The Core Assumption
Meaning lives in the constructive encounter between the text and the interpreting church, so interpretation is itself theology rather than a preparation for it.
The Four Assumptions
- Where meaning lives
- Meaning lives in the encounter between text and interpreting community, so that interpretation is never mere description but always a constructive theological act.
- What the text is
- The text is Scripture, the church's book, whose theological subject matter is God and God's relation to the world, and which must be read as a differentiated whole.
- Who may interpret
- The authorized interpreter is the church and its scholars together, interpreting in accountability to the texts, to tradition, and to the realities the texts are about.
- What counts as a good reading
- A reading is adequate when it is true to the texts in their particularity and fruitful for the church's knowledge of God, with the interpreter's own constructive role openly acknowledged.
Genealogy
This method arose in the 20th c period (Stated in the 1990s, especially in Text, Church and World (1994) and Text and Truth (1997)).
Key proponents: Francis Watson, Stephen E. Fowl, A. K. M. Adam.
Key texts: Text and Truth: Redefining Biblical Theology by Francis Watson; Text, Church and World by Francis Watson; Engaging Scripture by Stephen E. Fowl.
The Procedure
These are the same steps The Workshop will walk you through.
-
Name your constructive interest
State at the outset the theological question you bring to the text and the tradition within which you are asking it.
Why this step matters: Since neutrality is impossible, honesty about one's interests is the method's first requirement.
How to do it: Write the question and your location in two or three sentences, and revisit them when the text resists your expectations.
What goes wrong here: Performing this step as a formality and then interpreting as though no interest were in play.
You record: A declared constructive interest. Done well when: The statement is specific enough that another reader could predict your likely blind spots.
-
Attend to the text's particularity
Read the passage closely in its genre and canonical placement, letting its distinct voice register before relating it to others.
Why this step matters: Construction in this method is disciplined by the texts' resistance; particularity is what keeps construction from becoming invention.
How to do it: Note where the text's emphases differ from parallel texts, and refuse to flatten the difference prematurely.
What goes wrong here: Using the passage as raw material for a position already reached from other texts.
You record: An account of the text's particular witness. Done well when: At least one feature unique to this text shapes the final construction.
-
Construct across the canon
Build the theological claim by setting texts in mutual interpretation, allowing each to qualify the others.
Why this step matters: The canon is read as a differentiated whole whose unity is achieved in interpretation, not assumed as uniformity.
How to do it: Stage the conversation among texts explicitly, and record where the construction remains tense or unresolved.
What goes wrong here: Resolving every tension by appeal to a system the texts themselves never state.
You record: A constructed theological claim with its textual conversation. Done well when: The claim shows its working: the texts in conversation and the points of tension are visible.
-
Answer for the construction
State who is accountable for this reading and how it may be challenged, revised, or rejected by the community.
Why this step matters: Constructive interpretation is a public act within the church's ongoing argument about its texts.
How to do it: Identify the conversation partners, scholarly and ecclesial, to whom the reading is offered for testing.
What goes wrong here: Presenting the construction with the false authority of pure description.
You record: An accountability statement for the reading. Done well when: The reading names its testers and the terms on which it could be corrected.
Inputs Required
- A passage read with close attention to genre and canonical placement
- A declared theological question and interpretive location
- Conversation partners in scholarship and in the church's tradition
Outputs Produced
- A theological construction that openly owns its interpretive judgments
- A record of how the canon's diverse texts were set in mutual interpretation
- Material for doctrine and preaching that knows itself to be revisable
Quality Criteria
Under this method, a good reading is one that meets these tests:
- The interpreter's constructive role is declared, not disguised
- The particularity of individual texts visibly shapes the result
- Tensions within the canon are carried into the construction rather than erased
Common Errors
- Using construction as a license to make texts say what the interpreter prefers
- Claiming descriptive authority for what is in fact a construction
- Ignoring historical work on the text in the name of theological reading
Strengths
- It is honest about the impossibility of neutral interpretation
- It reunites exegesis and theology without dissolving either
- It takes the canon seriously as a whole while respecting its internal differences
Weaknesses and Critics
- Its criteria for judging rival constructions can seem underdetermined
- Readers who want historical description kept separate may find the method's candor uncomfortable rather than helpful
- The outcome depends heavily on the theological judgment of the individual interpreter
James Barr: Barr's descriptive program stands as the standing objection: constructions of Watson's kind, however candid, are not the outcome of historical study of the Bible, and calling them biblical theology blurs a distinction scholarship needs. (The Concept of Biblical Theology: An Old Testament Perspective (1999))
John Barton: Barton argued that biblical criticism retains an independent integrity as a set of literary and historical operations, and that absorbing it into constructive theology threatens the critical distance that makes its results useful to everyone. (The Nature of Biblical Criticism (2007))
Internal Schools
Watson's canonical construction: This school works at the level of the whole canon and its theological subject matter, treating the fourfold Gospel and the two testaments as deliberately differentiated witnesses.
Fowl's ecclesial interpretation: This school locates construction more specifically in the practices and virtues of Christian communities, making the church's life a formal part of the interpretive method.
Exemplar Readings
The Four Gospels as Constructed Witness (The fourfold Gospel canon): The reading refuses to harmonize the Gospels or to choose one as basic, and constructs its account of Jesus precisely from their irreducible differences, treating the fourfold form itself as theologically significant.
Law and Gospel across the Canon (Galatians read with James and the Sermon on the Mount): The reading stages the apparent contradiction between Paul and James as a canonical conversation, constructs a position in which each qualifies the other, and records the remaining tension instead of dissolving it.
What This Method Cannot Do
This method cannot provide the neutral, publicly verifiable description of ancient belief that historical scholarship at its most austere aims for, because it denies that such neutrality is available in theological interpretation. It also cannot guarantee agreement, since constructions are finally judged by theological argument in which the interpreter's tradition carries real weight.
Site Stance
The site has not yet assigned its stance on this method. The stance assignments wait on the named reviewers, the same naming the Christian Assessment verdicts wait on. The method stands here in full in the meantime: a stance discloses the site's judgment, and it never filters what a reader may read or run. The stance values and their criteria stand on the criteria page.
Run This Method in the Workshop
Open this method on the bench →
Across the Site
This method belongs to the Theological and Canonical Approaches family. Its sources stand in the References register; its family stands among the site's tools; the positions it produces can be compared in the Diptych.
Primary Sources
- Text and Truth: Redefining Biblical Theology by Francis Watson (1997)
- Text, Church and World by Francis Watson (1994)
Secondary Sources
- Engaging Scripture: A Model for Theological Interpretation by Stephen E. Fowl (1998)
- The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation edited by John Barton (1998)