Margaret Mitchell’s Paul, The Corinthians, and the Birth of Hermeneutics Part Three

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 11:06 pm by Ben Witherington

Margaret Mitchell’s Paul, The Corinthians, and the Birth of Hermeneutics Part Three 2015-03-13T23:06:48-04:00 Ben Witherington

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Towards the end of Margaret Mitchells book (at the beginning of what was her final lecture), Margaret cites a person who has been her regular dialogue partner in this book— Gregory of Nyssa. Here is what he says (cited on page 95):

“One could collect from the rest of the prophetic corpus countless examples in addition to these of the necessity of the ‘theoria'[i.e. contemplative]-reading that accords with the sense of the words. If the ‘theoria’ is rejected however, as pleases some people, the result is what seems to me to be the same as if someone might lay out unworked grain on a table for human beings to eat… without peeling back the stalk, without separating the kernel from the husks by winnowing, without threshing the grain into flour, without preparing bread in a way suitable for the baking arts. Consequently, just as unworked produce is food for beasts and not for humans, thus one could say that the divinely inspired words of scripture not only of the Old Testament, but also many words of the gospel teaching–if they have not been worked over by the refinement of ‘theoria’, are food for irrational rather than rational beings. These gospel words include the winnowing wand that clears the threshing floor, the chaff is blown away, the grain that remains at the feet of the winnower, the unquenchable fire, the good storehouse (Matt. 3.12) the tree that produces evil fruits, the threat of the axe that frighteningly shows its sharp blade to the tree (Matt. 3.10) the stones that take place of human nature (Matt. 3.9) (from his Song of Songs Commentary Prologue).

The point of this little parable is that texts do not easily release their treasures. They must be worked over by intelligent readers who are ready for serious labor, who anticipate the feast that is to come, according to Mitchell (p. 96).

The art of interpreting complex texts, never mind figurative texts like parables is neither easy nor is the skill to do it easily acquired. And yet still, as Mitchell says, Paul with no little irony can say to his rather error=prone readers in 2 Cor. 1.13– ‘we do not write to you anything but what you read and understand.’ Clearly, this sentence must be ironic in character, for if the Corinthians had truly understood 1 Corinthians, Paul would not have needed to write the discourse in which we find this very sentence. If there is one thing I have learned in the last 30 years it is this— if you are unable to read the rhetorical signals of a text like this (i.e. in this case when it is ironic, and when it is deadly serious) you are bound to misinterpret it in a whole new fashion.

There thus arises two problems, one of which has to do with the text, and one of which has to do with its readers. That Paul’s letters were heavy weather is evident not only from 2 Pet. 3 where we hear ‘there are some things in Paul’s letters difficult to understand which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction’ but also from so careful a reader as John Donne who says ‘wheresoever I open Paul’s letters I hear thunder, a thunder which rolls throughout all the earth’.

In short, the meaning the Pauline text is not always self-evident, requires a careful reading and indeed a careful contextual study that is rhetorically adept, and even if with such a reading the text becomes clear, there is the further problem that the reader may be ‘cloudy’ or as the author of 2 Pet. 3 puts it either ignorant or unstable or both, and prone to twist the text in their own preferred directions.

The analogy of Gregory of course suggests that the hermeneut or preacher or teacher has a lot of work to do with the text before it becomes not merely palatable but nourishing to a given audience. This is in part because the text is complex, or because the text is figural or because the genre of the text requires prior understanding (e.g. parables, or the coded language of apocalyptic prophecy).

And then of course there is the problem that a literal reading of a figural or fictional or poetic text is a violation of the way the author intended the text to be read or heard in the first place. Sometimes the speaker expects the audience to attend to the surface meaning of what he says, sometimes the speaker intends for the audience to read his intent more than the mere words on his lips, sometimes the speaker conveys a meaning through tone of voice that would belie the surface meaning if read off cold— for example when Paul says to the Corinthians “I resolved to know nothing among you but Christ and him crucified” and then of course he went on to ‘know’ many other things among them as well, and to discourse on many other things in 1 Corinthians as well.

Paul’s letters are full of such things— consider for example ‘For even if I made you sorry with my letter, I do not regret it, (though I did regret it, for I see that I grieved you with that letter, though only briefly). Now I rejoice, not because of you were grieved, but because your grief led to repentance, for you felt a godly grief, so that you were not harmed in any way by us.” So now we learn there are: 1) several kinds of grief, and 2) Paul only intended the good kind, and 3) he was glad that the good kind happened that led to repentance and renewal of relationship though he says initially he didn’t want to cause them any grief.

The point Mitchell makes is not so much that Paul is slippery, as that what he says is part of an ongoing conversation which cannot really be frozen in time, and has to be interpreted in light of what he said both before and after he said this, has to be interpreted in light of whether it’s tongue in cheek or merely cheeky, has to be interpreted according to the sort of rhetoric and genre it is, and so on.

What all the above suggests is that not merely Mitchell, but Gregory was right in saying that Christians need a guide to the perplexing nature of some of this scriptural material. Having a good translation and a decent mind and the Holy Spirit is apparently not enough in many cases to lead to full understanding of the Scriptures.

Of course, this flies in the face of the fundamentalist assumptions that: 1) those resources are perfectly adequate for interpreting the Bible because, 2) the text is perfectly clear if we just sincerely apply ourselves to the text calling on the Spirit to guide us, and 3) if we are alert, and spiritually attuned then the text itself couldn’t possibly be all that complex, or require detailed study, say in the original languages and contexts in which it was given.

Of course not. That’s too much like hard work. That sort of study often means being dependent on other people, trustworthy guides from the past to help one understand the Bible. It requires study in concert with the rest of the body of Christ over many generations. And that’s a violation of my personal autonomy and my belief that me and Jesus and the Spirit and the Word are all I need to ‘rightly divide the word of truth’.

The truth is, over 2,000 years of water has gone under the bridge, and we all need all the help we can get, mundane and supernatural, to understand these Biblical texts, and not muck up their interpretation. God has given us not merely a Book, he has given us a body of Christ to help us understand the Book, he has given us not merely a mind for what matters, he has given us challenging texts to stretch that mind so that we actually learn new things, actually change our views and sedentary ways, actually grow in Christ.

Certainly, I agree that ancient texts have meaning which has to be figured out in light of their original contexts. The texts still have those same meanings, though their significances and applications change with each situation and generation. Margaret Mitchell calls us to a rebirth of humility when it comes to interpreting Paul and thinking we have full grasped the measure of the man and his writings. She reminds us— we have not. It is much like the famous aphorism of John Donne which he told on himself—

‘when you think you have donne, you have not done, because there is more’.

The question Mitchell’s book raises up for teachers and preachers is— are you serving up bread, or merely uncooked kernels of grain, hard to chew or swallow? If the Word is indeed like a seed sown in a field (see Mark 4), then these sorts of questions are perfectly appropriate.

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