Is an existential interpretation of the Bible and of theological doctrines valid? Or are we seeing a modern philosophy replacing traditional religious material that has become outmoded? ~John Macquarrie[1]
Jean Paul Sartre once commentated that the word existentialism, “is now so loosely applied to so many things that it no longer means anything at all.”[2] To make matters more complex many of the so-called existential thinkers (i.e. Heidegger, Japers, and Marcel) refuse to have the label of existentialist attached to their philosophical thought. As Roger L. Shinn points out, “almost any self-respecting existentialist refuses to call (himself/herself) an existentialist.” Shinn adds that to say “I am an existentialist” is to put oneself within a classification. The existentialist would prefer to say, “I am myself, and I don’t like your effort to fit me into your classification.”[3] Moreover, amongst existentialist thinkers there are striking differences of points of view surrounding for example, metaphysical questions (i.e. the question of the existence of God). One only needs to compare such thinkers as Nietzsche/Kierkegaard, Buber/Heidegger, Japers/Sartre to note the broad spectrum of differences in regard to their philosophical outlook.
Even though it may be an impossible task to reduce existentialism into a neat program or system, it is possible to find points of convergence and reoccurring themes. For example, Anglican theologian John Macquarrie points out that such themes as “freedom, decision, responsibility are prominent in all the existentialist philosophers… matters (which) constitute the core of personal being.”[4] Macquarrie goes on to list themes like, “finitude, guilt, alienation, despair, death.” Topics which he says have “not been prominent in traditional philosophy, yet we find them treated at length among the existentialists.”[5] Many theologians in the 20th and 21st century (i.e. Rudolf Bultmann, Emil Brunner, Paul Tillich, Jurgen Moltmann, Karl Rahner, etc…) have been interested in the ways in which these themes and topics have been applied in the interpretation of the Bible.
The purpose of this paper therefore, is to examine how existential approaches in understanding the Bible have been used by theologians, scholars, and philosophers by Christian thinkers. This paper will begin by briefly examining the history of existentialism pertaining to interpretation and then look at some of the contributions and limitations of existentialism. Finally it will seek to explore questions of the future role of existentialist thought in hermeneutics.
Throughout the history of Christianity the Bible has been interpreted in a variety of ways. The early Christians and the Church Fathers interpreted the Bible making especial use of typology and allegory, while in that same time period; theologians such as Iranaeus began to stress the importance of tradition and ecclesiastical authority in the handling of Scripture. Through the use of typology and allegory, it is possible, even in these fledgling years of the Church, to see the seeds of what one could call an existential concern for interpretation. For example, within the typological method there is a focus on the acts or actions of God within the Old and New Testament. As Robert Grant points out:
The typological method is based on the presupposition that the whole Old Testament looks beyond itself for its interpretation…The Old Testament writers did not record past events because they were fascinated with the past as such; they wrote because the past events had present significance, and future significance…They believed that the God who was working in their own times and would work in the times to come was the same God who had worked hitherto. [6]
They had what Grant calls an “existential concern” with the history of God’s acts.
