As the first chaplain at the Andrew Murray Centre for Spirituality in Wellington, South Africa, since 2019, I am challenged to build on centuries of biblical interpretation and contemplation in church and cultural contexts worldwide. The purpose of the Centre is to create a space conducive to being silent, ‘hearing the word’, aware of one’s own presence in the presence of God and that of others. The bible serves as the primary authoritative text in the daily rhythms and rites at the Centre.

My reading of the bible² was formed and challenged by my exposure to various cultural, church and academic contexts (Mouton 2002:1–6). Inspired by the wisdom of ‘regular readers’, students and colleagues, I developed interest in the ‘authority’ of these texts over time and within different cultures. The paradoxical nature of biblical texts as both ‘word of God’ and products of human interpretation from within male-dominated cultures challenged me (cf Schneiders 1991).

A general insight into the relational nature of knowledge, and the metaphorical language in particular, opened the way for me to appreciate the life-giving potential of these texts within their cultural ‘constraints’. At the same time, I became increasingly aware of the devastating effect these texts have when they are interpreted as ‘word of God’ in an unnuanced, one-sided and absolutistic way. For me, this rigidity changed into a crucial challenge to consider the rich yet complex nature and intent of these texts. For this reason, I am concerned with the poignancy of rigid biblical interpretation – its power to convince, the way it is received and the effect it has on the lives of people and faith communities (Mouton 2006).

It is in this regard that the life and work of J. Wentzel van Huyssteen as mentor, colleague and friend became a lasting influence on my thinking as a biblical scholar. Van Huyssteen is a South African-born systematic theologian, who served as first head of the Department of Biblical and Religion Studies at the former University of Port Elizabeth (UPE), now the Nelson Mandela University (1972–1991). He was my lecturer in Systematic Theology when I enrolled for an MTh in New Testament at UPE in 1985. His teaching and writing influenced me greatly regarding the quest for ultimate meaning, the relational nature of all knowledge, the beauty of life in general, and the metaphorical nature of theology. I was interested in reading the New Testament texts ethically and intra-culturally, particularly with regard to women’s lives on the continent of Africa. I was intrigued by his nuanced, sophisticated hermeneutic on the fringe of various cross-disciplinary discourses. He encouraged me to submit my first article for publication in an academic journal, to attend international conferences, and to develop my own voice as a New Testament scholar. He introduced me to authors (in the field of Systematic Theology) and his extended network of international colleagues – Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Sallie McFague, David Tracy, Mark Kline Taylor, Miroslav Volf, Niels Gregersen, and Bill Eerdmans (publisher and friend). During 1990–1991 we were colleagues in the Department of Biblical and Religion Studies before he and his wife Hester moved to the USA. At Princeton Theological Seminary, he did the pioneering work as the first (and until now, the only) James I. McCord Professor of Theology and Science, specialising in the philosophy of science and religious epistemology. In the USA and further afield, he was acclaimed for his unconventional contributions to interdisciplinary discourses between theology and science. He worked and lived in the USA for almost 23 years (1992–2014) before returning to retire in South Africa.

I will focus with broad strokes on contexts and processes associated with the reception of biblical texts in general. Through the ages – at least until the European Enlightenment – Christian believers listened to, interpreted and appropriated the bible in a great variety of ways, wanting to under-stand their everyday lives. They were not so much interested in the biblical texts itself, or in what we today know as the academic or intellectual study of the bible. They were interested in scripture as canon, as norm – a guiding lamp, a light for their path. Without appropriating the bible to their everyday needs, challenges, sufferings, fears and hopes, the reading process, for many, would simply be incomplete and pointless. For them, the bible would be useful only insofar as it helped them to live faithfully coram Deo (cf Smit 1998a:275–291).

Since the Enlightenment, however, the attitude towards the bible changed. Different questions were asked. Paradoxically, people became more interested in this collection of ancient documents as an object for study, distinguished and separated from understanding life by means of it. The questions being asked of the bible were increasingly of a theoretical and ‘objective’ nature, instead of being personal, existential, and related to everyday life of its recipients (Smit 1998a:291–296).

