Blessing (5)

PrayerWorks, a new venture from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity starting in early January 2012, seeks to encourage prayer for the workplace by providing creative ways of praying and developing pathways of prayer for Christians together. From 1 February, this will include a 40-day journey of prayer for work using the prayer pathway of blessing. As part of this, I have been asked to write a supportive piece on what the Bible says about ‘blessing’ – what it tells us about God and the way he works, and its implications for our response in praise to God and in praying for others.

Earlier posts:

• Blessing (1) – Introduction

• Blessing (2) – Blessing comes from God – the creator God

• Blessing (3) – Blessing comes from God – the covenantal God

• Blessing (4) – Blessing flows through Christ

3. Blessing enlivens our praying

The topic of ‘blessing’ is not always included in treatments of prayer. This is arguably an oversight, as an appropriate understanding of blessing might inform and enliven our prayer life – as individual Christians and as local churches – in different ways.

(a) Words of petition

Blessing one another in prayer is a way of acknowledging that all good things, which build us up and make us fruitful, come from God. In blessing, we are expressing trust in God’s character and his love, not presuming on it, but asking him to continue to demonstrate his power in our lives and the lives of others, whether in the ongoing ‘mundane’ events of life or for the more ‘extraordinary’ needs of healing, rescue, provision, and direction.

This involves the recognition that God, in his grace, allows us to be the instruments of his blessing on others. Invoking God’s blessing on someone else thus serves as a particular kind of petition, with the implication that we are praying for the Lord to bless that person. In keeping with examples from Scripture, such prayers may be addressed to the person rather than God, but we are nonetheless asking for God’s blessing on them. It might be particularly appropriate to bless someone at special times, perhaps of pastoral need, or during sickness, or in the context of a commissioning – but not exclusively so. We will want to seek God’s blessing on others in line with God’s creative and life-giving purposes, in a way that exercises trust in his ongoing provision for us. This means we will be cautious about identifying his blessing solely with the ‘spectacular’ – the miraculous and special interventions – rather than with his constant presence within which the whole of life is lived, the ordinary as much as the extraordinary, the routine as much as the remarkable.

Moreover, since Jesus is now the focal point of God’s blessing, our prayers of blessing for others will take their cue from him – his commandments, his call, his love. And so we may pray for others the blessing that comes with participating in his death (1 Cor. 10:16; cf. Mark 10:38-39), for empowerment to bless those who persecute us (Luke 6:28; Rom. 12:14; 1 Pet. 3:9), for the joy and confidence that comes through knowing that every spiritual blessing comes from him (Eph. 1:3).

(b) Words of power

We know from personal experience that words are powerful. Positive, affirming words build up, while negative words tear down. The power of speech to shape someone’s self-perception – a child, a spouse, a friend, a colleague – for good or for ill, is enormous. A recognition of the power of words can, however, lead to a mistaken view of blessing which suggests that to say something is to make it happen, the presupposition being that the person who utters a blessing has the authority to do so effectively. But we should be clear that blessing is not a magical formula for victorious living, still less a guarantee of material prosperity; nor is it about twisting God’s arm into doing something.

It has sometimes been supposed that Old Testament curses and blessings operated with a view of language where the speakers believed that their words had causal, or even magical power. The story of Isaac blessing Jacob rather than Esau, for instance, suggests the blessing cannot be taken back once it has been spoken (Gen. 27). Is a magical control of the future implied?

We are helped here with the recognition of what is sometimes called the ‘performative’ nature of language, the acknowledgement that words perform certain actions. The phrase, ‘I now pronounce you husband and wife’, or ‘You’re fired’, spoken by an appropriate person in an appropriate context, are not merely making statements about things but doing things. ‘Bless’ is also an example of performative language where something is done in the saying. But just as the words ‘I do’ or ‘I give and bequeath’ or ‘You’re fired’ only carry force in particular contexts where particular social mores are in place in which the words are accepted as carrying force, so also blessing is only effective when spoken with appropriate conventions in place. Genesis 27 is a striking example of this: Isaac disposes of his estate in the form of a blessing which is considered legally binding and can’t be taken back. The ‘power’ is not inherent in the words themselves so much as in the social conventions of their use, and has nothing to do with magic or fate.