Furthermore, writers who took an allegorical approach to interpretation, such as Augustine, also place an emphasis on the subjective. As John S. Pendergast notes, “according to Augustinian exegesis, readers who focus on clarity or self-sufficient literal meaning as an end in itself are potentially missing the true meaning of a text.”[7] Augustine was concerned to stress a deeper meaning to Scripture, a spiritual meaning which had the power to transform the heart of the individual. Macquarrie argues that with Augustine, “we come to the most powerfully existential presentation of Christianity since St. Paul, and one that has been of such enduring significance that even today existentialists, Christian and non-Christian alike, acknowledge an affinity with the great North African scholar.”[8] For example in Augustine’s commentary on Psalm 42:7[9] he writes, “if by ‘abyss’ we understand a great depth, is not man’s heart an abyss? For what is there more profound than that abyss? Men may speak, may be seen by the operation of their members, may be heard speaking; but whose thought is penetrated, whose heart is seen into?…Do not you believe that there is in man a deep so profound as to be hidden even from him in whom it is?”[10]
During the Reformation the door was opened even further by Luther and Calvin for an existential interpretation of the Bible. While Catholics interpreted the Bible, “by the tradition of the church…(and relying) strongly on the authority of the fathers. Protestant exegesis makes a fresh start, often overturning the accumulated decisions of centuries.”[11] Protestant thinkers viewed that Bible in a more holistic way. As Grant argues, the spirit Protestantism viewed the Bible not as a “book of law like the American Constitution, interpreted by judicial decisions which possess binding force. It is a book of life through which God speaks directly to the human soul.”[12] For Luther there was more to the Bible that recognized authoritative consensus. Moreover, he believed that a mere historical or grammatical interpretation “is not an end in itself.”[13] Historical and grammatical understanding may aid the scholar in his or her exegesis but they are ultimately just “a means to the understanding of Christ, who is taught in all the books of the Bible.” Luther held that “Christ is the point in the circle from which the whole circle is drawn.”[14] Here Luther introduces “an element into his exegesis which takes it beyond ‘objective’ philosophical interpretation into the subjective realm of faith.”[15] Luther believed that “experience is necessary for the understanding of the Word. It is not merely to be repeated or known, but to be lived and felt.”[16]
In the 19th century the Danish thinker Soren Kierkegaard would pick up on Luther’s emphasis on the experiential. It is true that Kierkegaard shared in one sense a close affinity with Luther, while at the same time, he could be highly critical of the German reformer. Indeed, Kierkegaard in his personal journal once made the following remark about Luther:
Luther: your responsibility is great indeed, for the closer I look the more clearly do I see that you overthrew the Pope and set the public on the throne.[17]
Kierkegaard is often acknowledged as “The Father of Existentialism.” The Danish thinker therefore will be the starting point in the examination of the contributions of existentialism to interpretation.
Contributions of Existentialism
It cannot be denied that existentialism has been a major influence in the theological world since the first half of the 20th century. “Whether a theologian regards existentialism as a threat or as a hope” Jaroslav Pelikan writes, “he cannot ignore it as a force.”[18] Due to this influence it has contributed to a greater understanding of the Bible and added another dimension or tool for Biblical interpretation.
Writing in the 19th century, Soren Kierkegaard tells a parable about a certain rich man who on a dark but starry night drives home comfortably in his carriage well lit by lanterns. This man is safe, and he fears no difficulty, he carries his light with him and it is not dark around him. But precisely because he has the lanterns lighted, and has a strong light close to him, precisely for this reason he cannot see the stars, for his light obscure the stars, which the poor peasant walking without lights can see gloriously in the dark but shiny night.[19]
Within this parable Kierkegaard is sharing an important insight. To view the Bible merely through the lens of one hermeneutical tool or method (i.e. historical criticism, allegory, typology, etc.) is to ipso facto place limits on, and miss out on a more congruent or deeper appreciation or meaning of the text. The man in the well lit carriage is unaware of the greater reality of the star-lit sky. To only posses an academic understanding of the Bible; to understand for example the historical, cultural, and linguistic considerations; to be able to relate its literary genres and mythic influences in regards to its structure and development, is to miss out on a more majestic and greater reality of the Word. There is a danger that the Bible can be so overly dissected, analyzed, and rationalized, that it may loose its central force, purpose and meaning. The scholar or academic may for example, have a wealth of insight and knowledge into the apocalyptic and messianic features in the book of Zechariah, but fall short on what those important aspects actually mean to the spiritual life of the individual and Christian community of faith.
This division of understanding is highlighted in the difference between knowing about something or someone, and actually personally encountering that person. As Kierkegaard argues in his work, ‘Concluding Unscientific Postscript’ the object of ones faith, which is revealed to humanity via Scripture:
Is not a teacher with a doctrine; for when a teacher, has a doctrine, the doctrine is eo ipso more important than the teacher, and the relationship is…intellectual, and it…becomes important not to botch it, but to realize the maximum intellectual relationship.
