N. T. ライト読書会発表用メモ

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2010/10/9 ライト読書会　メモ
THE BOOK AND THE STORY（英国聖書協会サイトから）、は短く簡単なスピーチだが、ポイントを二点に絞ってみる。
①    聖書をどう読むか。
②    「聖書のストーリー」的読み方を回復することで、宣教的含意が明確に浮かび出てくる。

Ⅰ.　聖書は一つの大きなストーリーであり、聖書を読むとは、自分がその進行中のストーリーの中に入り、ストーリーの実現に向かって行動することである。
 
　聖書は「テキストの外にあるリアリティーへの窓」とのライトの強調は、聖書と読者の関係が後述する「二つの例」にあるような読み方の弊害（の可能性）への警鐘でもあろう。

From this brief sketch it is possible to see how the Bible (Jewish or Christian) does not exist, and does not offer itself to us, as a detached set of writings or as a book-in-a-vacuum. It is our window on a reality which is decidedly extra-textual - a complex community stretching from Abraham to the early apostles. In particular, the Christian Bible is a window on a particular extra-textual reality, the human being Jesus of Nazareth, whose followers came to believe in an astonishingly short space of time that he was the living, human embodiment of the one true God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. (Book & Story)

　この「テキスト外のリアリティー」である一連の歴史上の物語、特にナザレのイエスに焦点を結ぶ物語として聖書は読み解かれる必要がある。

The New Testament declares with one voice that the over-arching story reached its climax in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, whom the early Christians believed to be the promised Messiah of Israel. The followers of Jesus saw themselves as royal heralds, claiming the whole world for its new king.
Although it is rightly said that the first Christians saw themselves as living in the last days, it is even more important to stress that they were living in the first days of a new creation that dawned when Jesus emerged from the tomb on Easter morning. In other words, they saw themselves living within a story in which the decisive event had already occurred and now needed to be implemented. (Book & Story)

ライトの「聖書の権威」を扱った著書　The Last Word　で聖書の読まれ方が、このストーリー的強調点（ユダヤ的遺産）が失われるに連れて、変化してきたことを「二つの例」で指摘している。

A Diminishing Focus on the Narrative Character and Israel-Dimension of Scripture
The notion of “authority” which we have sketched in terms of “God at work powerfully through scripture to bring about the Kingdom, by calling and shaping a new covenant people and equipping its leaders to be teachers and preachers,” became gradually flattened out into two things in particular. First, scripture came to be regarded as a “court of appeal,” the source-book or rule-book from which doctrine and ethics might be deduced and against which innovations were to be judged. Second, scripture was used for lectio divina, the practice in which individual readers could hear God speaking to them personally, nourishing their own spirituality and devotion. (pp.64-5)

以上の示唆にあるように、聖書の権威は、「教理（"IS"/descriptive）」や「倫理・生活("OUGHT"/prescriptive)」に分離することなく、また「個人的敬虔」のための霊想書に縮小されてしまうことなく、「一連の物語に自分の歴史的立位置」を入れて読まれることによって有機的に機能すべきことをライトは指摘する。このことをさらに示唆するのが「5 Act Model-Creation/Fall/Israel/Jesus/post-Easter apostolic age (21世紀に生きるキリスト者も)」である。(The Last Word, pp.121-127; NTPG, pp.140-143.)

Ⅱ.　聖書を a Christian worldview と言う a particular perspective から見た the over-arching ストーリーとして読むことは、他の世界観的ストーリーと交渉し、対峙することになり、そこに宣教的含意が明確に浮かび出てくる。

The conflict that this community experienced, both with Jews who did not believe Jesus to be the Messiah, and, more especially, with pagans who saw the proclamation of Jesus as Lord to be a threat to their status quo, can be explained in terms of a clash of narratival and symbolic universes. This clash, and the ways in which Christians engaged in dialogue and mission, was much greater than merely a clash between their writings (or those writings which became the New Testament) and their surrounding culture. It was a clash between a community with its entire symbolic and narratival world view and other, surrounding communities with theirs. (Book & Story)

「世界観対決・対立」を含意した周囲の文化との交渉は、クリスチャン・コミュニティーが世界観レベルで、他の世界観を持つコミュニティーとの「対話・宣教」に繋がることを ”A Challenge To”で列挙している。Paganism, Idealism, the Aphoristic World, Power Structures, Rival Eschatologies, Other Religions. (Book & Story)
同様の視点は、New Testament and the People of God で別の角度からも指摘されている。

At the same time, theology-any theology-needs biblical studies, since the claims of any theology must sooner or later come into contact, perhaps, conflict, with the stories contained in the Bible, and if a worldview of any sort is to be sustained it must be able to meet the challenge posed by its rivals. Hindus, Muslims, Deists and pantheists will therefore study the Bible to understand how Christianity works from within, in the hope that their own stories will be able to subvert the Christian one, or at least withstand its potential challenge, and establish themselves as a more adequate account of reality. (The New Testament and the People of God, p.138.)

（読書会での談論の様子は明日ポストする予定。）