Journal of Scriptural Reasoning Forum

What is SR?

A Handbook of Scriptural Reasoning

Draft, Steven Kepnes

What is SR?

SR is a practice of group reading of the scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that seeks to build sociality among its practitioners and release sources of wisdom and compassion for healing our separate communities and for repair of the world.
Participants in SR come to it as both representatives of academic institutions and particular "houses" (churches, mosques, synagogues) of worship. SR meets, however, outside of these institutions in special times and in separate spaces that we liken to biblical "tents of meeting." We come together in these tents of meeting to read and reason with our scriptures. We then return to our religious and academic institutions with renewed energy to bring criticism and healing to our institutions.

The Reason of Scriptural Reasoning
SR is the thinking that occurs when scripture is taken up and discussed by a group of readers. It therefore works through both the reasoning that is implicit in scripture and the reasoning that we, as interpreters, bring to scripture.

But, most importantly, scriptural reasoning is the reasoning that we discover or that is "revealed" as we engage in dialogue about scripture.
SR includes moments of reflection on group practices of reading that collect, summarize and organize the insights that are generated. These acts of reflection will take the form of summary, commentary, and rules rather than systematic philosophies or theological treatises.

Why Monotheisms?
SR begins with the scriptures of the monotheistic religions because the initial members of the SR community came from the traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. One could also argue that we begin with Monotheisms because the problems that most plague the world were generated by the West. Therefore, the religions of the West are implicated in both the problems and the solutions to the contemporary world. However, fully developing this argument would require a discussion of whether or not Islam and even Judaism are properly designated as "religions of the West." Thus, a more simple answer to the question, "why monotheisms?" is that these are the traditions that we know best and these are the traditions that give us life and energy and knowledge to want to repair the world.
SR is neither about the roots of Christianity in Judaism nor the roots of Islam in Jewish and Christian traditions. SR acknowledges Abraham (and Adam before him) as a source figure for the three monotheistic religions, but SR does not seek to reduce or dissolve these religions into some universal Abrahamic faith. SR, rather, is about serious conversations between three religious traditions that preserves difference as it establishes relationships.
SR seeks to move beyond interfaith dialogues between only two monotheistic faiths to trialogic discussions. When the third is added to a dialogue between two traditions the conversations no longer merely go back and forth dyadically. The third creates a multiplicity of cross-cutting relations among and between each of the three that is rewarded with more complex and profound discussions.
We do not claim that other non-monotheistic religions are false or incapable of serving the goals that we have set. We do not rule out working with members of other traditions in the future. Yet, at this time of beginning, we begin with what we are and what we know and what generates our concern and care.

The End Time and Our Time
SR is eschatological in that it anticipates an end time in which all the children of Abraham will live together in peace. Yet it believes that before that time, Jews, Christians, and Moslems can participate in something of that end time by entering into the space between the scriptures of the respective traditions.

Why Scriptures?
Although religions and Western religions, in particular, contain more than scriptures-e.g. symbols, doctrines, and saints--we begin with scriptures. We do this, most simply, because Jews, Christians and Moslems share common narratives and they share a common respect for the scriptural texts as fundamental documents of revelation and religious foundation.
We have found that reading scriptures together provides a unique way to form relations between both the diverse readers who assemble around the texts and the traditions that the texts have given rise to. As ancient texts written in ancient languages and understood as sources of divine revelation, the meaning of scripture cannot be immediately known. Scriptures, especially, the scriptures of others, are necessarily distant and hermeneutically opaque. Scripture, therefore, provides us all with an initial challenge to discern meaning. Scripture challenges us with empty spaces and lacunae into which each interpreter can place herself in the discovery of meaning. With the aid of the distance and external medium provided by the text, people with different personal backgrounds and ideological agendas become readers talking to one another about the common subject of the meaning of the scriptures.

Hermeneutical Presuppositions
SR functions with a triadic semiotic that assumes that meaning arises out of the relationship between the sign, referent and community of interpreters (in Peirce's terms, the "interpretant") that reads the text. This type of semiotic transfers hermeneutic power to scriptural reasoners who face the scripture at the time and place in which they meet to read together.
When we read we each bring with us our own "internal library." This library starts with our knowledge of Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek and includes historical information, theology, modern and postmodern philosophy and science. It also includes our own previous readings of the texts and hearings of it in ritual and liturgical contexts and, finally, our own understandings of God, our historical moment, and our own lives. Bringing our libraries and our awareness of the contemporary world to the act of interpreting scripture, we necessarily bring to the ancient texts new questions and problems. However, our experience has been that these new questions breath new life into our scriptures.

In addition, we find our questions illumined in startling clarity and our problems addressed by the wisdom and guidance of the scriptures aroused and renewed.

Neither Liberal not Fundamentalist
SR believes that the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam remain central vehicles through which the presence of God is known and experienced. As SR fosters co-readings of scriptures by Jews, Christians and Muslims in which the boundaries of the traditions are crossed, it does not seek to find "underlying unities," or "overarching principles" or "universal essences" into which the scriptures and traditions can be dissolved. In this sense, SR departs from the objectives of much modern liberal religious dialogue.
SR attempts to articulate and preserve the separate identities of each of the three faiths. SR assumes that the individual traditions constitute, in George Lindbeck's terms, unique "cultural-linguistic" religious systems that maintain internal principles and mechanisms of coherence. This means, at a minimum, that when a word is used in a religious tradition it can best be defined by a series of words and terms from the religion in which it sits. Thus, even though the same term appears in one or two or three religions, it will necessarily carry a unique 'semantic aura,' a set of cognates and uses, that is specific to its use in a particular religious "language-game."
Our hermeneutical openness to a multiplicity of meanings for scripture differs widely from a fundamentalist or literalist hermeneutics. We also oppose fundamentalist attempts to isolate their particular religious tradition from other religions and the contemporary world to reinforce triumphalist claims of superiority. SR cherishes the modern liberal victories for religious tolerance and human rights but it assails the wholesale attacks on religious traditions that are also associated with liberalism. SR seeks a "third" position between liberalism and traditionalism that some of its members have referred to as "post-liberal."

How We Do Scriptural Reasoning
Given our principles and objectives, how do we do scriptural reasoning? First of all, we endeavor to establish the conditions for the possibility of scriptural reasoning. Thus, SR begins before we meet together to read. Thought must first be given to the scriptures that will be used. Our practice is to choose texts from the three traditions that focus on a common figure, e.g. Abraham, or a theme or issue, such as hospitality, or creation, or sacrifice. Scriptures of the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and Qur'an are our primary texts, but we also may include materials from secondary sacred literature such as rabbinic Midrash and Talmud, Christian exegesis, and Hadith. In SR study sessions we are not heavy handed about our "themes," as we find that quickly new themes and issues arise and we want to be free to follow these wherever they lead.
After texts are chosen, attention must be given to where the sessions will be held, what kind of room will be used, and how the tables and chairs are to be set up. Scriptural reasoning requires space for small intimate groups of about 6 to study together as well as a room to bring the small groups together for plenary sessions. Each small group should have representatives of each of the three traditions and it is best to have each tradition represented by more than one person.
Each session requires a convener and this person should have both knowledge of SR theory and experience in SR practice. Egalitarian principles of speech must be respected and protected. This means that the voices of women and men, senior and junior members, critical text scholars and theologians, and representatives of the different traditions are treated equally. To safeguard the cardinal rule of an egalitarian speech situation the convener may have to exercise her authority and intervene in the discussion to quiet a particularly strong voice or bring out a quiet one.
We privilege no single religious framework and no single methodological approach to the scriptures accept the principle that the texts are to be placed at the center of our discussions and to be treated with respect as sources of revelation, community, and guidance. To use a phrase from Martin Buber, the text is to be regarded as a "Thou" capable of addressing us as its expectant readers.
Our respect for the scriptures, however, should not limit us from subjecting them to text critical analyses. We believe that philological, historical, and critical analyses have the power to assist us in the process of understanding the text as Thou. We often look to text critical methods early in an SR session to clarify issues of language, history, and the context of our text both within the wider scriptures and exegetical traditions of specific religions.
The first and most important stage of SR is achieved when a give and take trialogue about the meaning and relevance or the scriptures occurs. But SR does not remain at the stage of a trialogue. Rather, it requires a further movement that is more explicitly analytical and synthetic. In the second stage of SR, we come after the hermeneutical event to collect, organize, and structure the various interpretations which group text study has engendered.
A final stage of SR addresses what the study session has to do with the world. How does it bring more understanding, more critical insight, more repair, more peace and healing to the world? This final stage actually exists as the prior stage of all scriptural reasoning. The ethical and spiritual issues that beset our world are what bring us together in the first place. Our prior awareness of these issues remains with us at every moment as we prepare for a session and travel through it. Given the strife that exists in the world among Jews, Moslems, and Christians, one may say that the very act of our meeting together for serious dialogue about our traditions is an act of peace making and healing. However, without denying the healing power of our very meeting, SR hopes to go beyond this to address, more directly, issues such as war, genocide, poverty, and disease that plague our communities and our world.

Return to Main Gateways Page >>


	What is SR? A Handbook of Scriptural Reasoning Draft, Steven Kepnes What is SR? SR is a practice of group reading of the scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that seeks to build sociality among its practitioners and release sources of wisdom and compassion for healing our separate communities and for repair of the world. Participants in SR come to it as both representatives of academic institutions and particular "houses" (churches, mosques, synagogues) of worship. SR meets, however, outside of these institutions in special times and in separate spaces that we liken to biblical "tents of meeting." We come together in these tents of meeting to read and reason with our scriptures. We then return to our religious and academic institutions with renewed energy to bring criticism and healing to our institutions. The Reason of Scriptural Reasoning SR is the thinking that occurs when scripture is taken up and discussed by a group of readers. It therefore works through both the reasoning that is implicit in scripture and the reasoning that we, as interpreters, bring to scripture. But, most importantly, scriptural reasoning is the reasoning that we discover or that is "revealed" as we engage in dialogue about scripture. SR includes moments of reflection on group practices of reading that collect, summarize and organize the insights that are generated. These acts of reflection will take the form of summary, commentary, and rules rather than systematic philosophies or theological treatises. Why Monotheisms? SR begins with the scriptures of the monotheistic religions because the initial members of the SR community came from the traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. One could also argue that we begin with Monotheisms because the problems that most plague the world were generated by the West. Therefore, the religions of the West are implicated in both the problems and the solutions to the contemporary world. However, fully developing this argument would require a discussion of whether or not Islam and even Judaism are properly designated as "religions of the West." Thus, a more simple answer to the question, "why monotheisms?" is that these are the traditions that we know best and these are the traditions that give us life and energy and knowledge to want to repair the world. SR is neither about the roots of Christianity in Judaism nor the roots of Islam in Jewish and Christian traditions. SR acknowledges Abraham (and Adam before him) as a source figure for the three monotheistic religions, but SR does not seek to reduce or dissolve these religions into some universal Abrahamic faith. SR, rather, is about serious conversations between three religious traditions that preserves difference as it establishes relationships. SR seeks to move beyond interfaith dialogues between only two monotheistic faiths to trialogic discussions. When the third is added to a dialogue between two traditions the conversations no longer merely go back and forth dyadically. The third creates a multiplicity of cross-cutting relations among and between each of the three that is rewarded with more complex and profound discussions. We do not claim that other non-monotheistic religions are false or incapable of serving the goals that we have set. We do not rule out working with members of other traditions in the future. Yet, at this time of beginning, we begin with what we are and what we know and what generates our concern and care. The End Time and Our Time SR is eschatological in that it anticipates an end time in which all the children of Abraham will live together in peace. Yet it believes that before that time, Jews, Christians, and Moslems can participate in something of that end time by entering into the space between the scriptures of the respective traditions. Why Scriptures? Although religions and Western religions, in particular, contain more than scriptures-e.g. symbols, doctrines, and saints--we begin with scriptures. We do this, most simply, because Jews, Christians and Moslems share common narratives and they share a common respect for the scriptural texts as fundamental documents of revelation and religious foundation. We have found that reading scriptures together provides a unique way to form relations between both the diverse readers who assemble around the texts and the traditions that the texts have given rise to. As ancient texts written in ancient languages and understood as sources of divine revelation, the meaning of scripture cannot be immediately known. Scriptures, especially, the scriptures of others, are necessarily distant and hermeneutically opaque. Scripture, therefore, provides us all with an initial challenge to discern meaning. Scripture challenges us with empty spaces and lacunae into which each interpreter can place herself in the discovery of meaning. With the aid of the distance and external medium provided by the text, people with different personal backgrounds and ideological agendas become readers talking to one another about the common subject of the meaning of the scriptures. Hermeneutical Presuppositions SR functions with a triadic semiotic that assumes that meaning arises out of the relationship between the sign, referent and community of interpreters (in Peirce's terms, the "interpretant") that reads the text. This type of semiotic transfers hermeneutic power to scriptural reasoners who face the scripture at the time and place in which they meet to read together. When we read we each bring with us our own "internal library." This library starts with our knowledge of Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek and includes historical information, theology, modern and postmodern philosophy and science. It also includes our own previous readings of the texts and hearings of it in ritual and liturgical contexts and, finally, our own understandings of God, our historical moment, and our own lives. Bringing our libraries and our awareness of the contemporary world to the act of interpreting scripture, we necessarily bring to the ancient texts new questions and problems. However, our experience has been that these new questions breath new life into our scriptures. In addition, we find our questions illumined in startling clarity and our problems addressed by the wisdom and guidance of the scriptures aroused and renewed. Neither Liberal not Fundamentalist SR believes that the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam remain central vehicles through which the presence of God is known and experienced. As SR fosters co-readings of scriptures by Jews, Christians and Muslims in which the boundaries of the traditions are crossed, it does not seek to find "underlying unities," or "overarching principles" or "universal essences" into which the scriptures and traditions can be dissolved. In this sense, SR departs from the objectives of much modern liberal religious dialogue. SR attempts to articulate and preserve the separate identities of each of the three faiths. SR assumes that the individual traditions constitute, in George Lindbeck's terms, unique "cultural-linguistic" religious systems that maintain internal principles and mechanisms of coherence. This means, at a minimum, that when a word is used in a religious tradition it can best be defined by a series of words and terms from the religion in which it sits. Thus, even though the same term appears in one or two or three religions, it will necessarily carry a unique 'semantic aura,' a set of cognates and uses, that is specific to its use in a particular religious "language-game." Our hermeneutical openness to a multiplicity of meanings for scripture differs widely from a fundamentalist or literalist hermeneutics. We also oppose fundamentalist attempts to isolate their particular religious tradition from other religions and the contemporary world to reinforce triumphalist claims of superiority. SR cherishes the modern liberal victories for religious tolerance and human rights but it assails the wholesale attacks on religious traditions that are also associated with liberalism. SR seeks a "third" position between liberalism and traditionalism that some of its members have referred to as "post-liberal." How We Do Scriptural Reasoning Given our principles and objectives, how do we do scriptural reasoning? First of all, we endeavor to establish the conditions for the possibility of scriptural reasoning. Thus, SR begins before we meet together to read. Thought must first be given to the scriptures that will be used. Our practice is to choose texts from the three traditions that focus on a common figure, e.g. Abraham, or a theme or issue, such as hospitality, or creation, or sacrifice. Scriptures of the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and Qur'an are our primary texts, but we also may include materials from secondary sacred literature such as rabbinic Midrash and Talmud, Christian exegesis, and Hadith. In SR study sessions we are not heavy handed about our "themes," as we find that quickly new themes and issues arise and we want to be free to follow these wherever they lead. After texts are chosen, attention must be given to where the sessions will be held, what kind of room will be used, and how the tables and chairs are to be set up. Scriptural reasoning requires space for small intimate groups of about 6 to study together as well as a room to bring the small groups together for plenary sessions. Each small group should have representatives of each of the three traditions and it is best to have each tradition represented by more than one person. Each session requires a convener and this person should have both knowledge of SR theory and experience in SR practice. Egalitarian principles of speech must be respected and protected. This means that the voices of women and men, senior and junior members, critical text scholars and theologians, and representatives of the different traditions are treated equally. To safeguard the cardinal rule of an egalitarian speech situation the convener may have to exercise her authority and intervene in the discussion to quiet a particularly strong voice or bring out a quiet one. We privilege no single religious framework and no single methodological approach to the scriptures accept the principle that the texts are to be placed at the center of our discussions and to be treated with respect as sources of revelation, community, and guidance. To use a phrase from Martin Buber, the text is to be regarded as a "Thou" capable of addressing us as its expectant readers. Our respect for the scriptures, however, should not limit us from subjecting them to text critical analyses. We believe that philological, historical, and critical analyses have the power to assist us in the process of understanding the text as Thou. We often look to text critical methods early in an SR session to clarify issues of language, history, and the context of our text both within the wider scriptures and exegetical traditions of specific religions. The first and most important stage of SR is achieved when a give and take trialogue about the meaning and relevance or the scriptures occurs. But SR does not remain at the stage of a trialogue. Rather, it requires a further movement that is more explicitly analytical and synthetic. In the second stage of SR, we come after the hermeneutical event to collect, organize, and structure the various interpretations which group text study has engendered. A final stage of SR addresses what the study session has to do with the world. How does it bring more understanding, more critical insight, more repair, more peace and healing to the world? This final stage actually exists as the prior stage of all scriptural reasoning. The ethical and spiritual issues that beset our world are what bring us together in the first place. Our prior awareness of these issues remains with us at every moment as we prepare for a session and travel through it. Given the strife that exists in the world among Jews, Moslems, and Christians, one may say that the very act of our meeting together for serious dialogue about our traditions is an act of peace making and healing. However, without denying the healing power of our very meeting, SR hopes to go beyond this to address, more directly, issues such as war, genocide, poverty, and disease that plague our communities and our world. Return to Main Gateways Page >>
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