Synoptic Workbook 95 (C. Murphy, SCU GPPM, PMIN 206)

Transcription

1 Synoptic Workbook 95 Exercise 7. Theological Reflection on a Method (homework) Introduction Theological reflection is the practice of contemplative reading and reflection on scripture. You probably came to this class with some experiences of theological reflection practices. If you have ever practiced lectio divina, if you ve ever done the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, if you ve ever read scripture and pondered the connection between its stories and ethical instructions and your own life, you ve done theological reflection. For this week s exercise, I d like to introduce you to a theological reflection practice that I have found especially helpful when entering into conversation with scripture. This practice comes from The Art of Theological Reflection, by Patricia O Connell Killen and John DeBeer (New York: Crossroad, 1994). Directions for Homework Here are the steps of the practice. It s best to write your responses during your reflection. Then, when you are finished with your reflection, review your notes and type up a 3-page paper in which you walk a reader through your insights. Plan a paragraph for each major section (story/method, image, situation in life, etc.). This practice is the basis for my suggestions for the pastoral application you will do in the final part of your exegetical research paper, so you have a chance to try it here before doing something like it for your research paper. This practice normally works by asking you to pick a story in scripture, narrate it neutrally, and identify the heart of the matter in the passage. I m going to ask you to adapt that practice for THIS exercise alone. Pick a pericope in the gospels, but also pick a critical method and think about the story using that method. You pick the passage and method. It s recommended that you use the same passage and method you ve chosen for your exegetical research paper so that you can fold this reflection into your final paper. However, you are also welcome to choose one of the three new methods profiled on the next few pages. Then, for the practice below, reflect on the method (rather than the story). Story Read the story using your method. What does your method suggest as significant features? Introduce these features as briefly and neutrally as possible. What is the heart of the matter? Identify the heart of the matter by noting the most significant insight your method reveals. Image Sit with the method you applied to this story, and especially with the heart of the matter, or central insight offered by the method, until an image emerges. Situation in Life Let the image lead you to an experience in your life. What is the experience? Narrate its elements as neutrally as possible; suspend judgment. What were your thoughts and feelings in that situation? What did you think about it until now? What does the image tell you about the situation? About your interpretation up until this point? Is that old interpretation confirmed, challenged, revised? Return to Scripture Reread your story (this time the story, not the method). Do you see anything new? Has your attitude toward the passage or the characters in it changed? Do you hear its message differently now? Return to Life What will you take from this story and your reflection on it into your daily life?

2 96 Synoptic Workbook Even if you choose to use one of the two methods we ve practiced in class (narrative criticism or redaction criticism) because you are using this method in your final paper, I recommend that you review the descriptions of the following three methods. In contrast to narrative and redaction criticism, each one of these is current, and each reflects the interests and concerns often voiced by students in the Graduate Program in Pastoral Ministries. I would like you to read an essay on one of these three methods before our next class, so that you understand where gospel studies are heading. You will find essays on each method in the Readings on Method folder on ERes. Social-Scientific Criticism Social-scientific criticism is an exegetical method that attempts to explore the original social and cultural setting of a text through clues in the text s content and rhetoric and through the analysis of other ancient evidence. The critic assumes that the world in which these texts were written is very different from our contemporary world; therefore, a modern interpreter cannot simply make claims about the text s meaning without first understanding the social conventions and assumptions of the author s world. Emphasis in this method is less on the individual author, as it would be in narrative criticism, and more on the social community within which s/he lived and communicated, because meaning is understood as a socially-constructed phenomenon. Just as a literary critic has to choose whether to focus on text, author or reader, and if text, whether to focus on plot, character, etc., so too a social-scientific critic has to make a lot of choices in the design of her study. All of these choices depend entirely on the question you want to explore, or the thing you d like to find out. So figure that out first, and everything else will fall into place. Here are the choices you ll have to make: 1. Focus Cultural system Social system 2. Scope Macro-level Micro-level Are you interested in codes of behavior and patterns of meaning that govern social relations and institutions? Examples: honor and shame, personality structure, hospitality, purity and pollution. Or are you interested in social relations, groups, organizations, institutions, events and political organization? Examples: family networks, gender relations, political institutions or processes, economic patterns of production, exchange, occupation, social classes, religious ideologies or ritual behavior, group formation and maintenance. Will you widen the scope to examine an empire-wide or regional phenomenon? Or is your interest in something smaller, such as dynamics in a particular village or social class or family? 3. Temporal Synchronic Are you interested in a particular moment in time? Range 4. Entry Point Diachronic Text Context 5. Direction Inductive Deductive Or are you interested in tracing a value or social system that was operative over a long period of time? Will you start with a particular gospel passage or archaeological or epigraphic artifact and use it to discern features of the cultural or social landscape? Or will you examine a feature of the cultural or social landscape and then read your text as an example of or in contrast to that feature? Will you collect a lot of data from the ancient evidence and build a hypothesis from that? Or will you begin with a hypothesis or a model of how a social system or cultural value works and apply that to your evidence/text?

