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Lectio Divina and Practical Theological Reflection: A Constructive, Critical, Appreciation1

Abstract (107 words)

Recent works on Practical Theology have suggested the contemplative approach to reading the Bible called Lectio Divina as a model of using the Bible in Practical Theological Reflection (PTR). This article explores that suggestion by reviewing Lectio Divina in terms of its present day practice and in light of the history of medieval practices of reading. Critical hermeneutical issues are discussed in relation both to biblical interpretation and practical theology. Lectio Divina raises questions in relation to the understanding of Scripture and its authority. It also raises the question of the place of prayer and the notion of the Bible as more than a resource for PTR.

Key words: Lectio Divina; Bible; Scripture; Hermeneutics; Theological Reflection; Prayer

1 Introduction

1.1 Background and framing questions Lectio Divina (literally ‘divine (or ‘holy’) reading’) is a contemplative approach to

reading the Scriptures which can be traced back to the Early Church, continuing particularly within Benedictine tradition. The last three decades have seen a renewed interest in this approach to Scripture, especially as a practice for Christians beyond the monastery. In 2003 I was introduced to a way of practising Lectio Divina as a group (it is often taught as an individual practice) and since then it has become part of our weekly prayer as a church. For over twenty years I have worked with various models of theological reflection and reflective learning. After seven years of practising Lectio Divina I became intrigued by the possibilities of Lectio Divina as a mode of theological reflection, having found it helpful for integrating experience and belief both personally and in groups. But as a friend of mine puts it, “That’s all very well in practice, but does it work in theory?” So this article attempts to review some of the background theory and practice of Lectio Divina, to test some of its presumptions and to explore what it might contribute to practical theological reflection (PTR).

As a result of working with various models of PTR I have begun to frame questions about each of its initials. R: what is the place of reflection in Practical Theology and how is reflection practised? T: how is the Bible used and what does it contribute to the distinctively theological character of the reflection? P: how do T and R shape practice? The discipline of Lectio Divina offers some answers to those questions. This article proposes that Lectio Divina: offers a practice which is conducive to reflection and creates space for that to happen; gives a way of reading the Bible which is appropriate both from a standpoint of faith and for theological reflection; forms and nurtures both reflexivity and practice. Before exploring these issues in greater depth, the rest of this introduction will give an overview of the approach of Lectio Divina and anticipate some of the critical questions which need to be addressed.

1 This article is intended for publication in the journal Practical Theology and is written in accordance with their author guidelines. In particular I have referenced by footnotes and the article is formatted with single line spacing and numbered heading levels. Articles for publication in Practical Theology should not normally exceed 6,000 words, but this article exceeds that to meet the requirements of the DPT Module 2. http://docs.equinoxpub.com/equinoxdownloads/authors/prthguide.pdf

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1.2 An Overview of the Approach of Lectio Divina Benedict (c.480-547) begins the prologue to his Rule with the instruction to, ‘Listen…

with the ear of your heart’.2 In Benedictine communities, time is set aside each day for the practice of holy reading. In contrast to scholastic reading for the purpose of science and knowledge, the objective of monastic lectio is wisdom and appreciation.3 The way that Lectio Divina is often presented today was first formalised in the work The Ladder of the Monks by the twelfth century Carthusian, Guigo II, who articulated a fourfold pattern of prayer as lectio, meditatio, oratio, contemplatio (reading, meditation, prayer, contemplation).4

The present day practice of Lectio Divina as taught by Benedictines is based on this medieval pattern. The first step is a reading aloud of the chosen passage of Scripture. As the passage is read slowly participants listen with a gentle attentiveness. They listen for a word or phrase which stands out or ‘lights up’ for them which then becomes their focus for meditation. This experience of words lighting up was described by the French Benedictine Dom Marmion in this way, ‘We read under the eye of God until the heart is touched and leaps to flame.’5 In the second stage of meditation, that word or phrase is memorized through quiet repetition; as it is repeated, the participant allows it to interact with their thoughts, memories, hopes and desires. The third stage is for each person to respond to God in prayer prompted by the way the word or phrase of Scripture has touched them. This leads to the fourth element in the process, which is a period of contemplation or prayerful stillness; this is a resting, ‘in the presence of the One who has used His word as a means of inviting us to accept His transforming embrace.’6 Beyond this experience of stillness is the belief that the read-meditated-prayed text will be lived out in the participants’ everyday lives. So, in Lectio Divina, contemplation is understood as more than a passive state: ‘Contemplation means living what we read, not wasting any of it or hoarding any of it, but using it up in living’.7 A common analogy for the whole Lectio Divina process is that of eating: ‘Reading puts as it were whole food into your mouth; meditation chews it and breaks it down; prayer finds its savour; contemplation is the sweetness that so delights and strengthens.’8

Lectio Divina is a way of reading Scripture in which ‘the words are read not for information but rather for transformation.’9 The theology of Lectio Divina, which will be explored more fully below, is that the Word of God is alive and active, and a normal way in which God communicates with his people. In Lectio Divina the aim is for each person of faith to

2 Benedict, RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict in English (Collegeville, Minn: The Liturgical Press, 1982), p. 15. This famous phrase is most likely a literary recollection of Ps. 44.11 in the Vulgate: ‘Audi, filia, et vide, et inclina aurem tuam’; which is rendered in the NRSV as ‘Hear, O daughter, consider and incline your ear’ (Ps. 45.10). 3 Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God. A Study of Monastic Culture (London: SPCK, 1978), p. 89. 4 Guigo, The Ladder of Monks: A Letter on the Contemplative Life And Twelve Meditations (London: Mowbray, 1978), pp. 67-68. 5 Quoted in Jenny Baker, Moya Ratnayake, et al. Tune in, Chill Out: Using Contemplative Prayer in Youth Work (Birmingham: Christian Education, 2004), p. 79. 6 Luke Dysinger, “Accepting the Embrace of God: The Ancient Art of Lectio Divina,” Valyermo Benedictine 1.1 (1990), accessed 02 April 2011, http://www.valyermo.com/ld-art.html. 7 Eugene H. Peterson, Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2006), p. 113. 8 Guigo, The Ladder of Monks. 9 Basil Pennington, Lectio Divina: Renewing the Ancient Practice of Praying the Scriptures (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co, 1998), p. 88.

