REFLECTIONS ON THE PRIORITY OF METHOD

As I reflect on the task assigned to me, and how I would organize the present chapter, I am immediately struck by the contrast between how the chapter is to be organized, and the manner in which I actually do biblical interpretation. According to the instructions received – and which I shall follow – each chapter is to begin with a general discussion on a particular method and how it might be applied to the Gospel of Luke, and then use a text either from Luke 16 or Luke 20–21 as an illustrative example of how the method works. This seems quite logical, straightforward, ideologically neutral, and universally acceptable. To our modern mind, it makes more sense to move from the general to the particular, from theory to practice, and from method to application.

However, one of the basic things we have discovered as Latinas and Latinos doing theology and biblical interpretation is that such seemingly neutral and universally acceptable procedures often imply values and approaches that are not as neutral as they seem. In this particular case, the suggested structure itself implies that method precedes practice; that first one studies and decides what procedures to employ in reading Scripture, and then one applies those procedures to specific texts. It is an approach that favors the general over the particular, and the theoretical over the practical. First one determines the theory, and then one puts it into practice.