¹ See, for example, Fowl, Stephen E. and Jones, L. Gregory, Reading in Communion. Scripture and Ethics in Christian Life (London: SPCK, 1991)Google Scholar, and Scott's, David excellent essay, ‘Speaking to Form: Trinitarian-Performative Scripture Reading’, Anglican Theological Review, LXXVII (1995), 137–159Google Scholar; also, the brief treatments of Jenner, Brian, ‘Music to the Sinner's Ear?’, Epworth Review, xvi (1989), 35–38Google Scholar; Wright, N.T., The New Testament and the People of God (London: SPCK, 1992), 140–143Google Scholar; Marshall, I.H., ‘Climbing Ropes, Elipses and Symphonies: The Relation between Biblical and Systematic Theology’, in Satterthwaite, P.E. and Wright, D.F., eds., A Pathway into the Holy Scriptures (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 199–220Google Scholar; and Hays, Richard B., The Moral Vision of the New Testament (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1996), 304–306.Google Scholar

² Francis Watson makes this point also in his recent books, Text, Church and World: Biblical Interpretation in Theological Perspective (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1994)Google Scholar and Text and Truth (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1997).Google Scholar

³ Relevant here is the recent and ongoing debate between Francis Watson and Philip Davies: see Davies, P.R., Whose Bible is it Anyway? (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995)Google Scholar, esp. ch.2, and Watson's, reply, ‘Bible, Theology and the University: A Response to Philip Davies’, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 71 (1996), 3–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the ‘uselessness of standardising’ (although in a different realm of discourse), see Midgley, Mary, ‘On Not Being Afraid of Natural Sex Differences’, in Griffiths, M. and Whitford, M., eds., Feminist Perspectives in Philosophy (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1988), 29–41, at 34–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴ Nicholas Lash, ‘Performing the Scriptures’, originally published in The Furrow in 1982 and republished in his important collection, Theology on the Way to Emmaus (London: SCM, 1986), 37–46Google Scholar; cf. also his other essay, ‘What Might Martyrdom Mean?’ (originally published in 1981) in Emmaus, 75–92.

⁵ Lash, ‘Performing’, 40.

⁶ Lash, ‘Performing’, 42 (author's emphasis).

⁷ See, for example, Mesters, Carlos, ‘The Use of the Bible in Christian Communities of the Common People’, in Torres, S. and Eagleson, J., eds., The Challenge of Basic Christian Communities (New York: Orbis, 1981), 197–210Google Scholar; and Rowland, Christopher, ‘“Open Thy Mouth for the Dumb”: A Task for the Exegete of Holy Scripture’, Biblical Interpretation, 1 (1993), 228–245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ The writings of Stanley Hauerwas bulk large here, some of which are cited below. His work is analysed critically in Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, 253–66. For Britain, see, amongst others, Milbank, John, Theology and Social Theory. Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990)Google Scholar; Williams, Rowan, ‘The Suspicion of Suspicion: Wittgenstein and Bonhoeffer’, in Bell, R.H., ed., The Grammar of the Heart (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), 36–53Google Scholar; and the well nuanced ‘two cheers for liberalism’ in Crowder, Colin, ‘Liberalism in Theology and Religious Education’, in Astley, J. and Francis, L.J., eds., Christian Theology and Religious Education (London: SPCK, 1996), 105–113.Google Scholar

⁹ Lash develops the ‘relay race’ image in ‘Martyrdom’, 79.

¹⁰ See further on this, the acute essays of the Hebrew, Jewish Bible scholar, Jon Levenson, in his book The Hebrew Bible, The Old Testament, and Historical Criticism (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993)Google Scholar, esp. ch.5, ‘Historical Criticism and the Fate of the Enlightenment Project’. Relevant on the Protestant side is Colin Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation. An Essay towards a Trinitarian Theology (Basingstoke: Marshall Morgan & Scott, 1985).Google Scholar

¹¹ For more on this, see further Barton, Stephen C., Invitation to the Bible (London: SPCK, 1997), 12–27.Google Scholar

¹² Lash, ‘Performing’, 42 (author's emphasis).