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listen attentively ‘with the ears of the heart’ to a living word addressed to him or her, here and now.

This brief introductory overview begs several critical questions. What view of Scripture is being held or is operant in this approach? Is this an appropriate or even valid approach given our awareness of textual and interpretative issues raised by critical scholarship? Before addressing these specific questions I want to situate Lectio Divina within the context of PTR.

2 An Overview and Critique of PTR I propose that Lectio Divina offers a fruitful model for PTR and, in particular, for the

use of the Bible in such reflection. The activity of reflecting theologically on situations and experiences has a wide variety of methods, models, and approaches.10 These different models of PTR draw on a variety of sources. The classic pastoral cycle of experience-reflection-action draws on the learning cycle of Kolb,11 and is rehearsed in many of the accounts of theological reflection in the discipline of PT.12 This appropriately represents the commitment within PT to learning through practice and not just learning for practice. The hermeneutical circle has its roots in the philosophy of textual interpretation and has transferred into PT with the shift towards PT being a discipline of interpreting situations in the search for meaning.13 Action research planning has its origins in industry and has come to PT through educational research and the desire to transform situations and practice.14

Despite the dominance of these models in the PT literature none of them has come from a theological or religious source. This does seem strange given that many people employing PTR as an heuristic tool are engaged in some form of ministerial or faith-based work. Thinking of my own practice, like the participants in Pattison, Thompson and Green’s ‘TR for the

10 Judith Thompson, SCM Studyguide to Theological Reflection (London: SCM Press, 2008), p. 19; Elaine Graham, Heather Walton, and Frances Ward, Theological Reflection: Methods: v. 1 (London: SCM Press, 2005). 11 D. Kolb, Experiential Learning as the Source of Learning and Development (Englewood Cliffs, London: Prentice Hall, 1984). 12 Examples include, John Foskett and David Lyall, Helping the Helpers: Supervision and Pastoral Care, (London: SPCK, 1990); Laurie Green, Let’s Do Theology. A pastoral cycle resource book, (London: Mowbray, 1990); and Paul Ballard and John Pritchard Practical Theology in Action. Christian Thinking in Service of the Church and Society’ (London: SPCK, 2006), pp. 81-95; Wesley Carr, Handbook of Pastoral Studies (London: SPCK, 1997), chap. 6. 13 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (London: Sheed & Ward, 1975), pp. 235-45, pp. 258-74, pp. 325-41. Examples of hermeneutical forms of PT include Donald Capps, Pastoral Care and Hermeneutics (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984); Charles V Gerkin, The Living Human Document: Re-Visioning Pastoral Counseling in a Hermeneutical Mode (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1984); Don S. Browning, A Fundamental Practical Theology: Descriptive and Strategic Proposals (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996); Richard Robert Osmer, Practical Theology: An Introduction (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2008); Terry Veling, Practical Theology: “On Earth as it is in Heaven” (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2005). 14 The historical roots of action research are commonly traced back to the work of Kurt Lewin in the United States in the 1930s-40s, see C. Adelman, “Kurt Lewin and the Origins of Action Research,” Educational Action Research 1.1 (1993), pp. 7-24. For an educational model see John Elliott, Action Research for Educational Change (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991); Stephen Kemmis and Robin McTaggart, The Action Research planner, 3rd ed. (Geelong, Vic: Deakin University, 1988). For a more recent treatment see Ernest T. Stringer, Action Research, (London: Sage, 3rd edn, 2007). For a theological adaptation see Helen Cameron et al., Talking About God in Practice: Theological Action Research (London: SCM Press, 2010).

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Real World’ study, prayer and Scripture form a key part of my reflective process.15 Some models of theological reflection make explicit use of Scripture, but within different approaches it is seen as a starting point, a source of moral norms or narrative frame, a resource for reflection, or one voice in the conversation.16

2.1 The Bible in Practical Theology and Pastoral Practice Today In 1988 Pattison identified the ‘almost absolute and embarrassing silence about the

Bible in pastoral care theory’, but since then there has been a re-engagement with the Bible by practical theologians.17 This re-engagement is something which I can acknowledge in my own experience which at this point I offer as illustrative. I was introduced to and inspired by the pastoral cycle model of theological reflection in Liberation and Contextual Theologies.18 The pastoral cycle model often seems to give priority to social and political analysis and at that time, coming from a liberal theological perspective this was very attractive to me.19 But subsequently I found that I had to take seriously the commitment to the Bible which underpins the faith and lives of these communities and practitioners. This was something that brought me back to a serious engagement with Scripture.

