Reading with strangers: Hospitable interpretation of Scripture

Brittany Melton unpacks what it means to interpret Scripture in a way that is hospitable to other interpreters, and explains how that can highlight our own blind spots.

What does it mean to interpret the Bible? It involves making sense of the words themselves, understanding what they meant for the original hearers or readers in a world far removed from our own, and trying to grasp what they mean in today’s world. This process of understanding and interpreting is called ‘hermeneutics’.

Many of the twentieth century’s pre-eminent philosophers and psychologists interpreted texts with what Paul Ricœur described as a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’. It is an attempt to unearth the real meaning of a text, often by reading against its stated or obvious intent. Others, in reaction to this suspicious reading of texts, have developed more positive approaches for which they use terms such as ‘hermeneutics of trust’, ‘charity’, or ‘generosity’. Within biblical scholarship, these indicate trust in the reliability of the Bible, and attempt to recover what Ricœur referred to as a ‘hermeneutics of faith’. Esau McCaulley says, in his book Reading While Black (2020), that Bible readers should ‘refuse to let go of the text until it blesses us’. He likens a hermeneutics of trust to the ‘posture of Jacob’: ‘we are patient with the text in the belief that when interpreted properly it will bring a blessing and not a curse.’ This is not a cheap or easy trust, but an unrelenting prophetic hope that all the word of God is good news. In a world that seems increasingly suspicious of Scripture, this kind of trust is vital for us.

I want to go a little further, using what German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer called a principle of ‘good will’. I think we can apply this spirit of generosity to other interpreters, not simply to the biblical text. I call it a ‘hermeneutics of hospitality’. I define biblical hospitality as ‘the costly welcome of an other’, and this extends to the practice of interpretation. Welcome requires openness and a degree of vulnerability. How do others, even strangers, help us to read the Bible better, more faithfully?

As Jeannine Brown says, people in western cultures assume that they are ‘Lone Ranger readers’,[1] but the reality is that others always influence the way we read the Bible. Everyone reads the Bible in a particular way because of their personality, experiences, and social location. Their reading is shaped by their church traditions, or by secular views of the Bible, and the default is to keep reading the same way. We all have blind spots as a result. A hospitable interpretation of Scripture helps us to identify and address those blind spots. It has three commitments: to pay attention to the whole of the Bible, to read broadly, and to aim to provide something life-giving.

Pay attention to the whole of the Bible

One of the people who has prompted me to be more hospitable in my interpreting of the Bible is John Goldingay. He is deliberately provocative about the need to engage with the whole of Scripture, asking such things as Do We Need the New Testament? (IVP, 2015). It’s his way of challenging those Christians who neglect the Old Testament. Christians say that all Scripture is God’s word, yet in practice many focus heavily on the New Testament, or Old Testament passages that obviously relate to Jesus. Resisting this tendency makes room to pay more attention to books like Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs—parts which fit less easily in scholarly theological schemes or the ‘metanarrative’ of scripture.

Read broadly

Everyone suffers to some degree from confirmation bias: we are suspicious of anything that doesn’t fit with our preconceived ideas. But avoiding other perspectives limits us to our own time, place, and experiences, so we never discover our blind spots. Reading broadly exposes us to interpretations outside of our preconceptions, and beyond the concerns and answers of our day. When Goldingay is working on a passage of the Bible, he reads anything he can get his hands on to think as broadly as possible about it. His bibliographies range from French novels to Christianity Today articles, from rabbinic readings to postmodern commentaries.

What these first two commitments offer is a vast amount of context, from both the biblical canon itself and exposure to many more interpretations. In essence, interpreters invite all the family of biblical books to the table for their opinion to weigh in, as well as a host of neighbouring readers. That way, one’s way of interpreting Scripture is not simply a reflection of prior commitments.

We can think about interpreting a Bible passage in a similar way to understanding a painting. We can study a painting in relation to similar works or those from the same time period. Yet, when it comes to displaying the painting, the colour of the wall or the other artworks nearby (even if they're not directly related) might draw our attention to certain features. From this perspective, we see that understanding isn't just about our own experiences. It's more like faithfully ‘curating’ the biblical material. Modern interpreters have emphasised learning about the ancient contexts which produced the Bible. But it is worth asking, in the light of the wider canonical context and the various interpretations across time and space, which points of cultural resonance best illuminate a given text? In other words, which interpreters are best situated to help us hear the text?

McCaulley offers five components of biblical interpretation based on trust, ending with a ‘willing[ness] to listen to and enter into dialogue with Black and white critiques of the Bible in the hopes of achieving a better reading of the text’ (p. 21). How do outsiders help one to read the text better, more faithfully? He poignantly elaborates, saying, ‘If our cultures and histories define the totality of our interpretive enterprise, the price of admission can be complete acquiescence to that culture’s particularities’ (p. 22). Andy Abernethy has recently talked about this as ‘valuing family’. He says, ‘We need the insights of our sisters and brothers and spiritual fathers and mothers to understand God’s Word and see what we might be missing’ (Savoring Scripture, 2022, p. 12). This means listening to the voices from the global Church, as well as the inherited voices of earlier interpreters of Scripture.

A hospitable interpretation of Scripture is committed to listen to others. It is, therefore, interested in fostering a diverse reading community. The aim in attending to these diverse voices is to ‘hear the fullness of what God’s word is communicating’ (p. 14). Talking of ‘fullness’ in this way is a reminder that Scripture is richer, more complex, and more multilayered than people often allow. Western readers often miss this because modernity has conditioned them to pursue the single correct meaning of a text. This has often gone hand in hand with an assumption that European and Anglo-American interpreters are the ones who have privileged—even exclusive—insight into the meaning of the biblical text. But to hear the fullness of what God’s word is communicating is an epic task and Christians in every place and time must humbly recognise the need for more voices to contribute to it.

Aim to provide something life-giving

Abernethy says that ‘when we welcome and value the perspectives and voices of others, we are valuing the family of God’ (p. 14). Practically, this means paying attention to the sorts of questions others ask when studying the Bible. A hospitable interpretation of Scripture aims to provide something life-giving by speaking into these questions. It is committed to being constructive, with the counterbalance of first listening widely and well.

I would like to go a little further than Abernethy and suggest that there is value in the voices of those ‘outside the family’. A hospitable interpretation of Scripture remembers that we were all once strangers (Deuteronomy 10:19; Ephesians 2:19), and so humbly listens also to those outside the community of Christian faith. If the apostle Paul has anything to say about it, Christians should be especially repentant for disregarding Jewish voices, and all the more for closing their ears to those in different parts of the family of God.

Other people read the Bible with very different assumptions to us, and so ask questions that we might not think to, and see things that we might miss. It can be uncomfortable hearing very different perspectives, but it encourages us to read the Bible more carefully in an attempt to hear it more fully. A way of interpreting the Bible that is closed off to those outside the family of God, suspicious of others, and drawing lines about who is ‘safe’ to listen to, does not have at its heart God’s gospel for the life and flourishing of the world.

Reading and listening widely is vital to glean insights into interpreting Scripture. We must listen to the groans of the marginalised so that we can come to Scripture with those same concerns. Abernethy points to this posture when he says, ‘the Bible God gave us is best read with all of our sisters and brothers’, since ‘pretty much anyone we read could help us see aspects of the Bible we might overlook’ (p. 15). A hospitable interpretation of Scripture not only trusts the Bible, therefore, but also listens to other voices within the Bible itself and to a community of interpreters who help us overcome our weaknesses and blind spots.

[1] Scripture as Communication: Introducing Biblical Hermeneutics (2021), p. 126.