more thinking about purity (circle drawing) and hermeneutics' constant bickering

If the theory of science sets itself the further task of investigating such conditions as are subject to our power, on which the realization of valid methods depends, and if it draws up rules for our procedure in the methodical tracking down of truth, in the valid demarcation and construction of the sciences, in the discovery and use, in particular, of the many methods that advance such sciences, and in the avoidance of errors in all of these concerns, then it has become a technology of science. ~ Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, 11.

The more I pursue theological studies, the more I am challenged to give up my purity addiction and embrace the lordship of Jesus. Let me unpack this, beginning with evangelicalism.

Evangelicalism came out of the fundamentalist movement. While confessing the authority of scripture, evangelicals did not want to disengage from cultural ideas and science. They wanted to stay in dialogue. Nevertheless, evangelicalism retained the purity culture of fundamentalism. And what is purity? Purity is an over-realized eschatology. It is "radical discipleship." It is what the Bible is really saying. Call it the first-century church, call it Christian America," call it the Christian home, xmarriage, xsingleness--it goes by many names. At the deep center of all of these purity moves is, I believe (and I'm still thinking about this), a baptized existentialism (or a spoon-cooked commercial ethic) which privileges individual action as the locus of truth. In that I see the Enlightenment plus the Great Bargain. Let me put these together.

The Enlightenment was and is a profound eruption in the Western mind. It removed most accepted forms of knowledge in favor of experiment and demonstration. The invidivual was encouraged to doubt everything. Knowledge was democratized. Its basis was experience rather than revelation.

The Great Bargain is far older than the Enlightenment. It is in the DNA of human living. The Great Bargain is when a human being decides that if they perform an act or produce a thing then God (or whatever passes for God or the gods) will hand over whatever good it is that the human being wants: fertility, a cushy job, rain on the crops, victory over the enemies, get a girlfriend, be free of illness, whatever. This is the root of idolatry. It goes back into the deepest selfishness of the human heart. And people make this bargain without even realizing they are doing it.

The Enlightenment makes the individual king of his own knowing. The Great Bargain makes the individual's actions or choices the king of their own success. Combine them in a religious context, and we get purity as control of knowing and control of acting where control and conformity produce the happy and highest form of life. Consider, as an example of this, the Bible.

The Bible is so central to evangelicalism, examining its use in that movement should isolate a bias toward purity. Evangelicals properly profess the Bible to be God's prophetic word. I certainly do not deny that. Observe that how that is can be understood differently. From the purity side, it means embracing an obedience to the Bible in the form of sola scriptura, but it is an obedience of adherence. Understanding is cultivated in order to conform. Exegesis and other textual disciplines work to isolate and explain in order that the present may be brought into conformity with the past. Certain hermeneutical tools or methods will be favored over others as they aid in this task. Of understanding, there may never be exactness, but the pursuit of exactness can be even more useful than a clear arrival. Even as I write this, I struggle hard in my soul. These are my people and the tools I was trained on. This hermeneutic is my hermeneutic, and I am still convinced of their value and am a student of them. But if they are sound, they can be shaken without harm. Purity culture is a subtle beast. The question is worth asking; truth has a way of broadening into freedom. The cathedral of Christian orthodoxy is larger than any one historical movement or moment.

Back to the Bible, then. Isn't it interesting that the Bible itself always defers to Jesus; Jesus is the revelation of God. It is hermeneutical about itself, certainly, but in the center is not an exegetical arrival but the person Jesus. It is as if we've decided the Pledge of Allegiance is about a flag and not about the country; we have switched out the sign and the signified (nodding toward Augustine's On Christian Teaching (de doctrina Christiana)).

This does not discount the Bible or the careful study of the Bible. The Bible is the divinely sanctioned, apostolic, human witness to the visitation of Yahweh to his people. Yet, it is not what is worshiped; Jesus is worshiped. So we don't study the Bible to be right; we study it to better know its author. Nor do we expect perfection in the Bible, but we do expect it in the one about whom it witnesses. That is one step.

The second step is the Walter Bruggemann step. Bruggemann is a well-respected Old Testament scholar. He points to Jewish ideas of belonging and says that to belong is not to agree in everything, but to join in and participate with others in the argument. The Bible, he says, is like an argument. Different perspectives crush up against one another and battle it out. And one is invited to take up the Bible and join the age-old community of arguers. Participation is community. Argument is being formed by and forming that community. And that community itself is being formed by its texts, which are the fundamental arguments of one's worldview.

That is a much, much different way of thinking about reading and participating and approaching the Bible than the perfection model. The argument model does not guarantee resolution, but formation. Not arrival so as to be right, but struggling to understand and in the struggling becoming a kind of struggler (lex orandi; lex credendi).

Let's say we adopt the Bruggemann model. Now we ask about the unity of the church. Before, in the purity model, we groaned about how far the church has fallen from Jesus's utopic plea that "they would be one as we are one." But now, in the argument model (that may not be the best word; I'm thinking out loud), the church in its struggle to embody the teaching of Jesus, in its centuries of debate and dialogue, looks different. Burning people at the stake is something purity models do (especially when they are wed to political purity); the argument model sees argument as engagement--as listening--as caring together with others.

I'd be willing to bet purity model churches structure their liturgies (for even non-denoms have liturgies) around purity. I'd be willing to bet purity models adopt a purity model of outreach, of the use of church funds, of the education of their children, of the expectations of the faithful, of their dialogue with communities and individuals outside the church. Purity culture is a circle-drawing culture: agape is on the inside; judgment is on the outside.

The Bible itself, in the argument model, models its resultant community in a different way. And its God is probably going to be a unity of plurality and not a monad (but that goes in a different direction). Consider grace. The scandal of grace is God’s operation to break a purity circle “while we were yet sinners.” The second are the many instances where Jesus breaks purity and yet, instead of being made unclean, he makes clean. When I talk about circle drawing, by the way, I'm talking about the creation of purity culture. The difference between purity and argumentation is the negation or acceptance of a hermeneutical model of knowing.