What is a good reading of Scripture?

The last part of the term is always crazy. Blogging is on the lower end of the priority list. Papers, counseling practicums, group presentations, and an art project later I have finished. Now I have about two weeks until I start Hebrew.

Dr. Joann Badley taught perhaps my favorite class this term. "Reading Practices" used to be called "Interpretive Methods". I'm very pleased with the textbook: The Art of Reading Scripture, edited by E.F. Davis and R.B. Hays. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003.

We looked at historical and textual criticism, literary method, Patristic scholars,critical traditioning, deconstruction, and other forms of approaches.
Our final day, we came up with a working list of approaches of the reading the Bible.

Here is what we came up with:

What is a good (‘better’) reading?

• Living in the primary rhythms of scripture: Exodus/ Resurrection
• Ways the story of God disarms the other stories of our culture
• Claiming truth where you see it.
• Habits of reading and practices of discipleship affect our reading (guard against bad readings)
• Frees us to hold complexity rather than reducing the meaning (e.g. to a moral reading); especially with respect to the application
• Invites other people into wonder and imagination, because primary purpose is the presence of God; so may have drawn on various other readings (so not just ‘academic’, as per Sadducees);
• Enliven as per, not in dissonance with, the life of Christ; gain understanding through worship and other forms of Christian formation.
• Saturated with humility; God is big, and knowing there are other voices;
• AUTHOR/author; incarnational theology; Acknowledge the trinitarian character (kenotic work) of God.
• Remember canonical frame
• Informs the way that we live (reciprocity: the way we live forms the way we understand); implications for spiritual practice as well (e.g. food); implications for life in community (e.g. forgiveness, peace-maker); requires something of us (challenges us)
• How does it bear witness to God; cross as corrective
• Pays attention to the actual words; not constructing a hypothetical text