We are living at a time in which Christianity is passing through a phase during which believers worldwide are (re)discovering the power of the bible for their daily lives. There is evidence of this trend in South Africa and especially in the rest of the African continent (cf eds. West & Dube 2000). The trend has recently been intensified by the devastating effects of the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic. The moment affords theology in general, and the biblical sciences in particular, an opportunity to assist the ecumenical church in all its manifestations to make sense of the human story amid disaster and loss, at the same time accounting for the ways in which scripture functions ‘authoritatively’ in the church’s ethos and decision-making. What makes this a particularly moral issue, is the influence these texts have on how people understand God, as well as their own identities, and daily choices in personal and public life.

The escalating discourse worldwide about the functioning of scripture in the Christian ethos and ethics needs to be looked at within this context (cf Mouton 2002:7–13). It is part of a much broader discussion among literary scholars on ‘the ethics of interpretation’, which requires that people take responsibility for the way they read – specifically to the nature of the literature involved and the socio-historical contexts within which it is received.³ This challenge becomes more urgent when it comes to canonised (religious) texts, which are read with the anticipation of communicating new life and hope. This is by no means a straightforward issue because of the variety of ways in which the bible has been interpreted and appropriated during the course of the human story.⁴ It confirms the relational nature of all human knowledge, including interpretations of the bible (cf van Huyssteen 1987:15–51). An ‘ethics of New Testament interpretation’ would thus be challenged to account for the dynamic yet complex nature of authority and intensions of these texts, and their appropria-tion in terms of the faith experiences and needs of present-day readers/audiences.

According to their multidimensional nature and purpose, these texts necessarily invite multiple questions (cf n.3). In the context of honouring van Huyssteen’s life and work, I will focus on the following. Firstly, how do the New Testament texts refer to God as ultimate reality? Secondly, where metaphorically speaking, does redescription of reality by their receivers occur? And finally, of what use are exponents of New Testament Studies to other theological disciplines’ and the church’s social responsibility and public ethos?

I start with some short comments on the origins of the New Testament texts. In general, one can say that these texts are the result of human activity wanting to understand transforming experiences with Jesus of Nazareth (cf Mouton 2001:121–122). The resurrection faith of the early followers of Jesus, for example, was rooted in paradox; it needed interpretation. In diverse and changing social contexts, the uninterrupted experience of God’s life-giving Spirit was a continual challenge to (re)interpret traditions and (re)imagine the future.

Any interpretation, including the interpretation of ‘religious’ experience, obviously happens in the light of available symbols. This would have been the situation for the early followers of Jesus. It was unavoidable for them to interpret new experiences and changing circumstances in the light of a pluralistic first-century Mediterranean symbolic world. The Greco and Roman (specifically Hellenistic) culture, as well as the religious symbols of Judaism were complex and diverse. The rapid growth of the Jesus move-ment required adjustment to new settings. In the process they did not invent a new language, but rather reinterpreted, rearranged and reappropriated available symbols and traditions (cf Johnson 1999:5, 35–38).⁵

Similar processes of experience and interpretation continued during the collection, selection and canonisation of the New Testament documents by the early church fathers. Through these processes the early church affirmed that those writings – especially in their being addressed to, and conditioned by particular historical contexts – obtained enduring authority and relevance for the church.⁶ It is in their diversity of settings, genre and style that these texts addressed different contexts through centuries. This is why the whole collection of diverse and complex writings has to be kept alive if the church is to affirm its identity.

An interactive dynamic like this provides New Testament Studies with a useful framework – to continue the interpretive processes of the early church, critically accounting for our own interpretation in different times and places.

The Christ event was to amplify and reshape all previous experiences and interpretations of the God of the Hebrew scriptures (Mouton 2006:57–60). It would challenge the early (and later) followers of Jesus radically to revise their everyday lives within a faith relationship with the living God through Jesus Christ and the Spirit. If Jesus (as interpreted by the New Testament texts) opened up new ways and directions of speaking about God, humanity and society, how was it supposed to be executed?

The ability to explore, know and describe reality is an awesome challenge to human beings. Perhaps more remarkable, is the ability of human imagination to re-describe reality, to rename experiences, and to retell their stories from new perspectives. This involves the human ability to speak metaphorically – to recognise new possibilities and to make new connections between familiar images and experiences (Lategan 1994:21; Mouton 2006:60–64; van Huyssteen 1986:158–168, 1987:26–31, 1997:169–178).

Metaphorical language distinctively extends throughout the New Testament writings. Literary tools such as genre (narrative, parable, poetry, apocalyptic symbols), liturgy, art, tradition, and people – all function as rhetorical instruments for redescribing reality. The early Christians, for example, referred to God as redeemer in Jesus Christ; to Jesus as son of God, lord (ὁ κύριός) and saviour; witnessed to the Spirit as the seal of God’s ownership of them; to themselves as the body of Christ, as God’s household and holy temple. They re-imagined and re-named their understanding of God and their daily life experiences from the new perspective of the Christ event.⁷ This way metaphor can function as a powerful, reorienting lens showing a renewed self-understanding and ethos, creating a perception of the past, present and future.

The appeal of metaphor to me is its imaginative and transformative characteristics, its ability to refer to, shape and make sense of an alternative reality. According to Ricoeur (1975, 1976:89–95), the transformative power of a text lies in its ability to suggest and mediate this alternative reality, creating the possibility of opening up a ‘proposed world’ which readers can choose to adopt or inhabit and identify with. In this way a text may reveal new possibilities – new ways of looking at matters, new ways of relating to people, new ways of thinking and behaving (see Lategan 1992:154, 1994:131–133; Thiselton 1992:351–372; van Huyssteen 1987:25–26, 1997:169–174). In this way a text has a convincing advance towards renewal, inviting people to re-imagine their life stories, and to inhabit it as the real world for them (cf Lategan 1996; van Huyssteen 1987:38–51).

The referential and transformative potential of a text corresponds with the notion of the ‘implied reader’ as ‘the reader we have to be willing to become in order to bring the reading experience to its full measure’ (Vorster 1989:25). Since the development of reader response and reception theories, Wolfgang Iser’s concept of the ‘implied reader’ became a powerful tool in describing the role of audiences/readers in the process of understanding. The implied or textually defined reader refers to:

In this sense metaphors are important lenses, clues, signals or shifting devices by means of which an author can guide her/his audience towards adopting a preferred position, or inhabiting a new moral world.

What effect was the language of the New Testament writings supposed to have on their audiences? What was their implied rhetorical function? (cf Schüssler Fiorenza 1988:13–17). It seems that these texts were intended to focus their audiences’ attention on the God of Jesus Christ and the Spirit – the proclamation of God’s pathos, God’s liberating and healing grace towards humankind, but also as an invitation to identify with God’s revelation and purpose for creation in Christ. According to McFague (1982:31–66, 90–194), the heart of the drama of Jesus’ death and resurrection is the tension it creates between the accepted ways of relating to God and others, and a new way of living in the world.

For the church to identify with, and inhabit, the strange alternative world of the New Testament writings is an ongoing, interactive process. It involves the wonder of a (re)creat-ing Sender-God’s initiative and the receiving of God’s grace by individuals and faith communities. It is as much a gift of God’s grace as a faithful hermeneutical choice:

Therefore, for New Testament Studies to give account of the nature of these writings and their reception in new times and places – as a life-giving and sense-making activity – the authority of these texts has to be (re)focused and (re)structured within the settings of uninterrupted interaction between God’s Spirit, their diverse textual dimensions, as well as the interests, dreams and fears of contemporary faith communities. Such an approach will embrace the many dimensions of the hermeneutical circle, and will be truthful to the dynamic nature and purpose of these texts. Surprisingly, the spiral movement between the Spirit, scripture and the concrete needs of current audiences is also crucial for unlocking the liberating meaning of those ancient canonised texts. It is their power to facilitate, persuade and affirm new possibilities, to encourage, console, and to invite, move and challenge their receivers to (re)imagine these texts authoritatively.

