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William Wesley Elkins, Drew University
This phrase simply encodes central aspects of the hermeneutics of
scriptural reasoning as a hermeneutics of common sense. When we are at
home we naturally feel no need to explicate what is familiar to us.
However, when something we naturally understand becomes strange to us or
is unfamiliar and problematic to another, our hearts are restless with
interpretations until the unfamiliar becomes familiar and we and make
the stranger feel at home with what we normally and naturally
understand. We just do not interpret what is plainly common sense. In
addition, when we do not feel at home, a little common sense is enough
to get us back to where we belong.
However, sometimes we may be struck
by the difficulty of feeling at home or making a stranger feel at home
when everything we thought was common sense just does not work to make
us feel at home or to make a hospitable place for the stranger.
In general things are not as complicated as
this. From time to time, however no matter what we do (family or
stranger, insider or outsider) we find that we are taking refuge in
strange and inhospitable places.
In particular, in the context of modernity the Abrahamite traditions
do not feel at home. Modernity treats religious
belief as a matter for scientific or historical analysis. Moreover,
modernity limits what is reasonable to the logic of these models and
does not validate forms of scriptural interpretation that shape the
practices of communities of faith. So, for the Children of Abraham, if
we have not been evicted by modernity (a worst case scenario supported
by some) we are uncomfortable in the house that modernity has built.
Scriptural Reasoning is a response by the Children of Abraham to respond
to and repair the problematic conditions of modernity so that we can
rediscover ways of being truly at home by rediscovering the promise and
possibilities of our own traditions.
So in the normal state of things, a certain amount of homelessness is
necessary for Scriptural Reasoning in the Abrahamite traditions. There
are times, however, when things get more difficult. In particular there
are passages of scripture that displace the sureties of our traditions
in different, complicated, and conflicting ways. For example, in
scriptural passages on the "hardening of Pharaoh's heart," what is
common sense and interpretative-reparative response for one tradition
may seem, more or less, to miss the point for another. In these cases
the wager of Scriptural Reasoning is that there is wisdom in the
insight that in the context of modernity our shared sense of
homelessness may be mitigated by a shared process of dialog that helps
us rediscover our true homes and ways of being hospitable
to others. It is the hope of the Society of Scriptural Reasoning that in a
profound and, as of yet, incompletely specified way, the journey we share
together is a way of recovering the unique shapes of our scripture-formed homes.
This is, of course, a complicated process and requires different
approaches, each with varying patterns of success. However,
from time to time, it is possible to state succinctly what has been
achieved in any one dialog. Willie Young, managing editor of
Journal of Scriptural Reasoning,
described what was at stake and what was accomplished in the last year's
interpretations of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart.
In focusing on the
topic of Pharaoh's heart, the 2000
meeting of the National Society of Scriptural Reasoning brought together three
particular communities and their respective readings of scripture. In what could best
be termed a community of
separation, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim readers of scripture shared study and
reflection on the difficult issue of God's permission or willing of Pharaoh's
hardened injustice and tyranny, as depicted and interpreted by the commentators
of their tradition-rich communities, without thereby converging into a unitary
or homogenized voice. In diverse ways
and to varying degrees, the papers deliberate upon the characterization of
divine and human justice. Together,
they open an unfinished conversation, allowing each community in its
particularity to speak to troubling and difficult issues of punishment,
reconciliation, and divine and human agency in the world.
A scriptural reasoning understanding of
justice follows from appreciation for both the harmonies and dissonances that
emerge in the discussion.
(1) One
of the primary issues that troubled the participants is the significance of
free will in and for the interpretation of the hardening of pharaoh's
heart. This issue is much more that an
issue of a philosophy of obligation and the relation between ifs and cans: if
he can he should; if he cannot then he is not responsible for failing to do
what he should. It appears that free
will may be a problem internal to the scriptures concerned with the hardening
of Pharaoh's heart. In particular any
generalization of the covenant to include all humanity seems to require that
Pharaoh be able to choose to free the Exodites. However nuanced the relation between
divine power and human
potentiality, this position cannot avoid a crisis of meaning introduced into
biblical scripture by the death of the first born of Egypt. It would seem that the
end may be just but the means may have been, if not unjust, then
excessive. This issue, however, may be
radically irrelevant if free will is a modern issue and is simply imposed on
the text on a text that is about what we must acknowledge: God's sovereignty or
unity. In this position the force
behind God's claims is simply a matter of how forcefully we choose to deny
them.
(2) The
persuasiveness of interpretations that affirm the centrality of free will may
depend upon the clarity and variety of the means used to make the claims of God
understood. In this regard the Muslim
commentators provided a detailed account of a balance between the claims of
God's sovereign unity and the signs directed towards guiding a voluntary
submission to Allah. The semiotic variety and clarity of this position may
provide philosophers with the concepts needed to interpret the relation of
God's will and God's willingness to be known.
However philosophical and faithful this approach is, there may be certain
darker intervals and trajectories in scripture that call for interpretations
that go beyond a faithful reason towards a faith formed in the particular
mysteries of the divine will. Whether
the "hardening of Pharaoh's heart" is one of these darker intervals is a
question that each of these commentaries addresses in its own ways.
(3) In
this regard, any final analysis is simply a prelude to further interpretations
that call us to speak more and quite differently. There is a certain terrible
and awe-filled mystery in the
"hardening of Pharaoh's heart" that is not simply addressed to Pharaoh.
It applies to all those who encounter the
purpose and promises of the God of the Children of Abraham.
In the tension between the home from which
we are displaced, by the difference between God's ways and our own, and the
promise of the home that we will find, when God's will is done, we may find
that we can help each other journey home in our different ways. This is the
hope and the significance of the following papers.
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