Evangelicals may well be nervous about the notion that doctrine develops. Examples of Catholic dogmas such as the immaculate conception of Mary and her assumption immediately come to mind. Isn’t that where development of doctrine inevitably leads?
However, before we throw out doctrinal development, we might want to listen to what Vanhoozer has to say about it. His understanding is hardly different from Congar’s. Although he does not ground development in Christology the way Congar does, I suspect that Vanhoozer would agree with Congar on the christological foundation. Vanhoozer speaks quite freely about the “meaning potential” of biblical texts, and makes this observation: “As the potential of the Old Testament is realized over the ‘great time’ of the canon, so too the potential of the canon is realized over the ‘great time’ of church history.” Vanhoozer explicitly uses “development of doctrine” language to describe this unfolding of the meaning potential of the biblical text: “The development of doctrine is thus a matter of improvising with a canonical script.” In fact, Vanhoozer’s language emphasizes development in some ways more strongly than does Congar’s. We repeatedly encounter in Vanhoozer the language of imagination, as well as related terms, such as improvisation, spontaneity and creative understanding. For Vanhoozer, development of doctrine is based on the church’s creative improvisation on the biblical text.
–Hans Boersma, J.I. Packer Professor of Theology at Regent College, Vancouver. B.C., Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011)
Athanasius (in line with serial efforts before him) argued that Prov 8:22ff (read together with John 1, Phil 2, Col 1, Gen 1) yielded exegetical ‘proof’ of ‘of one substance’ (contra the Arian position). Is this the same logic lying behind the immaculate conception and does Roman Catholic teaching claim this as dogma on the same grounds? Here we touch on the difference between potential in biblical exegesis (what Aquinas referred to as the ‘literal sense’) and two-source notions of authority in Roman Catholicism. Is Boersma (following Vanhoozer?) suggesting that the immaculate conception and the homoousia arguments lie on the same plane? There is a trend amongst some NA evangelicals, seeing the limitations of previously held views on inspiration and canon, to grant a much greater role to ecclesial creativity. But the question is the role of the biblical text in pressuring such doctrinal conclusions.
“We encounter the language of imagination in Vanhoozer” (and presumably that is salutary). The problem I have is that nowhere does Athanasius et al argue exegetically on the basis of ‘imagination’ but on the basis of the text’s coercion. Is postmodernity’s only way to think about this to describe it as ‘imagination’? The turn to the history of interpretation is an acknowledgment of the limitations of ‘historical-critical single sense objectivity’ since the late 18th century. But one can hope this turn is carefully made. The idea that Prov 8:22ff bespeaks the homoousia — in the wake of historical-critical readings — requires an entirely different awareness of sense-making in a previous period. Calling this ‘imaginative’ seems to invite a lot of confusion, to my mind.
Understanding of the truth develops, the Truth does not. The decisions of a church council, to have reliable validity, must be in accord with the previous councils all the way back to and including the 1st Council of Nicaea.
The difficult thing for moderns is the failure to grasp how doctrine for the Fathers was not just pious tidiness (‘Christ must be one with the Father or we have a weak christology’) but exegesis. The better studies of the period underscore this (Wilken, Frances Young, the new Ancient Christian Commentary series, John Behr, et al). Councils are True because they grasp the literal sense of scripture, apprehended through the Rule of Faith.
Dr. Seitz,
Could you say more about the Rule of Faith, first with respect to the fact that it would seem to have a somewhat vague meaning for post-moderns, I assume because of the various interpretations, by post-moderns, of its use by the Fathers; and second, what are to be said of councils at present given what I presume to be an inability – of all Churches – to grasp the literal sense of Scripture (defined in patristic, not modern terms)? Surely not that councils are irrelevant, but in division, surely that they are not True. Could you offer your perspective. Thanks,
Katie
Hard to comment on ‘councils at present’ as it is difficult to define them, given a divided Church (and now an internally divided Communion for Anglicanism).
You are correct about the post-modern appeal to ‘Rule of Faith’. Does this mean a consensus fidelium as Augustine meant the word? and if so, what happens when the consensus goes missing? In the ante-Nicene fathers the ‘rule of faith’ or rule of truth (Irenaeus) has to do with the proper Christian handling of the scriptures inherited from Israel such that their literal sense brokers God in Christ, revealed by the Holy Spirit. ‘In the beginning’ of Genesis 1, e.g., is taken to mean agency more than temporality, so ‘in beginning — the Word — God created the heavens and earth’ — the OT has this sense inherently, but the Rule of Faith hears the testimony to Christ in the apostolic bequest and so is able now to identify that sense as truly there.
This is why on my ear improvisation and imagination and so forth seems not to grasp what is at stake.
