Beeson podcast, Episode 456 Mark Gignilliat August 6, 2019 Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George. Timothy George: Welcome to today's Beeson podcast. Well, today I have the privilege of having a conversation with Dr Mark Gignilliat. Mark Gignilliat is a dear friend and colleague here at Beeson, has been for a number of years now, and he's just returning from a sabbatical leave in St. Andrews, Scotland. Welcome back, Mark. Mark Gignilliat: Thanks. It's very good to be back. Thank you. Timothy George: Now to get going, just tell us about St. Andrew's a little bit because that's actually where you did doctoral study, right? Mark Gignilliat: Right. Timothy George: So this is your second tour of duty over there. Mark Gignilliat: Right. It was a bit of a return to home in a way. My wife and I were there from 2002 to 2005 and the sabbatical came up and we were thinking about where to go, and ended up landing back in St. Andrews and it was a wonderful experience. You know, we went to St. Andrews initially with no children and this time we went with four. So we put all of them in school. It was tight living quarters. So we had a small flat that we were living in. All four of our children were in one bedroom. So that had its fun moments. And all of them were in school right around the neighborhood. A very simple life, good life, and able to get some research done on a project that I'm doing for Baker Academic on the theological introduction to the Old Testament. So I was able to get some headway on that. And St. Andrew's, you've been there, it's an idyllic place for studying. Timothy George: It's wonderful, yeah. Mark Gignilliat: You're set on the North Sea. There's no train station there. You're really kind of in the middle of nowhere. It was a very good experience. I think we're having a bit of reverse culture shock because everything is so slow and sort of methodical there, and now we're living the American fifth gear pace. Timothy George: The rush. Mark Gignilliat: Yes. Timothy George: Well you know, I think St. Andrews is the third oldest university in Great Britain after Oxford and Cambridge. Is that right? Mark Gignilliat: I think that's right. And I've always thought of Cambridge, Oxford and St. Andrews forming a kind of triad. Maybe that's self-serving in a way, but it's its Scotland's oldest university. Timothy George: Yeah. And what about doing theology there? There's a theological college, St. Mary's. Mark Gignilliat: St. Mary's is there, and St Mary's as a theological college still has a self-identified theological identity, which is becoming increasingly rare and departments that tend to focus more on religious studies. So there's a really vibrant theological community there with some big names, like Tom Wright teaches in New Testament. You have Steven Holmes in theology. Christopher [Shwoble 00:02:38] is the new theology professor that's come in to fill the vacant of posts that John Webster left with his untimely passing. And it's a vibrant place. I mean there's a lot of fascinating discussions going on. Mark Gignilliat: When I was there, I had the opportunity to sit around and hear a full day's discussion on TS Eliot's four quartets. And various theologians coming in various places. So there's a kind of theological energy that's still going on at St. Andrew's. Timothy George: Wonderful. Well, I'm glad you had a great year. I'm very glad you're back with us. Mark Gignilliat: Thank you. We're glad to be back. Timothy George: This has not been an idle year for you in terms of publishing. You mentioned one project, but you've actually published a commentary on Micah since you've been gone. And the book we're going to talk about on the podcast today, Reading Scripture Canonically. So some of these books were in the works before you went to St. Andrew's on this visit, but right now they're in hand. Mark Gignilliat: They're here. Timothy George: So, we want to talk especially about this book, Reading Scripture Canonically. Now that's kind of a long, maybe a little bit forbidding title to somebody who's not an expert in the field, but actually the book is not that long. It's 120 pages or so. Very clear. Readable prose, as you always write. Why did you write this book? Mark Gignilliat: Well, I wrote this book for students, and actually the book is dedicated to the students here at Beeson. You know, we teach various courses here on exegesis and I wanted something that was in a manageable size that you could hand to students and they could engage, you know what some basic theological instincts that they need for engaging old testament exegesis. So there is admittedly an assumption of a certain sort of base knowledge that the book is working with, whether it's some exegesis classes or some courses in seminary or undergrad religion courses. There is some assumed knowledge in this book, but it's meant to be small and manageable. Mark Gignilliat: John Webster, I've already mentioned him, but he published a book years ago on holy scripture that came out with, I believe Cambridge Press, and it's a small tight book. I've assigned that book. I love that book and I think that kind of size, I was aiming for that with this. Timothy George: Yeah, so it's accessible. Mark Gignilliat: So it's accessible. You know, I don't know if the prose is all that clear. I wish I did better at that, but it is meant to be accessible for students. Timothy George: Now I want to focus in on this word canonically. Most people think of canons as guns that fired in the civil war. Mark Gignilliat: That's right. Timothy George: What is a Canon and why should one read scripture canonically? Mark Gignilliat: Well, I mean canon as a term in its basic sense means rule or norm. So it has something to do with authority, that which structures our thoughts and our prayers and our lives before God, but as with anything within the theological disciplines or within biblical studies, terms and their definitions are contested. And this is one that's hot actually among biblical scholars. And I would say, and I'm going to paint broadly here, but I would say that probably most biblical scholars today are working with an understanding of canon primarily as an external list. Something that an external property of the biblical text where later ecclesial communities came along and decided which books were in or which books were out. That I think is kind of the driving definition of cannon in a lot of the discourse. Mark Gignilliat: And I'm leaning against that definition in this book and arguing in line with some others, who I'm sure we'll talk about before our time is over, but arguing that really canon should more properly be understood an internal property of the biblical texts. So I'm actually opting for definition here that's under determined. It allows for a whole range of activities that are involved in the compositional history of biblical books from their inception to their final form. And that this canonical process itself is something that's internal to biblical texts and not just an external category. Mark Gignilliat: In the discipline today, I think the terms canon and scripture tend to be understood as distinct terms. This book is seeing those terms as beginning to blur into one another. And for those who are listening who have sort of theological sensibilities and they sniff Protestant instincts, it is. I mean this is an understanding that canon is primarily something that's recognized within the biblical text and not necessarily determined. So it's [crosstalk 00:06:46]. Timothy George: I want to ask you two questions about that because when I think of canon and how it's commonly used today, there are two situations I want to mention. One is it's a distinction between Protestants and Catholics. We have, it is said, different canons. That means we recognize different bodies of literature as holy scripture. Catholics have more books than Protestants. What do you think about that? And in the second question, you can group these together or deal with them differently if you like, is the question of whether the cannon is open or closed, because an open canon I suppose means maybe new revelations can be given or new books discovered that would be regarded as the very words of God, the holy scriptures. So Protestant-Catholic, open-closed. Mark Gignilliat: These are only some of the most complicated questions of ... Timothy George: We have two minutes. Mark Gignilliat: ... of Christians today. It's a great question. And actually, chapter four of this book leans into that, the chapter on textural criticism, which may be the most foreboding chapter of the book. And this is a live question, you know the question about how the Septuagint, which is a sort of broader canonical, more books are involved canonically within the Septuagint and how that's been received. And this goes back to early church debates between people like Augustine and Jerome. When I'm on the priority of the Hebrew text and relationship to the Septuagint, these are problems that have been with the church for a very long time. Mark Gignilliat: I would say that the term open canon is a helpful term only insofar as it involves a larger ecumenical conversation that's continuing to go on. We do know that Rome and the Protestant church are divided on their understanding of the scope of the canon, and I think that is a conversation that's probably still in order. And this is one of the reasons, going back to the first question, Dr. George, that I think it's important to recognize cannon as an internal property rather than an external property. I mean, even in the first century there were debates that were going on regarding which books of the Old Testament canon were deemed in or out, like Esther or some of these books on the edges. And I think this book here is trying to make an argument that canonical authority isn't necessarily determined by the fixity of the canon itself, that there's a recognition that there might be some blurred edges on this discussion and there can be continued conversations. Mark Gignilliat: Here's the challenge though, and you realize this with all the work that you've done in your own ecumenical endeavors. What are the mechanisms that would be involved, let's say if they discover a third Corinthian letter from Paul that would allow a larger ecclesial conversation that goes across denominational boundaries to be able to make that kind of move? I'm not sanguine about that right now, but I do think it's an interesting thought project theologically. Timothy George: There are two names in this book that occur a number of times, two people who have had a great influence on you and your own scholarship and thinking as a theologian. One is Brevard Childs. The other is Christopher Sykes. I've met Christopher Sykes. I was not privileged to meet Professor Childs. He's no longer with us in this world. Say a little bit about who these people are and why they're important to you. Mark