Flesh Made Word: The Protestant Interpretation Problem and an Embodied Hermeneutic

This book delineates the individualist interpretation problem that has long beset Protestant biblical interpretation, and engages theological resources that could serve to move beyond it. Lauren Smelser White argues that readers of Scripture-specifically those who long to submit their lives to God’s transforming Word, which they believe the Bible discloses-ought to reckon with the participatory role that human bodies (corporeal and corporate) play in producing revelation’s norms. Such a reckoning need not entail giving up on Scripture delivering the life-changing address of a divine Other. In support of that claim, White distills a picture of revelation as a divine-human discursive encounter: a process wherein our hermeneutic constructions are incorporated into the Word’s self-disclosure, and whereby interpreters who embrace this venture in vulnerability may experience graced transformation. The work concludes by proposing that this Christomorphic interpretation process is analogous to a mother’s embodied responsiveness in caring for her child. Such a hermeneutic paradigm suggests distinctive commitments from communities who desire to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in interpretive acts.