Politics of Biblical Theology: A Postmodern Reading, The

The Politics of Biblical Theology: A Postmodern Reading. By David Penchansky. Studies in American Biblical Hermeneutics 10. Macon: Mercer University, 1995, ix + 109 pp., $18.00 paper.

Despite a rather broad title, the scope of this little book is quite narrow. It is a description of the fall of the American Biblical-theology movement. This, however, is no ordinary, humdrum retelling of an old tale. Penchansky is a postmodernist. He is suspicious of all human motives and interpretations. Accordingly, he proposes to describe the political motives behind the downfall of the movement. It is an expose on a "power play, an effort to drive out the ruling priests of the academic world" motivated by "absolute hatred of and disappointment in the promise of the Biblical theology Movement" (pp. 4-5).

It is difficult to conduct meaningful discourse with those who deny the possibility of meaningful discourse. Nevertheless, if we pretend for the moment that we can make sense with our words, there are two lines of inquiry through which we can interact with Penchansky's thesis. First, we can address the method Penchansky uses to approach his topic. Second, we can address the degree to which he has demonstrated an accurate understanding of the particulars of the subject.

Penchansky is clear about his commitments. He utilizes four postmodern interpretive "keys" to explore the Biblical-theology movement. First, he revels in contradiction. According to the author "contradictions inhere at the very heart of all things" (p. 12). Second, he accepts no methodological or linguistic center in interpretation. That is, nothing is verifiable or falsifiable. Third, "all readings are political" (p. 13), either consciously or unconsciously. Fourth, all attempts to organize ideas or phenomena in bipolar structures (e.g. substance and essence, sign and signified, text and reader) are unacceptable. One cannot properly call this a "method" as such. Rather, it is a set of values that the author believes exist at the heart of all that is human and that he tries to reveal in the writings of the Biblical-theology movement and its opponents.

The obvious absurdity of such a position, which has been pointed out many times, is this: If we claim that everyone unavoidably approaches and writes texts from preconceived and (more importantly) all-pervasive ideological positions, we also claim that one's ideology is static. By definition, it denies the malleability of the reader and asserts, exclusively, the malleability of the text. The ideologies of the text and the reader cannot converge. In this sense (to use a postmodern buzz word) texts have no "power" to affect and mold the thoughts and loyalties of the reader.

Penchansky's descriptions of the history of the Biblical-theology movement, its characteristic methods, and the opposition to it by James Barr, Brevard Childs and Langdon Gilkey largely agree with the standard treatments. Penchansky's unique contribution to this history is his claim that the opponents of the Biblical-theology movement and the leading members of the movement itself unconsciously share certain core values. According to Penchansky, Barr, Childs and Gilkey accused the Biblical-theology movement of being "biased, religio-, and ethnocentric," while, at the same time, being all of those things themselves. More specifically, Barr and company substituted their own "positivist ideology" for the "romantic ideology" of the Biblical-theology movement. Unfortunately, both ideologies, he claims, suffered from the same political and chauvinistic weaknesses.

Penchansky is correct that the Biblical-theology movement is highly indebted to romanticism for its notion of history (Heilsgeschichte), linguistic theory and value of the primitive (hence the emphasis on archeology and comparative sociocultural studies). What he means by "positivist" is less clear. If he means nothing more than that Barr, in particular, affirms the objectivity of knowledge and emphasizes the methods of the sciences, he would be correct. If, however, he means that Barr affirms the notions of progress, infinity of nature and history, and so forth, that characterize the various subbranches of positivism, he is categorically wrong. Properly, positivism is itself (along with absolute idealism) within the sphere of philosophical movements generally called "romanticist." Barr shows no affinity to positivism in this sense and traces his own roots to Scottish common-sense philosophy ("Common Sense and Biblical Language," Bib 49 [1968] 377-387). Furthermore, it is hard to comprehend how any one label, "positivist" or any other, can encompass the widely divergent positions of Barr, Childs and Gilkey.

Regarding the common ideological links between the Biblical-theology movement and its critics, Penchansky identifies them as (1) a tendency to identify themselves in opposition to outsiders, and (2) an attempt to impose order on religion. This "commonality" is nothing more than the recognition that both parties have different conceptions of Biblical theology. All that this means, ultimately, is that neither of the two movements indulges in contradiction like the postmodernists do.