What might martyrdom mean? [Nicholas Lash, 1981]

Source: N. Lash, "What Might Martyrdom Mean?" in W. Horbury, B. McNeill (ed.), Suffering and Martyrdom in the New Testament (CUP: 1981), 183-98; reprinted in his Theology on the Way to Emmaus (SCM: 1986), 75-92.

Summary.

• Stendahl tries to resolve the hermeneutical gap by distinguishing between what the Biblical text ‘meant’ and what it ‘means’. The biblical scholar as a historian recovers what it ‘meant’, and the systematic theologian performs the separate task of translating that into what it ‘means’ for us today. This framework is defective for many reasons, the two foremost of which are that it neglects questions of whether the Bible’s claims are true, and that it fails to see that the poles of the hermeneutical gap are not meanings but patterns of action/practice. In this alternative framework, biblical scholarship is not separate from Christian practice, but a subset of it.

The hermeneutical problem/the problem of the hermeneutical gap.

• The Bible was written c. 2000 years ago, in different times to ours. What do Christians do with it today?

The problem of the relationship between the different practitioners.

• What should be the relationship between the biblical scholar/exegete/historian, the systematic theologian/hermeneut, and Christian practice?

Krister Stendahl’s framework for resolving these two problems.

• There is a gap between what the biblical text ‘meant’, and what it ‘means’. At one side of the chasm is the biblical scholar whose job is merely to recover and ‘describe’ what the text originally meant—what it said back then. The systematic theologian’s job is to get us across the chasm. He ‘translates’ the original meaning, through hermeneutics, and tell us what the text means now—what might be appropriately said today.

The value in Stendahl’s solution.

• Standahl’s framework guards against anachronism, which Christians tend towards. Historians seek to understand and exhibit the past in its pastness; yet because Christians think the words spoken and deeds enacted in the past are enduringly significant, they’re liable to muddle past and present.

Problems with Stendahl’s terminology.

• ‘Description’ is already interpretation. Anything the exegete does beyond simply copying out the Greek text is mediated by his judgement; and his judgement and language are to some extent mediated by the culture he belongs to.
• ‘Original meaning’ is extremely vague. Does it refer to authorial intention, or what the original audience understood, or something else? How might those things be defined?
• His ‘translation’ metaphor/analogy is inappropriate because:
• It overlooks that the historian’s task has already involved some degree of interpretation/translation. Stendahl actually makes this mistake a second time simply by using the word ‘translation’. It implies a neutral methodology, obscuring the fact that any ‘translation’ will be rooted in theological decisions about the nature of revelation.
• It stretches the concept of ‘translation’ into unintelligibility.
• It obscures the possibility of conceptual discontinuity between the text and contemporary theological proposals.

Five problems with Stendahl’s framework.

• The framework wrongly assumes that understanding what a text originally meant must precede understanding what it means today. These enterprises are actually interdependent and dialectical. Of course the past illuminates the present, but the present illuminates the past too, and there’s even a sense in which understanding what a text might mean today is a precondition of understanding what it originally meant. Here’s why. Ancient writers responded to questions of the human predicament (such as hope, death, suffering, love) in terms available to them within their culture. If we are to sensitively or deeply understand what their responses originally meant, we must already have some grasp of the human predicament; and that grasp must necessarily be articulated in terms available to us within our culture.
• Caveats. (1) It’s not straightforward to make sense of the past or the present: certain features of either may be opaque to us. (2) Lash isn’t suggesting that there is no irreducible distinction between present attempts to understand the past on its own terms, and present attempts to articulate who we are and how we should live.
• The framework is thus also wrong that a historian’s skills are adequate for understanding a text’s original meaning. We don’t need any existential self-awareness to decide whether Paul left a cloak or overcoat at Troas, but most of the Bible is concerned with weightier, existential matters. (Though this is not to say that the historian’s skills are at all dispensable though.)

• Stendahl mistakenly assumes that texts have or embody meaning in the same way that objects have mass--consistently, intrinsically, and objectively. Literary, theatrical and musical works, however, are not objects but notations which have meaning only insofar as people are producing, using, or interpreting them.
• The framework focuses on questions of meaning, to the neglect of questions of truth. One question of truth might be: was Jesus right that his death would do for mankind what no one else could do? The biblical scholar demurs that this questions is beyond his competence as a historian: the truth-conditions of the question are hidden in the mystery of divine action, which do not lie open for historical scrutiny.  They’re right that their historical skills aren’t up to the task. But the question applies to them nonetheless because it’s really for everyone personally. Will we give the kind of trust—to the man Jesus, not to a ‘meaning’—which the NT authors gave? To refuse to answer is to refuse to trust Jesus.
• Stendahl’s framework mistakenly assumes the poles of the hermeneutical gap are expressions of meaning: instead, the poles are patterns of action/practice. The past-pole is ‘the testimony of Jesus’ [≈ the practice of faith; cf. Revelation 19.10] in his own time and in the time of those who first sought to share that testimony. Thus Christian interpretation is fundamentally a matter of being faithful to the patterns of action to which the texts witness, not of understanding the meaning an ancient text. (Once again, this doesn’t make exegesis unnecessary. It's indispensable—but we need to situate it in the context of interpretative practice.) The present-pole is the continued sharing in ‘the testimony of Jesus’ as may be demanded of us today. Thus being faithful to the patterns of action to which the texts witness is fundamentally a matter of Christian practice, not of ‘translating’ meanings. Two factors suggest this alternative framework.
• For NT authors, maintaining the testimony of Jesus was part of putting their trust in Jesus and his truth. Issues of truth, trust, and the practice of faith are thus bound together. The interpretative process’ concern with truth suggests that the hermeneutical problem ultimately lies in the relationship between biblical scholarship and the practice of faith.
• Divine speech is performative. God’s self-witness in Christ involved transforming the human condition, not merely giving information about it. Similarly, the Christian’s primary concern is to to exercise transformative power by witnessing to ‘the testimony of Jesus’, not to ‘make sense’ of anything (e.g. suffering, or a meaning).

The hermeneutical problem restated in terms of Lash’s alternative framework.

• The Bible attests to certain patterns of witnessing to “the testimony of Jesus”, but those actions occurred c. 2000 years ago in different times to ours. How might Christians witness to the ‘testimony of Jesus’ today?
• The question ‘What might “witness” or “martyrdom” mean today?’ should really be ‘How might we today exercise faithfulness to “the testimony of Jesus”?’ Answering that will require us to employ full integrity and discernment. It will also require all the biblical scholar’s tools.

The problem of the practitioners’ relationship resolved by Lash’s framework

• We can now see that the biblical scholar’s work is only an aspect of the broader task of Christian interpretative practice. That broader task is to attempt to bear witness faithfully and effectively to God’s transformative purpose and meaning for mankind. It is for individual biblical scholars to decide how they should change their practice in light of that.