Dr. Rodney Plunket

 You may have heard the story of the man who received a medal because he was voted the humblest man in his community.  However, the citizens withdrew the honor the following day because the man wore the medal.  You see humility is not an ornamental virtue.  It is, instead, a virtue that is kept alive inside your deepest self, and from there it shapes all of your attitudes and all of your behav­iors.

Our service this morning is focused upon humility before God, but I want to begin by looking at its opposite.  I want to begin by looking at religious pride as it was demonstrated by a group of religious people during the time of Jesus.  That group was the Pharisees.  The Pharisees were a very conservative sect of the Jews.  They almost constantly opposed Jesus.  I want to look at two stories which make very clear that the Pharisees lacked humility before God.  Instead, they were characterized by religious pride.  They were confident that their interpretations of Scripture were correct.  As a result, they were unwilling to learn anything from Jesus.

Take your Bibles and turn to John (Jn) 7.  This chapter follows on from the story of Jesus’ miraculously feeding the 5,000.  That miracle and Jesus’ attendant teachings created a lot of controversy.  John 7:1 tell us that the Jews were trying to kill Jesus, but that sentiment was not universal as the remainder of ch 7 makes clear.  In fact, it is obvious in ch 7 that it is the chief priests and the Pharisees who want to arrest and kill Jesus.  Please look at Jn 7:31-32 and follow along as I read.

Yet many in the crowd believed in him and were saying, “When the Messiah comes, will he do more signs than this man has done?”

The Pharisees heard the crowd muttering such things about him, and the chief priests and Pharisees sent temple police to arrest him.

A few people realized the power of Jesus’ signs and made the correct deduction.  They realized that this man could indeed by the Messiah, the Christ of God.  When the chief priests and Pharisees heard that some were thinking and saying such things they decided to have Jesus arrested.

Now please look at Jn 7:45-49 and focus upon the chief priests and the Pharisees as I read.

Then the temple police went back to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them, “Why did you not arrest him?”  The police answered, “Never has anyone spoken like this!”  Then the Pharisees replied, “Surely you have not been deceived too, have you?  Has any one of the authorities or of the Pharisees believed in him?  But this crowd, which does not know the law—they are accursed.”

What was keeping the chief priests and the Pharisees from being affected by the truth in Jesus’ signs and words?  Their minds were made up.  They were confident that any who viewed Jesus differently from the way they viewed Him were people who did not really “know the law” and were, therefore, “accursed”.

I call their attitude hermeneutical pride.  Hermeneutics is the science of interpretation, especially the interpretation of the Bible.  These chief priests and Pharisees were certain that they knew how to interpret the Bible, and upon the basis of their hermeneutical pride they were confident that they needed to oppose Jesus, even kill Him.

Now look at Jn 9.  In this chapter we have the story of the man born blind to whom Jesus gave sight, a miracle Jesus performed upon the sabbath day.  This chapter also reports the controversy that flowed out of that miracle.  Listen to the views of the Pharisees recorded there.  Look at Jn 9:16a.  “Some of the Pharisees said,  ‘This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.’”  Now look at vv 24-34 and follow along as I read.

“So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, ‘Give glory to God!  We know that this man is a sinner.’  He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner.  One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”  They said to him,  “What did he do to you?  How did he open your eyes?”  He answered them,  “I have told you already, and you would not listen.  Why do you want to hear it again?  Do you also want to become his disciples?”  Then they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.  We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.”  The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing!  You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes.  We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will.  Never since the world began has it been heard that any­one opened the eyes of a person born blind.  If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”  They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?”  And they drove him out.

Do you feel their sickening pride?  They have it all figured out.  They express no doubt about Jesus.  He is a sinner.  They have no trouble diagnosing the reason that this man was born blind.  It was because he was “born entirely in sins,” and, therefore, there was no way he could teach them anything.  Pride, pride, blinding pride––they were eaten up with it.  As a result they could not see the truth stand­ing right there in front of them.

Please turn now to Jn 9:35-41 and follow along as I read.

Jesus heard that they had driven him out [i.e., He heard that they had driven the man born blind out of the temple], and when he found him, he said,  “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”  He answered, “And who is he, sir?  Tell me, so that I may believe in him.”  Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.”  He said, “Lord, I believe.”  And he worshipped him.  Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”  Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?”  Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin.  But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.