The transforming and authoritative power of the New Testament writings are shown within the interaction between Spirit, text and context. This richness and complexity already indicated the attempts of the early followers of Jesus to interpret and understand their life experiences. The continuous process which had to show them how to match their new identity in Christ with a lifestyle and language worthy of their calling, took place in the creative, liminal strain between their understanding of Torah and their memory of Jesus.

The concept of ‘liminality’ was introduced by French anthropologist Arnold van Gennep, who used the term ‘rites of passage’ in connection with the ceremonies and rituals performed at different stages in the life cycle of individuals and groups (birth, puberty, marriage, parenthood, retirement and death). These rites serve principally to provide guidance for the responsibilities encountered in the new phase (Van Gennep 1960:1–13, 21). Van Gennep (1960:15–25, 192–194) distinguished three types of rites: rites of separation from a previous world, rites of transition, and rites of incorporation into a new world. Using the Latin word limen (threshold), he respectively calls these rites pre-liminal, liminal and post-liminal. In the fields of cultural anthropology and sociology, the notion of liminality has since been developed further by several scholars, in particular by North American anthropologist Victor Turner. It has also been adapted and appropriated by theologians such as Gerald Arbuckle and Leo Perdue, both with reference to Victor Turner, and Mark Kline Taylor, with reference to anthropologist Paul Rabinow. Taylor (1990:199–208), a systematic theologian from Princeton (and former colleague of van Huyssteen), develops liminality – together with ‘admiration’ – as a Christian reconciliatory strategy for dealing with human differences. He observed:

Taylor describes the liminal space between cultural (including gender) boundaries as a difficult, fragile, risky and trying experience, of which the ambiguities and strains are not easily tolerated. At the same time, the liminal encounter represents a dynamic and dialectic process wherein no one remains static. As new alliances are constructed in the interaction between different worlds, people’s moral identities and lifestyles are reconstituted by it. From within this space their hope for the future and their courage to live faithfully in the present would be shaped. The authors of the New Testament writings facilitate such processes by constantly reminding their readers of the privilege and associated ethos of their new position in Christ, strikingly different from who they were before.⁸

This movement from one insight (position) to another can be described as the typical metaphorical processes of orientation, disorientation (alienation) and reorientation. It is in this context that I find the concept of ‘liminality’ particularly helpful for describing the complex and ambiguous interaction between senders, texts and receivers, which represents the ‘epicentre’ of textual communication in general and New Testament Studies in particular. Liminality involves experiences of both the wonder and discomfort when one is suspended between different groups, persons or viewpoints. These are processes implied by the very nature of the New Testament writings themselves. The majority of their implied receivers found them-selves within liminal or transitional contexts – characterised by comprehensive changes in their thinking, as well as changing political, economic, social and moral conditions in the first-century Mediterranean world (cf Meeks 1986, 1993). The creativity, tension, paradox and risk of liminal spaces are ironically implied by these texts as the most appropriate context for moral development and spiritual growth (Mouton 2006:64–66).

If the epicentre of New Testament interpretation is characterised by such a rich yet com-plex dynamic. It certainly provides New Testament Studies with important clues towards the ethos and pathos of its task. If, as we have seen, the authority of these texts lies in their metaphorical ability to disclose new perspectives on reality and new ways of living in the world, New Testa-ment Studies is challenged to do likewise – to mediate the discernment of such an alternative world, a world characterised by God’s radical presence in Jesus Christ and the Spirit. It is in this regard that I am convinced that New Testament scholars are called to support other theological disciplines and the church – particularly in its social responsibility – where it becomes a liminal place, boldly stepping into risky spaces, facilitating diverse dialogue and divergent discourses.⁹

In such a process, an appropriate first response would be to take the multifaceted (rich yet ambivalent) reception of the bible in Africa seriously. It involves the (growing) importance of the bible for Africa, and also the importance of African contexts for the interpreta-tion of the bible. It has many and far-reaching implications for New Testament scholarship in Africa. It needs to recognise and affirm the contribution of Christian spiritualities in Africa – for example, as embodied by The Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians. They are characterised by their passion for wholeness of life (opposing divisions between ‘secular’ and ‘sacred’, ‘spirit’ and ‘body’, the ‘self’ and the ‘other’, ‘male’ and ‘female’, ‘culture’ and ‘nature’), regarding community life as central to all meaning, and respecting the integrity of creation (Phiri 2004; cf Mouton 2006:67–76).

Secondly, New Testament scholars may serve other theological disciplines and the church best by simply speaking more humbly and provisionally about the surprising reality of a compassionate, vulnerable and impartial God’s presence as revealed in the New Testament writings in a complex world.

All human expressions and interpretations of the Christian faith are fragile and all too often fragmented embodiments of the mystery of God revealed in Jesus Christ. None of those interpretations (whether symbols, rites, stories or practices) can adequately reflect the rich unity and koinonia of the ecumenical church worldwide. New Testament Studies are therefore not the prerogative of a privileged or marginalised few. Its rich yet fragile liminal epicentre involves every person and community who interprets and experiences the living faith mediated by these texts, and should serve – as I have mentioned earlier – the unity of the church, directly and in-directly. For this reason, ‘regular’ and ‘professional’ readers – biblical scholars, systematic and practical theologians – all share the moral obligation to engage the creative tension between the dynamics of these texts and the multiple needs, suffering, fears and hopes of the present-day audiences. Those who have chosen to inhabit their strange, alternative world, desperately need one another in the process of sensible understanding (cf Mouton 2006:77–80).

As New Testament scholars we cannot assume that our work will be of use to the church and its public witness. We should rather ask whether the church (still) needs us, and whether we are all indispensable. In the past, we could not assume we were of use (cf Smit 1992, 1994b, 1996). I am inclined to think neither can we now.¹⁰

The interactive epicentre of New Testament Studies is a sur-prisingly rich yet complex, noisy and even messy space (Mouton 2006:50–60). In order for New Testament scholars to contribute to a sense-ability, being heard, depicting reality, being life-affirming, problem-solving and a community-building enterprise (cf van Huyssteen 1986:169–187), we need to become ‘recipients’ ourselves. We have to listen carefully and prayerfully to what the New Testament texts tried to accomplish, and pay special attention to their intended functions in varying contexts over time.

If such an understanding at the core of New Testament Studies is required as requisite for its pathos, persuasive drive and healing power, it becomes a deeply sacred, sacramental and liturgical subject. I want to acknowledge Wentzel van Huyssteen’s hermeneutic by suggesting that New Testament interpreters develop a hermeneutic of listening. The New Testament writings metaphorically refer to receiving the gospel as ‘hearing the word’.¹¹ A ‘hermeneutic of listening’ implies the willingness to hear mindfully – with openness and receptivity.¹² It includes paying attention to, acknowledging, and submitting to the paradoxical authority of God’s words in human language. As such it would be in accordance not only to the nature of these texts, but also to the Reformed principle of biblical reading as discerning the voice of the living God. A hermeneutic of listening reclaims the life-changing, transformative potential of the New Testament writings as an invitation to attain a healed and healing body of Christ. It will embrace and sanction (public) responsibility and action, knowing that those texts are the result of actions and intended to create action (Snodgrass 2002:27). A hermeneutic of listening will consider all the voices represented in New Testament interpretation, consciously hearing those voices which are considered unimportant in the past, including the silenced voices within the biblical texts. It challenges us to live patiently and humbly with the discomfort of risking to remember, to forgive and to hope.¹³

Biblical scholars have much to learn from Van Huyssteen’s embodiment of relationality and risk as the foundation for his bold thinking beyond boundaries. A hermeneutic of listening gives priority to the imaginative possibilities of God’s liberating, healing love over the broken realities of our lives and world. It allows for moral confidence instead of absolute certainty. Perhaps receivers of the biblical texts today should be challenged – like the early Christians – to remain open to be surprised by that which they do not understand.