Gignilliat: Well, Christopher Sykes was my doctor [fodder 00:09:45] at St. Andrew's. So you know, I remember walking into his office as a 26 year old, freshly minted M Div student and being very nervous to meet him. I'd read a lot of his works, and at that point in time, and even now, for me he loomed a little bit larger than life. He had this unusual capacious mind that could, you know knew his own discipline very well, but also knew the history of Christian theology and the Western intellectual tradition. And I, just seeing that at work was its own kind of teaching project for me. I think I caught as much from watching my Professor Sykes as I was taught. And they both, you know, Sykes studied with Childs at Yale University during the day when I guess whatever this Yale school was, was actually in play. Figures like George Lindbeck, Hans Frei, Brevard Childs, thinking through on what Christian theology looks like on the far side of modernity. Mark Gignilliat: I mean this is the continued challenge. And so that's in many ways the influence that both Childs and Sykes have had on me is the ways in which, you know Chris' own project on canonical interpretation continues to do its work. Timothy George: You know, I don't know what denomination Brevard Childs was. Christopher Sykes is an Anglican. Mark Gignilliat: He is. That's right. Timothy George: And you are too. Mark Gignilliat: Yes. Timothy George: You've moved in your denominational home over the years of your life. So now you're not just an Anglican, you're actually a theologian at the Cathedral Church of the Advent, which is a leading Anglican Episcopal church in the United States, maybe in North America, one of the largest here in Birmingham. We're so blessed to have a wonderful, supportive, mutually enriching relationship with that great congregation. You have a vital role of leadership there. So, talk a little bit about that and how that intersects with your work as a biblical theologian. Mark Gignilliat: Well, as an anecdote with this that I think really says something about the ways in which our situatedness in the life of the church shapes and influences our reading of scripture. I remember being in a doctoral seminar years ago and we were wrestling with something in Isaiah, and thinking through Isaiah 53, which is of course a classic Good Friday text. And the referent of the servant in Isaiah 53 is something that's, again, contested. I mean, what is the servant referring to in the book of Isaiah? And I remember being in that seminar and hearing Professor Sykes say, "I assume that the referent of the servant in Isaiah 53 is our Lord Jesus Christ." Mark Gignilliat: And as I thought about that, and of course there was a kind of very textured way of understanding this, but as he said it was, I've thought about that, I realize I grew up in an Anglican context. I went to episcopal school as a boy. Every good Friday of my life I'm in church on Friday hearing Isaiah 53 read in conjunction with the death of our Lord and Savior. And he was like, the influence that that has on you from an exegetical standpoint is there's something that can't be transcended. We can't escape that. So I think the ways in which the church and the church's Catholicity influences our reading of scripture is again, not something that's external to biblical reading, but is actually internal to what we're trying to engage when we come to terms with the subject matter of the Bible. Mark Gignilliat: And that to me, I mean, I can still remember, that that was sky opening for me to realize, okay, when I'm reading the Bible, I can never read the verbal given-ness of the biblical texts in abstraction from the subject matter of what the Bible is. And what is that? God's revelation of himself in Jesus by the Holy Spirit. And that was when wheels began to turn for me years ago as a postgraduate student about the necessary interrelationship of Christian theology, ecclesial situatedness and the reading of holy scripture. Timothy George: So talk a little bit about the Cathedral Church of the Advent and what you did there, because I think it's very interesting. It's the way in which you bring together your academic vocation with an ecclesial ministry. Mark Gignilliat: Right. Well, I haven't done anything there in awhile. Timothy George: Well, you've we've been away. Mark Gignilliat: I've been away. Timothy George: I think they're looking forward to your coming back. Mark Gignilliat: We'll see. We'll see. I don't know. That's a great question. And funny, when I came to Beeson 15 years ago, I remember having a conversation with then associate Dean Paul House. And I said, "Paul, I feel like I need to be involved in local church activity. I don't want to just be a pure academic only in the Divinity School." And I remember Paul giving me some advice and I began to make that a matter of prayer. I mean, early in my academic career here, I prayed that God would open some sort of venue, but I didn't want to put flyers. I wasn't going to go self market. And so just began to pray about that quietly. Mark Gignilliat: And in 2012, Frank Limehouse, who by the way, I dedicate the Micah commentary to Frank. I don't even think Frank knows that yet. Timothy George: And Frank, by the way, is the former dean of- Mark Gignilliat: The former dean, that's right. Timothy George: ... The Cathedral Church of the Advent. Mark Gignilliat: So I dedicated the Micah commentary to Frank. Frank called me while I was on sabbatical in Germany