The series Using the Bible in Pastoral Practice by Pattison et al (2005-07) marks a significant bringing together of reflections on theory and practice on this topic. The third book in the series is a workbook designed to help practitioners reflect critically on their use of the Bible in their pastoral practice.20 The second book in the series, Holy Bible, Human Bible, sees the challenge for using the Bible in pastoral practice as being about holding together what it means to be both biblical and human. For Oliver, it is the Bible as narrative that enables ‘strong and creative connections’ between these two realities; and the biblical story has priority not only in a foundational sense but in keeping in perspective all other narratives.21

Amongst the many excellent essays in the first book in this series, one that is particularly pertinent to this study is by Colwell on ‘The Church as Ethical Community’. Colwell’s proposition is that as the church indwells scripture it comes to live scripture’s story. This takes place through a kind of hermeneutical spiral which, rather than consisting of critical reflection on practice leading to renewed practice, instead leads to an ever more truthful hearing of Scripture.22 The faithful reading of Scripture leads to a virtuous community ultimately becoming a means of grace for the world as it witnesses to the Christian story. But the critical question that arises from this is: if it is true, where is such a church that has become a ‘living telling’ of the story?

15 Stephen Pattison, Judith Thompson and John Green, “Theological Reflection for the Real World: Time to Think Again”, British Journal of Theological Education, 13.2 (2003), pp. 119-131. 16 Stephen Pattison, “Some Straw for the Bricks: A Basic Introduction to Theological Reflection,” in James Woodward and Stephen Pattison (eds.), The Blackwell Reader in Pastoral and Practical Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 135-145. 17 Stephen Pattison, A Critique of Pastoral Care (London: SCM Press, 2nd edn, 1993), p. 106. 18 Such as, for example, Juan Luis Segundo, The Liberation of Theology (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 1977). 19 Laurie Green, Let’s Do Theology: A Pastoral Cycle Resource Book (London: Mowbray, 1990), pp. 120-3. 20 Stephen Pattison, Using the Bible in Christian Ministry: A Workbook (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2007). 21 Gordon Oliver, Holy Bible, Human Bible : Questions Pastoral Practice Must Ask (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2006), p. 156. 22 John Colwell, “The Church as Ethical Community,” in Paul Ballard and Stephen R Holmes (eds.) The Bible in Pastoral Practice (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2005), p. 222.

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Perhaps it is in the attempt to answer this question that, more recently, some practical theologians, influenced by congregational studies and ordinary theology, have shifted the focus of attention onto the practice of reading the Bible. Village, in his empirical research, looks at how people approach the Bible and proposes an ordinary hermeneutic. One of his findings is that although individual differences (such as psychological type, age and frequency of church attendance) largely explain why people interpret the Bible differently, there is still an influence of an interpretive community; being part of a congregation does transform people.23 Fulkerson, in her congregational study, attends to how members of a church actually use the Bible in their small groups. Out of her description of the interpretive practices of a diverse United Methodist congregation Fulkerson found abounding differences. These varying approaches included those who read the Bible for God’s will, those who read liberatively from their perspective of disadvantage and those who practised biblical citation. These practices had a range of effects, from building mutual understanding, to causing conflict and precipitating crisis including people leaving the community. The key thing that emerges from her study of this diversity is the sheer complexity of assessing the patterns of cause and effect and, over time, the consequences of each of these practices as lived out by the members of a community.24

2.2 Practical Theological Reflection and the Potential Benefits of Lectio Divina In a recent overview of the place of Scripture in theological reflection, Lectio Divina is

mentioned as one possible approach. Here the distinctiveness of Lectio Divina as a mode of theological reflection is seen to lie in its ‘gentleness and God centredness… along with a sense of unhurried offering of yourself and the situations you are involved in’.25

Reflection on experience and practice requires attentiveness to personal actions but also to motivations, emotions, thoughts and past experience. One limitation of PTR is that when attention remains focussed on these things then they constitute the only material for reflection. This dilemma is clearly described by Cameron et al in their recent work on Theological Action Research: ‘To reflect on one’s own experience is, for the late modern practitioner, instinctively to reflect on one’s own subjectivity, one’s own psychological responses to a situation. The integration of this with the language of faith is often secondary, and struggled with as a problem.’26 If and when this is the case then the reflection is in danger of being un-theological and only self-referential; ego-centric and narcissistic. When religious consciousness displaces a theology of God’s action in the world then theology becomes about discerning God’s presence retrospectively in our human experience and ends up being more like anthropology than theology.27 Even if, with Rahner, we want to affirm that there can be no theology without anthropology,28 it should be remembered that his transcendental method, having thematized

23 Andrew Village, The Bible and Lay People: An Empirical Approach to Ordinary Hermeneutics (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 137-142. 24 Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Places of Redemption: Theology for a Worldly Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), chap. 6. and especially pp.190-2. 25 Thompson, SCM Studyguide to Theological Reflection, p. 93. 26 Helen Cameron, Talking About God in Practice: Theological Action Research (London: SCM Press, 2010), p. 24. 27 This is essentially the critique made of Schleiermacher’s theology; see Anthony Thiselton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics: The Theory and Practice of Transforming Biblical Reading (London: Marshall Pickering, 1992), p. 207 28 Karl Rahner, “Theology and Anthropology,” in T. Patrick Burke (ed.), The Word in History (London: Collins, 1968), pp. 1-23.

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human experience as worldly and historical then, in an explicitly theological step, makes clear the theological dimensions from the standpoint of Christian revelation.29

The other problem with using the Bible for the practice based methods of PTR with which we have become familiar over the last decades is that they are focussed on addressing a specific issue. The aim is to reflect on a particular experience, or social situation, in order to generate new meanings and steps for practical action. When Scripture is turned to as part of the reflection the approach inevitably becomes one in which one tries to find a message of relevance to the issue in hand; the choice of readings becomes selective and discriminatory, favouring only those passages that fit the standpoint and commitment of the reader. The danger in this for practical theologies is that they come to see the Bible and prayer as no more than a resource for theological reflection or pastoral care. When theology, the Bible or prayer are seen in this way then they can be used simply to endorse conclusions derived from other perspectives without having contributed to the discussion. Another loss is that issues that are important from the Christian perspective may not be raised by other disciplines and so might never be considered. Prayer is instead primarily a relationship with God and the reading of the Bible a means of listening to God and entering into communion with God.30

3 A Theology of Lectio Divina. The Word of God in Scripture: read, meditated on and prayed

In many modern Western rites at the end of the Bible reading the reader proclaims ‘This is the word of the Lord’, and the hearers reply, ‘Thanks be to God.’31 The belief that the proclaimed and heard text of the Bible is the ‘Word of the Lord’ is the essence of the theology of Lectio Divina. Although there are some variations in how this is expressed between different church traditions most hold that the Bible communicates God’s Word. In Hebrew the etymological root of ‘word’ (dabar) indicates the depth of things and to speak is to give expression to what is within things at their most profound, real or deep level. Further to this, action is a constitutive element of the Word; the Word always has an effect, as in the New Testament phrase, ‘the word of God is living and active’ (Heb. 4.12).

If one were attempting to classify Lectio Divina as a particular kind of interpretation of Scripture, it would be as a spiritual approach. Although Lectio Divina involves a close reading of the given text it gives priority to the spiritual value of that text on the understanding that the ‘The Word of God’ is not just a book but is something that contains life in itself, like a seed which can, given the right conditions, germinate, sprout and grow within human beings. In Christian theology, the term ‘the Word’ is to be distinguished from any human words, even the words of the Bible. ‘The Word is centred in Christ, and is attested to by the Bible, but is known only through the grace of God.’32

29 A. Carr, “Theology and Experience in the Thought of Karl Rahner,” The Journal of Religion, 53.3 (July 1973), p. 365. 30 Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger, Pray Without Ceasing: Revitalizing Pastoral Care (Grand Rapids, Mich: William B. Eerdmans, 2006), p. 31. 31 For example, Common Worship: Services and Prayers for the Church of England, 2000, p. 172 32 John Bowden, ‘Word of God,’ in Alan Richardson and John Bowden (eds.), A New Dictionary of Christian Theology (London: SCM Press, 1983), p. 603.

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Mindful that this is a simplified and condensed summary of a complex area of Christian doctrine, ‘the Word’ is the second person of the Trinity through whom all things are created; the pre-existent Logos of the prologue of John’s Gospel, who in the incarnation becomes flesh and dwells among us (Jn 1.14). The Word is always a person and becomes known in the person of Jesus Christ, who is attested to in the Scriptures. Lectio Divina is a way of seeking Christ in the Scriptures, as Augustine put it ‘the One I look for in the books.’33 It is reading but not in a superficial sense and more than in the sense of studying to find the intellectual meaning. So Enzo Bianchi, who has been a significant influence on the contemporary renewal of interest in this approach, offers the effective translation of Lectio Divina as ‘the Word prayed’ or ‘praying the Word’ rather than the literal sense of sacred or divine reading.34

The approach of Lectio Divina is to read the Bible as ‘a living Word, to seek out its meaning and search for its guidance in history, the life of the Church, and our own lives.’ The aim is to attend to the Word in such a way that we hear ‘not only the echo of the time when it was written but also the living message it holds for our lives today.’ 35 Lectio Divina is not uninterested in the historical sense of Scripture. The understanding of the Bible is that it is a record of God’s action in history and that revelation in the particularity of an historical moment exists in relationship with God’s constant revelation.

Bianchi suggests that the process through which the Scriptures were born is very like that of Lectio Divina: ‘reading (the event), meditating (on the event), praying (about the event)’ which then became ‘an enduring testimony in the Bible, enfleshed in language, incarnated as an historic word.’36 If in Lectio Divina the reader is seeking to interpret the Bible’s written accounts in the light of their own everyday experiences then there is a need to distinguish between the provisional framing of God’s message in particular historical circumstances and the constant revelation contained within the framework. Revelation is like a conversation between God and humanity taking place in time through which there is a progressive assimilation on our part of the truth once given. This is the basic logic to which Lectio Divina returns. The believer begins by reading from an historical perspective and seeking to understand what the text originally meant, but immediately after that begins to seek a ‘more global or doxological reading; that is one which draws out the message entwined in those historic circumstances and places it now in the context of salvation history.’37

When it comes to the public use of the Bible then the Church is defined in some important way by listening; it is a community that exists in response to ‘a word of summons or invitation, to an act of communication that requires to be heard and answered’. So although Scripture arises out of the reflection on historical events it is ‘not a self-generated reality, created simply out of human reflection and ideals’ and ‘what is read needs to be read as a communicative act’ and therefore not as instruction or information but as summons.38

Bianchi says that ‘Lectio Divina is done with your whole being: with your body, because normally you should pronounce the words with your lips; with your memory, which

33 Confessions 11.2.3-4 34 Enzo Bianchi, Praying the Word. An Introduction to Lectio Divina, trans. James W. Zona (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1998), p. 27. 35 Ibid., p. 19. 36 Ibid., p. 20. 37 Ibid., p. 21. 38 Rowan Williams, “The Bible Today: Reading & Hearing” (presented at the Larkin Stuart Lecture, Toronto, Canada, 2007). Accessed 20 June 2011, http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/2112/the-bible-today-reading-hearing-the-larkin-stuart-lecture.

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retains the words; with your intellect, which understands their meaning. The fruit of this reading is experience.’39 The first stage of Lectio Divina is to read the text through and listen to it deeply, paying attention simply to the text and not attempting to make use of any other faculties. The text is read just as it is – as a received text – with the aim of absorbing its thoughts in the form in which they are written. There is a deliberate staying with the text at this stage, not trying to apply it or to understand it in the light of one’s own experience or circumstances. The aim is to receive the text and understand it on its own terms. The text is read with no preconceptions that something will happen or that there will be some kind of felt experience or psychic sensation.

This can be illustrated this using the English expression, ‘something caught my attention’; rather than you deciding what you are going to look at, something catches you. This is a good way of approaching the text because so often readers come to the text having decided what is already there. Often readers approach the text with the conclusions of their own tradition or perspective already in mind. Consequently, the act of reading is one that reinforces preconceptions and prejudices.40 This is the ‘horizon of expectations’ that each one of us brings to the text – the finite viewpoint of each reader’s situation, mindset and framework of references.41

What Lectio Divina fosters is the disposition of approaching the biblical text with openness, in which, as readers and listeners, ‘our primary responsibility is to receive’.42 Alan Jacobs, in his work A Theology of Reading, explores the kenotic nature of this listening to receive. His main point is that this has to happen in such a way that the proper tensions between the I and the Other are not dissolved. He quotes Simone Weil regarding this kenotic movement: ‘This way of looking is first of all attentive. The soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to receive into itself the being it is looking at, just as it is, in all its truth’, and concludes by following up Bakhtin’s suggestion that the heart of a proper kenotic understanding of reading is not self-evacuation but a self-renunciation that never loses or annihilates the self.43

The hermeneutical dialogue that Lectio Divina offers is an apt way to engage with the communicative act of Scripture. But this approach is not without critical issues, two of which are addressed below.

4 Critical Issues for Lectio Divina

4.1 An Ancient Practice? The present day practice of Lectio Divina is, on one level, an appropriation and

extension of ancient and medieval reading practices for our own reading. The challenge for post-modern readers is to approach a text with reverence, and not just for information, entertainment or part of a professional or critical exercise.

39 Bianchi, Praying the Word, p. 52. 40 This illustration comes from Richard Rohr, The Art of Looking Sideways at the Bible (Greenbelt Festival, 2010), accessed 19 January 2011, http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/shop/talks. 41 A term of Hand Robert Jauss used by Thiselton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics, p. 34. 42 Williams, “The Bible Today: Reading & Hearing.” 43 Alan Jacobs, A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love (Boulder, Colo: Westview, 2001), p. 108.

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In his Rule Benedict gives instruction for each monk to spend several hours each day in reading or listening to books being read.44 Lectio Divina as a practice has come down to us through this Benedictine tradition. However, what is seldom mentioned in the popular introductions to Lectio Divina is that the approach to reading (‘Lectio’) throughout the medieval period was strikingly different from our own. In her extensive study of memory in medieval culture, Mary Carruthers explores the role of lectio and meditatio in relation to memory and ethics.45 Lectio was to read and study, meditatio was to memorize so as to familiarize and internalize what was read. This familiarizing was in order to make the text one’s own. Carruther’s point is that the medieval scholar’s relationship to the text is quite different from that of a modern scholar. The process of lectio is (perhaps) comparable in that it is a process of seeking to understand the meaning of every word in the text. But whereas modern scholarship aims to respect the ‘integrity of the text’ and seeks to get the text ‘objectively right’, the medieval scholar does not stop there but seeks to digest the text, memorizing it through a process of rumination.

The practice was to memorize the reading by murmuring, that is, mouthing the words, as the reader turned the words over in their memory. This was understood as a tropological process as the text was turned into one’s self. The image of rumination is basic to the understanding of what was involved in memoria and meditatio. It is an image of regurgitation, with the memory as the stomach, and the stored texts are the cud which is recalled to the palate. There is a connection here with the monastic custom of reading during meals which can be seen as a literalizing of the metaphor of consuming words. The end of the process is that once the words have been devoured, digested and familiarized they become one’s own words. The reader of the text is, in a sense, not the interpreter but the author or ‘re-author’. The good of reading is for the reader’s moral life. Another aspect of the vocalizing or murmuring is that the reading process can be ‘conceived to be not a “hermeneutical circle” (which implies a mere solipsism) but more like a “hermeneutical dialogue” between two memories’. The reader, in meditation performed in murmur, reads attentively and so the other voice in the dialogue is not lost as it sounds through the written letters. 46

Carruthers’ exposition of Augustine’s description of Ambrose reading gives further important insights into the ancient practice of reading. The image of rumination and nourishment of mind and body is familiar, but what is especially interesting is the word used in the description of the reading process. Ambrose is said to ‘pour over’ the meaning. The original word has connotations of cracking, tearing open, or breaking into pieces. It suggests ‘an intensely energetic, suspenseful, concentrated, and meticulous activity, which gives a vigour to meditation that the placid image of cud-chewing may not.’47 Carruthers also comments on two other words in relation to Ambrose and his companions which are silentium and intensus. These reflect the attitude of attentive concentration necessary for meditatio and memoria.

As a practice with roots in the ancient life of the Christian community, Lectio Divina is a pre-critical approach to the Bible. One of the aspects of Lectio Divina that most intrigues me is the way in which it works in practice as a way of reading the Bible as a post-critical reader. There is something about this pre-modern approach that works in our post-modern context. One aspect of this is the acceptance that there are different levels of meaning within the text,

44 Benedict, RB 1980, chap. 48. 45 Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory. A study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 162-188. 46 Ibid., pp. 168-9. 47 Ibid., pp. 170-3.

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whereas modern historical-critical biblical scholarship has tended to restrict itself to a single meaning.

Since the first half of the fifth century there has been a notion of the four-fold sense of Scripture. The literal meaning arises from the historical setting of the text, and may include metaphor. Allegorical meaning can be theological, Christological or other devotional extensions of the literal meaning. The tropological or moral meaning embodies a practical application for present action, not necessarily the ethical content of Scripture but how it forms our behaviour. The mystical or anagogical level of meaning embraces the horizon of the future consummation, that is the ways in which Scripture draws the reader deeper into communion with God. Although at some times priority has been given to one level of meaning, especially the literal historical sense, generally in the Christian tradition the four senses have been given equal importance.48

Casey suggests that these four-fold levels of meaning can be seen to some extent to be sequential and that they can form a way of approaching Lectio Divina. The first stage of reading pays attention to the literal level of meaning of the text. The stage of meditating on the text engages the faculty of the memory and this works on the allegorical level, as what we read is located within our existing frame of reference. So for Christian readers this is primarily the Christological level of meaning as associations are made. As the prayer proceeds to oratio the faculty of the conscience is activated and the moral sense of the text is heard as a call to behave in a certain way or to obey a certain commandment. Finally, at a mystical level, in contemplation, the praying reader becomes aware of the how the prayed word has penetrated to the depths of their being and experiences the sense of the word being addressed to their spirit. Then the Word is experienced as Person.49

4.2 Reading the Bible as Scripture50 Whilst it may sound a tautology to say that the Bible can be read as Scripture, this gets

to the heart of Lectio Divina and how it relates to other ways of reading and reflecting. In attempting a constructive yet critical appreciation of Lectio Divina one issue that has to be addressed is the understanding of Scripture, which has changed considerably from the pre-modern, through the modern, to the post-modern periods. In his comparative study What is Scripture?, Wilfred Cantwell Smith gives an overview of this transition and proposes a nuanced and helpful understanding of Scripture which is pertinent to this study. In the pre-modern era the term ‘Scripture’ for Christians was equated with ‘the Bible’ (Old and New Testaments, and Apocrypha). The Bible, understood as The Word of God, was a work of divine provenance revealed by God to humankind. Since the modern period Christian Scriptures have been seen alongside the Scriptures of other faiths, are no longer unequivocally seen as God’s will, and are recognized as being this worldly, though nevertheless a text that some people regard as authoritative. And this is Cantwell Smith’s key point, that the word Scripture has come to

48 Anthony C. Thiselton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics: The Theory and Practice of Transforming Biblical Reading (London: Marshall Pickering, 1992), p. 183; Michael Casey, Sacred Reading. The Ancient Art of Lectio Divina (Liguori, Missouri: Liguori/Triumph, 1995), pp. 52-57. 49 Ibid., pp. 56-57. 50 This is an intentional reference to the key work of Canonical Criticism by Brevard Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture, (London: SCM Press, 1979).

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designate a text of special status, but with this status now understood to be conferred by human beings and not by God.51

In the modern period, interpretation of Scripture has been dominated by historical-critical biblical scholarship, which primarily attempts to understand texts in the light of their original ancient historical, cultural and social setting. Paradoxically, this puts the texts back to an historical point at which these texts were not yet seen as Scripture. In a similar way, the later approaches of literary criticism which treat the texts like any other literature are treating them as no-longer Scripture. Neither of these approaches has what Steinmetz would term, ‘a hermeneutical theory adequate to the nature of the text which it is interpreting.’52 Between these pre- and post-Scriptural approaches have emerged the post-liberal canonical and contextual approaches to the Bible which have allowed it to re-emerge as Scripture.53

A critique of Lectio Divina which has to be anticipated and addressed at this point is that it is an uncritical and naïve approach to the Bible which is out of place and inappropriate in our post-Enlightenment time. A great danger with Lectio Divina as a method of reading the Bible is that it seems to presuppose that the text is not in itself problematic. Critical scholarship has taught many of us to read texts, including biblical ones, through the lens of a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’. There is now a vast range of critical readings of the Bible, including Feminist, Queer, Liberation, Sociopolitical, Black, Postcolonial, Asian and Ecological.54 Perhaps what is important is to recognize that we can no longer read in one way and from one standpoint. But what Lectio Divina can do is make the reader carefully and intentionally engage with the text as it actually is. Sometimes this will confront the reader with texts that have to be wrestled with. If and when critical questions arise from this process then it is to the critical scholarship that informed readers can turn for possible answers.

Whatever new approaches to the Bible have emerged we cannot pretend that the critical approaches never existed, or, as Robert Carroll puts it, there is ‘no reason to imagine that post-modernism can reinscribe medievalism or a pre-critical approach to the Bible.’55 Part of the answer to this is to embrace an approach to Scripture which is, in a self-aware way, post-critical or intentionally naïve. This fits with Walter Brueggmann’s recent description of what is happening when we read the Bible.56 Drawing on Ricoeur’s terms, such reading is an act of ‘second naiveté’, as it ‘pushes beyond criticism by spirit-led artistry to receive a new world imagined through the text.’ The core of such an approach is: that the Bible, whilst being seen critically, can still be received as a gift of the Spirit; that the reader sees themselves self-critically but also understands themselves ‘as an empowered, beloved, forgiven agent of God’s newness’;

51 Wilfred Cantwell Smith, What is Scripture? A Comparative Approach (London: SCM Press, 1993), pp. 11-12. 52 David C. Steinmetz, “The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis”, Theology Today 37.1 (1980), p. 27 53 Walter Brueggemann, “The re-emergence of Scripture: post-liberalism,” in The Bible in Pastoral Practice (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2005), pp. 153-173. 54 For an overview and example of each of these forms of criticism, and for further reading in relation to each, see Paula Gooder, Searching for Meaning. An Introduction to New Testament Interpretation (London: SPCK, 2009), pp. 135- 198. 55 Robert P Carroll, “Cracks in the Soul of Theology,” in The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church (London: SCM Press, 1995), p. 144. 56 Brueggemann’s work influences the recent article by Paul Ballard, “The Bible in Theological Reflection: Indications from the History of Scripture,” Practical Theology 4.1 (2011), pp. 35-47.

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that God is seen critically but also as the God of salvation; and that the world is seen critically but still also as the ‘venue for the practice of God’s righteousness.’57

What Cantwell Smith asserts very clearly is that even in this time after Enlightenment rationality, Scripture can be held to be a bi-lateral, if not tri-lateral, term which inherently implies and names a relationship and engagement between people, text and transcendence. Texts are not Scripture in themselves for ‘Scripture is a human activity’ – indeed in his striking phrase he claims that ‘there is no ontology of Scripture.’58 But what this brings into the foreground is the importance of the readers as a community of persons who approach the Bible as Scripture, who recognize it as having a special status as authoritative for them, and who, in reading, come to engage in a relationship with the words and their values.

The transcendent dimension of the Christian Scriptures is what Luther termed the res scripturae, the ‘matter of Scripture’, which is the saving gospel of God’s love revealed in Jesus Christ. It is this which is the source of the Bible’s continuing authority, for this gospel exists before and apart from the words of any text and indeed the words of the text can be tested against the gospel. People accord authority to the Bible through the practices of reading it, studying it with all their critical powers, using it in worship and being challenged by it as a literary text. It is in this practice that people can ‘come face to face with the gospel and respond to it with our whole lives.’59

This begins to address some of the critical questions which might be raised of Lectio Divina. In what follows some of the potential benefits which that approach might bring to PTR are identified.

5 Possible contributions of Lectio Divina to Practical Theological Reflection

5.1 Actualization Every reading of the Bible is an attempt at actualization – an attempt to make it

contemporary. It is in this actualization that the meaning of the text can be fully grasped. In this process new meanings are uncovered although in line with the meaning of the text. As has already been discussed, it is possible both pre- and post-critically to explore different levels of meaning in the biblical text.

The aim of historical-critical approaches to biblical texts has been to uncover an original understanding of the text in the historical and social setting within which it was produced. In effect this approach has held that a text has one single meaning which can be uncovered with the correct application of exegetical tools. More recent theories of language and hermeneutics (especially Gadamer, Ricour, and Foucault) affirm that written texts are open to a plurality of meaning. There is now a theoretical validity in an approach to engaging with the Biblical text that combines these different approaches. First, insights from historical-critical approaches enable readers to hear texts from the Bible, to a greater extent, within their own setting. Second, from that first reading/hearing, readers are enabled to identify ways in which the biblical text sheds light on their present situation and the current issues they face. Third,

57 Walter Brueggemann, Redescribing Reality: What We Do When We Read the Bible (London: SCM Press, 2009), pp. 28-29. 58 Cantwell Smith, What is Scripture? A Comparative Approach, p. 18 and p. 237. Italics original. 59 John Barton, People of the Book? The Authority of the Bible in Christianity (London: SPCK, 1988), p. 89.

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from the richness of meaning in the text they are enabled to draw out insights can that can help to change their present situation in ways that are consonant with the Gospel.

Asserting the plurality of meanings in the biblical text is not the same as saying that a text can be made to mean anything the reader wishes. For example, the third point above rules out those interpretations that would lead to a text being actualized in ways which are unjust or unloving. The Roman Catholic document ‘The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church’ states this very strongly: ‘Clearly to be rejected also is every attempt at actualization set in a direction contrary to evangelical justice and charity, such as, for example, the use of the Bible to justify racial segregation, anti-Semitism or sexism whether on the part of men or of women.’60

The understanding of Scripture as having authority and inspiration can be understood in its potential for effecting change in terms of personal transformation. In Lectio Divina the practice of staying before the text involves a disposition of letting it be in charge. The point is that as a reader one is no longer in charge determining for oneself what it means. As Rohr expresses it, ‘That’s the authority of Scripture; that you give it the power to change you, that you give it the power to humiliate your common sense thinking, your bare naked literal thinking and to realise that this could be true at this level, at this level and at this level.’61 Put another way, in Lectio Divina we are obliged to ask, “What does this text suggest or imply about the changes which reading it or hearing it might bring about?” In the time of recitation we re-imagine ourselves: ‘For this moment, we exist simply as listeners, suspending our questions while the question is put to us of how we are to speak afresh about ourselves.’62

Cardinal Martini, in his introduction to Lectio Divina expands, the usual four-fold pattern to include four additional terms, one of which is ‘actio’ – which is the mature fruition of the complete journey.63 This additional term emphasises the point that the reading of Scripture and practical action flow into each other and that the process of Lectio Divina does not end in contemplation.

