Abstract
Gowler’s contribution to the Wiley-Blackwell Bible Commentaries offers 340 closely-written pages documenting interpretations of James, ancient and modern, scholarly and popular, from a wide range of sources, verbal and visual. It’s an extraordinary achievement in harvesting the many fruits of Jacobean readings over 2000 years. The book opens with a long introduction followed by a chapter-by-chapter interpretation of the text. The commentary draws principally on Chrysostom, Augustine, Bede, Luther, Calvin, Kierkegaard, Douglass, Deems, Mayor, and Tamez. Additionally, from theologians to hymn-writers and preachers, Gowler has searched out a great variety of interpretations, some written from situations of severe poverty and oppression where James’s text has spoken with power.
James is hardly a standard letter, which some have considered to be barely Christian in its theology and which Martin Dibelius (with whom Gowler does not enter into debate) saw as a fairly disparate collection of Hellenistic ‘admonitions of general ethical content’ (p. 16). For Gowler the heart of James’ message lies clearly in its call for practical action. Its focus is on a kind of faith which bears fruits and will not tolerate injustice and the oppression of the poor. It has spoken powerfully to those experiencing grinding poverty and forced others (Dibelius’ who reads references to the poor in the light of a Jewish tradition of the poor in spirit) to ‘domesticate’ its message. Gowler is keen to point out the strong echoes of Jesus’ teaching in the letter. He quotes Mayor’s claim that James contains more of the teachings of Jesus than ‘all the other epistles put together’ and indeed that he may perhaps have ‘preserved sayings of our Lord not recorded in the Gospels’ (p. 21). This is what renders the letter Christian, not, specifically, its teaching about the theological or soteriological nature of Jesus the Christ.
Gowler acknowledges a debt to Bakhtin, the Russian writer inspired by Dostoievsky’s ‘dialogism’, the way the voices of his characters are ‘full and equally valid voices’. (p. 4) Truth is found not ‘inside the head of an individual person, it is born between people collectively searching for the truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction.’ (p. 3) So our understanding of James is shaped by, and emerges from, our dialogue with the history of reception of James as we engage with the different ways readers in different contexts and in dialogue with earlier readers have read this text.
But how do we come at the truth that lies not in James’ head, but in that complex and centuries’ long conversation? We should hardly expect the author of a reception-historical commentary to distil that truth for us (to have grasped that truth and to allow us to peer inside his head). Rather we should look for enlightenment as our understanding is challenged and enlarged by the on-going conversations that he introduces to us. What are the criteria of success?
Firstly, the commentary must introduce us to a wide range of voices from different modes of communication, visual as well as verbal, popular and scholarly, Christian and, where available, non-Christian. Judged by this criterion, Gowler’s book is a very significant achievement. For some this may indeed be a sufficient measure of the success of such a commentary. And, no doubt, a rich anthology of different presentations and re-presentations of James’ text can contribute greatly to our understanding of the text, its potential for meaning.
Yet a more thoroughly Bakhtinian, ‘dialogical’ approach demands more. It needs to draw us into the conversation between these different voices and thereby to help us participate in the search for the truth, which is ‘born’ in such interaction and engagement. Now it is true that an anthologising approach to such a task may indeed draw us in, find us reading with or against the grain of a given interpretation, a hymn, a sermon, a historical argument. It may indeed, as it presents a particular reading, draw us into debates contemporary to that reading and find us turning back to other passages which have dealt with these themes. The provision of a generous index, as here, is a great aid to such readerly engagement.
Can one ask for more? Here I think there are a number of ways in which the commentator can assist in the process of recovering the memory of these long-lasting conversations, of bringing to mind the truth to which they tend. The first is mundane enough and consists in no more and no less than a good introduction which can heighten the readers’ awareness of the different voices they will encounter in the text and of the way in which these voices have drawn on and interacted with each other. We should never underestimate the difficulties of picking up what is being said in any conversation. Individual contributions may lose much of their force and their subtlety if they are divorced from their setting in a dialogue. This is no surprise, if truth is not to be found in the head of an individual but in the event of conversation. Gowler does indeed provide us with a long introduction. But I confess to finding his history of the reception of James’ text more a rather brief series of sketches of his main contributors and much less an attempt to spell out the history of a conversation. The thematic section certainly offers more opportunity for a historical conspectus, though it is interesting to notice how the conversation is portrayed. Thus, voices that argue for a spiritual understanding of poverty are characterised as ‘domesticating’ the message of the Letter. Is this to prejudge the truth to be found in the conversation; to give pride of place to some voices in the conversation rather than others? Gowler might well want to ask whether he too is not entitled to enter the conversation, to add his voice. Even so, one would want to ask first for a more rounded presentation of the conversation.
Can one look for this in the way the different interpretations of a given passage are presented in the body of the commentary? Clearly, on a dialogical view of reception history, the commentator’s task here is to bring out the main voices in the conversation and to make clear how they relate to each other. Yet this is where the commentary is often at its weakest. Different views are simply listed chronologically without any attempt to discern the reasons behind the differences. Even where, as in the discussion of faith and works, there is among the views sampled frequent discussion of other views, there is little attempt to comment on or illuminate the debate.
It is almost as if Gowler felt that it was inappropriate here to allow his voice to be heard. And this is crucial; should the reception historical commentator, overtly or covertly, add his (authoritative?) voice to the text? Or: should she, rather, act purely as a facilitator of a conversation between the readers and previous interpreters of the text? And, if the latter, should that be achieved by staging a conversation between a chosen strong reading of the text and some other interestingly contrasted readings, as Joyce and Lipton have recently done so finely? Alternatively, should the commentator in each section seek to recreate the ebb and flow of understanding between interpreters down the ages in the hope that the reader too may be lured into entering the dialogical circle of understanding? All interesting options, but whichever one choses, there is no escaping the fact that the commentator too will have his or her say, for only those who engage with and in the conversation can begin to make it out.