The primacy of God in blessing means that it his power that counts, rather than any supposed power inherent in the words themselves. Praying words of blessing has no power apart from the activity of God himself to bless. For us, this is an encouragement that prayers for blessing don’t depend on the right use of a special formula, but on the promise and guarantee of God’s own word. It also means we can be confident that we won’t go far wrong if we bless others in line with Scripture – with the grain of God’s ongoing care for creation, in alignment with his desire for covenant relationship with his people, and in tune with his work of redemption through Christ.

(c) Words of praise

If God comes first – as the source of all blessing – we bless people and things in relation to him. Blessing food, for instance, is a shorthand way of praising God for it. We are not thanking the food itself, or invoking God to make sure it tastes good, but acknowledging him as its ultimate giver.

In fact, many of the occurrences of ‘bless’ words in the Bible are used by men and women back to God himself. Having received God’s blessing, the community of faith blesses God in return – not to grant him favour in the way he does for us, but to give thanks. Throughout the Psalms, in particular, the people are called to ‘bless’ the Lord because of how he has blessed them, and the primary way they bless him is through praise (e.g., Ps. 28:6; 31:21; 34:1; 41:13; 68:19; 72:18; 89:52; 100:4; 103:2; 104:1; 106:48; 124:6; 135:21; 144:1; 145:1-2, 10). In addition, in 1 Chronicles 29:10-11 and 20-22, David ascribes glory to God, declaring how great he is (29:11); when he calls on those gathered to bless the Lord, their response is to bow their heads, worship and offer sacrifices to God (29:20-22). In this case, blessing the Lord affirms him as Lord and pays him honour.

As much as we might seek God’s blessing for ourselves and for others, to follow the pattern of Scripture also involves blessing God – as an expression of individual or corporate praise, giving thanks to God, praising him, acclaiming him as Lord.

(d) Words of preparation

In both the Old Testament and the New Testament, the blessing of the congregation of God’s people appears to be significant. Some church traditions echo this in giving considerable place to blessing in their gatherings – in greetings, before and after the sermon, during communion, and so on. Perhaps especially for those less used to blessing in a congregational context, there may be a place for acknowledging the significance of the benediction as a crucial component of the gathered worship – as that which sends people on their way in service to Christ. The final blessing serves as a bridge from the gathering to the life outside the four walls of the church building, not merely marking the end of the worship service, but connecting the gathered worship to the scattered lives of the worshipping people beyond the weekly gathering. The benediction – appropriately used – prays for God’s providential care and powerful equipping of his people as we move from the gathering into everyday life, asking that God will bless us as we do so.

‘Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.’ (Hebrews 13:20-21)

For further reading

Keith Grüneberg, Blessing: Biblical Meaning and Pastoral Practice, Grove Biblical Series 27 (Cambridge: Grove Books, 2003).

A helpful booklet-length treatment.

Patrick D. Miller, They Cried to the Lord: The Form and Theology of Biblical Prayer (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994).

A full and rich exploration of different types of prayer, especially in the Old Testament, with a useful chapter on blessing and cursing.

Christopher Wright Mitchell, The Meaning of BRK “To Bless” in the Old Testament, SBL Dissertation Series 95 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1987).

A scholarly work which divides the uses of the brk root into three categories: God blessing man, man blessing man, and the use of brk in the praise of God.

R. Scott Osborne, The Book of Blessings (Xulon Press, 2007).

Available as a free download. A book which focuses on speaking blessings based on Scripture, using the language of the Bible, gathering biblical references modified in order to create blessings, divided into discrete areas such as blessing for courage, for joy, for faith and trust, etc.

Claus Westermann, Blessing in the Bible and the Life of the Church, Overtures to Biblical Theology, trans. Keith Crim (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978).

Something of a classic in the area, describing blessing in different traditions within Scripture.

