Pushing Past Literalism

Ever since I started down the path of academic theology I have been plagued by a single word: “literal”. No other word has caused me near the same amount of frustration and headaches than this word. Not only is it often, ironically, ill defined and vague, it becomes, also ironically, a license to interpret or translate a text in anyway the person doing the action sees fit. But the real problem is that there are good theologians who use the word “literal” to denote something like “in a way that accounts for the nuance in what the author is intending to communicate” whereas there are even more theologians who use the word “literal” to mean “in the first way it immediately seems to me”. One has the admirable goal to let the text speak for itself in some way, whereas the other is a mish-mash of subconscious eisegesis mixed with poor reading-comprehension. Unfortunately the latter has increased immensely in pop-culture (seriously, watch any movie that quotes Revelation via KJV for the sake of a spooky effect). So then, two things need to happen:

1) New specific vocabulary need to emerge. “Literal” simply has too much baggage to effectively communicate a methodology. When one interprets literally, does that mean they open up the dictionary, spin the wheel, and hope for the best? Or does it mean they approach an author, trying to understand the nuances that come with various sorts of context that might shape one’s view on what the author is trying to communicate? While I opt for the second definition, the word “literal” itself does not carry any clear hint of such a methodology. Perhaps something like “Intentional Interpretation” would communicate the idea properly of interpreting the intention of an author, which would include the description given prior.

2) Pedagogy needs to continue its refining process. The goal of teaching something is not to make it unnecessarily laborious, but to teach something substantial in the most efficient, meaningful ways. When it comes to the task of interpretation, I’ve only read long winded books that do not only teach the methodology, but both the history and justification of methodology. While these sorts of things are important, sometimes people just need a basic “how-to”. Much in the way that we do not explain or justify the pedagogical methods to a child during potty-training or learning to read, it makes little sense to do so with anyone for any subject at an introductory level. As someone undergoing the certification process for personal training, and as someone who both trains himself and others already, saying too much is often just as bad as not saying enough. I had a wonderful professor who had a simple chant that helped us recall the methods of interpretation; he simply had us chant through the different sorts of context we’d come across in the text. Even something as simple as this will be a good deterrent from lackadaisical interpretation.

I have no desire to be someone who just points the finger without bringing anything to the table. With that being said, here are a few questions that I think would aid any interpreter, but particularly inexperienced ones, during their task.

• Author: Who were they? When did they write? Where were they when they wrote it? Who did they write it to?
• Audience: Who was the intended immediate audience? What are phrases or ideas the audience would recognize as common or unfamiliar? Is the audience given in the letter, or is there any indication who it might be?
• History/Culture: Where is this taking place? What are the customs, common languages, imagery, concerns, or common knowledge of the community? What was going on at this point in time?
• Literary: What is written close in proximity to what is being read? How do the surrounding verses, passages, and chapters affect how this verse should be read? This is the first and often most important piece of context to dive into.
• Canon: Where does this fit in with the rest of Scripture? Is this written about elsewhere in a more clear fashion?

These questions are by no means exhaustive, but they should be helpful nonetheless. Sometimes you need to go through these questions thoroughly to have an accurate understanding of the text in question, but sometimes the text is explained by itself at another point. Whether the answers are unclear or crystal, the questions will, at the very worst, waste your time finding out information that was readily available elsewhere. I’ll give a short example:

First John 4:8 says, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” The first question we should ask is clear: what does John mean by “love”? While we could look to the Greek Stoics, the German romantics, or any other person ever who has defined love off of some foreign axiom, we got lucky and John gave us a few examples. John, in his endearing repetitiveness, answers this question both in 1 John 3:16 and 4:9-10. First, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” Then, “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” Lucky for us, John defines love himself within the letter. There may be much to be said about synthesizing what John says about love; that is, how does one define it in their own words (bonus points if you don’t abstract it to a general principle). All that is needed to get the general meaning here is the literary context. One can delve deeper into historical and cultural context to perhaps dig up the significance of self-sacrifice on the behalf of another person and its interaction with “love”, but even without that you’re going to get the general idea.

Let’s change the conversation and terminology surrounding interpretation. Seriously, before anyone else makes more Left Behind movies.