Reading Summary: “Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition” by Craig Carter
Carter, Craig A. Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition: Recovering the Genius of Premodern Exegesis. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018.
Overview
Craig Carter takes direct aim at the Enlightenment, especially that movement’s affect upon biblical interpretation methodology. Carter believes that the Enlightenment, and especially “higher criticism,” is “a dead end, a sideshow, a deviation from orthodoxy, and a movement that is now in the late stages of self-destruction.”[1] Carter intends to blaze a trail toward “ressourcement,” a recovery of the interpretive methods and presuppositions exemplified among the better premodern exegetes. His primary villain is the historical-critical method of biblical interpretation and the presupposed naturalistic worldview that necessarily comes along with it.
Takeaways
Carter offers at least a few noteworthy claims and arguments. First, he outlines 3 essential elements of The Great Tradition: (1) a tradition of spiritual exegesis, (2) dogmas emerging from that exegesis, and (3) the metaphysical implications of those dogmas. These, he says, collectively “provide a hospitable context for the practice of exegesis.” [2]
Second, he offers a narrow definition of the allegorical method and a defense of it. “The allegorical method views the text as having more than one meaning, but not an unlimited number of meanings and certainly not mutually contradictory ones.”[3] Carter named his narrower allegorical method and particular brand of Theological Interpretation of Scripture (or TIS) the “prosopological” method of exegesis, which he describes as exemplified in Pre-Modern exegetes like Augustine. This “prosopological” method views the Bible as a united volume with Christ at its center, it maintains the “literal” sense as the controlling sense, and it (most notably) perceives Christ as “indwelling the text” and therefore speaking “in the text” throughout the whole Bible.[4]
Third, he argues that Christian Platonism is the necessary philosophical or metaphysical framework for doing faithful hermeneutics. The fundamentals of Platonism, Carter asserts, are antimaterialism, antimechanism, antinominalism, antirelativism, and antiskepticism.[5] This metaphysical framework converges with the biblical worldview, particularly that God is both transcendent and immanent, and thus join with theology proper as a “unified foundation for the development of empirical science on a foundation of mathematics.” Carter says, “To oppose Christian Platonism, therefore, is to oppose philosophy itself, and, in doing so, to set oneself in opposition to reason, the moral law, and natural science.”[6]
Analysis
Carter’s critique of historical criticism, which denies the supernatural authorship of Scripture and both the miraculous (unusual) and providential (usual) actions of God throughout history, is warranted. Faithful and believing Christian exegetes are sure to celebrate Carter’s flat opposition to such a naturalistic and skeptical view of Scripture and history. However, Carter does not seem to differentiate (at least not much) between the historical-critical method and the grammatical-historical method of hermeneutics. Carter seems to argue that the original intent (i.e., the meaning) of the human author is something to be stepped upon or even overlooked in an effort to get to the spiritual meanings. He says, “The purpose of exegesis is to understand what God is saying to us today through the inspired text.”[7]
Carter’s prosopological method, wherein the spiritual meanings may be discerned by believing readers, enabled by the Holy Spirit, seems to lead to at least two critical problems. First, he seems to conflate inspiration and illumination. Carter says, “The miracle of revelation through the writers of Scripture is balanced and complemented by the parallel miracle of the illumination of the readers of scripture.”[8] Both are indeed works of the Holy Spirit, but these are quite different theological categories, and the way in which one can know what exegetical conclusions are the result of illumination is a reverberating question throughout the book.
A second critical problem with Carter’s interpretive method is his insistence that there are “meanings” and not a single meaning for a given passage of Scripture. Carter writes, “The text may have one or several meanings because of the complexity of God the Holy Spirit inspiring the text through the human author… the meaning of the text for today is what we seek to hear as we study the text carefully, intensively, and reverently” (emphasis added).[9] It seems that Carter unnecessarily fuses interpretation/meaning with application at various points, on one occasion even thrusting ontological reality upon a typological concept.
Commenting on Psalm 16, Carter writes, “As in many passages of Scripture, the tenses almost get in the way of the thought, because what is past, present, and future is all known simultaneously to God. The church already exists in the Savior dying on the cross, but it actually exists already in a sense in the Messiah in the palm of David in the Old Testament” (emphasis added).[10] A faithful preacher may rightly make the application that the church is “in” Christ upon the cross, but the ontological or “actual” existence of the church in the Messiah is a philosophical conclusion that is not necessarily described as part of the meaning of the text.[11]
Questions
What does Carter mean by multiple meanings in the text of Scripture?
Does Carter believe that the guardrails for accurate interpretation are ancient creeds or confessions?
If so, how is Carter’s interpretive method distinct from the Roman Catholic view of two sources of authority – Scripture and Tradition (or Tradition 2)?
See a good overview of the various views of “Tradition” by Justin Taylor HERE.
Carter’s example sermon on Isaiah 53 seems to reflect the same conclusions as the typological method of interpretation and application. Why is Carter’s prosopological method necessary, as he argues, to the exclusion of the typological method and the grammatical-historical approach?
[1] Carter, Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition. xviii.
[2] Carter, Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition. xiii.
[3] Carter, Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition. 6.
[4] Carter, Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition. 214.
[5] Carter, Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition. 79-80.
[6] Carter, Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition. 82.
[7] Carter, Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition. ix.
[8] Carter, Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition. 44-45.
[9] Carter, Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition. ix-x.
[10] Carter, Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition. 210.
[11] Carter even goes so far as to say, “since the reality of the individual members of the church – their essence – is derived from the Son, there is a sense in which the essence of the church exists eternally in an ideal sense prior to taking flesh in history.” Carter, Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition. 211. This is where Carter’s Christian Platonism seems more Platonic idealism than Christian theology.
