(Not me, Paul)

Hays (see previous post) suggests several ways in which we may learn to be imitators of Paul in our interpretation of Scripture:

(i) Read Scripture primarily as a narrative of election and promise, as a witness to God's righteousness.

(ii) Read Scripture ecclesiocentrically - it is a word for and about the community of faith.

(iii) Read Scripture in the service of proclamation. That is to say, homiletical and prophetic readings can sometimes be more faithful that rigorously exegetical ones.

(iv) Read Scripture as participants in the eschatological drama of redemption. We have to participate in it and we have to recognise our parts properly.

(v) Appreciate the metaphorical relation between the text and our own reading of it. Cherish the poetics of interpretation, allowing rhetoric to lie down peacefully with grammar and logic.

Do we then overthrow the canon by this hermeneutic? On the contrary, we uphold the canon. Will the imaginative freedom of Paul's example ultimately destroy Scripture's authority if we dare to read the text as freely as he did? On the contrary, only when our interpreters and preachers read with an imaginative freedom analogous to Paul's will Scripture's voice be heard in the church. We are children of the Word, not prisoners.

Ultimately Hays offers two constraints to limit our interpretation of the Scriptures: 'the criterion of God's faithfulness to his promises' and what he calls 'the most powerful check against arbitrariness and error':

No reading of Scripture can be legitimate... if it fails to shape the readers into a community that embodies the love of God as shown forth in Christ. This criterion slashes away all frivolous or self-serving readings, all readings that aggrandize the interpreter, all merely clever readings. True interpretation of Scripture leads us into unqualified giving of our lives in service within the community whose vocation is to reenact the obedience of the Son of God who loved us, and gave himself for us.

We could apply this criterion fruitfully to all kinds of readings of Scripture, but for me (surprise, surprise) this resonates most strongly with the interpretation of the Song of Songs. The 'literal' interpretation so prevalent in the last 200 years has, it seems to me, singularly failed to meet this criterion, whereas the 'Christological' interpretation that was generally held before then, clearly achieved this kind of effect. And so it is that I begin with the premise that the effective interpretation is the 'true' one.