The apostle anticipated the time when “itching ears” would drive Christian audiences to reject sound doctrine in favor of teaching that would merely suit their own desires. His remedy, given solemnly to Timothy: “proclaim the message,” teaching it with persistence, patience, sobriety, and a readiness to endure suffering. Thankfully, Timothy and his progeny have followed this stiff advice, making the Christian message available today in more cultures, languages, and settings than ever.
Yet, diseased ears continue their baleful influence. In a Sightings piece last year, Martin Marty bemoaned the fame, following, and feckless scholarship of David Barton, whose cause is “to show from eighteenth-century documents that [the] Founding Fathers determinedly and explicitly established a Christian state, which leaves all non-Christians as second-class citizens.”[1] Leaving aside the claims here concerning the Christian nature of the early Republic, I note the passions so easily enflamed by anyone preaching the idea of a Christian state. Yet where is the evidence—on Barton-inspired websites or any other—that such a position could be considered biblically sound doctrine?
To prepare Christian teachers to deal with this and all other modern cases of itching ears, up steps N. Clayton Croy. His remedy—Prima Scriptura: An Introduction to New Testament Interpretation—is far longer than the advice that Timothy received. But in its goal and serious-minded tone, it stands squarely in the tradition of those original, inspired words.
In Prima Scriptura (Scripture as “primary,” “first,” “final”), Croy, true to his Wesleyan Methodist roots, jettisons the venerable sola Scriptura, darling of Reformed stalwarts everywhere. Yet as he develops his comprehensive view of New Testament interpretation, it’s clear that he yields to no one in his high view of Scripture. Furthermore, in language that Pietists would appreciate, Croy hopes that, even through the blood, sweat, and tears of the full-bodied exegesis that he advocates, the NT interpreter may actually “encounter God in the text and be led by the Holy Spirit in discovering meaning and being transformed by it.”
The interpretation Croy teaches is hands-on, inductive, creative, text-focused—and downright demanding.
Croy writes for confessional readers of all stripes—Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox—who “belong to communities of faith that affirm the authority of Scripture and the faith of the classic creeds.” More specifically, he’s addressing leaders of Christian communities, and those who aspire to be such, who wish to study and reflect on Scripture with the aim of “informing and shaping the life of faith.” At least on the surface, then, Croy’s intended audience is defined rather narrowly by religious commitment and ecclesiastical position. Yet in its implications and potential benefits, this is a volume that one could fervently wish would play widely across the Christian landscape.
Chapters 1 and 2 move from the modern reader (“Analyzing and Preparing the Interpreter”) back to the NT (“Analyzing the Text”), with particular emphasis on a 12-step method of exegeting the text. Chapter 3 (“Evaluating and Contemporizing the Text”) returns us to the present, explaining why and how to utilize the “hermeneutical adjuncts” of tradition, reason, and experience in grasping the contemporary significance of what we have learned about a biblical text from our exegesis. The final chapter (“Appropriating the Text and Transforming the Community”) reminds readers that “the work of Scripture is not complete until interpreters and their communities respond to its message and are transformed.” James (“be doers of the word, and not merely hearers”) would be proud.
Throughout, Croy pleads for a NT interpretation that is informed by engagement with Bible readers from the broadest possible range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. To that end, chapter 1 asks interpreters to identify their own subjectivity, especially including their social location, theological identity, and life experiences. Croy then goes further, charging would-be NT interpreters to prepare themselves spiritually by embracing honesty, openness (to the text), obedience (to how each genre in the text demands to be read), and piety (expecting to meet and respond to God in the process of studying the text).
Chapter 2, fully two-thirds of the entire book, is definitely the workhouse of Croy’s method, with its fairly standard approach emphasizing “persistent and painstaking observation.”[2] The author grants that the method may seem mechanical, yet, along with the mechanics, he asks interpreters to approach their work in a spirit of dialogue with the text. Such an approach implies a personal openness that expects to be surprised by the text, requiring a humility and a teachability that never come naturally. Exactly the place for the piety that Croy pleads for to kick in.
First step: survey the writing as a whole. Let’s say you’re interested in interpreting Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. Croy assigns students five ways to make this initial survey:
- guided reading—spend time getting the big picture of the letter and its author; also, notice where you the reader find yourself intrigued or curious or irritated;
- use of multiple translations—what’s the “feel” of each? how does each one deal with the more complicated parts of the letter?
