The Virtuous Reader: Old Testament Narrative and Interpretive Virtue

Written by Richard Briggs Reviewed By Iain Provan

This is a book about “the moral character or virtues most appropriate to the many and varied tasks of reading the Old Testament” (p. 17). The main idea is that we find in the OT itself a series of portraits of “the kind of character most eagerly to be sought after” (p. 17). The first chapter sets the stage by clarifying what an implied reader is, and why Briggs is focusing on the OT alone, rather than asking questions of the whole Christian Bible. The concluding chapter takes us from the implied reader to the real reader. The intervening chapters are focused upon particular virtues: humility (ch. 2); wisdom (ch. 3); trust (ch. 4); love (ch. 5); and receptivity (ch. 6).

Briggs begins in chapter 2 by noting that humility does not have an undisputed place, historically, among the virtues, and indeed that it is a contested concept. Numbers 12 is then recruited in pursuit of a biblical understanding of what humility is and is not. The ultimate outcome of his discussion is the suggestion that humility in this context refers, not to meekness, but to dependence upon the presence of God (Moses is quite capable of “appropriate, vigorous, yet still respectful engagement with God,” p. 62). Likewise, ongoing interpretation of Scripture requires such dependence upon God. A “spiritual life is one key to faithful handling of Scripture” (p. 67).

Unlike humility, wisdom (ch. 3) has an uncontested place, historically, among the virtues; but again, Briggs asks, what does the Bible mean by it? He seeks an answer to this question by way of 1 Kgs 3, attempting to show that “the kind of wisdom displayed by Solomon … speaks directly to the nature of the interpretive virtue of wisdom sought after by the reader of the Old Testament” (p. 97). The reader, like Solomon facing the two women, is faced with competing claims in texts, and requires patience to hear the testimony rightly. Wisdom is required to know the difference between questions that lead us forward and questions that do not.

The preceding chapter having raised the question of the proper roles of trust and suspicion in interpretation, chapter 4 pursues this question in relation to 2 Kgs 18. “Trust” in the face of an “onslaught of suspicion” (p. 123) is a major theme in this passage. The question that Briggs sets himself is “does wisdom consist in always assenting to the communicative purpose of biblical texts?” (p. 103). The implied reader of 2 Kgs 18, he suggests, “is one who trusts God in the face of considerable evidence (and even logic) to the contrary” (p. 130). Yet suspicion also has its place, and is indeed the inevitable companion of trust. Wisdom lies in knowing what that place is.

Chapter 5 deals with the virtue of love, or “interpretive charity,” taking as its base texts Ruth 1 and 2 Kgs 5. The first passage illustrates “love as a form of long-term commitment to the agenda of another” (p. 145), implying an interpreter who promises to go where the text goes “in the sense of following it on its own terms” (p. 153). The second passage illustrates love that in the short term deviates from the longer-term path, “blessing some interpretation of the text that may seem to sit at odds with many other ways of rightly handling the words of Scripture” (p. 162). Interpretive charity may call hearers to account before the text; but it may also grant some leeway in the reading of the text, in pursuit of the larger agenda of building up in the reader’s love of God and neighbor.

In chapter 6 the virtue of receptivity towards the holy God who summons is explored through the lens of Isa 6. Here it becomes clear that modes of interpretation informed by the other interpretive virtues are not of themselves sufficient, unless “receptivity operates in, with, and under” them (p. 192). Theological interpretation certainly cannot bypass questions about how the words and illocutions of the text function; and yet when those questions have been asked and well answered, there remains still the question of the willingness of the interpreter “to have one’s perspectives transcended and taken up into mysterious divine purposes” (pp. 191–92).

I do not always enjoy the books I am sent for review. Sometimes the effort of reading them attentively seems poorly rewarded when in the end (as every sane reader should) I pose the “so what?” question; and then regret begins to set in that I did not spend the day fishing instead. I must say, however, that I greatly enjoyed this book. It is well-written; contains lots of interesting historical, theological, and exegetical discussion; and represents exactly the kind of integrative project of which one would like to see more (beset as we still are in these days both by theologians who cannot/will not read their Bibles well, and by biblical scholars whose attention to detail is admirable but whose attention to anything else is limited—or who have given up on detail altogether and have vanished in a cloud of postmodern subjectivity and generalization). One could quibble, of course, about this or that detail: the too easygoing affirmation of Brueggemann’s categories of testimony and counter-testimony (p. 130), which draws a veil over significant difficulties in Brueggemann’s approach; the unconvincing use of the Elisha story in 2 Kgs 5 in speaking of interpretive charity, when admittedly “2 Kings 5 does not use the vocabulary of love” (p. 159); the failure to agree with me in my reading of 1 Kgs 3 (pp. 78–79!). I am, however, disinclined to quibble. In these strange times in which we live, in which “most of the scholars who might want to make [a theological claim about the communicative force of the canonical text] do not work with the text overmuch, and many who work with the text would prefer not to make such a claim” (p. 131), this book represents a refreshing attempt at theological interpretation of the Bible that insists at the outset that the Bible (and not, e.g., Aristotle) should define our terms. It is to be welcomed.


Iain Provan

Regent College

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

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