the last time and said, "Would you consider coming on in a part-time role, a cannon theologian," which is sort of fancy term. I don't even have my own parking space, so it's not that ... but I get to preach and teach within the church. And it has been a huge blessing. I think that is, it's integral to what I do here at the Divinity School, and what I do at the Divinity School shapes how I go about my work within the local church. And I think the two are so important and the way in which they influence and intertwine and it's shaped the way that I teach and it's shaped the way that I preach. So the sort of back and forth there, to not have one or the other, it would feel like you'd lose a limb, I think. Timothy George: Well it's a wonderful model because there is a, I think a temptation, certainly a tendency in a lot of academic theology to be somewhat distanced, if not divorced from actual living faith communities. And here's a way to show that you can actually do both and both would be better because of that connection. Mark Gignilliat: Right. I wish I was the kind of academic who could sit in his office all day and just write and read. I'm just not wired that way. So I think, you know, being in a local church context has been a blessing. Timothy George: Back to canonical theology a little bit. Is the trinity in the Old Testament? Mark Gignilliat: Is the trinity in the Old Testament? The answer to that is unreservedly yes. I mean this is ... and a lot to unpack here and so let's sort of back out on this. Is the trinity in the Old Testament? The question is I think, how is the trinity present in the Old Testament? Timothy George: We should say upfront that the word trinity is in neither the Old or the New Testament. Mark Gignilliat: That's right. So, on a basic lexical level, the answer is no. You're not going to find it in a strong concordance. The question is how do we enter engage the biblical text itself in its given literary form, and this is a question that I think is has exercised evangelical scholars and critical scholars as well for the past 200 years in a move that I think I might identify as overly historicist. In other words, the approach to reading biblical texts has reduced or tended to reduce the literal sense of scripture to its historical particularity in a moment in time. And what that I think has done is it's limited the theological reach of biblical texts to what an author might have known at the time. And I try to make a distinction in this book, and we'll see if it works or not, but I try to make a distinction between this book between what an author or an editor of a biblical book might have known versus what the text or how the text actually participates in divine realities. Mark Gignilliat: And that's an important distinction that I think within modern biblical studies often gets collapsed. I'm not trying to drive a wedge between the historical particularity of the text and its theological subject matter, but I'm also wanting to say that texts participate in something more than what the author might have even known because, and this goes back to someone like Aquinas, right, in the first part of the Summa where Aquinas raises the question, how do we engage the biblical texts? And the answer is by engaging it's authorial intentionality. And on a modern year you'd say, well that's kind of right. But then Aquinas quickly goes on to clarify, well, who is the governing author of scripture? It's God. And if that's the case, that divine authorship of scripture is the lens by which we view all other facets of the creaturely character of the Bible. Well then that's going to change, I think our interpretive approach. Mark Gignilliat: It's very Aristotelian, right? We engage the object of our study and the object of our study, what it is, is going to shape the approaches that we bring to reading it. And if I'm coming to the Old Testament as Christian scripture that's participating in God's own very life, that's going to shape my hermeneutical approach to it. So a lot to unpack there, but I think when we say is the trinity in the Old Testament, I don't know what was in Isaiah's mind. By the way, and I should say this as well, I won't be surprised if we get to heaven and Isaiah says, "What were you talking about, Gignilliat? I was a Trinitarian from the get-go." I mean maybe so. And there are medieval theological arguments that make that kind of claim. So I'm fine with that. But I'm trying here to keep something a little bit more distinct and say that might be the case, it might not be the case, but what the text participates in within God's own divine life isn't determined or overly limited by by the epistemic reach of the author. Timothy George: I want to throw out a Latin term. This is a theological podcast after all. Mark Gignilliat: I'll get my phone out to look it up. Timothy George: You know it well, sensus plenior. What does it mean and how is it related to what you just said? Mark Gignilliat: Well, sensus plenior reading is a term that understands the biblical text as participating more fully in something beyond its own literal sense. I'm okay with the term. My concern with the term is that I think it does tend to drive a wedge between the texts' literal sense and its participation in God's own [inaudible 00:19:19] in life. In other words, we do our historical excavation and once we've done that, then you can make a kind of homiletical add-on to move it into something in larger Christian