¹³ See for example, Hauerwas, Stanley, A Community of Character (Notre Dame: UNDP, 1981)Google Scholar; and Jones, L. Gregory, Embodying Forgiveness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995)Google Scholar; idem, ‘A Thirst for God or Consumer Spirituality? Cultivating Disciplined Practices of Being Engaged by God’, Modern Theology, 13/1 (1997), 3–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁴ See Louth, Andrew, Discerning the Mystery (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983)Google Scholar; Diogenes Allen, ‘Intellectual Inquiry and Spiritual Formation’, in Ford, D.F. and Stamps, D.L., eds., Essentials of Christian Community (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996), 253–265Google Scholar; and Dykstra, Craig L., ‘The formative power of the congregation’, in Astley, J. et al. , eds., Theological Perspectives on Christian Formation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 252–264.Google Scholar

¹⁵ More recently, and apparently independently of Lash, another Roman Catholic theologian—this time a New Testament scholar—has made good use of the same analogy. I refer to Schneiders, Sandra M., The Revelatory Text. Interpreting the New Testament as Sacred Scripture (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1991), 66, 78, 82.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Lash, ‘Performing’, 43 (author's emphasis).

¹⁷ See the relevant sections of Gadamer's Truth and Method excerpted in Mueller-Vollmer, Kurt, The Hermeneutics Reader (NewYork: Continuum, 1992), esp. 257–267.Google Scholar

¹⁸ See further the important reflections on Gadamer in relation to biblical interpretation in Louth, Andrew, Discerning the Mystery, 29–43Google Scholar; and Gunton, Colin, Enlightenment and Alienation, 128–131.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Lash, ‘Martyrdom’, 82–7.

²⁰ Lash, ‘Martyrdom’, 90.

²¹ Williams, Rowan, ‘The Literal Sense of Scripture’, Modern Theology, 7/2 (1991), 121–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²² Williams, ‘Literal Sense’, 123.

²³ Williams, ‘Literal Sense’, 125 (author's emphasis).

²⁴ See, for example, Hollenweger, W.J., Jungermesse/Gomer: Das Gesicht des Unsichtbaren (Munich: Kaiser, 1983)Google Scholar; idem, Das Fest der Verlorenen (Munich: Kaiser, 1984).Google Scholar

²⁵ See in general, Krondorfer, Bjorn, ed., Body and Bible. Interpreting and Experiencing Biblical Narratives (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992).Google Scholar

²⁶ Loughlin, Gerard, Telling God's Story. Bible, Church and Narrative Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁷ Lash, ‘Performing’, 45–6.

²⁸ Lash, ‘Performing’, 46 (author's emphasis).

²⁹ Williams, ‘Literal Sense’, 126.

³⁰ On the role of liturgy, see further, Wolterstorff, Nicholas, ‘The Remembrance of Things (Not) Past: Philosophical Reflections on Christian Liturgy’, in Flint, T.P., ed., Christian Philosophy (Notre Dame: UNDP, 1990), 118–161Google Scholar. On the significance of repetition in liturgy, see Sykes, Stephen, ‘Ritual and the Sacrament of the Word’, in Brown, David and Loades, Ann, eds., Christ: The Sacramental Word (London: SPCK, 1996), 157–167.Google Scholar

³¹ Young, Frances, The Art of Performance. Towards a Theology of Holy Scripture (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1990).Google Scholar

³² See Young, Performance, 21, n.1.

³³ Young, Performance, 1.

³⁴ Young, Performance, 21.

³⁵ Young, Performance, 21–5. The ‘two natures’ analogy recurs at different points throughout the book, and finally at 176–82.

³⁶ Significant here, as a development of Lash in an even more theological (trinitarian) direction, is David Scott, ‘Speaking to Form’, esp. 139–46.

³⁷ Young, Performance, 26–44.

