CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
2.1 Background of the Tri-Polar Exegetical Model
2.1.1 The Tri-Polar Exegetical Model by Grenholm and Patte
2.1.2.2 Contextualization
The term “contextualization” comes from the verb to contextualize which the Oxford Dictionary defines as: “to consider something in relation to the situation in which it happens or exists” (Wehmeier 2000:480) or “to place in, or treat as part of, a context”
(Simpson and Weimer 1989:821). As noticed above, one aspect that motivated Draper in the reformulation of the scriptural criticism by Grenholm and Patte was his focus on the context. Ukpong understands the term “context” as referring to the background against which a text is to be interpreted. In particular, he refers to an existing human community such as a country, local church, ethnic group etc, designated as the subject of the interpretation. This includes the people’s worldview and historical, social, economic, political and religious life experiences (Ukpong 1995a:6). The act of analyzing the context of the reader/reading community is what Draper refers to with the term
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contextualization. When reading the Bible bearing in mind our context, we give priority to the context of the reader, not because the Bible does not confront us with the Word of God, but because we are pre-disposed by our own social, economic, political and cultural context in a certain way (Draper 2002:16).
Draper believes that the social location of the reader/interpreter determines the kind of questions and tools s/he will use to interpret the text as well as the kind of answer s/he expects. It is primarily during this moment that the reader/interpreter speaks back to the text, challenging it with the specific questions and problems from his/her own life- situation or more precisely from his/her setting and context. It is indeed obvious that the knowledge of the reader/interpreter’s context helps her/him to recognize specific needs from her/his own worldview, which allows her/him to interact effectively with the text.
This awareness aroused Draper’s interest to go further and call the reader/interpreter to study and understand who s/he is, what is his/her setting, his/her culture, in order to know and consider all the circumstances surrounding him/her, and the influence they may make on his/her understanding of the biblical text which was written to a completely different people in a different society.
Ukpong supports Draper’s emphasis on studying one’s context, by saying that a critical study of the interpreter’s context enables her/him to be aware of the influences that work on her/him as s/he goes about reading the text, utilizing them positively and thus exercising control over them (Ukpong 1995a:7). However, the critical study, or differently put, the knowledge of one’s context, does not mean that there is a context that reads the Bible better. Rather, it helps the reader/reading community to make an effective interpretation which fits his/her context and is thus beneficial to him/her or the reading community. Hence, the contextualization process is a phase during which the exegete goes further, that is from what the text possibly meant to its first readers/hearers to what the text means for him/her or his/her community of faith in his/her own time. In short, Draper sums up the goal of this phase by saying that it aims to help us understand ourselves as historical beings rooted in a specific time and place, confronted by a historical text that is also rooted in a specific time and place (Draper 2001:156). This is a
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tool for confronting the Word of God then allowing it to speak to our contemporary social, cultural, economic and political situation.”13
One of the necessary consequences of prioritizing the role of the reader and the reader’s context in the way outlined above, is that the reader’s questions and concerns will not necessarily or even likely be the same as that of the text in its own context. The
“interpretive lens” does not derive from the text but from the reader.
Depending on the goal of the reader/interpreter, it is from this perspective of the deep knowledge of his/her context or worldview that s/he embarks on the reading of the biblical text, which is identified as
‘reading the text against the context of the reader’. This stage leads the reader/interpreter to a climax of his/her conversation with the text, the third pole, the moment called appropriation.
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13 Victor Cole (1998:17-19) speaks about the four differences between what he calls theologies of contextualization and contextual theology. One of marked differences is the database used for theologizing.
He names two separate sources or databases: the absolute database, which is the Bible, God’s inscripturated Word, and the second part, the relative database which consists on one’s contemporary social, cultural setting. Cole believes that the difference between the two resides in the fact that when dealing with the theologies of contextualization, very little is drawn from the absolute, i.e. from the Bible. However, he is aware that even in evangelical theologies the tendency is to draw solely from the Bible to the neglect of our contemporary and social and cultural setting. Cole therefore suggests that the contextual evangelical theology ought to let the absolute data confront with the relative one. I find that Cole’s ideas agree with Draper’s emphasis on the contextual exegesis which stresses the exegesis of the biblical texts both within its socio- cultural context as well as the social, cultural setting of the reader.
14 Gerald West (2009) describes this as the “ideo-theological option” of the reader.
However, even supposedly “objective” hermeneutical models are dominated by the concerns of the modern reader. For instance modern historical and scientific concerns which dominate many if not most of the commentaries on John’s Gospels are completely alien to the world of the text itself and just as likely to obscure or distort the interpretation of the text.
In the case of the Tri-polar theoretical framework, this gap is highlighted and acknowledged. Nevertheless, this approach does seek to give the text a moment of autonomy and a “voice” which may speak back to the reader. In fact it is precisely that
“voice” which enables the reader to reach towards a changed praxis in their context, because of the reader’s acknowledgment of the nature of the text as sacred text.
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This last phase of the Tri-Polar Exegetical Model is identified as the climax of the interpretive process. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term appropriation as taking something as one’s own or for one’s own use (Simpson and Weimer 1989:587).
Draper expresses the same idea. He sees this stage as a process of owning the Word, owning the message received from the text as one’s own, accepting the meaning of the text and its implications for the context of the reader/interpreter. This is a stage of appropriation of the sacred text in the light of the context of the reader/ interpreter. In fact, from the description of this moment by Patte, Grenholm and Draper, this is a moment whereby the context of all the text, its readers, the community of faith and its context are brought to a dynamic relation. The horizon of the text and that of the reader fuse together to form not a third horizon separate from the former two, but makes a new horizon. It is during this phase that the reader/interpreter/reading community of faith acquires a new understanding of the message presented by the text.
The combination of the inputs of these three scholars, Grenholm, Patte and Draper, results in a strong model for interpretation. However, there is also a need to look into its strengths or weakness.