Again . . . a bit of a reminder . . . everything from this point will be heavily influenced by Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt’s developing works on “provisional theology”. Tony lays out an excellent formulation to it here in a presentation he gave at the 2007 Wheaton Theology Conference and Doug begins an articulation of it in one of our first podcasts which you can find here and in his forthcoming book, currently titled Wild Goose Chase. Every bit of what I propose is a knock-off and a much more poorly worded proposal than what they’ve been developing.
Part One – An Introduction
Part Two – The Mystique
Part Three – Purpose
Part Four – Inerrancy & Inspiration
Part Five – The Problem of the Holy Spirit
Part Six – An Odd Letter
Part Seven – A Local Text & A Theology of Place
Today’s entire post is a direct quote from Tony Jones’ presentation at Wheaton’s 2007 Theological Conference . . . a presentation that later got rejected from inclusion in the collected printing of the keynote speakers’ presentations. I am directly quoting the first 4 pages of his presentation which you can download here. What follows from Tony is one of the more intriguing metaphors that has developed to articulate the interplay between orthodoxy, community, and scripture. Tony begins by describing his experience with umpiring baseball games and then translates that into the role of the community in shaping orthodoxy.
BEGIN QUOTATION
A plate ump sees about 300 pitches in a 9-inning game, and he’s got to make a decision on about half of them. Every pitch, you see, is either a ball or a strike. If the batter swings at the pitch, then it’s a strike (although, even whether it was a swing or not is often called into question). If the batter doesn’t swing at the pitch, the umpire has a decision to make a very quick decision. If the ball crosses the plate in the strike zone, it’s called a strike. If it does not, it’s called a ball.
Simple, right? Well, we umpires had to collectively affirm that we interpret the strike zone according to the “literal, or normal, sense.” (By that I mean, of course, “the meaning which the writer expressed.” To that end, let me read you the periscope from our almost-sacred text, the Baseball Rulebook, Rule 2.00,
The Strike Zone is defined as that area over homeplate the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the kneecap. The Strike Zone shall be determined from the batter’s stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball.
It doesn’t seem to leave much room for interpretation, does it? Except for that bit about the batter’s stance at he prepares to swing, it’s there, right there in black-and-white. You might say, “A strike is a strike is a strike.”
Except . . . when it isn’t.
Here you see (slide 6) the official strike zone, shaded in blue, and the strike zone as it’s actually called by Major League umps in the gray box. Significantly smaller, low and outside. Why? Well, baseball has changed a lot since that rule was penned. For one thing, have you ever tried to hit a 96 mile an hour fastball at the letters? It’s nearly impossible. And, on the umpiring side of the equation, the move from the bulky outside chest protectors to the vest protector under the jacket means that umpires crouch lower behind catchers, lowering their sightline and thus the strike zone. Major League Baseball has also increased penalties against bean balls in recent years, meaning that pitchers have pitched more outside pitches, and the umps have given them more of those pitches.
Finally, any umpire will tell you that the eyes of a manager standing in the dugout are about belt high to the batter in the box. That means the manager has a good gauge of high balls and low balls – and he’ll start barking at the home plate ump if they look too high or too low. But he can’t tell if a pitch hits the outside corner, or if it misses by an inch and a half. I can assure you that no ump likes to see players walk, so we steal strikes wherever we can. And, it’s easier to steal them outside and inside than it is high and low.
In 2001, Major League Baseball announced that it would be requiring umpires to get back to the literal interpretation of the strike zone, but that didn’t even last until the All Star Break. By June, the zone had once again moved low and outside.
Actually, let me put it another way: the Strike Zone was pulled low and outside by the community of baseball: pitchers and catchers, hitters and managers, umpires and MLB officials. And, of course, the beer-soaked fans who scream every time an umpire misses a call.
The hallowed Baseball Rulebook and its myriad interpreters live in a hermeneutical tension with one another, and that tension has resulted in a de facto strike zone – a working strike zone. There is no one, single authority who determines the strike zone.
But, intriguingly, neither has the strike zone slid down the slippery slope into nihilistic meaninglessness, with umps calling pitches in the dirt strikes. No, the community of baseball wouldn’t let that happen.
