Bibles that matter: biblical theology and queer performativity

Biblical Theology Bulletin, Spring, 2008 by Ken Stone

Abstract

Discussions of Bible and homosexuality, and discussions of postmodern biblical interpretation, have often taken place in isolation from one another. However, Judith Butler's "queer" approach to sex, gender and performativity may allow biblical scholars to rethink their objects and procedures in a manner that brings such discussions together. Grounded in a reading of speech act theory, Butler's work explores the possibility that gender, rather than being conceived in a modernist fashion as the social interpretation of stable sexed bodies, is best understood in terms of collective practices that produce perceptions of fixed sexes and genders as performative effects. So too the Bible, often conceived as a fixed object, may be reconceptualized in terms of the collective practices, including conventional modes of scholarly and popular analysis, that produce perceptions of a single, stable Bible as performative effects. Postmodern queer theory's appreciation of complexity and pluralism as resources rather than threats can thus be extended from bodies to bibles. Just as Butler examines processes whereby bodies come to "matter" (in both senses of that term), biblical scholars can examine processes--including those associated with biblical theology and those associated with sexuality debates--whereby bibles, too, "matter."

**********

Over the course of the last two decades, a number of scholars have suggested that biblical theologies ought to be reconceived for a "postmodern" world (e.g., Adam 1995a, 2006; Brueggemann 1997, 2005). As such scholars point out, biblical theologies have too often been constructed on the basis of a narrow set of assumptions associated with Western modernity. The assumptions in question, which thoroughly shape the ethos of modern biblical scholarship, involve in particular the notion that texts have relatively fixed meanings which are best discerned through the academic reconstruction of the Bible's grammatical sense, historical development, and ancient historical context. Now that these assumptions are being reexamined more critically, new ways of thinking about the Bible and its theological interpretation may be possible.

During roughly the same period of time, many communities of faith that actually use the Bible as a theological resource have been torn apart by controversies associated with homosexuality. Partly as a consequence, numerous books and articles have appeared in which biblical scholars attempt to discern and explicate biblical attitudes toward same-sex contact. Most of these studies deploy standard tools of historical-critical analysis, often with excellent results (e.g., Olyan, Brooten, Nissinen, Bird, and Ackerman). Yet relatively few efforts have been made to bring the concerns motivating such studies into dialogue with the parallel conversation about "postmodern" biblical theologies. Scholars who interrogate the premises behind modernist theological interpretations of scripture may on occasion use homosexuality debates among Christians to illustrate their points (e.g., Fowl: 119-27; cf. Adam 2006: 141-53). More often, though, studies on the Bible and sexuality, and attempts to rethink biblical interpretation apart from modernist assumptions about textual meaning, have developed independently of one another.

Recently, however, in a collection of essays on gender, sexuality, and biblical interpretation, Dale Martin bridges the gap between these developments when he launches a critique of what he refers to as "textual foundationalism." As used by Martin, the phrase "textual foundationalism" is not identical to "fundamentalism." Although fundamentalists may be foundationalists, many foundationalists reject beliefs about the inerrancy, theological authority, or historical accuracy of biblical texts. But foundationalists, whether they are fundamentalists, evangelicals, theological liberals, or critical scholars in the university with no religious affiliation, usually subscribe to some version of what Martin calls "the myth of textual agency." That is, foundationalists of all stripes accept "the common assumption ... that the Bible 'speaks' and our job is just to 'listen'" (Martin 2006: 1). Against such assumptions about a "speaking" Bible, Martin argues forcefully that textual meaning is inseparable from hermeneutics and interpretive rhetoric, which take place in specific contexts and under the influence of traditions and interpretive communities (religious and scholarly). Recognition of this fact does not entail a rejection of the historical, contextual analysis of texts. Indeed, Martin deploys standard tools of historical analysis throughout the essays in his collection, as he has to good effect in earlier works on the New Testament and early Christianity (e.g., Martin 1990; 1995). By calling attention to flawed assumptions undergirding the "myth of textual agency," however, Martin hopes to encourage interpreters of all stripes to take responsibility for the ethical consequences of their own interpretive moves rather than projecting those moves onto the supposed agency of texts.