Tim Parker
‘Reading texts brings to light the close relationship of analogy and interaction between the hermeneutics of texts and the hermeneutics of self-hood and of human life.’ (A.C. Thiselton)
Abstract/introduction
A reader-centered approach to Christianity is a way of looking at how we take in stories, incorporate them into our lives – that wonderful assimilation we know even from the early experience of reading between the text which we read and the ‘text’ which is our lives (autobiography), an enlargement or enrichment of self. Before appropriating the Bible as the Story par excellence, the Story by which we would live our lives, a good place to start is with the reading of works of the imagination - novels. Here we most readily see what our reading habits may be like (method) and how this has formed us as persons. I point out some of the pitfalls of what appears to be an attractive way of reading, which I call the romance of the text (Romanticism), that is, reading self-consciously - reading as wish-fulfilment or projection of self into the narrative.
This, then, is by way of preliminaries before a launching into a more challenging way of reading - in this case, the reading of the Bible - which requires more scrupulous ways of reading and becomes never more than a highly problematic one - of objectivity, as I point out - and to which we can never arrive at a final authoritative interpretation. The article presupposes a view of truth, language, cognition and reference, without explicitly addressing these issues. The emphasis is wholly on the intriguing narrative effect the Person of Christ has on the reader, surely a mark of his uniqueness, in which Christ himself becomes so identified with what the Scriptures are about that he embodies the very Word and Truth! That is, by our Lord incarnating himself such that He has united our very humanity, ie. human identity, to Himself vicariously. The place he occupies ‘in our stead’ is one of a unique two-fold mediation, mediating the things of God to Man and mediating the things of man to God. To read of these things is to understand both how Christ has united all things to himself at the same time as reconciling all things to Himself. To encounter this ‘Janus-like’ symbol must be the supreme moment in the reading process, as when the self is so radically called into question that we as readers do not so much read - the subjective stance - but are ‘read’ by him, He who is the True Text of our lives. For this - the transformation of the reader - the image of the Christian poster comes to mind: the footprints embedded on the sandy beach. “Where Lord were you, when I needed you?” There is only one set of footprints, for each one of us, burdened as we are, is being carried by Christ, not because of the burden we may carry at any one particular time - as I thought it meant - but because of Who he is and done for us in bearing our humanity for us.
Reading stories: the vicarious thrill of the imagination
Book reading could be said to be the affinity reflective consciousness has for other foci of consciousness, that innate curiosity of what it is to be another person - different but recognisably similar to oneself. There can be two aspects, the recognition and confirmation of prior experience, and the enlargement of that experience as through the lives of others. Such is the fun of reading, especially imaginatively, that when the bonds of identification form between the reader and character(s) in the text there is a blurring of the boundaries of consciousness of one and the other(s). This, the vicarious thrill of reading (the incorporation of the identity of another into ourselves), is the seduction of the imagination. Characters trade their intimacies and we feel we know them maybe even better than ourselves or those closest to us - even when all that is presented is only one among many selections as in a ‘slice of life’. Also story time or imaginary time do not overlap with historical time, the reader’s consciousness oblivious to the world outside the book and maybe even to that world prior to picking up the book. Reading then gives the reader a new identity without the normal constraining ties of life. (In fiction one can be a thousand different selves (and yet be oneself), as C.S.Lewis has said.) Is this magical or a sleight?
Longing for forms of identity and attachment to the text
When one is feeling a sense of detachment from the world, there is disenchantment with the world of self such that any bridge between the self and the world is welcomed even if that means taking on a false identity of the imaginary or fictitious self. David Bleich has said in relation to reading: ‘Each person’s most urgent motivations are to understand himself.’ Each encounter with a textual character becomes potentially a revision or reinvention of self. (Note, there is no mention here of the proper set of relations set up by the text as between the author, text and the reader, not to mention the world the text refers to. If I were to read as Bleich suggests (that is, reading as to felt needs), then not only would all literary texts be self-conscious creations but reading them would be tantamount to self-assertion, an act of defiance against authorship even to the extent of a denial of authorship. So much for reading as a means of overcoming worldly detachment! Yet this belongs to the very romantic idea of reading or self-love.
Normally in reading one has to be aware of the subjective biases on the part of the reader: for example, the tendency to project what is not there onto the text; biases of authorship; how the meaning of text changes with historical period. But here the sort of person one wants to be is the person one becomes as there are enough character variants out there to meet with one’s set of demands. Each new text holds out the possibility of a new mirroring or partial mirroring of characters, endless variants of the theme of self, allowing the reader to overcome some of the intractable vicissitudes of life. When unsure of the story of who we are, we can easily substitute another… and another. The mind seeks out the unity of purpose and action, and what better than to acquire through reading a plotted life, the sense of interconnectedness of character and event - purposeful action - life joined up and given coherence. Even if this world of the book is an impermanent one, at least it lasts for the duration the story. When the book is finished the irrational reader faces the real desire of another book or to face reality.
