Reader-response-criticism in the light of the scriptural principle

The problem

The topic given to me is “reader-response-criticism in the light of the scriptural principle.” ¹ Therefore, the task intended for me consists in examining to what extent reader-response-text theories correspond to or contradict the scriptural principle of the Reformation tradition. Thus, the scriptural principle, as a supposedly well-defined criterion, would be the benchmark of the investigation. In a first step of investigation, correspondence could be objectively established. Then, in a second step, it would have to be asked which conclusions are to be drawn from the findings. As far as this question is posed theologically, it is of a systematic-theological nature, since the scriptural principle is a theological norm. More precisely, it is a dogmatic norm, which claims, however, to be the result of a consistent exegesis of the texts of the Bible. As a dogmatic norm, the scriptural principle claims to be gleaned from or pregiven in the texts of the Bible themselves. As such, it is not a dogmatic norm established elsewhere and then applied to the texts of the Bible.

If one follows my formulation of the given topic, then a contribution to the discussion about the relationship of principle and method in biblical exegesis is at issue. ² Yet, umbrella terms like “reader-response-criticism” or “new literary criticism” do not, in the first instance, name any single method of textual interpretation. Rather, they refer to a group of different text theories, which favor synchronic reading over diachronic reading and emphasize the role of the individual reader and of interpretive communities ³ in realizing a text’s meaning in the act of reading. ⁴ Primarily at issue are theories of interpretation that observe and describe, on a meta level, what happens in the act of reading and interpreting, without in every case deriving a practical methodology therefrom. The given topic could, in any case, be understood as a theologically normative question, whether reader-response-text theories are theologically tenable if the normative status of the reformational scriptural principle is presupposed.

Of course, the question can be posed in the reverse direction: If reader-response-text theories are hermeneutically plausible, can the reformational scriptural principle still be maintained at all, or must it be abandoned in favor of other theories of biblical hermeneutics? In any case, the reformational scriptural principle has been subject to criticism since the days of the reformation, on the one hand side from Roman Catholicism, and on the other under the influence of historical-critical exegesis and its results.

According to the Reformation perspective, sola scriptura claims validity, first because Scripture is clearly understandable—although Luther distinguished between the external (claritas externa) and the internal (claritas interna) clarity of Scripture—and second—again according to Luther—because Scripture interprets itself and thus needs no external interpretive agency. However, if, as reader-response-text theories claim, the meaning of a text is not at all fixed, but emerges, with the help of the reader, ever anew in the act of reading, then the thesis of a self-interpreting Scripture, and thus of the scriptural principle, seems to become altogether untenable. Apart from this, in its scope, “the Scripture,” that is, the Christian Bible, is not even a fixed magnitude, since there are different versions of a biblical canon (a point I will go into below). ⁵ Hence, one thesis is that not only the meaning of Scripture and its texts, but the Scripture as such is first created by its reader(s)—more precisely, by the different churches and confessions as interpretive communities. In this case, however, sola scriptura completely loses its meaning.

In my article, I will first discuss the scriptural principle’s deconstruction as advocated (not only but also) by reader-response-text theories. Subsequently, I will pursue the contrary question, whether it is not precisely reader-response-text theories that make a plausible reconstruction of the Reformation scriptural principle possible. As will be shown, such a reconstruction also requires engagement with the concerns of the classical doctrine of inspiration.

The deconstruction of the Reformation scriptural principle and its doctrine of inspiration

According to classical Reformation doctrine, Scripture alone is the source and standard of Christian faith, Christian doctrine, and Christian life. In this regard, reference is made to Luther’s formula, “sola scriptura,” which of course does not stand alone, but belongs within a fourfold of solus-formulas, which mutually explicate each other: Sola scriptura—solus Christus—sola gratia—sola fide. Scripture alone is the source and standard of faith, because and inasmuch as it bears witnesses to Christ, who alone is the source of salvation, namely of the gospel which acquits the sinner. The justification of the sinner takes place for the sake of Christ, by grace alone—namely, by faith in the gospel alone, just as it is attested by Scripture.