3 Synoptic Workbook 97 As you can see, there is a great deal of variety in the sorts of projects you might choose. There are also numerous sub-methods upon which you can rely. Social-scientific of course refers to the social sciences and in biblical applications the social sciences that are particularly prominent are sociology, anthropology, archaeology, economics, political science, and law. For further guidance on the method, see the bibliography below, which includes some essays posted on ERes in the Readings on Method folder. Elliott, John H. What is Social-Scientific Criticism?, Guides to Biblical Scholarship, New Testament Series. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, Horrell, David G., ed. Social-Scientific Approaches to New Testament Interpretation. Washington, D. C.: T & T Clark, Malina, Bruce J. The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology, 3d rev. ed. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, Social-Scientific Approaches and the Gospel of Matthew. In Methods for Matthew (ed. Mark Allan Powell; Methods in Biblical Interpretation; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009) Murphy, Catherine M. Another Angle on the Baptist Movement: Social-Scientific Criticism. In John the Baptist: Prophet of Purity for a New Age (Interfaces; Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press/Michael Glazier, 2003) Neyrey, Jerome H., ed. The Social World of Luke-Acts: Models for Interpretation. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson, Rhoads, David. Social Criticism: Crossing Boundaries. In Mark and Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies, 2d ed. (ed. Janice Capel Anderson and Stephen D. Moore; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008) Feminist Criticism Feminist criticism is the analysis of biblical texts that seeks to recover the experience of women in antiquity and to critique norms and interpretations whereby that experience was and is marginalized. The feminist critic begins with the observation that ancient texts were mostly written by men and thus communicate men s view of reality. Women s perspectives, insofar as these differ(ed) from men s perspectives, are rarely visible. Thus women appear in the biblical texts often as the objects rather than the subjects of religious experience and ecclesial debate. To remedy this imbalance, the feminist critic reconstructs and emphasizes women s experience as it is indirectly revealed in the text, and presents the results as a challenge to churches today. Feminist critics also examine the assumptions of the text for gender constructs of both men and women. Increasingly, feminist critics from all over the world are focusing on the diverse structures of oppression under which women and men function (race, ethnicity, national origin, economic class, ability, etc.); they are recognizing and analyzing the multiple systems of power that complicate the positions and identities of women and men around the world.