- summary and outline—write a brief summary of the whole book, and prepare a detailed outline;
- chart—using a “landscape” orientation, prepare a table with several rows: divide the first row into four parts, one for each chapter, and give a title to each; divide the second row according to the natural divisions and subdivisions of the text; use the third (and additional) rows to chart the various themes, repeated words, and topics Paul uses;
- pictograph—using stick figures and cartoons, prepare an illustrated chart of Philippians.
For the last three points here, Croy gives his own answers. In addition, he gives exercises for students, as he does with each of the twelve steps.
All to say that the interpretation Croy teaches is hands-on, inductive, creative, text-focused—and downright demanding. Steps 2-12 keep up the pressure on readers, broadening the topics to include all manner of textual, literary, linguistic, grammatical, historicocultural, and theological concerns.
Chapter 3 brings the NT interpreter from the ancient world back into our own, shifting from exegesis to hermeneutics. After working hard to understand the meaning of a NT text in its own right, we next must ask how it relates to life here and now. We may have detected some ambiguity or even diversity in where the biblical text is headed (say, in its views toward the secular state), and we may find that its message speaks to a pressing modern issue only very indirectly. Furthermore, once we engage seriously with a range of Christian conversation partners, we may find ourselves in gridlock. What then? Well, then we’re ready for Croy’s third chapter, where he walks us through the necessity and value of using what we might call the “ropes” of tradition, reason, and experience, which Bible interpreters of all ages have used to help tie together the ancient and modern worlds.
Tradition, which asks us to give a voice to past members of the interpreting community, has notably bequeathed to us the classic Christian creeds, which distill what earlier believers found “essential, ancient, and consensual.”[3] Reason engages in a curious dance with faith. Exegesis obviously can go nowhere without reason; for its part, reason has no choice but to release faith as it arises to affirm the core Christian mysteries (notably, Trinity and incarnation). Experience is significant, in part because Christian faith includes the promise of experiential difference (Jesus: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest”). To evaluate a biblical text strictly in terms of my private experience, however, quickly becomes self-serving. Croy has a better idea: take “experience” not simply individually but as “broadly based human experience that is multinational and multiethnic.”
What to do when tradition, reason, and experience speak with no clear voice regarding a disputed issue? What metacriterion should we appeal to? Answer: prima Scriptura. And within Scripture, not just any word should reign (“love” and “justice” currently have their vocal defenders); the highest court of appeal must be the incarnate Word himself, in whose words alone, when acted on, we discover the foundation able to survive all manner of storms. Croy’s clarion conclusion: “Communities that confess Jesus as Lord must be attuned to him and interpret Scripture accordingly. They should be wary of ethical and theological commitments that are contrary to the person and work of Christ, commitments that are unable to find even a hint or trajectory in his mission and message.”
Finally, chapter 4 leaves readers with the hardest job of all: appropriate Scripture in such a way that actual transformation occurs—in me personally, in the functioning and fruit of Christian communities, in every last sphere of environmental, social, and intercultural life on this planet. Thy kingdom come indeed!
I like Croy’s grand, gritty approach to NT interpretation. It won’t sell to the masses. And students and preachers may complain of intense suffering as they grind their way through the steps of this comprehensive method. Yet when those thus prepared stand up to “proclaim the message,” we in the audience will find that we are getting the best possible medicine for our diseased ears, plus the sharpest picture we could wish of the transformations yet before us.
Craig Noll is an editor for the Eerdmans Publishing Company and erstwhile student and teacher of linguistics and New Testament Greek.
1. “David Barton’s Christian America,” May 9, 2011.
2. For a similar approach to exegesis itself, see the excellent Interpreting the New Testament Text: Introduction to the Art and Science of Exegesis, ed. Darrell L. Bock and Buist M. Fanning (Crossway Books, 2006).
3. Note also John Thompson’s comment, “We don’t fully know what the Bible means until we know something about what the Bible has meant” (Reading the Bible with the Dead: What You Can Learn from the History of Exegesis That You Can’t Learn from Exegesis Alone [Eerdmans, 2007], p. 11).
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