Conclusion:
Reasoning Inside and Outside of Eden
by Laura Eve Engel
As to why we may
ask such demanding questions of the Genesis text, University of Virginia
Professor Peter Ochs remarks: We ask because we
are not angels, being at the same time smarter and more sinful.[1]This seems to suggest that scriptural
reasoning is a specifically post-Eden task, that eating of the tree of
knowledge of good and bad is what enables us to now raise these questions, with
some hope of beginning to answer them together.
But what is this task? To what
end do we ask such questions? According
to Ochs, the answer lies in interrupting what he calls the dialectic of
Modernity[2] in
academic and religious thinkingthat is, a polar model of reasoning that
suggests that when academic and religious
thinking are added together, they encompass all possibilities. The task of scriptural reasoning then becomes
to transform polar opposites into dialogical pairsbut not to replace them
with some purported union of the two,[3]
pairs that when added together may encompass many possible options, but
certainly not all. After our encounter
with scriptural reasoning, this task seems familiar: in our intensive group
reading, we demanded questions of the text where it seemed weakest, not in
order to propose and then agree upon one or two ways in which to interpret the
text, but to increase the possibility of varied interpretation by widening the
gaps until they could be filled by all of us in some form. In doing this, we broke down the notion of
the either/or dialectic. This journal
issue alone presents four related but varied ways of examining the text of
Genesis 2 3. We do not propose any
overarching solutions to the problems within the text, but we have exhibited an
ability to work together to put pressure on the fissures that exist within the
text, until they are open to all of us to interpret.
Beyond its
responsibility to break down this dialectical approach to reading and
interpreting, scriptural reasoning is also an attempt to bring our reasoning
together as members of three Abrahamic faiths with an eye toward healing. The group setting in and of itself promotes
healing, as it increases ones awareness of others, and through discussion
largely increases the level of respect with which one views dissimilar (if not
opposing) viewpoints. In this journal
issue, the articles gravitated naturally towards thoughts of healing, each of
us concerned with how to bring interpretation into the modern world, to
correspond with a desire for increased compassion and understanding. Leahs response to healing reminds one of
physics: where there is emptiness, there is an equal and opposite source for
filling it,[4] which she suggests is a
means by which we may all heal the world.
Matts notion of free will outside the garden also has healing
implications, in that it speaks to the responsibility of the free willing
individual to use that will in a positive way.
This parallels well with A.J.s notion of Adam and Eve tilling and tending
the world as having been Gods intention all along; God provides Adam and Eve
with a model of compassion in a world that needed minimal tilling and tending
before sending them out to cultivate society and tend to the problems that
arise from it. Peter begins his article
wishing to respond to a specific problem that produced a rift in his church
community, and interprets New Testament scripture through the verses in Genesis
2 3, in light of a desire to repair that rift. As a scriptural reasoning group, healing was
on our minds and came through in our articles, and I would like to suggest that
at least some of that common focus can be attributed to the process: that group
reasoning increases ones awareness of a diversity of ways to examine the text
and, on a larger scale, the diversity of human beings. Sharing this process of reading scripture
with others helps to emphasize the rifts as well as similarities that exist
among individuals, which in turn can draw out rifts and similarities that exist
on a grander scale. After navigating
these full and empty spaces together, we are better equipped to tackle them
outside of the scriptural reasoning group, doing what we can to draw on the
energy that exists in those full spaces to repair the world.
Before Eve eats
the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and bad, she allows the snake to
reason with her. The snake says: You
are not going to die, but God knows that as soon as you eat of it your eyes
will be opened and you will be like divine beings who know good and bad.[5] Eve considers this, likely weighing the
information Adam conveyed against what she sees and hears with her own
senses. When the woman saw that the
tree was good for eating and a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was
desirable as a source of wisdom, she took its fruit and ate.[6] These lines seem to describe a reasoning
process consisting of several premises: one, the tree is good for eating, that
is, the fruit must be ripe; two, the tree is a delight to the eyes, that is,
it must be visually attractive; three, that the tree is a desirable source of
wisdom; and four, implicitly, that wisdom is desirable and good. All things considered, Eve reasons that it is
good to eat the fruit, and does. She
uses processes similar to that of scriptural reasoning in order to reason her
way to the fruit. In The Rules of
Scriptural Reasoning, Peter Ochs states, God alone creates. We must not
say this lightly, but we must say it: if SR is to guide us out of this century
of destruction and out of the moribund structures of modernity, then SR must be
infused with a divine spirit.[7] If to create is divine, then it is fitting
that we echo Eves reasoning process towards eating the fruit of divine
knowledge. And if, in fact, it was Gods
intention for Adam and Eve to eat the fruit so that they might enter the world
for which Eden
had been a training ground, it is through this process of reasoning that Adam
and Eve are able to enter that world and begin to till and tend it. It also seems that through scriptural
reasoning, we are able to construct, through a series of premises, logical
conclusions that may vary but are all in a sense true in their loyalty
to the text. These premises lead us to
conclusions that send us out of our isolated communities and into the world, to
begin the process of healing and repairing.
We are, in a sense, evicting ourselves from a complacency that comes
from not examining the text in this way, in order to pursue something far
greater and more challenging.
ENDNOTES
[1] Ochs, Peter. "The Rules of Scriptural Reasoning." The Journal of Scriptural Reasoning. Vol. 2 No. 1, May 2002.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Sievers, Leah. Genesis 2:2-3: The Filling and Emptying of
Literal and Imaginative Spaces.
[5] Genesis 3:4-5.
[6] Genesis 3:6.
[7] Ochs, Peter. "The Rules of Scriptural Reasoning." The Journal of Scriptural Reasoning. Vol. 2 No. 1, May 2002.
© 2007, Society for Scriptural Reasoning
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