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Scriptural Reasoning: Its Anglican Origins, its Development, Practice and Significance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

David F. Ford
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Abstract

Scriptural Reasoning is the study and discussion of Tanakh, Bible and Qur'an together, usually by Jews, Christians and Muslims. On its Christian side it has had strong Anglican participation since it began in the mid-1990s. This article recounts its origins and development (including its spread beyond the academy and to many countries, including China); offers guidelines for its practice; discusses four key publications that offer Anglican theological understandings of it; summarizes its significance; and proposes that it be practised more widely in the Anglican Communion. The article concludes with meditative and prophetic postscripts.

Keywords

AnglicanBiblefriendshipinter-faith relationsinterpretationpracticeQur'anScriptural ReasoningTanakh
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Anglican Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , November 2013 , pp. 147 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2013 

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Footnotes

1.

David F. Ford is Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge and Director of the Cambridge Inter-faith Programme.

References

2. Anglican Communion Network for Inter Faith Concerns, Generous Love: The Truth of the Gospel and the Call to Dialogue. An Anglican Theology of Inter Faith Relations (London: The Anglican Consultative Council, 2008), pp. 5–6.Google Scholar

3. Daniel W. Hardy to General Theological Seminary, New York. From a letter written shortly before his death in 2007 on the occasion of the Seminary's conferral on him of an honorary Doctorate of Divinity, which he was too ill to receive in person. See Hardy, Daniel W. with Deborah Hardy Ford, Peter Ochs and David F. Ford, Wording a Radiance: Parting Conversations on God and the Church (London: SCM Press, 2010), pp. 11–12. Hardy was an American Anglican priest who taught in the University of Birmingham for many years, was Van Mildert Canon Professor of Divinity in the University of Durham, then served as Director of the Princeton Center of Theological Inquiry (1990–95) before retiring to live in Cambridge.Google Scholar

4. With regard to another Christian dimension of Scriptural Reasoning, at the time of writing I am guest editing a forthcoming (October 2013) issue of the journal Modern Theology on the theme of ‘Interreligious Reading after Vatican II’. The issue is especially concerned with Scriptural Reasoning, Comparative Theology and Receptive Ecumenism.Google Scholar

5. Hardy, Daniel, ‘Textual Reasoning: A Concluding Reflection’, in Peter Ochs and Nancy Levene (eds.), Textual Reasonings: Jewish Philosophy and Text Study at the End of the Twentieth Century (London: SCM Press, 2002), pp. 269–276 (269).Google Scholar

6. Hardy, ‘Textual Reasoning’, p. 271.Google Scholar

7. It is important to note that the Jewish participants in Textual Reasoning were from diverse traditions within Judaism, and they sought not so much consensus as a better quality of debate and disagreement.Google Scholar

8. Hardy, ‘Textual reasoning’, p. 273.Google Scholar

9. ‘There is of course a great deal of this in Christian tradition, but, as in Judaism, it has not usually flourished where modernity has been influential. It should be encouraging for Christians to see Jews renewing it. What is the best name for this? Midrash, pragmatic sense, thinking outside the text while maintaining the authority of the text, or a combination of allegorical, moral and anagogical senses? My own preferred phrase for the attempt to allow the text to be fruitful through readings that are sensitive not only to its literal meaning but also to other senses, to intertextuality, to the traditions of interpretation, to the contexts (including cultural, ethical and political) of authors, traditional interpreters and ourselves, and to God, is: the wisdom interpretation of scripture.’ David Ford, ‘Responding to Textual Reasoning: What Might Christians Learn?’ in Ochs and Levene (eds.), Textual Reasonings, pp. 259–68 (264); cf. Ford, David F., Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) on this approach and also on Scriptural Reasoning.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. ‘It is conceivable that aspects of the plain sense might be arrived at by solitary readers reasoning alone; it is inconceivable that the discovery of wisdom beyond the plain sense could be achieved that way because the process (of coming to this wisdom together, acknowledging it, and appreciating it as constitutive of our sociality) is intrinsic to it, as is the continuing dynamic of overflow in further communication to others. There are far-reaching implications of all this for concepts of God, community, selfhood and rationality.’ Ford, ‘Responding to Textual Reasoning’, p. 266.Google Scholar

11. Other important events include: 1994–96 – early Scriptural Reasoning-like studies at Drew University, including Basit Koshul as the first Muslim participant; 1995 – formation of the Society for Scriptural Reasoning; 1996 – first three-faith residential meeting, Long Island; 1997 onwards – successive meetings of the AAR in which Scriptural Reasoning with Jewish, Christian and Muslim participants featured, and moved from being a fringe meeting to an official unit on the annual programme; 1998 – National Society for Scriptural Reasoning Website at Drew University; 2000 onwards – 24-hour gatherings held before the AAR annual meeting every year; 2000 onwards – annual residential conferences held at Cambridge University, and sometimes combined with an international summer school for young Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders; 2001 – first issue of the Journal of Scriptural Reasoning (online) at University of Virginia on ‘Messianism’; 2005–8 – Princeton Center of Theological Inquiry project on Scriptural Reasoning with a group of sixteen Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars, philosophers and theologians; 2007 – first graduate programme in Scriptural Reasoning in the University of Virginia; 2009 – second international Receptive Ecumenism conference in Durham; 2009 – three-day conference of the European Society for Intercultural Theology and Interreligious Studies (ESITIS) at the University of Salzburg, Austria, on the theme of interreligious hermeneutics in a pluralistic Europe, with a special focus on Scriptural Reasoning and Comparative Theology; the visit by Peter Ochs to Beijing in May 2012; over a number of years the introduction of Scriptural Reasoning to other academic institutions (e.g. in North America – University of Toronto, Princeton, Duke, George Mason, Eastern Mennonite, James Madison, Seattle, Santa Clara, Colgate, Yale, Amherst, Emory, Villanova, Swarthmore, William & Mary; elsewhere – in London, Oxford, Birmingham, Preston, Edinburgh, Dublin, Berlin, Capetown, Lahore, Dubai, Muscat, Beijing, Jinan); the spread of Scriptural Reasoning to settings beyond the academy – schools and prisons in the UK, hospitals in Israel and the Palestinian territories, local synagogue, church and mosque congregations in many countries, national and international leadership programmes; civil society initiatives by London Citizens and the Thousand Cities movement; contributions to the statement by Jewish scholars about Christianity, Dabru Emet, in 2000 and its aftermath, and to the Muslim letter to Christians, A Common Word between Us and You in 2007 and its aftermath.Google Scholar