If I understand Jesus, He is saying to the Pharisees that if there were some disabil­ity that was no fault of their own, if that was what kept them from seeing, then that would not be a sin.  But since they are so confident that they do see, when, in fact, they are blinded by pride––their sin remains.  In other words, they are culpa­ble for their sins and their sins remain, because the attitude which makes them blind remains.  They could change, but they do not.  They could change, but they are unwilling.  They are unwilling to consider the truthfulness of Jesus’ claims and/or the power of His signs.  Hermeneutical pride was keeping them from the truth.

How do we avoid the blindness effected by hermeneutical pride?  I believe that one of the most important realizations in the avoidance of hermeneutical pride is for each of us to be aware that we are all subjective readers of the Bible.  At least since the time of Descartes great value has been placed upon objectivity in the Western World.  We have been told that truth is to be gained by being detached and unconcerned and that the real student must lay aside all subjective interests.

How do we avoid the blindness effected by hermeneutical pride?  I believe that one of the most important realizations in the avoidance of hermeneutical pride is for each of us to be aware that we are all subjective readers of the Bible.  Let me explain this problem by considering the way that thinkers in the Western World have sought to discover truth.

At least since the time of Descartes great value has been placed upon objec­tivity in the Western World.  We have been told that truth is to be gained by being detached and unconcerned and that the real student must lay aside all subjec­tive interests.

The problem is that even highly trained experts have not successfully pulled it off.  That is, they have not been able to detach.  They are affected by their own culture, thought forms, and presuppositions.  And such is unavoidable, for, as Richard Rorty has noted, “. . . there is no supercultural observation platform to which we might repair.”[1]  That is, there is no intellectual plane to which we can travel that removes us from or removes from us those subjective assumptions that color our reflections on any and every object of study.

Examples of subjectivity with regard to the interpretation of the Bible are not difficult to find.  I will summarize only a few.

I begin with Martin Luther.  Krister Stendahl has pinpointed the way in which Luther’s thought was shaped by his own subjective reading of Paul.  Luther tended to create Paul in his own image.  He tended to view Paul as one who strug­gled under the Mosaic Law with the guilt of not being good enough in the same way that Luther struggled under the Catholicism of his day.  Luther had a very introspective conscience and thought he sensed the same in Paul.  However, Paul had what Stendahl calls a “robust conscience”[2] and to read him otherwise leads to flawed interpretations.  By the way, the most striking demonstration of Paul’s robust conscience is found in Acts 23:1 where Paul says, “I have lived in all good conscience before God to this day.”  The passage that likely has been most mis-read due to Luther’s subjective reading is Romans 7:7ff.  What I want to note, how­ever, is that the way that Luther’s subjectivity colored his reading of Paul will be easy for me to see, but Luther’s interpretation seemed undeniable to him, and it continues to maintain a strong influence in contemporary Christian thought.

There is an approach to biblical studies known as the higher critical approach.  It is noted for its many claims of scientific objectivity.  However, many contemporary critics from a variety of perspectives are revealing the sub­jective biases of its practitioners.  R. N. Whybray’s critique is an appropriate example because of its focus upon the Pentateuch, the understanding of which is foundational to much higher critical reconstruction.  The following statement from Whybray’s book is made with regard to two specific scholars, but the whole of his work reveals that what he says here can be applied to many of those suppos­edly conducting objective and scientific analyses of the biblical material.  Whybray writes,

. . . there seems to be no objective way of choosing between one scholarly reconstruction and another.  If the results are so much dominated by the presuppositions which are brought to the task rather than by the rigor of the method, the method itself cannot but be called into question (emphasis mine).[3]

These highly trained scholars have much in common and they are all seeking to engage in objective research.  But they are still “dominated by presuppositions” that generate significant disagreement among them.  Subjectivity has not been eliminated, and its influence upon the results is evident.  Again the fact that these scholars were and are controlled by subjective presuppositions will be easy for many of us to see.  It is not nearly so easy for them.

A 1995 book by David Penchansky contains an insightful critique of lead­ing figures within a vibrant movement of the 1940’s, 1950’s, and early 1960’s.  That movement was known as the Biblical Theology Movement (BTM).  But Penchansky does not critically evaluate just the BTM; he also critically evaluates that group of scholars who opposed and dethroned it.  Penchansky reveals that both the proponents and the opponents were affected by subjective agendas.  Nei­ther were models of unadulterated scientific objectivity.  It would take too much space to demonstrate the various indications of subjectivity that Penchansky iden­tifies; therefore, one example will have to suffice.  Thorlief Boman was one of the BTM’s foundational thinkers.  His primary opponent was James Barr.  Penchansky’s description of the result of their clash is several lines long, but his very first half-line is the most relevant.  Penchansky writes, “Barr effectively demolished any claim by Boman of scientific objectivity . . .”[4] (emphasis mine).  With Boman’s claim to scientific objectivity demolished, he and his writings fell out of favor in a very short period of time.  The other leaders of the BTM suf­fered the same fate and the Biblical Theology Movement died, but Penchansky demonstrates that those who effected that death bear the same short­coming as those whom they critiqued; they could see clearly the flaws of others; someone else must locate theirs.