Of course, with Luther, there is not an abstract scriptural principle that would, as the formal principle of Reformation theology, be distinguished from the doctrine of justification as the material principle in the manner of later Neo-Protestantism. ⁶ Rather, according to Luther, the “principium” of all theology is the clarity of Scripture, ⁷ although he distinguishes again between external and internal clarity—between claritas externa and claritas interna. ⁸ The external word can do nothing without the working or inner witness of the Holy Spirit—also, following Calvin, called testimonium spiritus sancti internum. Only thus can the external word become the medium of the Spirit, whose work consists in the assurance of faith. Yet, the testimonium spiritus sancti internum does not refer to anything other than the external word, that is, to the external, philological and grammatical clarity of the wording of the biblical text.

According to the Lutheran Formula of Concord from 1577, “Holy Scripture alone is the sole judge, rule and standard after which, as the sole touchstone, all doctrines are recognized and judged, whether they be good or evil, right or wrong.” ⁹ The Reformed confessional documents have similar formulations. Apart from the fact that the Formula of Concord, compared to Luther, reduces the scriptural principle to its criteriological function, it has (in Lutheranism as well as in Reformed Churches) an anti-Catholic—or to put it better—an anti-Roman thrust. Neither the tradition of the church nor the magisterium, but Scripture alone is the definitive norm for theology and proclamation.

Protestant orthodoxy attempted to secure this understanding of Scripture by means of the doctrine of verbal inspiration. According to that doctrine, God is the actual author of Scripture, while the human writers are merely the hand (manus), the quill pen (tabelliones) of the Holy Spirit. ¹⁰ Even though the subjectivity and productivity of the human author is not completely neutralized, they are nevertheless regarded, in terms of the medieval distinction between first and second causes, merely as second causes of Holy Scripture.

Protestant orthodoxy relies on statements of Scripture for its doctrine of the inspiration of the biblical authors and the authorship of the Holy Spirit. The Locus classicus of the doctrine of inspiration is 2 Tim 3:16: “All scripture [πᾶσα γραϕὴ] is inspired [θɛόπνɛυστος] by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (NRSV). The idea of theopneustos is also found in 2 Pet 1:19–21. The unknown author explains in v. 20 that “no prophecy of scripture [πᾶσα προϕητɛία γραϕῆς] ever comes about by the prophet’s own imagination” (NET). For, “no prophecy was ever borne of human impulse; rather, men carried along by the Holy Spirit [ὑπὸ πνɛύματος ἁγίου ϕɛρόμɛνοι] spoke from God” (v. 21, NET).

Of course, the biblically based doctrine of the inspiration of Holy Scripture is not an invention of the Reformation, but is a notion that dates back to the early church. Nevertheless, it received a new, controversial, theological meaning in the Reformation. In the early church and the theology of the Middle Ages, the doctrine of inspiration grounded the doctrine of the multiple senses of Scripture, the interpretation of which was monitored by the magisterium, which can then, via the idea of sensus plenior, posit dogmatic doctrines which are not found in the Bible. Yet, Luther eventually rejected the doctrine of multiple senses of Scripture, accepting only the sensus literalis, although according to his approach, the Bible as a whole (i.e. also the Old Testament) is to be read as witness to Christ. ¹¹

Notwithstanding rapprochements in ecumenical dialogue concerning the relationship of Scripture and tradition, between Protestant and Roman Catholic interpretation of Scripture, there remains at this point a theoretical opposition. According to the Catholic tradition, the Holy Scripture is “written into the heart of the Church rather than upon parchment.” ¹² Scripture is thus “to be read in the living tradition of the universal Church.” ¹³ This means nothing other than that which concerns the manner of interpretation “is ultimately” subject “to the judgment of the Church.” ¹⁴ Thus, scholarly exegesis has still to submit to the magisterium of the church. Revealingly, the Roman Catholic Church continues to hold fast to the doctrine of the fourfold sense of Scripture in its pre-Reformation formulation and to the exegetical method of allegorical interpretation. Vatican II expressly declares that it is and remains the task of exegetes, in accordance with the rules of the multiple senses of Scripture, “to work towards a deeper understanding and explanation of Holy Scripture.” ¹⁵ The historical-critical quest for the literal sense is merely the “scientific ground-work” for the “judgment of the Church,” ¹⁶ that is, the ultimate interpretation of Scripture by the magisterium. ¹⁷