5.2 From Theological Resource to Living Word PTR is used to reflect on a particular situation, issue or experience. As such it inevitably

begins with description and engagement with that presenting concern. The critical question for PTR comes with the theological dimension and what part that plays in shaping understanding. In contrast to Lectio Divina, PTR starts with the present point rather than with Scripture. The prior concern with the reflective practitioner’s situation creates a set of expectations and pre-understandings with which they then approach the text as a useful resource for reflection. Every reader brings an horizon of expectation to the text – this is a mindset, or system of references, which characterizes the reader’s finite viewpoint amidst his or her situatedness in time and history. Patterns of habituation define the reader’s horizon of expectation. The danger for practical theologians is that by concentrating on the part of the process that concerns the present, they objectify pastoral phenomena in a way which privileges the present over against the biblical text. The description of the present situation in abstraction removes it from its theological context both in terms of past foundations and future promise. Part of the task of theology is to decentre the present as a test of its truth. What happens over time in the process

60 The Pontifical Biblical Commission. “The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church” [1993]. In J.L. Houlden (ed.), The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church. London: SCM Press, 1995, p. 85. 61 from Rohr, The Art of Looking Sideways at the Bible. 62 Williams, “The Bible Today: Reading & Hearing.” 63 Carlo Maria Martini, The Joy of the Gospel. Meditations for Young People (Collegeville, Minn: The Liturgical Press, 1988), p. 5.

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of sustained reflection on Scripture such as in the regular practice of Lectio Divina is that the reader is exposed to the power of Scripture to ‘de-habitualize’ the perception of its readers.64

One of the presuppositions of the use of the Bible in PTR identified by Thompson et al as needing further investigation is the capacity of Scripture to ‘catch fire’ and ‘interilluminate with experience’ and so suggest ‘paths of creative action’.65 This presupposition is shared with Lectio Divina. What is being claimed for Scripture is that it can make trans-contextual claims, that it can validly be seen to address present day situations, and that at an eschatological level of meaning there is a universal horizon that transcends the reader’s immediate context. This brings the Theological dimension into what would otherwise be just Practical Reflection, and not just as a resource but as a living and creative force.

5.3 Disposition, Conation and Commitment Lectio Divina is an example of what Thistleton calls “believing” reading, which is not to

say that believers have access to a level of understanding not available to unbelievers, but rather that believers participate in an act of reading in which they perceive themselves as recipients or addressees of directed acts of commitment or promise. The presupposition of the believer is the ‘directedness’ on the part of the text. The practical theological question is about what the reader stakes in the reading of a biblical text. Does the reading of the text generate acts of renewed faith or merely a portrayal of the original writer’s faith? Drawing on the terminology of speech act theory, we can frame the question as one of the logical fit between language and reality. For example, if the words express the biblical writer’s belief and trust in God then they reflect a ‘word-to-world direction of fit’ (that is, there is a fit if the propositional content of the utterance fits an independently existing state of affairs in the world). If they commit the reader to an act of belief or trust then they represent a ‘world-to-word direction of fit’ (that is to say that, for there to be a fit, the world must change to match the propositional content of the utterance). The latter functions as ‘a self-involving illocutionary act, which carries practical consequences for the life and behaviour of the reader.’ This means that the same linguistic act of reading for the believer is different from the experience of the unbeliever. The act of reading counts for the believer because it commits them to some future action or expresses something of their own attitudes and beliefs, both of which carry self-involving consequences in practical life.66

What the believing reader brings to the act of reading is a particular disposition. The believer approaches the text expecting to be addressed on a cognitive and a conative level; to increase their understanding but also expecting to be changed on the level of their will and desire to perform certain actions. The reader who believes in the inspiration of Scripture comes to the text expecting to be inspired imaginatively and inspired to act in new ways. Part of this disposition is an attitude of openness. The believing reader approaches the text with an openness of heart and mind; with an expectation that in the text they will find something new that may challenge them to change.

As well as certain dispositions, the believing reader brings certain commitments to the act of reading. One of these is the commitment to the community of fellow believers and readers whose identity is affirmed and renewed as they hear scripture together. 67 The believing reader believes that Scripture is part of the divine act of summons and invitation to establish community. The role of the community in hearing the Scripture together and sharing

64 Thiselton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics, p. 34. 65 Thompson, SCM Studyguide to Theological Reflection, p. 95. 66 Thiselton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics, pp. 598-599. 67 Williams, “The Bible Today: Reading & Hearing.”

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interpretation and insight is crucial as a way of establishing a level of responsibility and accountability for interpretations and the way they are actualised. As mentioned above, part of the role of the Church is to lay down certain criteria by which interpretations can be evaluated and certain actualisations ruled out.

6 Conclusion Whereas PTR is often focussed on a particular situation, opportunity for learning or

problem to be solved, Lectio Divina is focussed on the formation of the practitioner’s character and will, as it informs their reflexivity and addresses them at a conative level. Lectio Divina can be said to be in itself a mode of Theological Reflection, but what is more important is that it fosters and informs the ability to reflect theologically. The practitioner of Lectio Divina is someone who comes to inhabit the biblical tradition, develops habits of attentiveness, grows in awareness, and through memory becomes more capable of forming associations and connections between lived experience and Christian belief.

Alongside situation-specific and problem-solving models, Lectio Divina offers PTR a significant reflective tool. Its great strength is that it is an apt way of reading biblical texts which are received and read as Scripture, as a mode of attention it accords them authority and holds the reader open to new insights and the challenge to change. As a mode of reflection Lectio Dvina contributes to the long-term formation of the practitioner as a person of wisdom with a greater capacity to act with theological reflexivity.

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