Or, ask a modern historical reader what Proverbs 8:22 is ‘about’ and the answer is likely to be ‘wisdom or wisdom theology’ in accordance with the history of Israelite Religion. But if one presses the question, ‘but what is wisdom or wisdom theology’ — that is, to what does it point, immediately one can see how hard ontology is for the historical reader asking about an author’s intention at a fixed moment and stopping there.
The Rule of Faith says there is more, and says that it inheres in the literal sense, as intended by God, and as spoken forth intelligibly by a human agent, inspired to say more (sometimes) than he/she knows.
So then let us take something like Genesis 1:27. If indeed it is agency about which we speak (which, could we also not get to by seeing Christ as our referent from the basis of fulfillment [by which I mean both an historical action as well as an end]?), the scope of this passage must be cosmic in origin (Jn 1:1, Col 1:16-17, Rev 21:6). Therefore, we must say first and foremost, that all things have their actual existence – they would not otherwise exist in some sort of (Cajetan-esq ‘pura natura’) – through the offering of Christ’s own body since it is in and through Christ by which all things are created, sustained and ended. If we say this, then we have to admit, do we not, that all of history, including that which we do not yet see, has already been given in the historical forms of the OT. Thus any interpretation of our place as Church or Nation as a whole, at present would have to be found within the OT Scriptures. In contrast, to speak of ‘improvisation’ or ‘imagination,’ even with intention to refrain from positing that interpretation and the work of the Spirit does not extend beyond Christ’s revelation, seems to suggest that our interpretation is not limited to the literal sense as given in Israel’s history. This is just a wild stab at things. Any more specific direction? Thanks.
Dr. Seitz, thank you for your contributions to this thread. In regard to your #2, I find a rule developed by R.G. Collingwood to be very helpful (something I’d like to give more thought to some day). Every text (worth reading, that is) implies an exact question to which it is the exact and only answer. Reconstruct the question in your mind, and you have reconstructed the process of thought involved in the text. Thus, can I reconstruct Proverbs 8:22 as compelling a question to which homoousia is the answer? If so, the overwhelming odds are that I will gain new insight into Proverbs. In my experience, at least, that is always the case with New Testament citations of the Old — they stand on their own as powerful and coherent exegesis (the literal sense?). Collingwood was intentionally putting forth an historical argument. The rule seems to me to help avoid, on the one hand, simply repeating Athanasius, which we can’t do; yet, on the other hand, it engages historical writings categorically in terms of their own thought as truthful statements in dialog with ours — and, lo and behold, we learn something in the dialog! BTW, thanks much for the discussion of “the literal sense”. It has broadened my understanding of the term.
As long as I’m at it — to engage a historical text as truthful cuts off the escape of “imagination”. If we refuse to respect the method of, say, Athanasius on its own terms, then of course it’s merely arbitrary. Let’s use our imaginations and have fun. It’s especially dangerous when we allow ourselves summary and dismissive attitudes toward major figures — “we know” what they have to say (we don’t!). If we accept a historical text as a full partner, we approach it as learners, and we accept the results as true (or false) judgments, things change fast.
Katie–my comment about agency was specific to Gen 1:1. The greek ‘arche’ had already been taken in this sense by Philo, as ‘wisdom.’ Throw ‘in arche en ha logos, kai ha logos en pros ton theon’ into the logic (John 1), and it was in Christian hands a small move to ‘in/by the logos God created the heavens and the earth.’ This needn’t be a rejection of the temporal character of ‘bereshith’ — though in Hebrew this has it own challenges. But a seeing more there all the same. Gen 1:27 seems to me a different case because its associative universe within the larger scriptural witness is not the same as with ‘arche’.
#8 — I’d want to study the argument of RG Collingwood in more detail. I’d say OT texts do not exhaust their potential by an exegetical question along the lines of ‘what did the reconstructed author mean’ because a) a divinely inspired agent may not know all that can be said by ‘mean’ and b) historical inquiry has made more complicated the idea of ‘author’ than was so for the premodern reader.
#9 — this is what anthropologists can refer to as the distinction between emic (native talk) and etic (talk about natives) evaluative stances. ‘Imagination’ is etic evaluation (and I think it is wrong). Emic evaluation asks: what did Athanasius think he was doing? The scholarly discourse answers either a) saying Prov 8:22 means that ‘because the church says so’ or b) Prov 8:22 means that because that is its ‘literal sense’ (understood to be something other than ‘historical sense’ a la 19th century).
#10 — I meant to say reading Proverbs 8:22 through the eyes of Athanasius — and so involving more than the “author” of Proverbs might have intended. As a 1983 graduate of Yale Div and a lifelong Childs devotee, I have a horror of the “reconstructed author” of Biblical scholarship.
#11– well done! Childs was leagues ahead in his thinking and we all miss him.
Dr. Seitz,
Thank you for the clarification … it is quite helpful to a paper i am working on!