The real problem of Protestant orthodoxy’s doctrine of inspiration is not the idea of a supernatural origin of the biblical texts as such, but the idea of the Bible as a completed book, upon which the slogan, sola scriptura, and the Protestant orthodox determination of the Bible as norma normans are based as well as the confessional documents as norma normata, substantiated by the Bible. The development of the idea that the Bible does not consist only of individual books, but is to be read in general as one continuous book, finds its preliminary completion in the scriptural principle of the Reformation. The concept of the canon thereby acquires a new meaning. “Canon” no longer indicates, as in the beginnings of church history, a regula fidei; nor does it merely indicate a list of writings, the liturgical use of which is permitted and which is considered to be orthodox. Rather, it indicates a two-part book, joining together individual writings, the comprehensiveness, composition, and structure of which all have theological significance.

This concept was only made possible by the invention of the codex. It allowed, by grouping together several writings, for the transition to the structure of a single, large, bound book. ¹⁸ The consolidation of the numerous writings to a single book took place when the canonical texts of Christianity made their way to the West, where Latin and not Greek was the lingua franca. The Greek plural noun βιβλία as “books” was modified to the consonant Latin, singular proper noun Biblia. “A grammatical misinterpretation coincided with an epochal, cultural reinterpretation … The Latin Biblia became a capitalized proper noun, a new, single word for a new, singular object.” ¹⁹

And yet, what is “the” Bible, “the” Scripture upon which the reformational sola scriptura insists? It is a canon with an anti-Catholic thrust which, with reference to the history of the canon, must be designated a hybrid. To be sure, the Reformers invoked the supposed original text of the Old and New Testaments in terms of the humanist slogan “ad fontes!” In the course of this, the Biblia Hebraica was given priority over the Septuagint, upon which the Vulgate Old Testament rests. They emphasized the pre-givenness, externality, and incontrovertible authority of the word of God. Yet, in truth, they did not use an already existing canon, but created a “hybrid canon, a canon which had hitherto never existed, and since then only exists in national translations.” ²⁰ Several Reformed confessional documents contain a complete canon-list of this hybrid, where the structure of the New Testament follows the canon of the early church, from which the Luther Bible famously deviated, when for theological reasons, it places the Letter to the Hebrews and the Letter of James, without numbering, between the Letters of John and Jude.²¹ The canonicity and authority of the Old Testament Apocrypha, contained only in the Septuagint, is contested, not only by invoking the argument (which originated with Jerome) of the hebraica veritas, but occasionally also by asserting its lack of divine inspiration. ²²

While Jerome’s (whose thesis of the hebraica veritas was invoked by the Reformers) appropriation of the Hebrew canon originated, in fact, from an anti-Jewish polemic (a fact mostly overlooked today in Christian–Jewish dialogues and in the discussion about the “canonical approach”), its adoption by the Reformers originated from anti-Catholic motives. ²³ “The Luther Bible, and parallel translations in vernaculars like the famous English and Dutch ‘Vulgate’ Bibles did precisely that which was achieved by the Catholic Vulgate: they created a new canon as ground of appeal for defense against other religious communities.” ²⁴

The hybrid character of the Protestant canon becomes especially visible in the Old Testament. Even though the Hebrew text is taken as its basis, the structure does not follow that of the Tanakh, but that of the Septuagint tradition. Here it must be called to mind that the decision of Judaism to recognize only the Tanakh, and not the Septuagint also, contains a polemic against Christianity and its use of the Septuagint. There is no, nor has there ever been, a Christian canon consisting of the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament.