Within this subjective view of the reading process there is no transaction between ‘the world’ the reader left behind and the ‘world of the book’ as it may touch upon the real world. The mind, then, has an affinity for other minds even if these ciphers in the text turn out, as in my case, to be me! Why would one feel this way, and allow this to happen? In this, the vicarious pleasures of the text, has the reader gone mad? Such reader identification and a ‘getting lost in the text’ is a comfort zone of immaturity and irrationality of emotion. Outside the ‘world of the book’ and the reader is, for example, potentially a poor real life lover. To quote: ‘Love can be either subjective and irrational, or objective and rational. In feeling love for another person, I can either experience a pleasurable emotion which he stimulates in me, or I can love him. We have, therefore to ask ourselves, is it really the other person that I love, or is it myself? Do I enjoy him, or do I enjoy myself in being with him?’ (John Mac Murray, from Reason and Emotion).
The trouble with life: Marcel Proust
Manifestly we each lead a life, a ‘story’ without a plot, the problem generating a degree of uncertainty and anxiety - we are in the middle of a story, the conflict between autobiography and history - the outcome of which is in most respects, unknown, hidden from us. Psychoanalysis too attempts to bridge-build in the world of the hurting person. There is the wish to build a commentary of one’s life or at least to come to a satisfactory re-interpretation of one’s life that causes less pain. How useful rather than inventive (fictional?) this process of re-telling and reinterpertation is, I don’t know, but it is surely an expression of the inability to bear too much reality, a non-acceptance of life’s contingencies or ‘ups and downs’. The unwell novelist Marcel Proust fell under the ‘romance of reading’ spell too when within the confines of his bedroom he made himself feel a bit better, albeit at the expense of a sheltering of self from the real world. Here is Proust’s invitation to his subjective view of the world and the world of the book: ‘The reader may project the “text” of his own life onto the material being read’ (‘chaque lecteur est, quand il lit, le propre lecteur de soi-meme’). And: ‘This complete identification of the self with what one reads is the most total assimilation imaginable, and in a sense becomes the most satisfying relationship any reader could hope to have’ (Frye). Despite being so pleasurable, so real, reader identification remains a seduction of the imagination.
The bonds of reader identification: ‘Literary Christs’
‘Literary Christs’ abound in literature as and when the reader identifies with one or more characters and lets identification or role-play (ie., the imagination) take over the mind of the reader - except of course, unlike Christianity, we are free to move back out of the text and regain our former selves. Note, such literary identification is a form of projection, subjectively determined and highly psychologised (that is, according to the felt needs at the time) by the reader. (If these habits of mind are carried over into the Biblical text we can easily slip into a way of life in imitation of Christ, but Christ is inimical to such thinking. It is difficult, impossible on simply human terms, to understand that he has given himself over to us totally.)
But for Proust there was a different ‘spin’, where literary characters are not acting on our behalf at all; rather it is we who, in bringing them to life, act for them (solipsistic idealism). ‘The world remains other, but its impenetrability or opaqueness acts as a stimulus for self-expression; literature affords an entry into the depths of experience that remain closed to physical perception.’ (Arnold Weinstein, Vision and Response in Modern Fiction, 1974; also: ‘The semantic complexity of novelistic fiction: the expansion and collapsing of Proust’s fictional universe’, Style, v 25 summer 1991).
Is it possible that such an enchantment of the imagination - reader identification - is what happens in Jewish textual relations when, for example, in the Haggadah, the Passover, the reader makes equivalence or identity with the historical characters who enliven the text? Surely without subjective relations with the text, there is no ‘we were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt’, and the historical event gets reduced to anecdote? If irrational emotion, then what does this say about God and his willingness to communicate Himself to us?
Reading seriously, and the Bible
As compared to the seduction of reading self-consciously - the usurpation of the author of the text with the imaginary self - serious reading assumes an interest in the objectivity of the world. Indeed the central question becomes ‘What is Truth?’ This is a ‘hard road to travel’ given the shortcuts to understanding amidst a plethora of ‘facts’, facts only having quasi-objective status. (To enlist the help of facts can be to short-cut the process of interpretation).
Rather there is the need for the in-depth scientific account of the religious quest, the rational inquiry into meaning and truth. If Life itself is a Great Story Book the meaning is hidden from us, unless objectified for us and made communicable or intelligible. Like life, consciousness itself has a storied-like existence in that we like to tell and receive stories, fictional mythic and in this case True Myth (cf. C.S.Lewis). The objective nature of our understanding or reading of Life is highlighted by Him who is the Author, the Subject or Master of the Scriptural set of narratives. Is this really so? That is to say, do we have in the Scriptures an authoritative form of address which can be wholly relied upon - ie., his objectivity?