I am reminded of Jesus’ reference to the mote and the beam.  It is so easy to see the mote in another’s eye and yet so hard to see a beam when it is in our own.  The beam has served as a central support bearer for so long that we cannot imag­ine it being an obstacle, a weakness.  We believe that it is a strength.  We believe that it is indispensable to sound and objective reasoning.  But we must stop and realize that such feelings reside in all who seek to think and reflect and interpret.  A subjective presupposition for one person is a requisite of valid reasoning for another.  As Penchansky writes, “Someone else’s ideology is false consciousness.  One’s own is of course simply common sense.”[5]

An example of flawed subjectivity confronted me recently.  It was one of those painful examples because the flawed subjectivity was discovered within myself and my tradition.  In churches of Christ, we have always made very sure that anyone we baptized was well aware of the fact that baptism was for the remis­sion of sins.  In fact, for years we have said, when baptizing anyone, “I now bap­tize you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit for the remis­sion of your sins.”  We want to make certain that they are conscious of the con­nection between baptism and the forgiveness of their sins.  I do not plan to stop doing that, but recently I did stop and ask myself a question.  I asked, “Why is it so important that people being baptized are conscious of receiving forgiveness while our practice in most cases would indicate that it is not nearly as important for them to know they are receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit?”

I looked at the NT to see if it made the receiving of the Holy Spirit less important than the receiving of forgiveness.  It does not.  The Gospels and Acts reveal that the hallmark of John’s baptism was forgiveness, while the hallmark of Jesus’ baptism was the receiving of the Holy Spirit (see Matthew 3:6, 11; Mark 1:4, 8; Luke 3:3, 16; Jn 1:33; Acts 1:5; 19:1-6).  In addition, two other NT passages (Acts 9:17-18 & 1 Corinthians 12:13) make explicit connections between Christian baptism and the receiving of the Holy Spirit.  I was forced to realize that my subjective unease with regard to the Holy Spirit had kept me from seeing the biblical fact that the New Testament connects Christian baptism more frequently to the receiving of the Holy Spirit than it does to the forgiveness, washing away, or removal of sins.

Please do not misunderstand me.  The New Testament teaches that the bap­tism of Jesus is for the forgiveness, washing away, and removal of sins (Ax 2:38; 22:16; Rom 6:6); I believe that, and I preach it.  But if I am going to be emphatic about that (and I intend to be) then I must be equally or more emphatic about bap­tism’s connection to the Holy Spirit even if I do not know all that receiving the Holy Spirit means (and what mortal does?).

What I have had to admit is that while I have found it so easy to recognize subjectivity in those who see no connection between baptism and forgiveness, dur­ing that same time I have been unable to see the importance of the connection between baptism and the receiving of the Holy Spirit.  I must admit that my read­ings of the biblical text are affected by my own subjectivity.  Like those reviewed above, the subjectivity of others I can see with ease.  My own subjectivity is much harder to see, and I will never see it all.

Some contemporary responses to the inescapability of subjectivity encour­age us to embrace subjectivity and enjoy it; interpret a text with a subjectively devised agenda and see how it goes.  If you can make it work, then it must be valid.

I could not be more opposed.  I know that I will never devise the perfect agenda absent of all elements of distorting subjectivity, but I have a passion to know what God’s Word really wants to tell me.  The more in tune with that mes­sage I become, the more in tune I am with God.  That is my quest.  It always will be.

I hope that churches of Christ in the 21st Century will operate on the basis of “hermeneutical humility.”  Such humility will neutralize self-righteousness, divisiveness, and sectarianism.

Such humility will also keep us open to seeing previously unnoticed truths in the Scriptures we all cherish.  As Sandra M. Schneiders has written, “The spon­taneous assumption that if one can read the text one understands it . . . makes the text unable to say anything the reader does not already think.”[6]  Brothers and sis­ters, may we stay humble and open so that the text can say what it has been divinely designed to say and can increasingly change us into the image of Jesus Christ.