CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
2.2 Evaluation of the Tri-Polar Exegetical Model
28 2.1.2.3 Appropriation
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.
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exegete’s context. This is in line with Grenholm’s and Patte’s observation that with this model of interpretation pastors/priests as well as other conscious believers ‘strive’ to be responsible when discerning and formulating the teaching of the Scripture for believers today (Grenholm 2000:6).
This mode of interpretation agrees with Stephen Bevans’ observation about contextual theology. He believes that contextual theology takes into account the faith experience of the past that is recorded in scripture and kept alive, preserved, defended even perhaps neglected or suppressed, and also takes into account the experience of the current context.
Bevans stresses the meaning of the text in the past and the present, as does the Tri-Polar Exegetical Model. He focuses on the act of being faithful to the experience and context of the past. In other words, he strives to draw the meaning of the text, being as faithful as possible to its context in the past, and also owning that message from the perspective of the present context. He then emphasizes that theology can be authentic only when what has been received is appropriated, made our own. He believes that this happens only when what was received from the context of the past, that is, the meaning of the text from its original context, is passed through the sieve of our own individual and contemporary experience (Bevans 2002:5).
The attention paid to both the context of the text and the context of the interpreter constitutes a considerable strength of the model. In the case of this study for instance, I am very much aware that the selected biblical texts I have to deal with in the Fourth Gospel are about people from a community very different from Rwandan culture.
Although they may be speaking about the role of women, those women were in a totally different society in the early centuries. Now Rwandan women are living in the twenty- first century, in a very different setting, so the distantiation phase of this approach will be a useful tool in attempting to understand what the selected texts might have possibly meant in their past contexts. The goal here is to attempt to allow the texts to express their divine revelatory qualities that are important to my context.
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This interpretive tool is therefore designated to help me avoid distortions in meaning, as much as this can be done. The Tri-Polar Exegetical Model also has the advantage of being an integrative approach. It respects other approaches, in conformity with Grenholm and Patte’s observation that scholarly integrity in any interpretation requires integrating a plurality of approaches (Grenholm and Patte 2000:2). Grenholm and Patte are aware that their approach could not claim to be an exhaustive method of biblical interpretation; it shows its inclusive aspect by welcoming and valuing other interpretive approaches. These contribute to its task of the scrutiny of biblical meaning. The accommodating character of the model will allow the incorporation of some aspects of inculturation and liberation hermeneutics in the contextualization phase of the present study, as we shall see below.
The Model is also worth commending for its capacity to interrelate the three poles of interpretation in a complementary way. Grenholm and Patte believe that the three poles represent three loci where interpretation takes place, as well as three loci where revelation occurs for believers. Draper argues that the exegetical goal of the whole process of the model is only reached when there has been a full exploration of all the three stages of interpretation, then the appropriation may be reached. Bevans also expresses the same idea saying that contextual theology is authentic only when the message we receive from the text is appropriated, made our own (Draper 2001:154; Grenholm 2000:14; Bevans 2002:5). The Tri-Polar Exegetical Model is viewed to be an important tool for contextual exegesis, although it has its limitations.
2.2.2 Limitations of the Tri-Polar Exegetical Model
Although the strengths of the Tri-Polar Exegetical Model are appreciated, like many other interpretive approaches, this model cannot assume to provide all the answers to all the problematic issues involved in the analysis of biblical texts. This section does not claim to exhaust the limitations of the Tri-Polar Model; its focus is on a few that affect its applicability to the present work.
As noticed earlier, Grenholm and Patte, as well as Draper (2001:155), believe that the three stages of the Tri-Polar Model are of equal standing, which implies that during the
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interpretation process one may start from any of the stages when applying the model to the text. This suggestion may create some confusion in the applicability of the model to some research work if it is understood that the order of the poles never matters. I would suggest rather that the choice of order for the three poles be determined by the nature of the research work one is undertaking. This applies especially to the distantiation and the contextualization poles. For instance, if a person is doing a contextual study and understands very well the context against which they are reading the biblical text, they may start from the analysis of the biblical text, the distantiation phase. But when the context against which they are reading the text is not totally understood, starting from the study of that context is more advisable, more so if the context of the reader/interpreter is to be the subject and not the object of interpretation.