Aspects of Theological Interpretation 9

[This is the ninth of twelve posts outlining a number of streams in the current interest in theological interpretation, paying particular attention to recent treatments. For earlier introductions to theological interpretation, see here, here, and here.]

#1 – Its uneasy relationship with historical criticism

#2 – Its disputed overlap with biblical theology

#3 – Its natural affinity with precritical interpretation

#4 – Its noteworthy exemplar in Karl Barth

#5 – Its relative comfort with multiple interpretations

#6 – Its significant emphasis on the role of the community of faith

#7 – Its contested dependence on ‘general’ hermeneutics

#8. Its careful attention to the role of the canon and typology

#9. Its renewed reflection on the doctrine of Scripture

Discussions of theological interpretation have an obvious impact on reflections about the nature and purpose of Scripture itself. It might be anticipated that renewed reflection on Scripture, in turn, will yield fruits for its interpretation.

[See, e.g., Timothy Ward, Word and Supplement: Speech Acts, Biblical Texts, and the Sufficiency of Scripture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); John Webster, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch, Current Issues in Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Telford Work, Living and Active: Scripture in the Economy of Salvation, Sacra Doctrina: Christian Theology for a Postmodern Age (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002); David S. Yeago, ‘The Bible: The Spirit, the Church, and the Scriptures: Biblical Inspiration and Interpretation Revisited’, in James J. Buckley and David S. Yeago (eds.), Knowing the Triune God: The Work of the Spirit in the Practices of the Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 49-93. See also Richard S. Briggs, ‘Perspectives on Scripture: Its Status and Purpose’, Heythrop Journal 48, 2 (2007), 267-74.]

If there is a trend discernible here, it is away from seeing the doctrine of Scripture as merely part of prolegomena, a distinct topic in its own right requiring consideration before dealing with other areas of doctrine. Rather, the doctrine of Scripture requires constant revisitation in the light of every other locus of theology – Trinity, soteriology, ecclesiology. Thus, as Work (Living and Active, 10) says:

‘In theological language, the three claims are that the Bible’s character as the Word of God suggests a Trinitarian ontology of Scripture; that the Bible’s role in salvation suggests a historical and personal soteriology of Scripture; and that the Bible’s inextricable relationship with the Church in its eschatological setting suggests an ecclesiology of Scripture.’

In short, Scripture must not be treated apart from the God who speaks through it, from the Spirit who inspired and illumines it, from the Christ to whom it witnesses, from its role in God’s work of salvation, and from its place in the formation of the church. Hence, for instance, Scripture can be seen as that which not only documents God’s covenant with his people, but which is itself a covenant document, containing commands and promises, the ratification of God’s relationship to his people. God does not merely provide abstract propositions in Scripture, but through Scripture binds himself to his people in a promise to act on their behalf. Scripture is God’s covenant deed in the sense that it functions as his promise of salvation, and as the written document which seals his promise.

[This notion goes back at least to Meredith G. Kline, The Structure of Biblical Authority, 2nd edn. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), but has been reinvigorated, especially through speech act theory, in more recent treatments: David Gibson, ‘The God of Promise: Christian Scripture as Covenantal Revelation’, Themelios 29.3 (2004), 27-36; Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Eschatology: The Divine Drama (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002); Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 133-41. Cf. Webster, Holy Scripture, 55: ‘Scripture’s authority flows from its given place in the economy of grace.’]

In a recent comparative study of Barr, Ricoeur and Frei, Richard Topping explores the nature of Scripture within God’s communicative and salvific action, seeking to show how Scripture is itself implicated in God’s revelatory action.

[Richard R. Topping, Revelation, Scripture and Church: Theological Hermeneutic Thought of James Barr, Paul Ricoeur and Hans Frei, Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007).]

Such studies recognise that distinctions between ‘propositional’ and ‘personal’ revelation, or ‘word’ and ‘act’, need to be more nuanced than they have been in previous discussion, recognising that God speaks, but does things in speaking, whether commanding, promising, blessing, forgiving, exhorting, and so on; and God performs these acts through Scripture. As Treier writes:

‘[T]heological hermeneutics involves thinking about the nature and nurture of interpretation in the light of God, whose action puts reader, text, and author in a larger context that decisively alters the character of their interaction.’