Lutheranism, however, unlike Reformed churches, never fixated the scope of the canon. “For the Lutheran tradition, ‘the Scriptures’ somehow are the Luther Bible, or the editions of the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament—without this ‘somehow’ being more closely defined (which later Lutheran dogmatic theologians indeed attempt).” ²⁵ Strictly speaking, the Scriptures to which the reformational churches appeal are not the starting point, but the product of the Reformation, namely, a canon of mixed Hebrew scope and Greek structure, and yet presented in a third language—whether German, English, or some other living language. ²⁶

The Council of Trent reacted to this development by establishing a canon-list for the Old and New Testament with validity for the Catholic Church. Interpretations which depart from the Vulgate are overruled by canon law. ²⁷ By contrast, in the Westminster Confession of 1647, the legality and necessity of vernacular translations are theologically justified by referencing 2 Cor 14:6. ²⁸ For those who do not know Hebrew or Greek, the “original text” has no other meaning than glossolalia, which, according to Paul, only serves the edification of the church when it is interpreted in understandable words. However, actually at issue in the Reformed and Lutheran Bibles is not the translation of an established original text, but the Protestant version of a Christian canon which only exists at all in the form of translations. Thus, the translation is the original—similar to the case of the Greek Septuagint.

This circumstance gives rise to a series of important hermeneutical and theological questions, which I already formulated at the beginning of this paper. These questions become more complicated by the problem of the different Bible translations. Aside from the fact that the Protestant hybrid canon only exists in translations, there is a multitude of German, English, and other foreign language translations, among which a further distinction must be made: between private translations, reading editions, scholarly translations, and translations licensed by the church (i.e. permitted for use in worship services). Before the act of reading, there is the choice of the translation in which one wishes to read the Bible. It is at least valid in this respect, that not only the meaning of an individual text, but the Bible as a macrocontext, comes into existence ever and anew in the act of reception.

Has the reformational scriptural principle—the crisis of which has been detectable since the beginnings of the historical-critical method—thereby resolved itself once and for all? ²⁹ Does it terminate with its destruction? ³⁰ Or is there the possibility of a reader-response-reconstruction, which is not only literarily but also theologically convincing? Is it possible to extrapolate anew the doctrine of the inspiration of Holy Scripture according to the Reformation understanding, without succumbing to the self-deception of Protestant orthodoxy?

Canon and church

Like the function of the Bible as Holy Scripture, the idea of the canon can also be made comprehensible via the worship service. Not only the complex canonization process of the individual books of the Bible, but also the idea of the canon as a complete work, is the result of faith-based reception and application. Each version of the biblical canon is a literary montage. Inasmuch as the Old and New Testament Scriptures were selected from a comprehensive body of religious literature and—in different versions—composed within a canon, a new macrotext came into being, in which the individual reader, and the interpretive community to which he or she belongs, can and should continually discover new connotations [Sinnbezüge]. As rule or guideline, the canon is not only a guide for faith, but the injunction to permanent reading, an invitation to a journey of discovery. However, “the Scripture” is not the result of individual acts of reading. Rather, it is the fruit of the communal tradition of reading of early Christian and early church communities. At the same time, it is an instruction to continued, communal, synchronic reading of the texts compiled in “the Scripture.” And yet, the range of variation in the sequence of canonized books shows that not only exegesis of single passages or books, but also a reading of the entire Bible leaves room to move for the individual reader as well as the respective interpretive community. Bearing in mind the quality of the Bible as Holy Scripture, to be recited and interpreted in the worship service, the respective liturgical year also plays an important role as a rule for a continual, synchronic reading. This aspect threatens to go unheeded in a reading of the Bible, which views it purely as belletristic literature.

The unity of Scripture can neither be formally determined, in terms of a canon-list (of which there are several today), nor by the magisterial dogmatization of an inventory of meaning(s). Rather, time and again, it comes into being anew via continued reading. ³¹ At the same time, a distinction must be made between the external and internal unity of the canon.

Nevertheless, the reformational tradition claims that the canon is not a product of the church and the church is not the subject of the formation of the canon. Only under these premises does the reformational scriptural principle—the “sola scriptura,” according to which Holy Scripture alone is the source of faith and every interpretative privilege of the church has to be rejected—make sense. Yet, to what extent is this claim plausible under the conditions of modern historical awareness and historical-critical research?