Reflexivity and Christ
The character of Christ has a unique self-consistency - given his unusual origins - and his wholly reflexive nature. Unlike the fragmentation of our narratives, his life seems like a seamless purposeful whole and possesses a high degree of self-knowledge - but given his unique self-identity maybe this is not surprising. By reflexivity is meant the consistency of will and action, knowing and being, inner and outer, in that (I quote) “we see a man making his own destiny, conscious all the time of the shape and meaning of life. We feel all the other characters in the Gospels are actors in a play the action of which Jesus grasps, but of which the other characters are at best, only vaguely aware and at worst ignorant. Jesus does more than grasp what is going on, the whole of history is reinterpreted in his Name, setting the seal on interpretations. The whole vast story which began with the creation of the world is turned inside out: instead of Jesus being reduced to a cipher by his self-denial, all that has gone before is turned into an expression of his being… ‘all might be fulfilled’… the secret pattern of history at last made manifest” (G. Josipovici, The Book of God, Yale Univ. Press). Alternatively: Christ rewrites the Scriptures in his own name, by reading himself into them. It is Christ alone whose prerogative it is to read himself into the story so that the Scriptures becomes an expression of his Being.
Negatively, the self is called into question completely; positively, we share in the new life lived for us
In this ‘book of life’, Jesus calls to account the reader in all his relations. Such is the inquiry-like nature of Christian belief that we come under the objectivity of Him who questions us. There is none of the attempt at creative self-transcendence as in the romantic version of reading. As Word He remains Subject over us, and spells out an experience of life against which our experiences are to be interpreted, not the other way round - His life is plotted unlike ours. As with any text, but rather more pressing here, we are made to ask personal questions: Who is this person? What are we to make of him? Such is his wholly reflexive nature - the Son is wholly reflexive of the actions of the Father who sent Him - so we listen then wonder: ‘To whom do we belong? Where do we come from and to where are we headed? And so gradually for the reader, as the nature of His Self-identity and Authority becomes clearer: For what things and to whom are we answerable for the things of life? - ie. the counterpart to: ‘Who are we?’ And as before, there are not only the vicarious (the experience of another as oneself) pleasures: the notion of the mind of the reader entering another - or should I have said the other entering the mind of the reader? - at any rate, the impermanent matter of reader identification - there is something else as well.
His surrogacy: taking on the life of his subjects
There is also the vicarious and substitutionary work of the person of Christ - that is to say, by bearing our humanity he has in effect gone before us in all that we would experience (hence he is the Master of our experience). This is a much more holistic vision of Christ - the union of man and God in his incarnate life - than that offered by the role-model version or the simplicity of the expression, ‘Do as you would be done by’, quite without objective reference. Surprisingly perhaps His Reality does not become a reality for us without personal acknowledgment, for such is the personal nature of what is offered to us. Love would not be love if we took it for granted, and as with human love there has to be recognition of the matter from both sides. But unlike the reading of a storybook, say, there is none of the let-down when the last page has been turned and the book closed.
Letting the text ‘read us’
All the above can only happen if we undo the tendency to read the text, to let the text ‘read us’, to relinquish control. This then is the opposite of ‘subjective reading’ and the romantic view of the text as mentioned earlier. If Christ acts in our place, the One who mediates a new reality, a new humanity, then this is the highpoint of the reading experience. As Mediator he allows us to share in himself - Real Friendship - so taking us out of our tragic inner dialogues, the narcissistic self.
True religion and the interconnectedness of life
This is the essence of True Religion, to understand as far as possible all the things of this world as they are brought to our consciousness, as indeed they have been bound together, and as Christ has united all things to himself. To attend to the ‘book of nature’ and the ‘Book of God’ and not to let religion become separated from life - that we would truly know that in him ‘we live and move and have our being’. Otherwise religious practice, in becoming divorced from religious reflection, becomes increasingly irrelevant. In eagerness to witness to a sceptical world is there not in some modern forms of spirituality too much emphasis on signs and wonders at the expense of our humanity (see Martyn Percy: Words, Wonders, Power)?
Both the pursuance and rightful goals of the study of the Arts and the sciences derive ultimately from his Reason or Love (cf. Stephen Prickett, Introduction to Oxford Paperback Bible, Oxford Univ. Press). To put it more formally, Christ inspires us to know and act rationally in accordance with the way in which he makes known the rational order He has rationally ordered. True religion is the ultimate expression of the working out of reason. This is a most challenging task for any expression of a unitary view of things, especially in the fragmentary world we live in - which can only ‘colour’ our thoughts - will be hard to state and live. But it is a ‘dream’ or rather reality, already lived by Christ, which we cannot fail to be whole-hearted about and inspired. A new way of life has entered the world. Being conscious of it is another matter.
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