[Daniel J. Treier, Introducing Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Recovering a Christian Practice (Nottingham: Apollos, 2008), 135-36. For a full argument for paying attention to the role of divine agency in biblical hermeneutics, see Mark Alan Bowald, Rendering the Word in Theological Hermeneutics: Mapping Divine and Human Agency (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). On Scripture as divine action, see Stephen R. Holmes, ‘Christology, Scripture, Divine Action and Hermeneutics’, in Andrew T. Lincoln and Angus Paddison (eds.), Christology and Scripture: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Library of New Testament Studies 348 (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 156-70; cf. in the same volume the essay by John Webster, ‘Resurrection and Scripture’ (138-55).]

As might be expected, among other issues, there is debate as to whether Scripture’s authority does not subsist apart from a community of readers who treat it as such, or whether it remains a property of the text by virtue of the voice of God. John Webster, for one, is clear that Scripture is the product of the divine word, and the church does not confer authority on it.

[See Holy Scripture, 42-67, and Word and Church: Essays in Christian Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001), 9-46 (‘The Dogmatic Location of the Canon’). It should be acknowledged that some think Webster needs to accord more weight to tradition; see, e.g., Gavin D’Costa, ‘Revelation, Scripture and Tradition: Some Comments on John Webster’s Conception of “Holy Scripture”’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 6, 4 (2004), 337-50.]

Aspects of Theological Interpretation 5

[This is the fifth of twelve posts outlining a number of streams in the current interest in theological interpretation, paying particular attention to recent treatments. For earlier introductions to theological interpretation, see here, here, and here.]

#1 – Its uneasy relationship with historical criticism

#2 – Its disputed overlap with biblical theology

#3 – Its natural affinity with precritical interpretation

#4 – Its noteworthy exemplar in Karl Barth

#5 – Its relative comfort with multiple interpretations

With some exceptions (to be noted), those interested in theological interpretation allow for more diversity in interpretation than those nursed in the arms of historical criticism are comfortable with. Arguing for an ‘underdetermined interpretation’ of Scripture, rather than a determinate or anti-determinate interpretation, Stephen Fowl seeks to move from debates about the ‘meaning’ of a text to ‘accounts of our interpretative aims, interests, and practices’.

[Stephen E. Fowl, Engaging Scripture: A Model for Theological Interpretation, Challenges in Contemporary Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 32-61, citation from 56, and cf. also his ‘The Role of Authorial Intention in the Theological Interpretation of Scripture’, in Joel B. Green and Max Turner (eds.), Between Two Horizons: Spanning New Testament Studies and Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 71-87.]

As we saw in an earlier post, Fowl turns to the multifaceted notion of the ‘literal sense’ in Aquinas for support.

[Stephen E. Fowl, ‘The Importance of a Multivoiced Literal Sense of Scripture: The Example of Thomas Aquinas’, in in A.K.M. Adam, Stephen E. Fowl, Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Francis Watson, Reading Scripture with the Church: Toward a Hermeneutic for Theological Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 35-50; Engaging Scripture, 38-40.]

Likewise, according to Adam, hermeneutics has been held captive to the metaphor of interpretation as translation of a one-to-one equivalence sort.

[A.K.M. Adam, ‘This is Not a Bible: Dispelling the Mystique of Words for the Future of Biblical Interpretation’, in Robert M. Fowler, Edith Blumhofer, Fernando F. Segovia (eds.), New Paradigms for Bible Study: The Bible in the Third Millennium (London: T&T Clark International, 2004), 3-20; ‘Poaching on Zion: Biblical Theology as Signifying Practice’, in Adam et al., Reading Scripture, 17-34.]

Elsewhere, he writes of the ‘myth of subsistent meaning’, which treats ‘meaning’ as ‘an immanent property of a text’.

[A.K.M. Adam, Faithful Interpretation: Reading the Bible in a Postmodern World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006), 3.]