Ernst Käsemann championed the thesis that the canon does not establish the unity of the church, but the diversity of confessions. ³² Of course, it can be objected that this thesis posits lopsided alternatives. Wilfried Härle modifies it to the effect that the canon “as such, in the diversity of confessions or ecclesial orientations, preserves the unity of the Church [singular!].” ³³ Nevertheless, Käsemann rightly saw that plurality in Christianity is not first of all a consequence of schisms, but was already characteristic of earliest Christianity. The New Testament canon represents this plurality, which needs to be put in proper relation to the believed unity of the church. This plurality is already apparent in that not only one, but four Gospels, quite different in their respective accounts and theological idiosyncrasies, found their way into the New Testament canon. Thus, the New Testament does not present a harmony of the Gospels such as Titian’s Diatessaron. ³⁴

What is more, not only is the idea of the canon realized differently with regard to the Old Testament in Judaism and Christian churches—as we have already seen—, it is also realized in different ways within Christianity itself. In this respect, Käsemann’s dictum can be modified to the effect that the different forms of a whole-Bible canon do not represent the unity of the church, but the diversity of confessions.

The different forms of the Jewish Bible, or Old Testament, and the Christian Bible with its double-canon, can be understood in terms of modern concepts of intertextuality. ³⁵ As Gerhard Ebeling explained, the biblical canon and the reformational scriptural principle are “in crucial respects, not … principle[s] of textual demarcation, but … of hermeneutics.” ³⁶ If these thoughts are taken seriously, then the result—not only in the dialogue between Christianity and Judaism, but also among the Christian churches—is “respect for the mutual delimitation, and thence enriching supplementation, which different textual traditions and organizations bring in their train.” ³⁷ If each canon is understood as a particular realization of the idea of Holy Scripture, which is dependent upon other forms and their realizations, then a hybrid such as the Protestant canon is also legitimate.

Scriptural interpretation not only happens in an inevitably plural fashion, but is also never presuppositionless, having, after all, its place in the church or respectively the individual confessions as interpretive communities. In this respect, the postulate of an “ecclesial hermeneutics,” which today is discussed as a “hermeneutics of consent,” makes sense. ³⁸ Of course, agreement with the biblical text can, at best, only be the result of the process of understanding, and in no way the premise of understanding. As a result, according to the Protestant understanding, there can be no ecclesial or magisterial prerogative of interpretation meant to govern or domesticate the fundamentally interminable process of interpretation. Furthermore, the church exists historically only in the plurality of confessions, with the result that even the idea of an ecclesial hermeneutic is not able to neutralize the problem of plurality.

According to the tradition of the Reformation, the church—or more precisely, the congregation, the community of worship—is of course not the subject but the object of interpretation. The church is a creation of the word “creatura Euangelii” (Luther), ³⁹ that is, a creature of the gospel or a creation of the Word of God. ⁴⁰ As Luther writes, the church is “nata ex verbo.” ⁴¹ At issue in the birth of the church out of the Word of God is not a one-time occurrence in the past, but a continuous event. Similar to the manner in which the Christian, according to Luther, crawls out of the waters of baptism daily, the church, as the fellowship of believers, is continually born afresh from the Word. ⁴² It is just in this sense that it is creatura verbi and not its creator.

The scriptural principle and literary hermeneutics

The hermeneutical and dogmatic problems the reformational scriptural principle creates are, of course, not yet conclusively solved by the proposed reconstruction of the idea of the canon. Rather, they acquire additional explosive force via the basic insight—from literary hermeneutics, reader-response-criticism, and post-structural text theories—into the autonomy the text acquires over against its author in the course of textualization. Paul Ricœur explained: “What the text means, no longer coincides with what the author wanted to say. From now on, literal meaning, that is, meaning which has become text, and merely thought or psychological meaning, have different fates.” ⁴³

