Tag Archives: Trinity Institute

Trinity Institute: Day II

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Today begin with Mary Gordon’s talk and a lively discussion, both on the panel at Trinity and among us in Madison. Gordon sad that there are three elements that pervade the stories of Jesus. First, that he has an intimate relationship with his Father; second that the gospels show Jesus was actively involved in people’s lives; and third that he suffered grotesquely and died, but that resurrection demonstrates that his suffering had meaning. On this third point, she quoted Simone Weil to the effect that the genius of Christianity is not that it offers a “supernatural cure for suffering, but that it offers a supernatural use for suffering.” Later, she said also that one cannot uncouple the readings or interpretations of the gospels from the actions those readings produce.

Gerald West led the group on-site and world-wide through the method of “contextual bible study” that he and his colleagues developed in South Africa and in conversation with people in Brazil and the Philippines.

I didn’t have particularly high hopes for the conference. I expected Brueggeman to entertain and provoke. He did so. I expected Gordon’s eloquence. Not knowing anything about the other two scholars and with a passing familiarity with liberation and post-colonial interpretations, I thought the conference would probably disappoint. But it didn’t. It was exciting.

There were two things that struck me. One was the level of discourse on the panel. It was clear that there were deep differences among the panelists. Perhaps the deepest were between the two Catholics. Sister Teresa Okure, who repeatedly appealed to the magisterium in positive ways, citing Vatican II documents as well as documents produced at the African Synod. Gordon spoke often and eloquently about the pain she and others suffer at the hands of the institutional church. But the conversation, in spite of those differences, was though-provoking and civil. The second thing was the stress by several of the speakers on the importance of the community coming together to read scripture.

Episcopalians aren’t very good at reading scripture together. In my experience, bible studies are poorly attended and often degenerate into individualistic reading into the text of one’s own issues and concerns, rather than allowing the text to speak to one’s situation. But time and again, the speakers urged us to find ways of reading and interpreting in community and in conversation between the trained and the less well trained or educated. But I wonder. Reading has become such a solitary activity and relatively uncommon at that. Is it possible to come together as a community to read and interpret together?

Trinity Institute: Reading Scripture through other eyes

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I just got home from the first day of the Trinity Institute’s conference “Reading Scripture through other eyes.” Thanks to Brad Pohlman and Franklin Wilson of Luther Memorial who provided the downlink and invited my participation again this year.

The conference speakers today were Walter Brueggeman, emeritus professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA and Sister Teresa Okure of the West African Catholic Institute. I enjoy the conference because it is one of the few opportunities I  have to engage theological scholarship in community, even if a large part of that community is virtual. Brueggeman and Okure both asked hard questions in their talks. Brueggeman gave an overview of the development of biblical interpretation in the last five hundred years, making use of Paul Ricoeur’s concepts of “pre-critical,” “critical,” and “post-critical” interpretations, the latter involving what Ricoeur called a “second naivete.”

He also stressed the important developments in biblical interpretation in the past thirty years, mentioning the rise of rhetorical criticism, ideology critique (including liberation theology, feminism, and post-colonialism), and the growing appreciation of Jewish approaches. He challenged us to ask questions of the text that let the text come close to people’s experience, and said in the panel discussion that truth claims have to be tested in the presence of pain. He pointed out Freud’s discovery that the self is “thick, layered, and conflicted,” making the connection between Freud’s use of image and story to help people understand themselves, with the traditional methods of Jewish interpreters who explained a story by telling another story. He extended Freud’s insight to the text and to God. The text of scripture is “thick, layered, and conflicted” and reveals a God who is “thick, layered, and conflicted.” Human beings, he observed, are created in the image of that God.

Okure sought to distinguish between the cultural contexts in which scripture was written and in which it is interpreted and the transcendent truth of the gospel. She spoke passionately both about her particular cultural context in Nigeria, and about her institutional context in the Roman Catholic Church.

Much of the discussion following the presentations, both in the panel conversation, and in our group at Luther Memorial, focused on questions of truth, including the truth of Jesus Christ. There’s an account of today’s proceedings here. More on the Trinity Institute here.

Although we were a relatively small group today, our conversation was lively and deep. To hear scholars struggling with important issues like the cultural contexts of reading scripture, and trying to articulate the relationship between the truths in scripture and the limitations of the human cultures in which scripture was written is exhilarating. There was also a provocative discussion about the role of the preacher/pastor and the community as a hermeneutical community, a community that interprets scripture.

We also heard Steed Davidson’s wonderful sermon on “Reading out loud.” He was working with Acts 8, the story of the Ethiopian eunuch. He pointed the importance of Philip as guide, not as teacher, and asked who was more transformed by the experience, who was baptized, since the Greek isn’t clear.

One of the things I want to do at Grace in the coming months and years is some serious bible study and this conference gave me more impetus to do that.

 

More on the Trinity Institute

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Rowan Williams wrote a brief essay for this week’s Newsweek that summarizes much of what he said last week at the Trinity Institute. The essay is available online. In it, he points out pervasive the use of economics to understand relationships (customer, consumer, for example, even in the church), and how any perspective that narrows the range for understanding human being to a single factor diminishes humanity. He concludes:

Our job as human beings is to imagine ourselves—using all the raw materials that science, psychoanalysis, and economics provide us—in the hope that the images we discover and shape will have resonance and harmony with the rhythms of what Christians, and others, call the will and purpose of Almighty God.

He consistently stressed during the institute the importance of both a full account of human being and developing ways to nourish fuller human being. If that truly is the goal, not just of political institutions, but of churches as well, then one might think finding ways of nourishing people who find fuller human being in same-sex relationships, and nourishing those life-giving relationships, ought to be a priority as well. Of course, he argued just that in essays written long before he became Archbishop of Canterbury.

Trinity Institute: Building an Ethical Economy

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This year’s Trinity Institute is taking place today and tomorrow. The topic is Building an Ethical Economy. I was invited by Luther Memorial Church to participate as one of the theological reflection group leaders. To be honest, I was somewhat hesitant, because my background and interest in economics is quite limited. I only took one class in college, and I must of spent much of it sleeping (it met at 2:00 in the afternoon, nap time). I certainly haven’t thought much or read much about the topic in the intervening years, either.

Besides that, Rowan Williams was on the agenda. He’s a brilliant thinker, but a turgid writer. I’d heard him speak more than ten years ago and was very impressed, but I’ve always had trouble understanding his prose, and my perception of him is shaped in part by his work as Archbishop of Canterbury. So I wasn’t expecting a great deal.

Today was great. Williams was brilliant and comprehensible. He pointed out that economics was only one way in which human beings relate to one another and that to reduce everything to economics or the marketplace is false. Money is only a symbol, as language is a symbol. Most importantly, he stressed that the questions we should be asking are about are ultimate end and purpose: human well-being, and that our focus should not be only on the individual but on our shared life, as communities, and as a world community.

He ended by saying that “what makes humanity human is sheer gift, sheer love;” that is to say, God created us in and from love. Love requires relationship and community; that we are “helpless alone, gifted in relationship.”

In the panel discussion that followed his talk and Kathryn Tanner’s, tomorrow’s speaker, Partha Dasgupta said some very insightful and provocative things. I am looking forward to hearing what he has to say tomorrow.

It was fun to sit around in a room and talk about these questions with others. We had an intelligent and provocative conversation.

There’s much more info about the Trinity Institute at its website. Transcripts and webcasts should be available soon.