Rather, he argues, ‘we infer meaning from the experience of attempting to arrive at a shared understanding’ (Faithful Interpretation, 5). Far from being stymied by this, such a procedure is beneficial for those with theological interests in the Bible:

‘Freed from the impossible task of pinning down a single correct meaning for each biblical passage, scholars might devote their efforts to spelling out what makes their proposal the best among various legitimate hypotheses’ (Faithful Interpretation, 10-11).

Texts can’t mean anything, but ‘a hermeneutic that respects the full catholicity of meaning needs to start by accepting abundance as a positive condition’ (Adam, ‘Poaching on Zion’, 25).

Others have not been persuaded to abandon the category of ‘meaning’.

[E.g., Murray A. Rae, History and Hermeneutics (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 132-40, noting that it is the ‘divine economy’ that establishes appropriate boundaries and context for the meaning of a biblical text; see further his ‘Texts in Context: Scripture and the Divine Economy’, Journal of Theological Interpretation 1, 1 (2007), 23-45, and cf. Brevard S. Childs, ‘Toward Recovering Theological Exegesis’, Pro Ecclesia 6, 1 (1997), 16-26, at 22-25.]

Vanhoozer draws on speech act theory to contest the claim that meaning is relative to the encounter between text and reader.

[Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text? The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge (Leicester: Apollos, 1998), passim, esp. 201-80. It might be worth noting that Fowl (‘Authorial Intention’, 76, n. 10) distinguishes between two streams of speech act theory, following on from J.L. Austin. Richard Rorty and Jeffrey Stout treat Austin as a ‘therapeutic philosopher’ who eliminates confusions about language by showing that words and utterances become intelligible because of the way they are used in particular contexts and social conventions, ‘not because words have meanings as inherent properties’. A second way is taken up by Searle, who seeks ‘to develop a philosophy of language and, at least implicitly, a metaphysic or ontology’. Fowl judges that Vanhoozer (and Thiselton) stand more with Searle, and places himself with Rorty and Stout. In fact, Vanhoozer utilises Searle’s speech acts along with Ricoeur’s hermeneutics and Habermas’ social theory, seeking ‘to integrate all three into a comprehensive theory of literary meaning as communicative action’ (Meaning, 207).]

Vanhoozer argues that authorial intention is based on the notion of the author as a communicative agent. To describe meaning is to describe the author’s intended action, which is not to be confused with ‘what the author planned to write’ or ‘unintentionally brings about’ (Meaning, 259).

[Francis Watson, Text and Truth: Redefining Biblical Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), 95-126 also utilises speech act theory in his argument that biblical texts have a single ‘literal sense’ which is ‘the communicative intention of the author’. See Scott A. Blue, ‘Meaning, Intention, and Application: Speech Act Theory in the Hermeneutics of Francis Watson and Kevin J. Vanhoozer’, Trinity Journal 23, 2 (2002), 161-84. In a more recent essay (‘Authors, Readers, Hermeneutics’, in Adam et al., Reading Scripture, 119-23), however, drawing on Augustine, Watson echoes Adam and Fowl in wondering whether theological hermeneutics ought to be more comprehensive in allowing a range of interpretive priorities.]

Texts are speech acts performed by authors, communicative actions of communicative agents, and one needs to understand what an author is doing – whether telling a story, making a promise, giving a warning, or issuing a rebuke. Vanhoozer also uses speech act theory to offer an account of the nature of Scripture as God’s communicative act.

[Kevin J. Vanhoozer, First Theology: God, Scripture and Hermeneutics (Leicester: Apollos, 2002), 127-203. See also Nicholas Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim that God Speaks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), and Timothy Ward, Word and Supplement: Speech Acts, Biblical Texts, and the Sufficiency of Scripture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).]

God is a communicative agent, and Scripture is his communicative action, the book of the covenant – the covenant of discourse – which establishes God’s relationship with his people, and through which we enjoy communion with him.

