Decolonial reading: definition and stakes

Welcome to Episode 15 of Season 4! In this episode I speak with Dr. Jordan Ryan.  This episode focuses on decolonizing theology, particularly biblical theology, using as an example Jordan’s new commentary on Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament in Color, a new one volume commentary. Today’s podcast introduces us to biblical hermeneutics and exegesis, which we all do from a place of positionality: who we are influences how we read and interpret texts. Dr. Ryan writes from his position as a Filipino- Canadian Christian, who now lives and works in the USA.  This was a difficult episode to title because its about decolonizing biblical theology, its about Filipino and Filipino-Canadian and American positionality in reading biblical texts, and its about Acts of the Apostles.  It's also about the Canadian hermeneutical school of Bernard Lonergan and Ben F. Meyer. Jordan Ryan introduces us to the world of Acts through the lens of a Filipino-Canadian biblical scholar in debt to Lonergan and Meyer. 

Meyer was a biblical scholar at McMaster who had died in 1995, but his legacy of biblical interpretation lived on and lives on at McMaster even for scholars like Jordan and Jonathan Bernier who came after Meyer’s death. Jordan’s book title The Role of the Synagogue in the Aims of Jesus is a conscious nod to Meyer’s famous book on the historical Jesus, The Aims of Jesus. Meyer was my teacher and I was greatly influenced by his thought and recently edited a book with my friend Paul Niskanen in tribute to Meyer called The Transcendent Mystery of God's Word. 

Meyer in turn had been a student of and carried on the legacy of the great Canadian Jesuit Bernard Lonergan and his theory of interpretation known as critical realism. I was so happy to hear Jordan call this the Canadian school of biblical interpretation. At the heart of it is what Jordan noted: that true objectivity emerges from authentic subjectivity. I will not go into a lot more depth on this tonight, though there is much more to say, a podcast series worth I would say, except that it means that Meyer following Lonergan believed that we interpret from our position, whatever that is, though we always need to be aware of our blind spots and oversights and be open to correction. But Jordan’s interpretation of Acts of the Apostles and the Bible in general from his position as a Filipino-Canadian is true objectivity because it is his authentic subjectivity. He reads the Bible with a Filipino-Canadian biblical hermeneutic. Please check out Jordan's commentary on Acts in The New Testament in Color: A Multiethnic Bible Commentary.

His ability to read from that position opens his readers up to seeing new things in the biblical texts, to understand the role of Roman imperialism, colonizing, ethnicity, race, and antisemitism that they might not have seen before either in the text or in their own interpretations. These might be blind spots that we had not reckoned with before because we did not see them. For instance, walking away from the community of goods which Acts discusses in chapters 2 and 4 because that’s communism, as if 20th century political movements negate the meaning of 1st century texts. It allows Jordan to ask questions that others might miss about coloniality, power and imperialism in Acts from his Filipino diaspora position. And the collectivist culture of the Filipino people allows them perhaps to grasp the goodness of these passages in Acts 2 and 4 more readily.

We need as he said to be aware of our horizons, a term Meyer and Lonergan use extensively to indicate the limits of our view, but also to indicate what we can see. From the horizon of a 500-year history of colonization, Filipino biblical scholars like Jordan can help us understand decolonial readings of the Bible. He pointed us to authors like Reta Halteman Finger and Justo Gonzalez and Federico Villanueva and Danielle Hyeonah Lambert, who can also serve as guides to help us along with Dr Ryan, to see new ways of reading Acts and the Bible in general, to broaden our horizons and to help us overcome blind spots. 

This podcast emerges from the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC, a centre that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, other religious traditions, and those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. 

What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. Our goal, then, is to talk to a lot of people, to learn from them, to listen to them, and to find out what motivates them, what gives them hope, what gives them peace, and what allows them to go out into the world to love their neighbors.

A few thanks are in order. To Martin Strong, to Kevin Eng, and to Fang Fang Chandra, the team who helps me bring this podcast to you, but also makes the CCE run so much more smoothly. 

I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. We are thankful to their commitment to the life of the academic world and of the work of the Church in the world by funding the work of the CCE. I am also thankful to the Cullen family, Mark and Barbara, for their support of the ongoing work of the CCE through financial donations that allow us to bring speakers to the local and international arenas.

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Thanks again for listening and remember what matters most.   

John W. Martens

Director, Centre for Christian Engagement