12. The relationship between Scriptural Reasoning and Comparative Theology is a leading concern of a forthcoming issue of Modern Theology (see n. 4 above).Google Scholar

13. For more on this see: www.interfaith.cam.ac.uk/en/resources/papers/sr-in-chinaGoogle Scholar

14. The website also provides ‘text bundles’ grouped around a variety of themes. For more information about Scriptural Reasoning see also the websites of the Cambridge Inter-faith Programme (www.interfaith.cam.ac.uk) and the international Society for Scriptural Reasoning (www.scripturalreasoning.com), together with articles in the Journal of Scriptural Reasoning (etext.lib.virginia.edu/journals/ssr). Note that there are other websites bearing similar names which are not affiliated to the Scriptural Reasoning movement described in this article; www.scripturalreasoning.org and the other sites listed here offer the best online resources.Google Scholar

15. Ford, David F. and Pecknold, C.C., (eds.), The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006). First published as special issue 22.3 of Modern Theology (July 2006).Google Scholar

16. Steven Kepnes, Peter Ochs and Robert Gibbs.Google Scholar

17. Tim Winter (Abdal-Hakim Murad) and Basit Bilal Koshul.Google Scholar

18. Chad Pecknold, Nicholas Adams, Ben Quash, Susannah Ticciati, Daniel Hardy and myself. (Chad Pecknold was then Anglican and now is Roman Catholic.) The other Christian contributors are Gavin Flood (Orthodox) and Oliver Davies (Roman Catholic).Google Scholar

19. Daniel W. Hardy, ‘The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning’, in Ford and Pecknold (eds.), The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning, pp. 185–207 (185) (Hardy's italics).Google Scholar

20. Cf. Hardy, Daniel W.Ford, David F., Living in Praise: Worshipping and Knowing God (London: Darton, Longman and Todd; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), revised and updated edition of Jubilate: Theology in Praise (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1984) and of the US edition, Praising and Knowing God (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985); Daniel W. Hardy, God's Ways with the World: Thinking and Practising Christian Faith (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996); Daniel W. Hardy, Finding the Church: The Dynamic Truth of Anglicanism (London: SCM Press, 2001). For Hardy's Anglican ecumenical vision for Christian churches see Daniel W. Hardy, ‘Spirit of Unity – Reconcile your People!’ (Würzburg: Commission on Faith and Order, World Council of Churches, 1989); Daniel W. Hardy, ‘Receptive Ecumenism: Learning by Engagement’, in Paul Murray (ed.), Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning: Exploring a Way for Contemporary Ecumenism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 428–41.Google Scholar

21. Hardy, ‘The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning’, p. 190.Google Scholar

22. Hardy, ‘The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning’, p. 189 (Hardy's italics).Google Scholar

23. Hardy, ‘The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning’, p. 202 (Hardy's italics).Google Scholar

24. Hardy, ‘The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning’, p. 202.Google Scholar

25. Hardy, ‘The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning’, p. 203 (Hardy's italics).Google Scholar

26. Hardy, ‘The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning’, pp. 206–207 (Hardy's italics).Google Scholar

27. Hardy, ‘The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning’, p. 202.Google Scholar

28. Hardy et al., Wording a Radiance, p. 12.Google Scholar

29. Hardy et al., Wording a Radiance, p. 82.Google Scholar

30. Hardy et al., Wording a Radiance, pp. 82–83.Google Scholar

31. Hardy et al., Wording a Radiance, pp. 76–77 (Hardy's italics).Google Scholar

32. Hardy et al., Wording a Radiance, p. 83: ‘Ecclesiology is embodied: in Jesus’ walking.’Google Scholar

33. Hardy et al., Wording a Radiance, p. 78.Google Scholar

34. For a summary see Hardy et al., Wording a Radiance, p. 89.Google Scholar

35. Hardy et al., Wording a Radiance, pp. 90–93.Google Scholar

36. Hardy et al., Wording a Radiance, p. 93. For further discussion of these themes see Chapter 6.Google Scholar

37. Ochs, Peter, Another Reformation: Postliberal Christianity and the Jews (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), pp. 167–194.Google Scholar

38. The others are on John Milbank and myself.Google Scholar

39. Higton, Mike and Muers, Rachel, The Text in Play: Experiments in Reading Scripture (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012).Google Scholar

40. On ‘for God's sake’ see Ford, Christian Wisdom, Chapters 1–4, 7 and 9.Google Scholar