[It should be noted that other scholars are less interested in exploring the notion of Scripture as a divine speech act, and more interested in using speech act theory to examine the communicative acts in particular biblical passages. See, e.g., Anthony C. Thiselton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics: The Theory and Practice of Transforming Biblical Reading (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1992), 272-312, and Richard S. Briggs, Words in Action: Speech Act Theory and Biblical Interpretation: Toward a Hermeneutic of Self-Involvement (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001). For useful surveys, see Richard S. Briggs, ‘The Uses of Speech-Act Theory in Biblical Interpretation’, Currents in Research: Biblical Studies 9 (2001), 229-76, and Brevard S. Childs, ‘Speech-Act Theory and Biblical Interpretation’, Scottish Journal of Theology 58, 4 (2005), 375-92.]

In a more recent essay, against Adam and Fowl, Vanhoozer defends the emphasis of his earlier work:

‘In sum: theological interpretation is the process of discerning the discourse, human and divine, in the canonical work. Whose discourse counts? I answer: that of the original historical author and the divine author who commissions, enables, authorizes, and accompanies it.’

[Kevin J. Vanhoozer, ‘Imprisoned or Free? Text, Status, and Theological Interpretation in the Master/Slave Discourse of Philemon’, in Adam et al., Reading Scripture, 51-93, at 71.]

Kevin J. Vanhoozer on ‘Aesthetic’ Theology

Kevin J. Vanhoozer, ‘A Lamp in the Labyrinth: The Hermeneutics of “Aesthetic” Theology’, Trinity Journal 8 (1987), 25-56.

[Another early essay from Vanhoozer, showing many of the seeds that would bear fruit in his later work. Some lengthy summary notes follow...]

•••

‘What I am calling “aesthetic theology” may be roughly defined as that theology which focuses on the Bible’s literary form or shape to the exclusion of the author and historical context’ (25).

Imagination, metaphor, and art have been increasingly prominent in titles of books on theology. The tide has been turning from historical criticism to literary criticism, and the turn to the aesthetic has been joined by a turn to language, such that language itself has become an ‘object of contemplation’ (25).

‘Rather than a lamp which makes one’s way in the world easier, language is viewed by many today as a labyrinth in which one loses one’s way, or worse yet, leads to nowhere’ (26).

The aesthetic object is ‘judged by virtue of its beauty, form, or shape’, and ‘is to be contemplated in its organic wholeness, cut off from questions about its original situation and the circumstances of its production’ (26). This means that ‘the text is cut off from its author, and from its author’s “author-ity”’ (27).

Moreover, ‘whole theologies are viewed as self-contained works of art, each displaying its own order and demanding to be evaluated on its own merits’ (27). And there are few criteria for judging such ‘works of art’.

‘My plan… is straightforward. In the first section I consider the fate of the author in contemporary hermeneutics… I survey in subsequent sections the aesthetic turn as it has affected philosophy, history, literary criticism, and finally, theology… I then consider a Christian view of language and literature under the heading aesthetics or ethics, and offer a theory of language and literature that preserves the strengths of aesthetic hermeneutics while restoring the author to his rightful place’ (27).

1. Reformation hermeneutics and the fate of the author
Vanhoozer discusses Hirsch’s view on authorial intention and some of his critics (Lentricchia, Palmer, Eagleton).

2. The aesthetic turn in philosophy: from Kant to Derrida
Why has the author fallen on hard times?

• The Kantian heritage – the aesthetic turn can be located in Kant’s copernican revolution which claimed that ‘knowledge does not conform to objects but objects conform to our knowledge’ (31, n. 26). His Critique of Pure Reason limits our ability to know the world as it is in itself; the mind is programmed to see in a certain way. This means that ‘language can no longer be regarded as a window to the world, a lamp which lights up the real’. ‘The mind, and language, do not mirror the world, but partly construct it’ (32). In his Critique of Judgment, Kant ‘paves the way for a distinction between descriptive and poetic language’ (32). In his third Critique, Kant sets aesthetics ‘in an autonomous realm of its own’, establishing ‘an autonomous aesthetic realm in order to distinguish aesthetic judgments from other types of judgments, and in order to have a means to speak about that which is beyond knowledge and experience’ (32).

