Perhaps I have gotten confused, so correct me if I misrepresent you. Can I take it that you would agree that it is possibile that the Bible did err in matters of science or history? And that such errors should not be considered significant since what is important for us is the more than literal or factual meaning that the Biblical stories teach? Is this your position? If I have understood you incorrectly, please clarify.
Yes, and, that is the way I remember be taught in seminary 30+ years ago, and how, I believed the United Testimony of 1952 was understood. Thus it is not a new way of thinking within Lutheranism.
However, is not the discernment of the more than literal or factual meaning that the Biblical stories teach and hence the "Christian doctrine and life" taught therein also a matter of interpretation? I read a story and it says something to me in my life situation and interacting with my life story. Someone else reads the same story who is at a different place in her/his life and with a different life story and the Bible story tells them something else. It may even mean to them something opposite to what it said to me. Whose interpretation should be privileged? Is it even legitimate to ask who is right and who is wrong? Both interpretations appear valid to the person interpreting the story for its true significance.
I think Luther opened up that possibility when he believed every believer should have a Bible in their own language so that they can read and interpret it for themselves. He trusted that the Spirit (and I think he might add, the church) would guide them into right interpretations. We know that this doesn't always happen.
Borg talks about
avoiding "uncritical subjectivity." There are two forms of this. (1) All the differences interpretive differences are tolerated and considered valid because they are subjunctive. It's all a matter of "where you're coming from." (2) A failure to recognize one's own subjectivity where views are presented as dogmatic certainty that "this is the way things are."
The corrective he suggests to uncritical subjectivity is to (1) be critical about one's own subjectivity, which means (2) putting one's positions in critical dialogue with others -- engaging in "public argument." However, the "public argument" is not just stating: "This is the way I see things," period, but includes
why one sees things the way one does. As he writes: "It provides reasons for the perspective and the conclusions to which it leads -- and all of it subject to public examination and evaluation: does it make sense?" (pp. 294-295)
I've frequently quoted Mark Allan Powell, who writes about "reader-response criticism." This method is subjective. It starts with the observation that different people read the Bible differently and it asks why this is so. He writes under a section called "Theological Evaluation," "... it [a reader-response interpretation] is necessarily autobiographical and subjective. It need not be
entirely autobiographical and subjective...." (
Chasing the Easter Star, p. 175)
A little later he sums up the section: "Thus, the standard fro truth is not the bible per se but the gospel of Jesus Christ, and all interpretations of the Bible (expected readings and unexpected ones) must be evaluated in light of this. the Bible remains authoritative because the gospel itself is derived from the Bible. Protestants recognize this as the principle of 'scripture interpreting scripture.' Lutehrans recognize it as the principle of 'a canon within the canon.'" (p. 180)
Earlier he lists some norms in coming to reader-response interpretations. This include (1) reading a work in its entirety. Even before reading his book, whenever I taught a biblical course, I asked the students to read through the entire book, preferably in one sitting. (2) Reading it in sequential order -- from beginning to end. We assume that's the way the author intended the work to be read. (Powell tells about a friend who always reads the last chapter of a mystery first. That is not what the author intended the readers to do.) (3) Knowledge of the language that the text is written in. With my two years of high school German, I could pronounce the words in a German text, but I wouldn't be able to interpret the text. (4) Knowledge of literary styles. We should know that letters to the editor should not be intepreted in quite the same way as the front-page news stories. Such norms would be part of the arguments of
why someone responds to a text the way they do.
In what way then would it be meaningful to talk about the Bible being "inerrant" and "infallible" or even authoritative?
At least in the ELCA, we don't talk about "inerrant" and "infallible". Those terms are problematic. Our confession is: "This congregation accepts the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the inspired Word of God and the authoritative source and norm of its proclamation, faith, and life." (C2.03.) The Bible is the authoritative source and norm for the congregation's proclamation, faith, and life. (Yet, in some congregations, many if not most of the council members haven't been in a Bible class since confirmation. As one speaker suggested, "Many of our congregations are run by a bunch of people with an eighth grade [biblical] education."
Perhaps its significance is that these stories resonated and were seen as meaningful for the followers of Jesus who first wrote them down and for the communities that remembered and in which they were recorded. They have been meaningful - inspirational - for believers who have continued to read, tell and meditate upon them through the ages. So also they are meaningful and inspirational for believers today even if they do not derive the same meaning from the stories. (Or not if they do not appeal, like the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem to the couple attending a service, in which case why not discard them from my personal canon of meaningful Bible stories?) We have a continuity of stories even if not a continuity of belief about what the stories mean. Is this the faith handed down by the fathers?
I would go beyond "meaningful" as the reason these stories were remembered and written down and preserved and used for centuries -- they are also powerful. They transform people's lives. People are encountered by God in these stories. As our Confession of Faith states: the Gospe is "the power of God for salvation to all who believe" and "Through them [Scriptures] God's Spirit speaks to us to create and sustain Christian faith and fellowship for service in the world."
Luther did consider discarding James from the Canon. For Lutherans some writings are more important (powerful) than others -- and that's OK.
Is there any way in which a preacher, or a church body could say of a Bible story that it means this and not that? Or even if we cannot determine what it "really" means, rule out some suggested meanings? Is the only absolute truth we have that we have no absolute truths? And do we know this absolutely?
Yes. Our ELCA's Confession of faith is in a priority order. Our understanding of the Trinity comes first. Interpretations that deny that truth are wrong. At the same time, the doctrine of the Trinity doesn't necessarily lock us into a particular language about the Trinity. As I noted somewhere else in this vast forum of notes: sometimes the word "God" refers to the Triune Being and this uncludes "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." Sometimes "God," like in 2 Cor 13:13, refers to the First Person and is thus distinguished from the other persons of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
Our second confession of faith declares that Jesus is our Lord and Savior and the Gospel is the power of God for the salvation of all who believe. Interpretations that deny these facts are wrong.
If a story can mean anything at all, that is it has no definate meaning but has whatever meaning the reader assigns it, can it actually mean or teach anything? Do not the Bible stories (especially since their meaningfulness do not lie in their reportage of historic events - which they may or may not have done with undeterminable degrees of accuracy) become a kind of Rorschach inkblots, meaningless in themselves until the reader pours meaning into them, what they mean to me?
I believe that it is the job of an exegete to try and determine what the
author intended the text to mean. We use historical-critical and narrative-critical tools to help discern the intended meaning(s) of the author. To use Powell's terms, a reader's interpretation may be what we deem to be an "intended" reading or an "unintended" reading. An unintended meaning -- something that we believe the author did not intended -- may not necessarily be wrong, if it falls within our understanding of the gospel as the power of God for salvation. For example, if readers interpret Matthew 2 and the slaughter of the children as God telling them to work for universal health care at least for children so that no child needs die because of lack of medical care -- that is, I think, an unintended reading. Matthew didn't have that in mind when sharing the story. However, I think that it could be argued that such an interpretation fits in with God's kingdom of shalom for all people -- the coming kingdom that was prefigured by Jesus healing diseases and blessing and healing children. Health care for children is good news. I wouldn't say that such an interpretation is "wrong," but probably unintended by the author; but it could be what God intended the person to hear from the passage.