Those who read the Bible holistically—as whole people
reading whole Scripture—have the best chance of understanding Scripture’s
explicatory power. In this vein, Gerd Theissen eschews any particular
psychology as he reads various Scriptures in his Psychological Aspects of Pauline Theology. By combining learning
theory, psychoanalytic thinking, and cognitive understanding into a
“hermeneutical psychology,” Theissen connects all interpretations to psychic
phenomena we are given to experience.
The psyche’s pervasive wholeness in both reader and
text is such that “the correspondence of an interpretation with the whole of a
text” trumps the consistency of any psychological theory. So here we find the
textual fidelity I initially addressed: exegesis of the Scriptures reveals such
a broad and profound explication of human experience that our own psychological
theories fail—any psychological
theories fail— to encompass it.
A few brief
examples must suffice. Theissen’s reading of Paul gives Christ as the center of
the transformation of both behavior and experience. The gospel of Christ becomes
an unconditioned positive reinforcement of transformation through its
annihilation of the law. No longer will we be punished for our sin. Rather, our
suffering through Christ will be exalted and rewarded in new life. Such a
system frees us from anxiety so that we can seek reconciliation with and
provide help for our fellow human beings.
And this transformation becomes psychologically
possible because Christ not only extinguishes the power of the law, but through
his death allows the darker energies of the unconscious to come into focus. It
is not that we are unaware of our sinfulness. Rather, that Christ means that
our consciousness of sin—after Christ, we do
know what we do—yearns for the integration and redirection of our entire selves toward God.
For example, through the phenomenon of glossolalia, in
new life even our unconscious may praise the divine. And Christ as the rule of
this new life lives in the members of the redeemed body of believers through
the in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit, shifting one’s perceptions of oneself,
one’s community, and the world. One no longer understands the self as isolated,
but together with those of Christ. If Christ does anything at all, Christ
changes one’s psychological identity—in terms of behavior, in terms of
psychodynamics, in terms of cognitive understanding.
Perhaps Theissen’s study of 1 Corinthians 3 will better
clarify what he means about identity. In this passage Paul criticizes Moses for
failing to effectively model transformed behavior. But this failure happened
not because Moses was who he was but because the law was what it was. Laws in
stone cannot change the human heart.
The transformation will not be legislated. We can
understand this as Paul complicates the Old Testament tradition of the veil,
which separates Moses from the people, and more importantly, the people from
the transforming glory of YHWH. As a result, the glory of Moses fades. But the
glory of the Lord, as seen in a mirror, will transform the people from glory
into glory.
Christ as model through the Spirit trumps Moses as
model through the law because the gospel of Christ lodges in the community. Through
Christ the Corinthians become their own message, with new conduct and new
identity written on their hearts. Astoundingly, this is also true for Moses,
whom Paul has physically turn toward the Lord.
The passages carries a valuation of interiority through
the metaphoric comparisons of letters and tablets and hearts and the light of
glory. It is possible, then, to read the veil as symbolizing the divide between
the manifest consciousness of the law and the latent unconsciousness of the Spirit.
If so, its elimination in Christ symbolizes the transformation of the whole
person by Christ’s divine glory. More, the passage itself has those who
understand the law through the spirit rather than externally as those who have
had the veil removed from their eyes.
The familiarity of the language of even this kind of
psychological reading should tell us, at least in part, that we are always already
reading the Bible psychologically. We read the Bible with psychology in mind
all the time, because of course in the mind is where psychology resides. Part
of what my criterion of salutary force is trying to address is that there are,
psychologically, both better and worse readings of the Bible available,
interpretations both more and less explicatory of the human heart and mind.
And I would suggest that those interpretations which
consciously recognize the psychological power of Scripture’s contents would be
more likely counted among the former than the latter.
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