Thanks to the process of autonomy, the reader or hearer, and the respective act of reading or hearing, gain fundamental significance not only for the understanding of understanding, but for the existence of the sense and reference of a text. The sense of a text is not inherent within it, in terms of an ontology of substance, but is in each instance created anew in the act of reading. ⁴⁴

The dogmatic problems which reader-response-theories create for a reformational doctrine of Scripture are illustrated by some remarks of Umberto Eco, which underline the necessity of the reader’s active involvement in the realization of the meaning of a text. For him, the text is “an inert machine … which demands some hard work from the reader to fill out the white patches, which have remained vacant—the spaces of the unsaid and the already-said.” ⁴⁵ The text demands the “collaboration of the reader as the essential condition of its actualization,” since it “is a product, the interpretation of which is a necessary component of the actual mechanism of its production.” ⁴⁶ Thus, the negative consequence: “A text is incomplete insofar as it is capable of actualization.” ⁴⁷

If this assessment is applicable to the texts of the biblical canon, the question of the soundness of the reformational scriptural arises all the more urgently. Simultaneously under scrutiny is the thesis of the external, preached word of the gospel, by which the faith that alone justifies is effected—when and where it pleases God. If, following Eco, one understands the sermon to be an “open work of art,” then the recipients themselves appear to be the originators of the word by which they come to faith. ⁴⁸

Protestant Orthodoxy wanted to secure the scriptural principle via the assertion that Scripture alone is complete and is alone operative in faith’s coming into being. The purported perfectio, sufficientia, and efficacia of Scripture appear to be refuted (as previously by historical-critical exegesis) also by reader-response-text theories, which ascribe an essential role to the collaboration of the reader or hearer in the realization of the meaning of a text, and thus of the text itself. Put in dogmatic terms, the problem of synergism arises, which has far-reaching consequences, not only for the doctrine of Scripture, but also for the doctrines of justification and grace. If the reader constitutively belongs in the biblical text, then he or she is the first to produce the text anew via its actualization in the act of applicative reading. If this is the case, then the ground of faith outside the religious subject, the extra nos of salvation, upon which the Reformation so emphatically insisted, apparently turns out to be an illusion.

However, as a glance at the christology of Martin Kähler as well as that of Paul Tillich (influenced by Kähler) shows, this conclusion is not compulsory. Kähler’s christological conception is groundbreaking precisely in that it develops a reader-response-model. According to Kähler, the historicity of Jesus consists in his history of effects [Wirkungsgeschichte]. “Yet, what is the resounding effect which this Jesus left behind? According to the Bible and Church history, it is nothing other than the faith of his disciples.” ⁴⁹

Kähler’s student, Tillich, carried his history of effects approach forward in his own christology. He emphasized that, as the Christ, Jesus is “a historical fact as well as the object of believing acceptance.” ⁵⁰ The Christ extra nos does not exist pro nobis except as Christ in nobis. “The receiving side of the Christian event is just as important as the factual side. And the event only proceeds from their unity, upon which Christianity is founded. In the symbolism of the church, Christ is the head of the church and it is his body. In this sense, the factual and the receiving sides necessarily belong together.” ⁵¹ Following Kähler, Tillich explained that not only the faith of Christians, but also the New Testament, the written document of this faith, is “an integral component of the event to which it bears witness. It represents the receiving side of that event and bears witness to its factual side.” ⁵²

By taking up insights of reader-response-criticism, Tillich’s thought can be carried further to the effect that not only the faith of the first disciples, but also that of today’s reader is an integral component of the event to which the New Testament texts bear witness, and is as such a component of Scripture itself. However, a distinction has to be made between acceptance in Tillich’s sense, and reception or application in the sense of a general hermeneutics. For Tillich, acceptance means a qualified mode of reception, namely, faith as a certain mode of understanding. Yet, faith is an understanding of biblical texts through which the reader not only gets into the text in order to complete it, but through which the reader, for his or her part, is transformed by learning to understand him- or herself anew. Faith, as the occurrence [Widerfahrnis] of transforming understanding, cannot see itself as action, but only as gift, and its appropriation of Scripture as Scripture’s dedication. While within the framework of a general, literary hermeneutics there is a necessary distinction between the arbitrary appropriation of texts and rule-governed interpretation, which follows the rules set forth by the text itself, beyond this there has to be a theological differentiation between faith and unbelief, between believing acceptance and the “sin in understanding.” ⁵³ However, both modes of understanding are provoked by the biblical texts.

