Flesh Made Word

Lauren Smelser White

doi:10.5771/9781978711051

Summary

This book delineates the individualist “interpretation problem” that has long beset Protestant biblical interpretation and engages theological resources that could serve to move beyond it. Lauren Smelser White argues that readers of Scripture—specifically those who long to submit their lives to God's transforming Word, which they believe the Bible discloses—ought to reckon with the participatory role that human bodies (corporeal and corporate) play in producing revelation's norms. Such a reckoning need not entail giving up on Scripture delivering the life-changing address of a divine Other. In support of that claim, White distills a picture of revelation as a divine-human discursive encounter: a process wherein our hermeneutic constructions are incorporated into the Word's self-disclosure, and whereby interpreters who embrace this venture in vulnerability may experience graced transformation. She concludes by proposing that this “Christomorphic” interpretation process is analogous to a mother’s embodied responsiveness in caring for her child. Such a hermeneutic paradigm suggests distinctive commitments from communities who desire to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in interpretive acts.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2022
ISBN-Print: 978-1-9787-1104-4
ISBN-Online: 978-1-9787-1105-1
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 226
Product type: Book Titles

1. Dedication No access
2. Contents No access
3. Acknowledgments No access
1. The Original Context for and Tenets of Sola Scriptura No access
2. The Significance of the Reformers’ Sola Approach for Protestant Hermeneutics No access
3. From Luther to Barth: Modernity and the Rise of the Hermeneutic Question No access
4. Notes No access
1. Barth’s Actualistic Vision of Revelation No access
2. Barth’s Actualistic Formula: An Irrational Approach to Revelation? No access
3. Luther’s vs. Barth’s Sola Scriptura Options: Hermeneutic Opportunities and Quandaries No access
4. Notes No access
1. Pannenberg: Theologian of Critical History No access
2. Pannenberg’s Oversight: Discounting Extra-Rational Sources of Understanding No access
3. Hans Frei: Theologian of Christ’s Narrative Identity No access
4. Frei’s Approach to Scriptural Interpretation: A Solution to the PIP? No access
5. Frei’s Oversight: Suspending Illocutionary Concerns No access
6. Reading Pannenberg and Frei as Correctives to One Another: Another Impasse No access
7. Conclusion: Looking to “High(er) Church” Resources No access
8. Notes No access
1. Balthasar’s Key Insight: Humanity’s Self-Expropriation in Theodramatic Revelation No access
2. Balthasar’s Paradigm, Applied: A (Theo)Dramatic Eschewal of Christoform Ambiguity No access
3. Feminist Engagements with Balthasar’s Kenosis: A Self Expressed in Translucence? No access
4. Notes No access
1. Contrasting Balthasar’s and Coakley’s Doctrines of the Incorporative Spirit No access
2. Coakley’s Théologie Totale: Out of “Stuckness” in the Knowing Subject, and beyond the PIP? No access
3. Looking Ahead: Toward a Transfigured Marian Profile No access
4. Notes No access
1. The Utterly Receptive Reader: A Misguided Hermeneutic Ideal No access
2. Balthasar and Coakley: The Delusion of a “Translucent” Contemplative Subject? No access
3. Flesh Made Word through the Body’s Grace: Toward an Alternative Hermeneutic Framework No access
4. Conclusion: Practical Trajectories beyond the PIP No access
5. Notes No access
References No access Pages 215 - 220
Index No access Pages 221 - 224
About the Author No access Pages 225 - 226