Robert Jenson and 5 perspectival points on reading Scripture

In his essay ‘Scripture’s Authority in the Church’ in The Art of Reading Scripture (ed. Ellen Davis & Richard Hays; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 27-37, theologian Robert Jenson offers 5 perspectival points for reading Scripture. I shall try to summarise them:

1) The church needs to remember that our attitude and approach to the Bible will be very different from that of the world. It is only the church that gathers together to hear what is said in the Bible and submit herself under its authority. Jenson states, “What Christians call the Bible, or Scripture, exists as a single entity because – and only because – the church gathered these documents for her specific purpose: to aid in preserving her peculiar message, to aid in maintaining across time, from the apostles to the End, the self-identity of her message that the God of Israel has raised his servant Jesus from the dead.” (p.27) Therefore, the church needs to be blatant and unabashed in reading Scripture for the church’s purpose and within the context of Christian faith and practice - a reading guided by church doctrine (p.28)

2) We need to recognise the narrative unity that is present in the Bible. The gospel is a message about an event – the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus – and so itself has the form of a narrative. In another words, what is present in Scripture as a unified whole is narrative unity, and the church should read Scripture recognising ‘the single plotted succession of events, stretching from creation to consummation, plotted around exodus and resurrection’ (p.29). This means that ‘in the church any passage of Scripture is to be read for its contribution to the telling of Scripture’s whole story’ (p.29).

3) Not only is there a narrative in Scripture, it is an over-arching narrative. “Scripture’s story is not a part of some larger narrative; it is itself the larger narrative of which all other true narratives are parts.” (p.34). As Jenson highlights, this means that ‘not only is Scripture within the church, but we, the church, are within Scripture – that is, our common life is located inside the story Scripture tells.” (p.30). This in turn means that certain ways of construing scriptural authority is not right. We must not think of Scripture as an information base for some entity outside the story – be it God or classical religious experiences or theological history of Israel or the primal church – since we are living in that story, there is no position from which such a ‘third-party outside view’ can be conducted. This also means that we must not think that before we can apply the Scripture passage to us, we first have to grasp it insofar as it is not about ourselves. While a proposition of Paul or the story of Samson happens in its community, we stand on the same line of continuity as the common community of interpretation. Positively, Jenson advocates a playwright analogy of understanding Scriptural authority. He suggests: “Scripture is authoritative for us, as characters in the story that it tells, somewhat as the existing transcript of an unfinished play is determinative of what can be true and right for its characters in the part that remains to be written.” (p.32). Sounds Vanhoozer-ish at this point? But there are differences. Jenson suggests that the third act is not written, but ‘when he does, he will do it as the same author who wrote the first two’ (p.32). I believe Vanhoozer would not agree with this or he would put it in a different way – the Script is complete, the final act is penned down and the whole drama is awaiting its final end and conclusion, though the performance is still going on and heading towards that direction. But both Jenson and Vanhoozer agree on this – The grand story told in Scripture is not only the story of the characters created by the author but is also the story of the author as a character in his own play. The story is also fundamentally God’s story. The end state of this hermeneutical perspective – “Scripture is not a set of clues from which to figure out God, for the story it tells is itself the truth of God.” (p.33)


4) Since we now live the story Scripture tells, Scripture does not merely inform us, but when we read Scripture in the church, Scripture addresses us. And the voice that addresses us is the Word of God, the Logos, the second identity of the Trinity. Jenson goes on to suggest, rather interestingly, therefore that the voice that speaks in the Old Testament is that of the pre-existent Christ, just as the New Testament is the voice of his continuing prophetic activity. Jenson gives the example of Isaiah – when the prophet describes the servant as a “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”, it is really Christ’s own testimony to his own character, given by the mouth of his prophet. Hence, we should not be afraid to ‘find Jesus in the Old Testament’. I have to admit this is a somewhat controversial point, but one that is definitely food for thought.

5) In the light of all this, the best way to experience the authority of Scripture is to see how Scripture is privileged in the life of the church – privileged in such a way as to fundamentally shape its life. As Jenson wittily says, “To experience the authority of Scripture, this is the chief thing to do: Hang out with Scripture, on a particular corner, the corner where there is a little crowd gathered around someone telling about the resurrection.” (p.36)