In studies such as the present work, I find it especially difficult to begin the process with the appropriation phase because, as it appears in the elaboration of the method from the perspectives of Grenholm, Patte and Draper, the appropriation phase consists of hearing the biblical message, owning it and accepting its challenges, thus being affected by the message or neglecting it as mentioned above. It is therefore difficult to move on to the appropriation of the message before accessing that particular message, that is before studying the text, studying and understanding one’s own context, so as to understand the message as it is challenging to a particular life-situation. In rare cases, the reader/interpreter may like to start by looking at how s/he is already appropriating the text to her/his context. But these are exceptional cases; otherwise the appropriation of the message comes through the dialogue between the reader/reading community of faith and the text.
The emphasis on the study of the text, especially the particular focus on allowing it to be on its own in order for it to speak by itself, is admirable aspect of the model. However, the reader/interpreter must be warned against the risk of producing a literary interpretation of the text with a meaning that may not be relevant to today’s context - for example, the passages in the letters to the Corinthians and to Timothy on the issue of worship (1 Cor. 13:33ff, 1 Tim. 2:11-15) and women’s participation as well as several
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other biblical passages. Such risk is minimized as long as the message received by the reader/believer of the text passes through the “sieve” of his/her own context or life situation.
Again, examining the practicability of interpretation during the process of contextualization and the appropriation poles, I would agree with Samba’s observation that there is no established distinction between the two phases, that these two phases/poles are rather interwoven, and not clearly distinctive (Samba 2002:40). In fact, it may not be easy to know when you have passed from the contextualization stage to appropriation. There are some gaps in the aspect of dealing with the reader/interpreter’s context. This is where aspects of the inculturation approach can be useful to supplement to the Tri-Polar Model, by supplying a methodology that guides the analysis of the interpreter’s context. Ukpong (1995a :11-12) has suggested some steps to follow in the analysis of the reader/ interpreter’s context. I found these steps helpful for the analysis of the Rwandan context as required by this study. I will therefore make use of a combination of the Tri-Polar Model and some stages of Inculturation Hermeneutics during the contextualization pole in the analysis of the Rwandan context.
Another limitation is displayed by the important gap which is observed at the level of the appropriation “pole”. This is a phase whereby a conversation takes place between the text and its context, and the interpreter’s context. The promoters of the Tri-Polar Model have not explained in detail the process of this conversation, especially how the gap between the two contexts is bridged for the conversation to take place. At this stage, West’s suggestion may be helpful. He clarifies that the conversation between the text and the interpreter’s context is facilitated by the reader. It is the reader who enables the regular back-and-forth movement between text and context, thus making the text and context mutually engage (West 2009:250). In the process of appropriation, the context of the reader prompts him/her, through his/her ideological commitment to it and through its ideological formation of him/her. West observes that similarly, the sacred text prompts the reader through his/her theological orientation towards it and through its theological formation of him/her (West 2009:254). West contends that the social location of the
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reader influences his/her ideo-theological orientation with which he/she approaches the text. For West, the whole process of interpretation is an integrative dynamic between the three poles which he describes as follows:
The contextual pole makes contribution to the ideo-theological orientation of the appropriation pole, in terms of the reader’s social location and the choices readers make about their social location. The textual pole makes a contribution to the ideo-theological orientation of the appropriation pole, in terms of its own core axis (as discerned by particular readers) (West 2009:255).
Notwithstanding the limitations of the Tri-Polar approach, I find the model helpful. For the purposes of this study, the limitations of this model will be minimized by supplementing it, in the contextual phase, with aspects of inculturation and, in the appropriation phase, by taking into consideration the concepts of social location and ideo- theological orientation as described by West. The application of the Tri-Polar Interpretive approach to this study is described in the following section.