Brueggemann makes an interesting comment in his preface to The Message of the Psalms. He opens the book itself with two quotes, one from John Updike and another from Jose Miranda, Communism in the Bible, which goes like this:

It can surely be said that the Psalter presents a struggle of the just against the unjust.

Brueggemann identifies Miranda at the “extreme” but wants to point to the helpfulness of Miranda’s thought. For example, he says, “With force and regularity the questions of justice, righteousness, and equity are regularly [sic] brought to the throne, often to our surprise” (13). But what really caught my eye as I was reading was actually Brueggemann’s qualification in using Miranda’s quote:

I have not set out to do liberation theology, as Miranda might urge, for I have been committed to no goal but to hear the Psalms. [12-3]

This strikes me as a powerfully healthy perspective for a Bible scholar. As for myself, I am continually drawn to the ideas of liberation theology in its struggle for justice. So, when I read the Bible, I will certainly be informed by that perspective and be attentive to themes of justice, power, etc. On the other hand, as I am developing my scholarly tools at this stage of my career, I must find ways to “hear” the biblical texts without molding them to fit my ideological perspective (I realize I’m departing a bit from Brueggemann’s intention here).

Many folks are, of course, announcing the death of historical methods in studying the Bible. We live in postmodernism now (or “pomo” for the cool kids among us) . . . how can one presume that we can find the meaning to anything? Is it not arrogant to say that we might be able to reach the “intention” of a text? Is not our assumption of the meaning we find in any text a product of our social and cultural location as well as our ideological presuppositions?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Perhaps we need a balance here. I am going to go out on a limb and say that there are some things that history can tell us. I think most people would agree (Bruno Bauer excepted) that Jesus actually existed as a real human being. We can discover certain things about the social, political, and cultural world that Jesus and his followers may have inhabited. Sure, we can debate about the meaning of our findings (this is the work of scholarship), but should we just throw our hands up in the air and say that our debates get us nowhere, let’s all just read the texts from our own perspectives? I don’t think so.

On the other hand, postmodernism and ideological criticism gives us a helpful corrective: we can’t know everything. Like my friend, Matt, I’m inclined to say it is helpful to recognize our presuppositions in our research. I think that if we are honest with ourselves and know what we would like to see in the texts, we can become more productive scholars. So, I am an Anabaptist with affections for liberationist and feminist readings of the biblical texts. I then seek out texts that challenge those perspectives and try to, as Brueggemann states, “hear” them.

I suppose what I now have to be careful of is that I don’t go so far to the extreme of looking for texts that challenge my perspective that I am more predisposed to see challenges than otherwise.