theological conversation. And I'm okay with that. I would prefer that than reducing it and leaving it in the Old Testament, in the ancient near eastern world. Mark Gignilliat: But I don't think that's the instinct of the church at its best. I think the instinct of the church is to recognize that the given-ness of the verbal, literal sense of the text itself is participating in God's own [inaudible 00:19:51] and self-disclosure. So, I would want to resist the instinct to make that kind of theological interpretation one or two steps removed from the actual engagement of the biblical text itself in its given literary form. Timothy George: And what are the dangers that come with, as the Protestant reformers and others have emphasized. And yet there is a sense in which we have to look for a more than we are able to simply in a reductionist way determine. Mark Gignilliat: Right. And I talk about this in some of the final chapters in the book. You know, the philosophy of language is one of the more fascinating intellectual endeavors of the last hundred years. Books by George Steiner, Real Presences. Rowan Williams has an excellent collection of lectures entitled The Edge of Words that sort of leans into the ways in which ordinary language participates in realities that even go beyond all that we understand. And so I make a kind of authorial argument that if we talk about normal language, our normal syntactical patterns meaning more, how much more so when we're talking about the language of God given in holy scripture? So I think that's where we see ... [Ira Nais 00:20:57] is a great example of this. You know, someone who recognizes that the biblical texts participate in realities that go beyond an original moment. Timothy George: Well, it's great having this conversation with you. It's wonderful to have you back from St. Andrew's. What's next for you theologically and in terms of your scholarship in particular? Mark Gignilliat: Oh, I'm wrestling with that. I mean I should get your advice. I have a few contracts that I have to fulfill. One of them is a commentary on Brazos theological commentary on the minor prophets. I think you're doing one on James, right? Timothy George: I'm doing one on James for that same series. Mark Gignilliat: So when you start, I'll start. Timothy George: You're making me feel guilty. Mark Gignilliat: Me too. So I have a commentary on the minor prophets that I'm doing for Brazos. A friend of mine and I are co-authoring a book on a theological introduction to the Old Testament. So I have a few contracts that I have to fulfill, but I'd like to try to write for a larger audience at some point. I don't know what that will look like. I have some ideas. I'd like to write a little collection of essays, not a commentary on the psalms, but a collection of essays on the psalms. Something like we saw with CS Lewis' reflection on the psalms, and it won't, could be of that level, but that kind of writing I'd like to do. Mark Gignilliat: I'd also like to do a book at some point on a theology of Bible translation. And this is one that I will have to percolate a little bit more, but the seeds of that project are already in chapter four of the book that we're talking about today. How do we wrestle with the fact that very early in the life of the church, even in the compositional history of the New Testament itself, a translation is functioning as the authoritative norm for Christian theological sense making and discourse, the Septuagint. That's an important question. Now we can raise the question about which texts Hebrew Septuagint deem canonical, but the very basic matter is a translation is doing a lot of heavy lifting theologically for the New Testament authors and the early church. Mark Gignilliat: What do we do with that and why do I hear my translation read on Sunday morning at Church and we say this is the word of the Lord and then we respond with thanks be to God? What theological categories do we need to have to understand the ways in which our translations function canonically? I'd like to think about that a little bit more at some point. Timothy George: I would encourage you to pursue that book on the psalter because the first thing I ever heard by you after you came to Beeson was a course you offered on the psalms. And I listened to every one of them as I did my morning walks, and it was wonderful because you were engaging the students, and Jesus Christ was there in the psalms in an appropriate kind of way. It seemed to be, it was a theological reading of the psalms, but with spiritual formation as the underlying theme going through it. And we need more of that, not less. Mark Gignilliat: Well thank you. Those lectures didn't put you to sleep while you were walking? Timothy George: No, no, no. They kept me awake and made me appreciate you as part of the giftedness that you are to us. A wonderful teacher, a wonderful theologian. Well, we're delighted to have you back. Thanks for taking time for this conversation. Mark Gignilliat: Thank you. Timothy George: The book is called Reading Scripture Canonically. Mark S. Gignilliat is the author. It's from Baker Academic. It's very accessible but I think an important book for us today. So I encourage everybody to go and read it. Reading Scripture Canonically, Mark Gignilliat. Thank you, Mark. Mark Gignilliat: Thank you, Dr. George. Announcer: You've been listening to the Beeson podcast with host Timothy George. 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