Spheres of awareness

The search for awareness has motivated elaborate schemes within world religions and continues today to challenge educators in their quest for a wide range of societal benefits. Explorers in search of one form of treasure often discovered other riches they could not have imagined before they encountered a whole new range of resources. Ultimate meanings that religionists champion may well be more limited than they realize when seen amid a vast array of other undiscovered possibilities. Thus the quest for greater awareness is ever a challenge whose efforts rarely outstrip its benefits.

To put it more concretely, growth in awareness is the grist of religion, the building blocks of education, the pot of gold of explorers, and the Nobel Prize for researchers. Each new salvo of exploration produces some benefits, even if ones other than the intended goal. So much for why creative research pays off. Now the question is how to launch explorations with a reasonable expectation of gain.

In the world of religion, truth is presumed to be both in possession and beyond full comprehension. The character of religious truth for Christians is such that it is assumed to be granted as a favor rather than earned as a payment for efforts expended. But a disposition to receive is also a component, even if this disposition is sometimes also deemed a favor of divine benevolence. Thus, for instance, the belief that redemption from sin is by divine action rather than human--within the scheme of Christian thinking at least--can become the basis for a range of sacred actions that accommodate to this fundamental personal patron-client relation between God and humans. But, with an explorer's curiosity, the researcher may ask questions that lead beyond the given assumptions that truth is had and answers sure.

The quest for awareness may lead a brave explorer to ask critical questions of the given scheme of salvation: Does everyone see the scheme the same way? Are there variations on this scheme that suggest alternative practices? What would happen if the prescribed sacred actions are changed or supplanted? Where did these ideas come from and how accurately were they transmitted to us? Do we need to recognize some other components that we weren't aware of in order to properly grasp the truths intended? Do we know things that the sacred authors did not know?

All these questions press the explorers, equipped with driving instinct as well as unusual courage, onward toward careful analysis, alternative possibilities, and, yes, even dangerous conflicts with established keepers of truth. Unless the explorers press on, the bubble of accepted truth may remain fixed and growth in awareness only a lost opportunity.

In biblical theology, the explorers we know today are those that press questions of history, context, hermeneutics, genres, world views, social systems with distinctive core values. Unmindful of the tools of exploration, the interpreter may be like a blind man restricted to a single room lest he fall from some unseen danger. Tree-huggers may feel secure even though they live but a fraction of a life.

In the quest for fuller awareness in biblical theology, explorations attested in the current issue of BTB include three diverse styles of search: rhetorical conflict analysis (Lee A. Johnson), history-of-effect hermeneutics (Jon M. Isaak), and network analysis (Dennis C. Duling). Each is an exploration that promotes a new frontier in awareness. Each suggests a different sphere of awareness within biblical textual interpretation, thereby expanding the range of meanings that biblical theology can address more creatively and with greater benefit.

Jon M. Isaak introduces a mode of textual analysis that recognizes both the contextual rhetorical strategy of the author and the continual re-experience of disciples, locating the center-of-meaning at a point between text and recipient.

Lee A. Johnson challenges three kinds of readings of Paul's references to Satan and suggests yet another mode of analysis for extracting meaning from these texts. Assumptions on Paul's meaning have led interpreters to conclusions that may need serious redirection in light of this exploration.

Dennis C. Duling begins a two-part detailed analysis of the awareness-world of members of the Jesus movement, examining in this part the geographical zones that biblical texts link with Jesus and his followers.

Taken together, these three studies should help biblical theologians expand their spheres of awareness in the quest for contextual meanings and ranges of interpretation of biblical texts. Contextual meanings rest upon the spheres of awareness of biblical authors as best we can infer this awareness from available evidence. Ranges of interpretation accommodate to the spheres of awareness that interpreters bring to the text's interpretation, often wide-ranging and with diverse needs and resources. Taken together, these articles form a trilogy of explorations into spheres of awareness, both those of biblical writers and those of biblical interpreters. The impact of the meeting of these diverse spheres of awareness is the challenge of an ever-emerging biblical theology.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Biblical Theology Bulletin, Inc
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning