“The Catholic exegete and theologian Francis Martin has
shown that biblical interpretation requires an account of historical reality informed
by a scriptural metaphysics rooted in the relation of “participation” that is
creation.[1]
This is so because exegesis (including much contemporary exegesis) that
participates doctrinally and spiritually in the realities depicted by
Scripture, and thus reads Scripture not merely as a record of something
strictly in the past, requires the sense that all human time participates metaphysically
(order of creation) and Christologically-pneumatologically (order of grace) in
God’s eternal Providence and therefore that no historical text or event can be
studied strictly “on its own terms.” Conversely, certain metaphysical
presuppositions are inadequate to Christian biblical interpretation.”
[1]
Francis Martin, “Revelation as Disclosure: Creation,” in Wisdom and
Holiness, Science and Scholarship: Essays in Honor of Matthew L. Lamb, ed.
Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering (Naples, Fla.: Sapientia Press, 2007),
205-47.
Matthew Levering's Participatory Biblical Exegesis: A Theology of Biblical Interpretation (University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), 18.