• German idealism and romanticism – for Schiller, humans are unique because only they can experience beauty (34). Aesthetic attitudes lead to freedom and play. In England, Coleridge took up Kant’s ideas on the imagination. ‘Characteristic of Romantic thought is a dualism between poetic and ordinary or scientific language’ (33, n. 33).

• Nietzsche – ‘Given the absence of God, it is up to man to give form to the world – to “aestheticize” it’ (34).

• Heidegger – ‘In his later work, Heidegger explored the ways in which poetry “shows” what cannot be conveyed by propositions. With Neitzsche, Heidegger criticizes the attempt to “objectivize” Being by capturing it in propositional language and manipulating it with conceptual categories. Form must not be imposed upon Being; rather, Being must disclose itself. And it is in Art, particularly poetry, that Heidegger believes Being comes to light’ (36).

• Derrida – with Derrida comes ‘the end of Western metaphysics’, and ‘a sustained attack on the author-ity of the author’ (37). Language refers only to itself; there is no fixed point. ‘The death of the author liberates human creativity… makes the creature the Creator’, and ‘we are free to interpret texts and the world playfully’ (39). There are no facts, only interpretations.

3. The aesthetic turn in history: from Nietzsche to Hayden White
The rhetorical nature of historiography is being noticed.

• Nietzsche on the use and abuse of history – historiography is an expression of the will to power. We should cast off the shackles of the past.

• Roland Barthes: the ‘discourse’ of history – histories are forms of literature, a discourse, with a rhetorical character.

• Hayden White: the ‘poetics’ of history – ‘White’s working hypothesis is that historical narratives are verbal fictions which make sense of experience in the same way as do novels and other fictional works’ (41-42).

‘In choosing to tell a history in one way rather than another, the historian performs an essentially “poetic” act. White makes an important distinction between the events of the story, the story itself, and the plot. The same event – say, the death of a king – may be a beginning, a middle, or an end in three different stories. But White makes the further distinction and says that the same story may have different plots. By “plot” White means the kind of story the historian tells… White borrows the kinds of stories the historian can tell, significantly enough, from the field of literary criticism. A story may be made into four different types of plot: Romance, Tragedy, Comedy, and Satire. The death of a king, for example, may be a Tragedy or a great Romance – it all depends on the meaning the historians sees in the story’ (42).

The historian thus chooses how to ‘emplot’ his story: ‘Providing the “meaning” of a story by identifying the kind of story that has been told is called explanation by emplotment.’ [Hayden White, Metahistory: Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 7.]

‘How a given historical situation is to be configured depends on the historian’s subtlety in matching up a specific plot-structure with the set of historical events that he wishes to endow with a meaning of a particular kind. This is essentially a literary, that is to say, fiction-making, operation.’ [Hayden White, ‘The Historical Text as Literary Artifact’ in Robert H. Canary and Henry Kozicki (eds.), The Writing of History: Literary Form and Historical Understanding (University of Wisconsin 1978), 48.]

A chronicle is a series of events but when it is made into a story with a plot, historiography comes under the domain of poiesis, and can be seen as an allegory. ‘The meaning of a set of events bestowed by the plot could never be produced by a literal representation of these events. Historical narrative is the projection onto the facts of the plot-structure of a literary form’ (42).

4. The aesthetic turn in literary criticism

• New criticism – the poem is a ‘verbal icon’. The unity of literature is emphasised.

• Structuralist criticism – like New Criticism, focuses on the text as it stands rather than the author’s intention or the historical context. The goal is to make explicit the underlying ‘grammar’ of literature. The author is overshadowed by the literary codes which are ‘the real determiners of meaning’ (44).

• Post-structuralism – a response (a group of responses) to structuralism, ‘structuralism without an ordering center’ (45). For Iser, readers fill the gaps of indeterminacy in their own way. Jauss rejects the idea of a text having a single objective meaning, even though the text contains objective features. Literary history is a history of the reactions of readers to texts. The response of the reader is a fusion of the reader’s horizons and the objective features of the text. For Fish, the reader is a member of an interpretive community which shapes what and how he or she reads. In some cases, interpretations are constructed only to be knocked down again. ‘The text is an aesthetic playground only when no author is there to superintend the play. For man to play, for man to realize his creative freedom, the Author must die’ (47).