³⁸ See further, Wilken, Robert's essay, ‘Memory and the Christian Intellectual Life’ in his Remembering the Christian Past (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 165–180, esp. at 170–1Google Scholar: ‘In many fields of creative work, immersion in tradition is the presupposition for excellence and originality. Think, for example, of music. … [O] ne is impressed with how often a performer like folk singer Jean Redpath speaks about tradition as the necessary condition for making and singing folk music. How often we are admonished not to let the old traditions be forgotten. Why? Surely not for historical or archaeological reasons, but because musicians, like painters and writers and sculptors, know in their fingertips or vocal chords or ears that imitation is the way to excellence and originality.’

³⁹ Young, Performance, 61. Compare also Hauerwas, Stanley, ‘The Politics of the Bible: Sola Scriptura as Heresy?’, in his Unleashing the Scripture (Nashville: Abingdon, 1993), 15–44.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ See further, Steinmetz, David, ‘The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis’, Ex Auditu, 1 (1985), 74–82.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Young Performance, 66–87.

⁴² Young, Performance, 161–2.

⁴³ Cf. cfWilliams, Rowan, ‘Between the Cherubim: The Empty Tomb and the Empty Throne’, in Costa, G. D', ed., Resurrection Reconsidered (Oxford: Oneworld, 1996), 87–101Google Scholar, at 98: ‘[T] he silence with which Mark's gospel ends indicates that the speaker of the gospel and the subject of the gospel as a narration is not himself silenced. It is not just a homiletic point to say that the “missing ending” of Mark's text is the response of the reader or community of readers rather than a textual lacuna of some sort. The narrative of Jesus is not finished, therefore not in any sense controlled, even by supposedly “authorized” tellers of the story; his agency continues, now inseparable from the narrative of God's dealings with God's people, and so his story cannot be simply and decisively told. The telling of the story of his life and death is … a process designed to bring the believer to the point of recognition that this is not a life exhausted in any text or ensemble of texts, in any performance or ensemble of performances. Jesus remains subject of his history.’

⁴⁴ Wright, N.T., The New Testament and the People of God, 142.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ For the most recent assessment, see the collection of essays edited by Davis, Stephen, Kendall, Daniel and O'Collins, Gerald, The Resurrection. An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Resurrection of Jesus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Loughlin, Gerard, ‘Living in Christ: Story, Resurrection and Salvation’, in D'Costa, G., ed., Resurrection Reconsidered, 118–134.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ G. Loughlin, ‘Living in Christ’, 120.

⁴⁸ Compare William Blake's letter to Dr. Trusler of 23 August 1799, in Keynes, G., ed., The Letters of William Blake (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980), 9Google Scholar: ‘But to the Eyes of the Man of Imagination, Nature is Imagination itself. As a Man is, So he Sees. As the Eye is formed, such are its Powers. You certainly Mistake, when you say that the Visions of Fancy are not to be found in This World. To Me This World is all One continued Vision of Fancy or Imagination, & I feel Flatter'd when I am told so. … Why is the Bible more Entertaining & Instructive than any other book? Is it not because they are addressed to the Imagination, which is Spiritual Sensation, & but mediately to the Understanding or Reason?’ I owe this reference to Christopher Rowland.

⁴⁹ Compare also what Loughlin says about the interpretation of myth, in his earlier essay, ‘Myths, Signs and Significations’, Theology, LXXXIX (July, 1986), 268–275, at 273Google Scholar: ‘The signification of myth is the movement of the literal meaning which makes us participate in the latent mythological meaning, and thus assimilates us to that which is signified. Myth is not to be analysed, but consumed; its reading at once an appropriation and an enactment. … For the proper reading of myth is the communal living of myth, not just in participative performance but in existential commitment.’

⁵⁰ G. Loughlin, ‘Living in Christ’, 124–5.

⁵¹ David Scott, ‘Speaking to Form’, 145.

⁵² G. Loughlin, ‘Living in Christ’, 128.

⁵³ So, too, G. Loughlin, ‘Living in Christ’, 130–2, a concluding section of his essay entitled, ‘Exemplary Lives’, where he says, inter alia, ‘It is in the lives of the saints (which finally constitute the life of the Church), that the “event of a transformation”—which is the risen life of Christ—is “made to happen”, again and again, and each time differently. In the life-story of Jesus we see the overcoming of coercive and selfish power through the refusal of violence, the practice of forgiveness and the transformation of suffering. It is this practice which the Church aims to repeat, and in so far as it does, it is inscribed and incorporated into the very life of the crucified and risen Christ’ (131).

