Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-75dct Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-08T07:19:41.078Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 8 - Ethics and contemporary reading

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

J. I. H. McDonald
J. I. H. McDonald
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Get access

Summary

So we listen to the text. But with whose voice does it speak? It is a text still, not a person. It has no voice of its own... The text is mute. So apart from the prior assumption, from the very outset, that something speaks through the text which called the text and myself into being, the text is cast into a swamp of total relativism, and interpretation is reduced to ventriloquy. So I repeat: in the text I hope to encounter an alien speech which is finally the self-disclosure of God.

(Walter Wink)

We listen to the text: to the Other. With this observation we are brought back to Schweitzer, with his living Stranger; to Barth, with his insistence on the One who is qualitatively different from ourselves; and to Bultmann, with his emphasis on encountering the Word. As Ricoeur has emphasised, the text comes to us as the witness of the faith community to the object of its faith, so that as we engage with the text we hear the summons that it brings to us. In the text, interpreted with integrity, we find, not our mirror image, but a wholly different reality which relativises us, yet comes as a gift of grace.

But there is a difficulty. In order to listen to the text, we must overcome the fact that, at least for many, western scholarship has expropriated the Bible, so that many are no longer confident that they have access to its interpretation.

Type
Chapter
Information
Biblical Interpretation and Christian Ethics , pp. 200 - 246
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×