Versión de HTML Básico
The Mitnil Authority o] Scripturc
65
decisión often results in an appeal to certain patterns characterist ically exhib
ited by whatever aspect ol scripture the theologian takes to be au thor i tat ive .41
So a theologian’s claim that the scriptures have authority for the church
will involve ascribing some sort of wholeness to the text or set of texts.42 But
because various kinds of wholeness can be ascribed to the texts, there can be
no one concept of scripture. The theologian’s attempt to propose how scrip
ture should be understood and used in the church derives from an act of
imagination that Kelsey, borrowing from Robert Johnson, calls a
discrimen
—that is, “ a configuration of criteria that are in some way organi
cally related to one another as reciprocal coefficients.”43
Therefore, according to Kelsey, the relationship between the church,
scripture, and theology turns out to be formally similar to the notorious
“hermeneutical circle.” For “ the concrete ways in which biblical texts are
used as scripture in the church’s common life help shape a theologian’s
imaginative construal of the way that use is conjoined with God’s presence
among the faithful. The determinate patterns in scripture suggest a range of
images from which he may select or construct a root metaphor for that
discri
men.
The particularities of the concrete use of scripture unique to the common
life of the church as he experiences it will shape which image strikes him as
most apt. Then, secondly, it is that imaginative characterization of the central
reality of Christianity, ‘what it is finally all about, ’ that
is
decisive for the way
the theologian actually construes and uses biblical texts as scripture in the
course of doing theology.”44
Kelsey’s analysis is particularly illuminating for exposing the influence
the church has on how we construe scripture. Theologians, to be sure, make
suggestions about how scripture can or should be understood, but such
suggestions must be fueled by the common life of the church in both its
liturgical and moral forms. So a theologian may construe and use scripture in
ways determined by a “ logically prior imaginative judgment,” but that is not
all that needs to be said. For such judgment, as Kelsey suggests, must be
schooled by a community whose life has been shaped by the narratives of the
scripture. How we use scripture is finally an affair of the imagination, but it is
nonetheless a political activity, since our imagination depends on our ability
to remember and interpret our traditions as they are mediated through the
moral reality of our community.
For all its perspicacity, however, Kelsey’s analysis fails to do justice to
the ways in which scripture morally shapes a community. The idea of a
discrimen
suggests a far too singular and unifying image, whereas the actual
use of scripture in the church, in liturgy, preaching, and in morality, is not so
easily characterized. In fact I would maintain that many of the difficulties
attendant upon locating the authoritative aspect of scripture in doctrine, con
cepts, or saving event(s) revolve around the attempt to provide a far too