Concerning the theological problem of the sufficiency of the Scripture, it follows from these reflections that while the biblical texts are indeed in a certain sense incomplete, they nevertheless make for themselves the reader they require for their completion. ⁵⁴ They are a strategy, or put traditionally, a medium salutis, that provokes faith. Where believing reception occurs in the act of reading, the text completes itself in terms of its indwelling intentio operis. At issue in the intentio operis is a regulative idea, used by Umberto Eco in his critique of a radical, (de)constructivist text theory. ⁵⁵ This idea implies that the text is not only autonomous from its author, but also from its reader. The regulative idea of the intentio operis allows for making a distinction between interpretation—which is always plural— and over-interpretation.

The biblical texts are sufficient (a term of Protestant orthodoxy) in the sense that they are adequate as the sole stimulant of believing reception, which does not grasp itself as an autonomous achievement, but as a gift, namely as the fruit of reading. The observation of reader-response-criticism that the biblical texts, like other texts, are also only realized by the reader or hearer, does not necessarily have to contradict the sola scriptura of Reformation theology.

A dogmatic interpretation of the—in terms of a literary hermeneutics—existing incompleteness of the biblical texts must seek its starting point in pneumatology. Protestant orthodoxy’s text theory of verbal inspiration, which can be interpreted as a production-aesthetical approach, did the same. It distinguished between God as the causa principalis and the inspired human authors as the causae instrumentalis. ⁵⁶ A literary hermeneutics allows for, and virtually compels, a return to the long-obsolete doctrine of inspiration, in order, of course, to fundamentally reformulate it. ⁵⁷ It must be reconstructed, in reader-response terms, as the doctrine of the inspired reader. In critical reception of the terminology of Protestant orthodoxy, the dogmatic problem of the sufficientia of Scripture can be solved in the following way: While the reader or hearer is certainly not to be thought of as causa principalis, he or she is nevertheless to be thought of as causa instrumentalis. In this sense, according to a theological understanding, the reader is also a constituent part of the biblical text.

Inspiration, death, and resurrection of biblical texts

Nevertheless, the emergence of new meanings in the act of reception and interpretation must not be misconstrued as a human work, as some interpretive conceptions within contemporary theology suggest, but as an event effected by the Spirit. ⁵⁸

In order to understand this, we begin with the figure of thought of the death of the author. ⁵⁹ Roland Barthes trenchantly characterized the text’s gaining autonomy as the death of the author: “La voix perd son origine, l’auteur entre dans sa propre mort, l’écriture commence.” ⁶⁰ Similarly, Umberto Eco pointed out, “The author would have to cease to be after he has written. So as not to disturb the proper motion of the text.” ⁶¹

If the creation and text of the Bible, the “divine Aeneid ” (Luther), are relatively autonomous with respect to their author, then the question arises whether it is not possible to even speak of “the death of the author” with reference to God. ⁶² A post-critical, synchronic reading of the Bible, as has for example been performed by Jack Miles, appears at first to rehabilitate God, in a way free of any premises of faith, as the actual protagonist of the Bible, with the result, however, that God is no longer thought of as a present reality, but suffers the death of the author. ⁶³ For Miles, the biography of God (which is how he characterizes the Tanakh) is no longer the history of someone living, but of someone deceased, which ends with his gradual fading. By the death of God, the modern critique of religion means God’s absence or nonexistence. Yet, in terms of the theology of the cross, the death of God is to be thought of as the form of his hiddenness, that is, however, sub contrario to be thought of as the mode of his presence. It is quite appropriate biblically to speak of the death of the author with reference to God, provided that thereby, in keeping with the theology of the cross, the final consequence is drawn from the notion of the incarnation. The Word not only became flesh (John 1:14), but also writing. Yet, the Word’s becoming-writing can, in keeping with the theology of the incarnation, be construed to the effect that God himself delivered himself up to the conflict of interpretations. This becoming-writing, spoken together with Johann Georg Hamann, is the endpoint of his humiliation and kenosis.