⁵⁴ See further the moving essay by Florovsky, Georges, ‘On the Veneration of the Saints’, in his collection of essays, Creation and Redemption (Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1976), 201–208.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ See, for example, Lossky, Vladimir, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1957), 217–235Google Scholar; also, Louth, Andrew, ‘The Transfiguration in the Theology of St Maximos the Confessor’, forthcoming in The Forerunner (1997).Google Scholar

⁵⁶ McGuckin, John A., The Transfiguration of Christ in Scripture and Tradition (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1986).Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Bultmann, R., The History of the Synoptic Tradition (ET, Oxford: Blackwell, 1963), 260Google Scholar. More detailed and interesting is the essentially religionsgeschichtlich study by Kee, H.C., ‘The Transfiguration in Mark: Epiphany or Apocalyptic Vision?’, in Reumann, J., ed., Understanding the Sacred Text (Valley Forge: Judson, 1972), 137–152Google Scholar, but again the conclusion is reductionist: Mark's story is a ‘literary device’ intended to convey a ‘message’ of assurance. Only a message?

⁵⁸ Evans, D., ‘Academic Scepticism, Spiritual Reality and Transfiguration’, in Hurst, L.D. and Wright, N.T., eds., The Glory of Christ in the New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987), 175–186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁹ This was so for the Reformed theologian George Caird also. As Evans notes (‘Transfiguration’, 181), Caird's awareness of ‘the researches of Evelyn Underhill and others, who have shown that the intense devotions of saint and mystic are often accompanied by physical transformation and luminous glow’, led him to the conclusion that the transfiguration could be accepted as ‘literal truth’.

⁶⁰ Quoted in Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (London: Penguin, 1993), 119.1Google Scholar owe this reference to my colleague Walter Moberly.

⁶¹ Matzko, David, ‘Christ's Body in its Fullness: Resurrection and the Lives of the Saints’, in D'Costa, G., ed., Resurrection Reconsidered, 102–117, at 114, 116.Google Scholar

⁶² Stephen E. Fowland L. Gregory Jones, Reading in Communion, 135–164; compare also Moltmann, Jürgen, The Way of Jesus Christ (London: SCM, 1990), 196–204Google Scholar, where Moltmann cites the cases of contemporary martyrs Paul Schneider and Arnulfo Romero, as well as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as among those who share in ‘the fellowship of Christ's sufferings’.

⁶³ Lischer, Richard, ‘Martin Luther King Jr.: “Performing” the Scriptures’, Anglican Theological Review, LXXVII (1995), 160–172.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Loades, Ann, ‘Simone Weil—Sacrifice: a Problem for Theology’, in Jasper, D., ed., Images of Belief in Literature (London: Macmillan, 1984), 122–137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶⁵ See further Wilken, Robert L.'s excellent essay, ‘The Lives of the Saints and the Pursuit of Virtue’, in his Remembering the Christian Past, 121–144Google Scholar; and, for a liberationist perspective on the saints, see Boff, Leonardo, Saint Francis. A Model for Human Liberation (London: SCM, 1985).Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Compare Stanley Hauerwas' comment in ‘Failure of Communication or a Case of Uncomprehending Feminism’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 50/2 (1997), 228–39, at 235 n.13: ‘I was recently asked by a friend why I do not write more about the ‘poor’. It is a good question. The quick answer is I do not know how to do so in a way that is serious. I do not believe it wise to write about the ‘poor’ or the oppressed in the abstract. … [W]e lack the resources … to remember or to be with the poor—or even more, to imagine what it would mean for us (that is, those of us who write articles like this) to be poor.’

⁶⁷ See further, Hauerwas, Stanley, Community of Character, 53–71Google Scholar, on ‘The Moral Authority of Scripture: The Politics and Ethics of Remembering’.

