A Review of Introducing Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Recovering a Christian Practice by Daniel J. Treier

The point of knowing Scripture is to know God – this is the starting point for Daniel Treier’s work to describe and guide Theological Interpretation of Scripture (henceforth TIS). Treier is professor of theology at Wheaton College, and this book was loaned to me by my father-in-law, a theology professor at Southeastern Seminary. In what follows, I’ll do my best to give a brief overview of the book and my thoughts about it. 

Instead of reading the Bible as primarily history, or literature, or ideology, Treier presents TIS as a way to read the Bible as Scripture, first and foremost concerned with revealing the Divine author. This book is divided into 2 parts, the first dealing with the beginnings and defining aspects of TIS, and the second addressing challenges and future issues this movement might interact with. 

He begins by observing a recent appreciation for the ancient church and its practices, which has led to a renewal of reading the Scriptures to grow in virtue, and a focus on reading the whole Bible as about Christ. Next, he sets the Rule of Faith of the early church, which in essence is the patristic teaching that God is a Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as a guide for Christians to read the Bible as Christians. It is this rule of faith that the earliest Christian communities saw as the core teaching of the apostles and the “key” that unlocks understanding to all the Scripture. 

It is here where he introduces Francis Watson, who after reading this book has become particularly interesting to me. Watson, according to Treier, emphasized that “the reality of Jesus is only accessible to us through the mediation of an irreducible textuality” (Treier, 65). That means that we only know Jesus as he is presented in the Bible, and not apart from it. Instead of seeing the Bible as myth, Watson worked to highlight the reality of Jesus as he is presented in the Scriptures. At the bottom, his work showed how biblical scholarship can be done with Jesus as the center of the Scriptures, whether dealing with the Old or New Testament. He also argued that all theology must be “biblical theology” while recognizing the legitimacy of voices outside the Christian faith to critique the church, provided their voices cohere with “Scripture’s internal checks and balances” (Treier, 66). I find these conclusions, especially as done by a biblical scholar (which I hope to be) wonderfully affirming.

The next chapter in the first section addresses that reading Scripture theologically makes reading within the church essential. Drawing on several contemporary scholars and with reference to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the believing community is the primary context for reading Scripture. Treier draws on Stephen Fowl’s idea of phronesis, or practical wisdom, that engages biblical scholarship on an as-needed basis for the purpose of practicing virtue, since an exhaustive theory of the Bible appears to be unnecessary given the diversity of scholarship. This practice of virtue is social and ought to be learned from those who have been faithfully worshipping God and growing in the fruit of holiness that is virtue, chiefly love for God and neighbor.

Part 2 lays out the future of TIS, starting with its engagement with Biblical Theology. Biblical Theology as an academic discipline has been difficult to define, but Treier seems to indicate that it is not incompatible with TIS and gives three basic approaches laid out by figurehead scholars – that Biblical theology ought to be the study of historical revelation as represented by D. A. Carson, a canonical approach focusing on the text of the final form of Scripture by Christopher Seitz, and concluding with Francis Watson on the idea that Biblical theology can serve as a bridge discipline between systematic theology and biblical studies. In this way, TIS and biblical theology merge into one. 

Next, Treier deals with the discipline of hermeneutics, or the discipline of finding the meaning of texts. He addresses the question of whether Scripture ought to be read considering modern and general hermeneutical theory, which has been influenced by postmodern scholarship which has tried to undermine the ability to derive an objective meaning from any text. He turns to Kevin Vanhoozer largely in this chapter, asserting that Scripture is not primarily a narrative, but a drama that the church responds to in understanding by embodied action. The church interprets the Scriptures as God’s speech in action, which prompts them to respond in obedience with worship and virtue. One thought from this chapter that I’m left with is the puzzle of authorial intent. We cannot get inside the mind of any biblical author to know exactly what they said, but it still seems that if the Bible is to speak to us in a meaningful way it must have a meaning outside of what we impose upon it. I want to read Vanhoozer more to get my mind around this point.

Finally, Treier deals with Christianity’s global shift. Relying upon Philip Jenkins, he illustrates the growth and shift of Christianity away from its previous cultural centers of Europe and North America toward the South, globally speaking. Asia, Africa, and South America are increasingly becoming the centers of Christian growth and activity. These Christians, by and large, are marked by conservative biblical stances and a deeper spiritual resonance with the supernatural, which shows particularly in the success of Pentecostal movements in the “majority world.” These Christians will inform how the rest of the church interprets scripture, and their unique contexts and presuppositions will help western Christians understand their own and hopefully see Jesus more clearly in the Scriptures.

Throughout the book, Treier reflects upon how each chapter’s subject impacts the doctrine of the image of God, which has been understood in various (and sometimes opposing) ways throughout church history. I’ve personally been wrestling with these diverse understandings for a while. Treier suggests a solution by again drawing on Watson, whose quote bears repeating:

“Gen. 1:26-28 [the first instance of the concept of the image of God] is speaking not directly of Jesus but of all humans. All humans may be said to be like God in the sense that they are like Jesus. He shares their human existence, the path they must traverse from birth to death; and they share his human existence. If Jesus is like God, then, in so far as they are like Jesus, all humans are like God. Without this christological reference, the concept of the image and likeness of God should be handed over as quickly as possible to the Platonizers and the spiritualizers, who insist that the image is to be found in the human mind but is absent from the human body. Yet, in Genesis, it is not the mind but the whole human person who is made in the image and likeness of God; and that is the case with Jesus, who mirrors God not only in his mind but also in his bodily action.”

Watson, Text and Truth

Treier springboards from this to argue that “we must engage a passage in light of its potential implications and points of interface with other texts or contexts” (Treier, 154). 

This way of understanding the image of God, and the book in general, resonate as true. I’ve been wondering about how the church’s understanding of the Scriptures, influenced by trends in the academic discipline of biblical studies, can be so dependent upon the findings of archaeology or a scholarly reconstruction of the mind of the author (which is always speculation) that the actual source of the believer’s trust isn’t in the Bible but in what modern science has to say about the Bible. Do we believe in Christ because we think they’ve found evidence for Noah’s flood or the Shroud of Turin, or because we’ve had an encounter with God in Christ? Any other foundation seems like shaky sand, given the contentious and changing nature of the sciences. I’m interested to read more about this, particularly by Francis Watson and Kevin Vanhoozer. If you’ve made it this far, God bless you! Here’s a gold star: