing God better. And engaging in the practice of interpreting texts so as to discern God's discourse requires engaging simultaneously in whatever practices might yield a better knowledge of God. Those practices will be practices of the heart as well as the head, of devotion as well as reflection.