The object of faith for Kierkegaard is centered upon, “the reality of the teacher, that the teacher (i.e. Jesus Christ) really exists…the answer of faith is not concerned as to whether a doctrine is true or not…the object of faith is…God’s reality in existence as a particular individual, the fact that God has existed as an individual human being.”[20]
Moreover, as Kierkegaard observed “every human life ought to have ‘primitivity.’ By that odd word he meant the re-examination of the foundations of experience and existence. The genius of such ‘primivity’…is not to produce something new, but to ask about fundamental questions from the particularity of a life, place, and time.”[21] Kierkegaard reads and interprets the Bible with this concept of primivity in view.
A good example of how this existential principle is used in Biblical exegesis can be seen when applied to the Abraham and Isaac narrative in Genesis 22. W. Dow Edgerton believes that this is a story about the, “refusal and resistance of meaning” which leads the reader “to a search beyond the story itself through the deep echoes of language, imagination, and memory.”[22] Abraham is faced with a crisis of decision. He has been asked by God to sacrifice something so unimaginably important. Unlike the tragic heroes such as Agamemmon, Jeptha, and Brutus who also sacrificed their children to appease the divine, Abraham is in a different category. Kierkegaard sees this difference as clear:
The tragic hero still remains within the ethical. He lets one expression of the ethical find its telos in a higher expression of the ethical; the ethical relation between father and son, or daughter and father, he reduces to a sentiment which has its dialectic in the idea of morality. Here there can be no question of a teleological suspension of the ethical.
With Abraham the situation was different. By his act he overstepped the ethical entirely and possessed a higher telos outside of it, in relation to which he suspended the former. For I should very much like to know how one would bring Abraham’s act into relation with the universal, and whether it is possible to discover any connection whatever between what Abraham did and the universal… except the fact that he transgressed it. It was not for the sake of saving a people, not to maintain the idea of the state, that Abraham did this, and not in order to reconcile angry deities. If there could be a question of the deity being angry, he was angry only with Abraham, and Abraham’s whole action stands in no relation to the universal, is a purely personal undertaking. Therefore, whereas the tragic hero is great by reason of his moral virtue, Abraham is great by reason of a personal virtue. In Abraham s life there is no higher expression for the ethical than this, that the father shall love his son. Of the ethical in the sense of morality there can be no question in this instance. In so far as the universal was present, it was indeed cryptically present in Isaac, hidden as it were in Isaac’s loins, and must therefore cry out with Isaac’s mouth, “Do it not! Thou art bringing everything to naught.”[23]
For Kierkegaard, Abraham is a figure that arouses admiration in one sense and in another appalls him. It is a passage of Scripture that has a highly personal connection to Kierkegaard. Just as Abraham was called to sacrifice his son Isaac, Kierkegaard, “was impelled to give up Regina (Olson),”[24] the love of his life and the women he was engaged to. Bretall also points out that this personal parallel does not lessen the philosophical or theological force of “Fear and Trembling.” The same could be said for example, of Plato’s writings of the trail and death of his master Socrates. The personal does not minimize the truth that is brought to light by either of these philosophers. An existential interpretation of this and other passages of the Bible, highlights the importance of decision, the problem of faith, anxiety, dread, and finitude. It also speaks to the category of personal ethics and conscience. It is in these ways and many more that existentialism contributes to exegesis.
Limitations of Existentialism
While existentialism may offer insight and important perspective it is however, no panacea for all of the complexities and difficulties of biblical interpretation. There are a number of problems and criticisms which have come to light in recent times because of the popularity and use of existential thought within biblical studies. This section will briefly focus on a few of its problems.