5. Aesthetic theology: the Bible as ‘text’
The Bible is being used as an ‘aesthetic object, cut off from its original situation and from the authority of its author’ (47). We should applaud the emphasis on the unity of the text, the structures and patterns of a work. We should also acknowledge that our interpretations are provisional; we are finite and limited.

• Parables and metaphors – parables can be seen as aesthetic objects, and have been treated as such in scholarship, but the trouble comes ‘when the parables are taken to be paradigmatic for all biblical literature’ (48-49). Ricoeur possibly falls into this trap in his treatment of biblical hermeneutics, when he ‘extends the metaphorical nature of the parables to all religious language’ (49).

• The hermeneutics of ‘aesthetic’ theology: the religious ‘classic’ – David Tracy is an exemplar of aesthetic theology. Taking account of the pluralistic context in which he does theology, he sees Christianity as a particular expression of a universal truth. ‘Tracy’s book has for its thesis that all “classics,” both religious and secular, reveal truth in an analogous way. “Classics” are works that “so disclose a compelling truth about our lives that we cannot deny them some kind of normative status”’ (50). The Bible is the ‘classic’ of Christianity, and the stories and symbols in the Bible more adequately express ‘Christian fact’ than do doctrines. The power of the gospels (for instance) does not depend on events actually happening, but on the power of great art, or a great story. ‘The story of Jesus has the power to disclose truth and transform lives, regardless of whether or not it happened. For what is important is the meaning of the story. In Tracy’s pluralist context, the meaning of the Christian classic is the same as that of all the other classics: life is trustworthy’ (50). But the problem for aesthetic theology ‘is to account for the indispensability of the historical Jesus’ (51-52).

6. Toward a theology of language and literature: aesthetics or ethics?
The death of the author permits us to consider the text as an autonomous object onto which we may project our own interpretations. The death of the author is also related to the death of the Author (52).

‘The Christian theologian must affirm that an interpretation of the world which wilfully ignores the Creator is a hermeneutics of rebellion… I would like to suggest that we view language not as the creation of human beings, but rather as the gift of God. Our language is not our own, not something merely to be played with. Rather, language is a privilege and responsibility… As privilege and responsibility, the major category for language and literature should not be aesthetics but ethics’ (53).

Wilful misunderstanding of a text ‘is somehow guilty of doing violence to the author’. ‘Purpose to misinterpret an author seems akin to disrespect, a kind of semantic rape’ (53).

7. The return of the author: speech acts
Speech act theory is ‘admirably suited to meet our call for an ethics of language and literature’ (54). Searle treats language as a kind of action, which brings it under the domain of ethics; he also demolishes the barrier between ‘ordinary’ and ‘poetic’ language, and offers a revised notion of intentionality which escapes the criticisms levelled against Hirsch.

Searle distinguishes three components of a speech act: ‘the locution is the actual utterance; the “illocution” is what one does in saying something; the perlocution is the effect the saying has on one’s hearers’ (54). Searle proposes ‘that the speaker or author enacts his intention by invoking a convention that signals his intent’ (54). We signal our intention of thanking someone by saying ‘thank you’. We may need to know the context to understand the act; if I shout ‘fire’, it helps to know whether I’m defending a castle or warning an audience to flee the cinema (cf. 54-55).

‘If a text is a speech act, it seems as far-fetched to separate an author from his language and literature as it does an agent from his action. The author “belongs” to his text. He is responsible for his illocutionary acts. Author-ity designates the right – indeed, the obligation – of the author to be held responsible for his speech act. And if the author is accountable for this speech act, surely the reader is responsible for treating the author in a way that he deserves. Wilfully to misinterpret a text is akin to attributing an action to the author that he did not commit’ (55).

8. Conclusion
‘The moral of this study is that theologians should participate in the interdisciplinary discussions concerning textual meaning and truth’ (55).