Iv. A Concluding Note
IV. A CONCLUDING NOTE
But all has not been said. Let us assume for the moment that what I have urged in this essay is right, that true exegesis has not taken place until we have closed the circle and entered into the intended Spirituality of the text. The obvious next question is: So how do we do that? What do we do as exegetes, as interpreters of the Word, so as to do both the historical and Spiritual task well, so that they blend in our lives and are not viewed as two separate disciplines?
1. The key is to be found in one’s overall stance toward Scripture, from beginning to end. This includes several things, but at least it means to come to the text with an absolute conviction that it is God’s word; that here God speaks and we listen. Thus our concern in coming to the text is to hear from God. No other stance is exegetically in keeping with the text itself.
Such a stance also includes a conviction that the text has been inspired by the Holy Spirit; for only with such a conviction will one expect the same Holy Spirit to help us in the twofold task of being good historians and good listeners.
2. The second key lies with our concern to do good exegesis, to hear the text first on its own terms, not our own. This, of course, stands over against a popular notion of Spirituality, which believes that learning gets in the way of hearing the text in a spiritual way. But such an approach to the text misunderstands the biblical meaning of Spirituality. And very often such an approach to the text gives one warm feelings about the biblical text and about God, but it does not always lead to obedience or to being encountered by God’s own purposes in giving us the text in the first place.
In contrast to such a view, I urge that true Spirituality demands that we do our exegesis as carefully as our skills and opportunities make it possible. Since everyone who reads the text also interprets as one reads, the question is not whether one will do exegesis or not — everyone will and does — but whether one will do good exegesis or not.
The reason we must learn to do good exegesis is precisely because we are passionate to hear and obey. This means that we must also be passionate to get it right regarding the meaning of the text — not that God is waiting for our exegesis before he can speak to the church, but because if the text is going to lead us to genuinely biblical Spirituality, we must have the text right so as to have our Spirituality conform to the intent of the text.
3. Which leads me, third, to suggest that our exegesis, therefore, must be kept in the context of the believing community. We must learn to hear the text together, to let the exegetical expert work hard on the text, but to insist that what he or she has learned in the privacy of one’s study must be tested in the believing community. For the true heirs of the Philippians, who first received this text, are not the scholars who have objectified the text and made it their own, but the community of believers who are committed to listening to God and walking in his ways.
4. Which leads me finally back to the beginning. Our final stance toward the text must be that with which we began; but it now must be informed by an exegesis that has completed the circle. And such completion takes place truly only when we rise up and follow, when we who would be “spiritual” recognize that true spirituality is not simply inward devotion but worship that evidences itself in obedience and the same kind of God-likeness we have seen in Christ himself.
This, then, is what I think exegesis and spirituality are all about: not separate, or separated, disciplines, but one discipline that requires us simultaneously to be good historians — that is, good students of the Word — and good pray-ers.