⁶⁸ See for example, MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: UNDP, 1981).Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Frei, Hans, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (New Haven: Yale UP, 1974).Google Scholar

⁷⁰ As Hauerwas puts it, in Community of Character, 54–5: ‘Failure to appreciate how the biblical narratives have and continue to form a polity is part of the reason that the ethical significance of scripture currently seems so problematic. Indeed, many of the articles written on the relation of scripture and ethics focus on ways scripture should not be used for ethical matters. Yet if my proposal is correct, this very way of putting the issue—i.e. how should scripture be used ethically—is already a distortion. For to put it that way assumes that we must first clarify the meaning of the text—in the sense that we understand its historical or sociological background—and only then can we ask its moral significance.’

⁷¹ Note David Scott, ‘Speaking to Form’, 144–5: ‘Interpretation may be so institutionalized in schools and done by learned men and women that it has become over-identified with ideas and written commentaries. Interpretation is meaning, and meaning can be said. But more basically, biblical meaning is done: meaning as relationships God intends between us and himself and between ourselves in relation to God. Because those relationships are forms of human life sharing in, showing forth and being shaped by God's own “performance” as triune life, the most authentic Christian biblical interpretation is human enactments of God-informed life. … Interpretation, then in its final form, is God-formed human practice. What we do as the people of God is our interpretation of the Bible.’

⁷² Compare Gerard Loughlin, Telling God's Story, where Part One is entitled, ‘Consuming Text’, and Chapter 8, ‘Eating the Word’.

⁷³ Profound on this is Yeago, David S.'s essay, ‘Messiah's People: The Culture of the Church in the Midst of the Nations’, Pro Ecclesia, VI/1 (1997), 146–171.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ See further, Rowan Williams, ‘The Suspicion of Suspicion’.

⁷⁵ See further, Loughlin, Gerard, ‘Following to the Letter: The Literal Use of Scripture’, Literature and Theology, 9/4 (1995), 370–382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷⁶ Relevant here is Thiselton, Anthony, ‘Knowledge, Myth and Corporate Memory’, in Believing in the Church. The Corporate Nature of Faith. A Report by the Doctrine Commission of the Church of England (London: SPCK, 1981), 45–78.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ For well nuanced comment on liberation and feminist hermeneutics, see David Scott, ‘Speaking to Form’, 149–51. Relevant also is the very recent exchange between Albrecht, Gloria and Hauerwas, Stanley in Scottish Journal of Theology, 50/2 (1997), 219–241.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷⁸ For encouragement in this direction from the Orthodox tradition, see further, Guroian, Vigen, Ethics After Christendom. Toward an Ecclesial Christian Ethic, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 53–80Google Scholar, on ‘The Bible in Orthodox Ethics: A Liturgical Reading’.

⁷⁹ See Kelsey, David's two works, To Understand God Truly. What's Theological About A Theological School? (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1992)Google Scholar and Between Athens and Berlin. The Theological Education Debate (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993)Google Scholar. A useful discussion and evaluation of the issues from this side of the Atlantic is an unpublished paper by Mark D. Chapman of Ripon College entitled, ‘Scripture, Tradition and Criticism: A Brief Proposal for Theological Education’.

⁸⁰ I have in mind here Potok's novels The Chosen, The Promise, In the Beginning, Name is Asher Lev, and The Gift of Asher Lev, all published by Penguin. In the Beginning, in particular, explores both the promise and perils of ‘higher criticism’ for performing the scriptures in the context of Hasidic Judaism.

⁸¹ See further on ‘apprenticeship’, Hauerwas, Stanley, After Christendom? (Sydney: Anzea, 1991), 101–111Google Scholar; also, Wilken, Robert L., Remembering the Christian Past, 171–175Google Scholar

⁸² Very helpful on this from an Orthodox Jewish perspective are the recent writings of Chief Sacks, Rabbi Jonathan, especially, Faith in the Future (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1995)Google Scholar and The Politics of Hope (London: Jonathan Cape, 1997).Google Scholar

⁸³ I gratefully acknowledge the support of my colleagues in the Department of Theology, University of Durham, for making possible the sabbatical leave during which this essay was written. It is a revised version of the paper delivered at the British New Testament Conference held at the University of Leeds, 11–13 September, 1997.