The recognition of the interpreter's situation as a factor in appropriating text is nothing new. Christians of all stripes have long recognized it. That is why the few churches today practice foot washing or exchange the "holy kiss," despite direct commands to do so in the New Testament. Nor is the question of eating meat sacrificed to idols an issue in modem Western churches. These practices are all recognized as cultural, and modern culture has changed.

Steven L. McKenzie wrote the above in his book How to Read the Bible: History, Prophecy, Literature, and they are very good examples of how the New Testament are not only products of a specific culture which is not ours, but also how the text is interpreted based upon the reader’s culture. This isn’t necessarily a problem; where the real problem lies is in the fact that so few Christians recognize, understand, and acknowledge that this is what is occurring.

Instead, Christians tend to pretend that their readings of the text stand outside of their culture and that the parts of the text which they emphasize most are also independent of the culture in which they were written. Thus, the pretend to be locking on to eternal truths revealed by God and external to menial cultural habits — but just how justified is this attitude?

Still, the extent to which the New Testament letters are permeated by the culture that produced them does not always received full consideration by modern interpreters trying to appropriate them. Thus, the text about head covering in I Corinthians 11 has a history of (ab)use and is still used today in some circles to argue for the subordination of women; yet the idea of the female body as an imperfect edition of the male body, upon which the text is based, was a product of an ancient culture and strikes a modern reader as ridiculous.

Paul himself admits in the passage that he is dealing with a “custom,” even though he presses theology into service for the sake of his rhetorical argument. This raises the question as to whether Paul’s discussions of other issues (e.g., marriage, women’s roles, homosexuality) also reflect his rhetoric and the culture surrounding him and may no longer be tenable for the modem understandings of such matters as gender roles, sexual orientation, and the like.

As you can see, the recognition that aspects of the New Testament texts are simply reflections of the culture in which they were written (and thus not “eternal truths” which all of humanity is obligated to follow until the end of time) has significant implications. Is it merely a coincidence that passages which force the subordination of certain segments of the population have typically been read by those who aren’t subordinated as being “eternal truths” rather than cultural products?

Christians, whether liberal or conservative, progressive or fundamentalist, don’t really have any consistent, coherent standards according to which they can judge certain passages as still applicable to them and others as cultural products which might be interesting for historical reasons, but not necessarily binding anymore. Instead, they seem to just “wing it,” and divide up the text based upon what seems to fit their political and social preconceptions — in other words, they use thinking which is the product of their own culture in order to decide what is “really” a product of another culture and what isn’t. Does anyone else notice the problem inherent in this?

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