4 98 Synoptic Workbook Feminist criticism is not a stand-alone method, but rather utilizes other methods such as narrative or redaction criticism and uses the results to answer one or more additional questions, such as: Is there a woman or a woman s point of view in this text? 2. How are women portrayed in this text? Do they speak? Are we given access to their point of view? 3. Who has the power in this text? How is power distributed? How do women get what they want (if they do)? And what do women want? 4. How does the text represent uniquely female experiences, such as childbearing or menstruation, or traditionally female experiences, such as child-rearing? 5. How have women s lives and voices been suppressed by this text? Are women made to speak and act against their own interests? 6. What hidden gender assumptions lie behind this text (e.g., that women lead men astray, that women cannot be trusted)? 7. Is the import of the passage to reinforce or to alter contemporary gender roles? Does the text betray any anxiety about changing gender roles? 8. Whose interests are being served? The feminist critic has to make several choices in the design of his study. The first choice is one of focus: what text or character or gender issue will be central? The second choice is one of method: what exegetical method will you partner with feminist questions (common ones include narrative, redaction, and social-scientific criticisms)? The third choice is your question: which of the above questions is most interesting to you or most suggested by the focal text? Anderson, Janice Capel. Feminist Criticism: The Dancing Daughter. In Mark and Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies, 2d ed. (ed. Janice Capel Anderson and Stephen D. Moore; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008) Kraemer, Ross Shepard and Mary Rose D Angelo, eds. Women and Christian Origins. New York: Oxford University Press, Seim, Turid Karlsen. Feminist Criticism. In Methods for Luke (ed. Joel B. Green; Methods in Biblical Interpretation; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010) Wainwright, Elaine M. Feminist Criticism and the Gospel of Matthew. In Methods for Matthew (ed. Mark Allan Powell; Methods in Biblical Interpretation; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009) Wicker, Kathleen O Brien, Althea Spencer Miller and Musa W. Dube, eds. Feminist New Testament Studies: Global and Future Perspectives, Religion/Culture/Critique. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, Postcolonial Criticism Postcolonial theory is a critical discourse that grew out of the dissolution of empires in the 19th and 20th centuries and the emergence of independent nations. This transition created a growing awareness of the ways that dominant empires had defined the other, that is the subject peoples, so as to justify their subjugation. 16 This particular list is derived from J. Cheryl Exum, Feminist Criticism: Whose Interests Are Being Served? in Judges and Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies (ed. Gale A. Yee; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995)

5 Synoptic Workbook 99 The Christian scriptures were generated in a similar imperial context, and new research is indicating that New Testament theology, ethics and ideology both oppose and conform to imperial values in sometimes surprising ways. Once Christianity became the dominant religion of the Roman Empire, the situation became more complex: now those in power inherited a scriptural canon that privileged the marginalized, but they used it during the colonial period to justify and maintain their superior position. This created some interesting historical paradoxes particularly in Europe s and the United States imperial adventures of the 16th-21st centuries, as the New Testament language of kingdom, mission and new world were transformed into tools of empire, and as Pax (peace), on the Ara Pacis, Rome A symbol of the abundance and prosperity that Caesar Augustus had brought to his people. tools to critique empire. As colonies gained political independence in the mid-20th century, the New Testament was transformed yet again. New critical voices have arisen to challenge the dominant ways of reading the tradition and to offer new readings to take their place. For those interested in issues of global justice, postcolonial criticism offers a practice that is both broader and more challenging than traditional liberation theology. A postcolonial critic might argue that liberation theology is not really so liberating: it relies on a Marxist critique, which is a product of the West; it focuses on class structures as the predominant system of oppression, while there are interlocking systems that ought to complicate that picture (gender, ethnicity, etc.); it privileges the very biblical text that was used by colonizers as proof of the inferiority of indigenous religious traditions; and it imagines the Exodus tradition as the paradigm of liberation when it actually sets the stage for colonial conquest in the Book of Joshua. Postcolonial criticism privileges indigenous traditions, texts, and ways of knowing ( subaltern knowledge ); it examines intersectional experiences of oppression, including the complicated position of the colonizer; it explores the deployment of the Bible both by colonizer and colonized as part of the ever-shifting discourse between participants in the colonial encounter; and it examines the biblical text itself in terms of the colonial dynamics involved in its production and interpretation. The postcolonial critic has to make several choices in the design of her study. The first choice is whether to examine the imperial circumstances behind the gospel s production, the deployment of the gospel in Europe s colonial expansion, or the reception, use and critique of the text by indigenous peoples historically or in the present-day. Dube, Musa W. Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible. St. Louis: Chalice, Kelber, Werner H. Roman Imperialism and Early Christian Scribality. In The Postcolonial Biblical Reader (ed. R. S. Sugirtharajah; Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2006) Liew, Tat-siong Benny. Postcolonial Criticism: Echoes of a Subaltern s Contribution and Exclusion. In Mark and Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies, 2d ed. (ed. Janice Capel Anderson and Stephen D. Moore; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008) Segovia, Fernando F. Postcolonial Criticism and the Gospel of Matthew. In Methods for Matthew (ed. Mark Allan Powell; Methods in Biblical Interpretation; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009) Sugirtharajah, R. S. Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.