Of course, it’s not lost on me that since the earliest days of the postmodern conversation, there’s been story floating around about three umpires,
- The pre-modern umpire says, “I call ‘em as they are!”
- The modern umpire says, “I call ‘em as I see ‘em!”
- The postmodern umpire says, “They ain’t nothin’ ’till I call ‘em!”
This all stems, it seems, from the irrepressible literary critic, Stanley Fish, who years ago told this story about the legendary umpire, Bill Klem,
“Klem’s behind the plate,” Fish said. “The pitcher winds up, throws the ball. The pitch comes. The batter doesn’t swing. Klem for an instant says nothing. The batter turns around and says, “O.K., so what was it, a ball or a strike?” And Klem says, “Sonny, it ain’t nothing ’till I call it.”
“What the batter is assuming is that balls and strikes are facts in the world and that the umpire’s job is to accurately say which one each pitch is. But in fact balls and strikes come into being only on the call of an umpire.”
Have you looked at Luther’s 95 Theses? They’re not about systematic theology, they’re about the very specific issues of his day. Have you read Augustine’s treatises? They are confronting the Pelagianism of his day. And Aquinas? The Islamic Aristotelianism of his day. This is
orthodoxy: an ongoing conversation who is God?, who are we?, and what’s the relationship between us?
END QUOTATION
If this is anywhere near correct . . . then it means that the locus of authority is found in the community as they navigate the story of God. And if the church has always stood in a specific place and context as they interpret and practice the scriptures . . . then we too stand in a specific place and context in our interpretation and practice.
Listening: Let Me Introduce My Friends by I’m From Barcelona
[tags]Scripture, Bible, Scripture + Evolution, Emergent, Emergent+Scripture, Emergent+Wheaton, Wheaton+Tony Jones, Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt[/tags]
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6 Comments
There are degrees, and issues for which, this is true. And there are degrees for which it is not. The question is where it is being applied.
To continue from where we left off on the last point, there are absolute truths expressed in scripture. There are things that God clearly requires of us.
There are other things that require contextualization.
Many have problems with confusing the two.
The problem with the baseball analogy is that it’s a game created by man. It isn’t a good metaphor for man’s sinful state, redemption, and renewal.
It’d be a more accurate analogy for how the community standards have shifted, from movies and bowling and card playing being considered “sin” just a few decades ago to where most Christians today wouldn’t think twice about any of those.
So again, it all depends on how you’re applying it.
Interesting analogy Mr. Jones uses. I’m not sure how far you can pull that one out, but it’s thought provoking.
So, if the community of faith interprets the context (declares “what is”), then why do people have so much trouble with the community that ratified the scriptures as canon, merely formalizing what the community of faith(the church) had been using for a couple hundred years? And it has stood the test of time for more than 1700 years.
Derek brings up an interesting point on community standards, especially regarding what is sin….hasn’t it generally been the community that tells you whether or not you’re sinning? Do we not rely on those around us to tell us if we’re “wrong,” “right,” etc? We’ve retreated from the Big 10, because, well, no one can really keep all the 10 commandments, can they? So we’ve gone with Jesus’ summation of loving God with all we are and loving our neighbor. Who/what do rely on to help us/hold us accountable?
I’ve digressed a bit off the point, but this post really got me thinking…..
i get you john. totally.
and i’m definitely not saying that scripture written 2000 years ago isn’t normative for our lives today. i’m not saying that there aren’t things that we learn from scripture. or even applicable today.
but my theory is that they are applicable because of the community’s (throughout church history) resonance with them and not because they are words on a piece of a paper.
more plainly said, the authority comes from the community. if they didn’t believe them and practice them, then they would have no authority in and of themselves. they would just be words. but because they have resonated with them throughout the years and practiced them, then this infuses them with authority for future generations.
for example, if my family didn’t pass down stories to me of my family history . . . i would live uncentered, unconnected, and on my own whim. but because my family tells me stories about our shared history, i live with roots. my proposal is that the authority is found in the roots and not in the pieces of paper.
bowling, movies, and card games is not what i’m talking about in being contextual. that’s not people being contextual. that’s just people being stupid and more concerned with boundaries and slippery slopes than gospel.
