Myths of reading

James Simpson tells us more than once in Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and Its Reformation Opponents (Harvard, 2007) that the purpose of his study, beyond being an account of Reformation hermeneutics, is to argue that "[t]he liberal tradition would understand the punishing demands of literalism better if it stopped tracing its own ancestry to the moment that produced its most vigorous opponent" (282).  According to Simpson, the liberal tradition makes the mistake of grounding itself in the "sixteenth-century Lutheran moment" (3), identifying sola scriptura and the purported attendant "freedom" of the reader as the self-evidently right-minded riposte to Catholic hermeneutics--especially as articulated by St. Thomas More.  Simpson's account pits William Tyndale against More, the latter of whom Simpson turns into the forefather of contemporary "'pragmatism'" (223).  Nevertheless, Simpson also tries to argue that More's treatment of heretics was a kind of interpretive illness, "a textual virus of distrustful literalism," that More "contracted" in the course of arguing against his opponents (261).*  Ergo: More vs. Tyndale also becomes More vs. More vs. Tyndale.  In other words, Simpson claims that sola scriptura is not necessarily the liberating force that some assume it to be, a point which has cropped up elsewhere (e.g., in Diarmaid MacCulloch).  Underlying this critique of the liberal tradition is a critique of what I suppose you could call the "myth of sola scriptura" in Reformation historiography; in practice, this turns out to be an attempted take-down of Tyndale specialist David Daniell, whom Simpson chivvys up one page (or endnote) and down the other.  (My own bemused response to Daniell's Tyndale biography is here.)  While Daniell is not Simpson's only target, Simpson's frequent Daniell-whacking does make it difficult to tell how far the scholarly trend in question extends beyond him. 

As a non-specialist, I've certainly got some questions about the book--for example, there are far better theological explanations for More's behavior than hermeneutics per se, and Simpson's arguments about the "modern" (3) nature of fundamentalism have been seen elsewhere--but Simpson does provide some interesting frameworks for thinking about my Victorian novelists and their own understanding of Biblical hermeneutics.  It goes without saying that the evangelicals are all very invested in sola scriptura, while the Catholics and the High Church Anglicans are very not so invested (in fact, Catholic historical novelists quite pointedly substitute scenes of communal worship for scenes of Biblical reading, often enough).  However, the evangelicals have a range of attitudes to how sola scriptura works in practice, ranging, at one extreme, from the Presto! theory  (Jew or Catholic reads the N.T. without any other instruction and instantly becomes the author's desired variety of Protestant) to, at the other, the Wow, This Takes Work theory (reading takes place over months or years within a larger Christian community that delimits interpretive possibilities).  One of the things that interests me about all of this is that historical novels about the Reformation are, in effect, explaining to the reader how it is possible for them to read...a historical novel about the Reformation.  Because these novels don't just represent people reading, translating, explicating, reproducing, and transporting Bibles; they also rely heavily on the reader's prior acquaintance with the Bible (e.g., the ability to catch allusions, recognize unsourced direct quotations, note parallels between novelistic narratives and various Biblical stories, etc.). 

*--I think this disease metaphor overplays the point one might make about any argument--namely, that it's often impossible to avoid adopting your opponent's own categories, tactics, turf, etc.  That's the price of engaging with another position, really. 

Comments

[Zora]

I'm enjoying your comments on Bible-reading. I read a fair bit of Victorian didactic literature, as well as proofreading it for Distributed Proofreaders.

I've put particular effort into Susan Warner, who published _The Wide Wide World_ under the pen name Elizabeth Wetherill. Enormously popular book at the time, now forgotten. Available as an e-book, albeit in a bad e-edition. I helped DP do _Melbourne House_. Many of the rest of her books are available as PDFs through Google books.

Um, now, where was I? Ah yes, Bible reading. Warner is definitely of the "just read the Bible and all will be clear" persuasion. No guidance necessary. In some of her books the seeker finds a true gospel minister and congregation (denomination never named, but must be Presbyterian or Congregationalist). In her later books, her characters seem to operate in a religious void. They are assertively Christian, but attend no congregation and consult the opinion of no minister. Not needed, because everything can be found in the Bible.

I don't know if you're at all interested in American didactic fiction. If your remit extends that far, you might be interested in reading some Susan Warner, if only because she was popular in the UK as well (in pirated versions that never paid her penny; she lived in poverty).

[Susan Sanford]

If I can quote from pop culture,

Fearing not I'd become my enemy
In the instant that I preach
(dylan)

Also interesting to see conviction/loyalty examined in the Amin Maalouf book "In the name of Identity"