Theological Journal – January 21 Torrance Tuesday

Thomas Torrance on Reading the Bible

The esteemed Scottish theologian Thomas Torrance developed a way or path for reading and interpreting the Bible that essentially involves what I calling a "Lifestyle" of Biblical Interpretation. These are not the technical skills we use to better understand scripture but an approach that contextualizes the use of these tools into a living relationship with God.

This Lifestyle of Biblical Interpretation according to Torrance involves a fourfold movement of Following, Penetrating, Indwelling, and Listening. It strikes me that, though Torrance does not mention this, this process is almost identical to that of Lectio Divina (Reading, Meditating, Praying, and Contemplating). This encourages me to believe this process has great potential to integrate heads and hearts in a seamless way not possible with other approaches.

  

Follow

-the biblical storyline which establishes and governs its meaning 

-allow the text to lead us to the divine realities toward which it points and on which it rests

Penetrate

-interpretation moves through the signs in the text to grasp what is behind them

Indwell

-how readers get an overall sense of Scripture’s meaning

-condition for discerning that scripture is a coherent if complex unity that yields itself to careful and meditative reading

Listen

-God speaks through the scriptures; we must listen for his living voice that comes through the biblical witness but is not generated by them.

Torrance takes scriptures claim that in and through the Bible speaks to humanity and call for our response to his word to us. God establishes a relationship with us through this speaking and expectation for response. Thus his proposal outlined above pushes beyond whatever methods we use to explore the text and asks us not to stop until we have encountered the reality beyond the texts which is mediated by but not generated by them. Textual reasoning can bring us to the threshold of this encounter but not into it. That requires, for Torrance, the following, penetrating, indwelling, and listening that reality. We might say, though Torrance doesn’t put it this way, textual study gives us knowledge, following, penetrating, indwelling, and listening gives us understanding. And that, finally, is the point of it.