Does your conclusion follow from the quote from Tony Jones?
I can easily agree that how things are interpreted, and what seems important, are contextual to a huge extent. Many theological arguments of the past seem utterly incomprehensible today — or even trivial.
[Even, say, the reformation arguments about faith and works seem to disappear today if you understand that when Catholics say "justification" they mean the same as most Protestants mean by saying "justification and sanctification". But I digress.]
So a lot of interpretation comes down to time and place. Is there any reason to be absolutist about this, and say that there can be no unchanging truth? Or, indeed, that we can know for sure.
An analogy with science seems to help. Newton’s laws of motion remain pretty useful, though 20th century physics shows that they by no means tell us enough to do, say, satellite navigation. Some other things that Newton and his contemporaries might have thought right will have turned out to be at odds with how we now understand the world, and will have been discarded.
So the way we interpret scripture will evolve over time (and place?) Sometimes that’s going to mean refining an understanding; for other things, it’s going to mean discarding one way of reading in favour of another.
Is that what you’re saying? I don’t think it is. But I’m not sure.
[PS for some reason, this put me in mind of an apparently famous quote from the first Chancellor of my university: "The functions of an angel are knowing and willing." I haven't a clue what he meant ... but that was 800 years ago. Yet, we happily claim a continuous existence of the University - with all its ideals of enquiry and study - over those eight centuries. The ideal of the university is bigger than the details of what we are studying right now. But I fear that I'm rambling.]
“but my theory is that they are applicable because of the community’s (throughout church history) resonance with them and not because they are words on a piece of a paper.”
My “theory” is that they have authority and are applicable because they were written to share the story of God, who shared His message of a new covenant with a community of people who put that message into writing. And God led the community through those writings, and as certain writings stood out as authoritative to the community, God led the community to establish them as scripture.
The intervening years have little to nothing to do with their authority or applicability.
Of course, the community was the context in which it was created. But for me, it seems like you’re too easily ignoring the work of the Spirit in it’s creation.
Stumbled upon you…
I’m an Orthodox Christian, and Tony Jones sounds like he’s waxing Orthodox. I’m having a, “Well, duh. Of course authority is found in the action of the Holy Spirit upon the community of believers through time (read: Church).
http://www.scottbrightwell.org
Hopefully the following exerpt gives you a little background for my thinking in this.
Fr. Thomas Hopko, “The ongoing life of God’s People is called Holy Tradition. The Holy Tradition of the Old Testament is expressed in the Old Testamental part of the Bible and in the ongoing life of the People of Israel until the birth of Christ. This tradition is fulfilled, completed and transcended in the time of the Messiah and in the Christian Church.
The New Testamental or Christian Tradition is also called the apostolic tradition and the tradition of the church. The central written part of this tradition is the New Testamental writings in the Bible. The gospels and the other writings of the apostolic church form the heart of the Christian Tradition and are the main written source and inspiration of all that developed in later ages.
. . . .
Holy Tradition is, therefore, that which is passed on and given over within the Church from the time of Christ’s apostles right down to the present day. Although containing many written documents, Holy Tradition is not at all limited to what is written; it is not merely a body of literature. it is, on the contrary, the total life and experience of the entire Church transferred from place to place and from generation to generation. Tradition is the very life of the Church itself as it is inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit.
. . . .
Among the elements which make up the holy Tradition of the Church, the Bible holds the first place. Next comes the Church’s liturgical life and its prayer, then its dogmatic decisions and the acts of its approved churchly councils, the writings of the church fathers, the lives of the saints, the canon laws, and finally the iconographic tradition together with the other inspired forms of creative artistic expression such as music and architecture.
. . . .
All of the elements of Holy Tradition are organically linked together in real life. . . . All come alive in the actual living of the life of the Church in every age and generation, in every time and place. As the Church continues to live by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Tradition of the Church will continue to grow and develop. This process will go on until the establishment of the Kingdom of God at the end of the ages.” pp12-13. _The Orthodox Faith_, “Doctrine,” volume i, New York, 1981.
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[...] quadrilateral cannot exist outside the community. To keep with the baseball allegory, as Tony Jones and others have suggested, the community could be seen as the umpire. The community calls the strikes. The [...]