The first criticism revolves around the current trend in the Western world and its inordinate focus on the individual and human experience. Robert Grant points out that:
Today it hardly seems necessary to insist upon the ubiquity of subjectivity. Indeed, it may be suggested that subjectivity has been overemphasized and that the interpreter owes a measure of objectivity to the document with which he deals.[25]
This extreme focus on subjectivity is no doubt in reaction to an overemphasis of the Enlightenment and Post-Enlightenment on rationality, historical criticism, and scientific and logical positivism. It could be said that for much of the past 200 years there has been a tyranny of reason over and above revelation which has contributed to an existential reaction in both the Christian and Secular world. However, as Grant points out this reaction has swung the pendulum far into the other direction.
Another problem area has to deal with the temptation to merely treat the Bible in an existential framework liberating the text from its miraculous and otherworldly characteristics. In regards to the miraculous not even Rudolf Bultmann would not go so far as to deny the miracles of Christ. Jesus of Nazareth, as Bultmann points out, did not even view his own “miracles as a proof for the existence and rule of God; for he knew no doubt of God…faith is for (Jesus) the power, in particular moments of life, to take seriously the conviction of the omnipotence of God”[26]
Even more alarming is the existential tendency to divorce the Bible from its historical context. Historical revelation, it is true, is a major scandal to the modern sensibilities. The Bible however, cannot simply be stripped of its historicity and just be interpreted existentially. When that happens the Bible loses not only its intellectual coherence but also, loses its spiritual force. After all, as the existential theologian Emil Brunner said:
Biblical theology is historical through and through. All that the Bible has to teach us is based on the historical revelation. In the light of Jesus Christ, in the light of the revelation of the Old and the New Testament alone, have we been able to see what we have seen.[27]
Without the objective historical reality of Bible and the narrative testimony of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at work among His creation, even existential truths that can be garnered from the narratives lose their power. In short, “our subjective apprehension of God does not exist independently, but only insofar as its source, mediation, and ground are found in the humanity (and historical reality) of Jesus Christ”[28]
Role of Existentialism within Biblical Interpretation
Existentialism will however, continue to be a voice within the realm of biblical interpretation which cannot simply be ignored. At its best, an existential interpretation offers the reader of the Bible the opportunity to enter into to a largely untapped or unexplored world of Scripture by encountering and wrestling with themes that have largely been ignored by academics and biblical scholars. It also takes the Bible out of the hands of the systematician and breathes new life into it. It treats the Bible as story not system:
Asking what these stories teach us about how we make sense, how we read the signs, events, and texts of our world into a world, and how we might represent that work to ourselves. It is a reflection upon the person of the interpreter who, to borrow Foucault’s language, ‘from within the life to which he [sic] entirely belongs and by which he is traversed in his whole being, constitutes representations by means of which he lives, and on the basis of which he possesses that strange capacity of being able to represent to himself precisely that life.’[29]
The Bible is therefore read and interpreted as being dynamic and not static. The stories, events, and acts (both human and divine) that the reader encounters in the Bible have something to say to the contemporary world. After all it “is a book of life through which God speaks directly to the human soul.”[30]
In conclusion, to return to the original question posed by John Macquarrie, (at the beginning of this paper) existentialism should be seen as a contributing force to interpretation, but a force that needs to be kept in check and balanced with objective truth. It is too easy and often the temptation too great, to take an unclear or obscure passages of the Bible and interpret them existentially. This however is not a new problem in the history of hermeneutics. Many of the Church Fathers for example, were criticized for their excessive use of allegory in their approach to interpretation. However, even with its weaknesses and limitations, existentialism can lead the scholar and reader of the Bible into “truths that are indispensable to our condition and that will be essential to any sane, human philosophy of the future.”[31]
Works Cited
- St. Augustine, “The Works of St. Augustin,” from A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of The Christian Church, ed. Philip Schaff (New York: The Christian Literature Company, 1888).
- Brunner Emil, Dogmatics II: The Christine Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, trans., Olive Wyton (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 1952).
- Bultmann Rudolf, Jesus and the Word (New York: Scribner, 1958).
- Edgerton Dow W., The Passion of Interpretation (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992).