It is part of the kenosis of the Logos that the Son of God freely gives himself into the hands of his enemies. In the same manner, the word of God, the word of Jesus, the word of the Christian proclamation as well as of biblical texts, is not an irresistible word of compelling force, but is outwardly weak. Thus, it is possible to speak of the death of the author, with a view to God, in the sense that God, by the textualization of his word, exposes himself to the conflict of interpretations, which cannot be ended by any kind of doctrine of inspiration.

As a form of the incarnation, the biblical texts also carry in their body the death of Christ. ⁶⁴ Other than verbal speech, texts, as its material externalization, are mute. They only become articulate in the act of reading. The same is true of the biblical texts. Interpreted in terms of the theology of the cross, their remaining-silent participates in Jesus’ falling-silent under interrogation by Pilate. ⁶⁵ The biblical text is defenseless, delivered into the hands of its readers and interpreters. Thus, for good reason, Franz Overbeck saw the task of exegesis in protecting the texts “against their expositors’ onslaughts of slovenly subjectivity.” ⁶⁶

The text is a form of death. Although it is meant to serve in the conservation and passing on of human speech and (according to biblical self-understanding) was inspired by the Spirit of God, it is nevertheless first the complete emptying of the human and the divine spirit into matter, a dead trace of meaning that has to be awakened to new life in the act of reading. ⁶⁷ In terms of the theology of media, the thesis can be propounded that the biblical texts participate in the incarnate Logos.

Yet, if one follows the hermeneutical theory of Paul Ricœur, then the externalization of the Spirit into the materiality of writing does not at all have to be seen in an entirely negative way. To be sure, the textualization of speech results in alienation. However, as Ricœur shows, the alienation is “not the result of the method of interpretation and thus not something added after the fact or even something detrimental; rather, it constitutes the appearance of the text as writing. At the same time, it is the condition of interpretation. Alienation is not only that which understanding must conquer, but also that which conditions understanding.” ⁶⁸

Nevertheless, alienation, as a result of the autonomy which the text gains over against its author, is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for understanding. Where the understanding is engaged, it must rather be construed as resurrection or raising of the text from the dead, and that means as an act of God or a work of the Spirit of God. This occurs in the act of reading—ubi et quando visum est Deo. ⁶⁹ Thus, scriptology has a media-theological need for pneumatology. Despite all justified criticism of a hermeneutica sacra, this remains the kernel of truth of the premodern doctrine of the inspiration of Holy Scripture. To be sure, it has to be reestablished under todays hermeneutical conditions of understanding.

The Spirit manifests itself in the act of reading, so that the understanding of the text is not the achievement of the reader, but an event which takes place between text and reader, in which the dead trace of the Spirit is awakened to new life and simultaneously takes hold of the reader, who arrives at a new understanding of his or her existence.

The historian Jules Michelet (1798–1874) saw “the task of the historian as a ‘resurrection,’ as a battle of memory against death.” ⁷⁰ The biblical tradition understands such raising of the tradition as the work of the Holy Spirit. According to Oswald Bayer’s trenchant formulation, “All of the effects of the Spirit narrated in the New Testament are, viewed at the decisive point, raisings of the dead, which occur by virtue of the resurrection of the crucified.” ⁷¹

However, Bayer’s thesis that, when it happens today, the coming of the Spirit never takes place “other than through the old letters,” has to be clarified or modified. ⁷² For not only the reader, but also the biblical texts themselves must be raised to new life if their readers are to participate in the resurrection life of Jesus. Both happen at the same time in the act of reading, when understanding in the sense of faith ensues: The resurrection of the text as well as the new-creation of the reader. He or she becomes καινὴ κτίσις (2 Cor 5:17), in that he or she becomes enmeshed in the biblical texts and their narratives, so as to eventually perpetuate these texts in story of their own life. ⁷³