Interpreting the Bible & the Constitution

by Jaroslav Pelikan

Both the Bible and the Constitution have the status of “Great Code,” but each of these important texts is controversial as well as enigmatic. They are asked to speak to situations that their authors could not have anticipated on their own. In this book, one of our greatest religious historians brings his vast knowledge of the history of biblical interpretation to bear on the question of constitutional interpretation. Jaroslav Pelikan compares the methods by which the official interpreters of the Bible and the Constitution―the Christian Church and the Supreme Court, respectively―have approached the necessity of interpreting, and reinterpreting, their important texts. In spite of obvious differences, both texts require close, word-by-word exegesis, an awareness of opinions that have gone before, and a willingness to ask new questions of old codes, Pelikan observes. He probes for answers to the question of what makes something authentically “constitutional” or “biblical,” and he demonstrates how an understanding of either biblical interpretation or constitutional interpretation can illuminate the other in important ways.

Genres: Philosophy, Christianity, Religion

216 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2004

About the author

Jaroslav Jan Pelikan was born in Akron, Ohio, to a Slovak father and mother, Jaroslav Jan Pelikan Sr. and Anna Buzekova Pelikan. His father was pastor of Trinity Slovak Lutheran Church in Chicago, Illinois, and his paternal grandfather a bishop of the Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches then known as the Slovak Lutheran Church in America.

According to family members, Pelikan's mother taught him how to use a typewriter when he was three years old, as he could not yet hold a pen properly but wanted to write. A polyglot, Pelikan's facility with languages may be traced to his multilingual childhood and early training. That linguistic facility was to serve him in the career he ultimately chose (after contemplating becoming a concert pianist)--as a historian of Christian doctrine. He did not confine his studies to Roman Catholic and Protestant theological history, but also embraced that of the Christian East.

In 1946 when he was 22, he earned both a seminary degree from Concordia Seminary in Saint Louis, Missouri and a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago.

Pelikan wrote more than 30 books, including the five-volume The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (1971–1989). Some of his later works attained crossover appeal, reaching beyond the scholarly sphere into the general reading public (notably, Mary Through the Centuries, Jesus Through the Centuries and Whose Bible Is It?).

His 1984 book The Vindication of Tradition gave rise to an often quoted one liner. In an interview in U.S. News & World Report (June 26, 1989), he said: "Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide.

"Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition."

Reviews

[Peter Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Law and Theology

Interpreting the Bible and the Constitution by Jaroslav Pelikan

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I am a lawyer with an interest in theology. My approach to matters theological has always been my approach to matter jurisprudential. I look for precedents and follow the back and the forth of the dialogue to see how theological concepts develop over time. I apply concepts used for contract interpretation, such as favoring the interpretation that existed before a controversy arose. Given my legal training, these are common-sense approaches. Now, I have scholarly confirmation to go along with my common sense.

Jaroslav Pelikan was a distinguished scholar of church history. As I recall, he started out as a Lutheran and then converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, which is to say that he had intimate experience with two species of tradition. This book lines up legal texts with religious texts to discuss the similarity of legal and theological analysis. Both have their foundational texts or canon - the Constitution and the Bible. Both have "cruxes of interpretation" - passages difficult to interpret because of obscure words or conflicts with doctrines, such as, for example, whether the Second Amendment applies to individuals or organizations. Both look to the sensus literalis or original intent. Both involve an idea of the development of doctrine.

The book shifts perspective from legal text to religious text to make the comparisons crisply and directly. This can be confusing. It certainly makes for a great density in writing as it deals with a lot of concepts rapidly coming at the reader without pause. Pelikan makes a lot of interesting points along the way that is worth meditating upon. I think the book is a useful text for those who are interested in theology. It may be confusing to Evangelicals and to those who think that they are not engaged in interpreting the text. It will be especially alarming to anyone who would be shocked at the prospect of comparing sacred texts with human laws. Such people should read this book to get more informed about what they are actually doing if they are reasoning beings.