- Grant Robert M. with David Tracy, A Short History of the Interpretation of the Bible, 2nd Ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984).
- Hunsinger George, How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
- Kierkegaard Soren, The Journals of Soren Kierkegaard, ed. & trans. Alexander Dru (New York: Collins, 1958).
- Kierkegaard Soren, “…Even When Temporal Sufferings Press Heaviest, the Blessedness of Eternity Outweighs Them” (Discourse VI) in The Gospel of Suffering, trans., David F. and Lillian Marvin Swenson (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1948).
- Kierkegaard Soren, “Concluding Unscientific Postscript,” in A Kierkegaard Anthology, ed. Robert Bretall (Princeton University Press, 1973).
- Macquarrie John, Existentialism (Hutchinson & Co; London, 1972).
- Murtonen A., Hebrew in its West Semitic Setting: A Comparative Survey of Non- Masoretic Hebrew (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1986).
- Pendergast John S., Religion, Allegory, and Literacy in Early Modern England, 1560-1640: The Control of the World (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing House, 2006).
- Sartre, Jean Paul, “Existentialism Is a Humanism,” in Existentialism fromDostoevsky to Sartre, ed. Walter Kaufmann (Meridian Books: Cleveland,1956).
- Shinn Roger L., ed., Restless Adventure: Essays on Contemporary Expressions of Existentialism (Scribner: New York, 1968).
[1] Macquarrie John, Existentialism (Hutchinson & Co; London, 1972), 217.
[2] Sartre, Jean Paul, ‘Existentialism Is a Humanism,’ Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, ed. Walter Kaufmann (Meridian Books; Cleveland, 1956), p. 289.
[3] Shinn Roger L., ed., Restless Adventure: Essays on Contemporary Expressions of Existentialism (Scribner; New York, 1968), p. 13
[4] Macquarrie, Existentialism, 4.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Grant Robert M. with David Tracy, A Short History of the Interpretation of the Bible, 2nd Ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 37.
[7] Pendergast John S., Religion, Allegory, and Literacy in Early Modern England, 1560-1640: The Control of the World (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing House, 2006), 9.
[8] Macquarrie, 29.
[9] “Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts; all your waves and your billows have gone over me.” This verse could also be translated “Abyss calleth to Abyss with the voice of Thy water-spouts”. The Hebrew word for “deep” or “abyss” is thowm. See Murtonen, A., Hebrew in its West Semitic Setting: A Comparative Survey of Non- Masoretic Hebrew (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1986), 156.
[10] St. Augustine, The Works of St. Augustin, from A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of The Christian Church, ed. Philip Schaff (New York: The Christian Literature Company, 1888), 136.
[11] Grant, 92.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid., 94.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Kierkegaard Soren The Journals of Soren Kierkegaard, ed. & trans. Alexander Dru (New York: Collins, 1958), 86.
[18] Macquarrie, xii.
[19] Kierkegaard Soren, “…Even When Temporal Sufferings Press Heaviest, the Blessedness of Eternity Outweighs Them” (Discourse VI) in The Gospel of Suffering, trans., David F. and Lillian Marvin Swenson (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1948), 123.
[20] Kierkegaard Soren, “Concluding Unscientific Postscript,” in A Kierkegaard Anthology, ed. Robert Bretall (Princeton University Press, 1973), 229-230.
[21] Edgerton Dow W., The Passion of Interpretation (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), 139.
[22] Ibid., 141.
[23] Ibid., Kierkegaard, “Fear and Trembling,” ed. Bretall, 182
[24] Bretall, 116.
[25] Grant, 142.
[26] Bultmann Rudolf, Jesus and the Word (New York: Scribner, 1958), 173.
[27] Brunner Emil, Dogmatics II: The Christine Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, trans., Olive Wyton (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 1952), 193.
[28] Hunsinger George, How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 92.
[29] Dow, 140-141.
[30] Grant, 92.
[31] Macquarrie, 226.
