Interview with Professor Elaine

Professor Elaine Wainwright
Position:	Richard Maclaurin Goodfellow Professor in Theology and Head of School, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Qualifications:	BA (Hons), Ph D UofQ, Brisbane, MTheol CTU, Chicago; Élève Diplomée École Biblique, Jerusalem; BSS Pontifical Biblical Commission, Rome

At the end of my semester taking THEO 101 Bible in Popular Culture under Professor Elaine and Dr. Phillip, I had the privilege of interviewing them. Below is the transcript of the interview.

Can you tell me a bit of your background, like how you were first involved in theology?

I got a religious background in the Catholic church. That was one area which gave me an interest in Theology. I also belong to a religious congregation within the Catholic tradition (Sisters of Mercy). So from that point of view, that was the avenue that really took me into theology. I was trained as a teacher in the area of business studies and then theology opened up a part of my work whitin the congregation. And its been my major area of teaching since then and I liked it very much. Its quite a dynamic area that I came in when there were quite significant changes happening both in areas of biblical studies generally and the opening up of catholic theology. church. All my teaching has been done in an ecumenical context, not only catholic institutions. This is really exciting for me to be teaching theology in a university

What particular aspect of theology that first drew your interest?

I was interested in the area of biblical studies. When i was doing my training . It was just after Vatican II a quite significant event in the Catholic life. It was a big ecumenical council that opened up the church to contemporary theology and biblical studies which had been controlled strongly by the church. It opened up to what other biblical scholars are doing. I found it was really exciting, discovering that various interpretation of the bible is available to me and others in the church.

You’re from Australia aren’t you? You studied in Rome, Jerusalem?

I did study in Jerusalem. I did my initial study in UQ, I went to Chicago Theological Union for my postgraduate masters coursework. I then went to Jerusalem for 2 years, did my Master’s thesis there and research for my doctorate, and had Roman degree 6 months which I thought might be helpful in my career at one stage, as I will be teaching in a Catholic context. It was just an exam after 6 months of preparation.

How did u end up in NZ?

I taught in the same context for 20 years and decided that I really needed a change. I was looking somewhere where as a women doing theology, to have some area of leadership. That was why I decided to leave my old job that I liked very much. This came up and I applied for it. It is a good opportunity to have leadership in theology, to help set up a school and making sure its working well has been really good.

Any theologian, scholar or literature that changed your theological persuasion?

There are a couple, both by women. The area of theology that changed me is in the area of feminist theology and biblical studies. The first book was when I was doing my Honours work in UQ. I was looking for an area where I can work and understand different competing interpretation. I was living in a political environment, where there was a left-wing government where the premier of Queensland, a strong Lutheran, quoting scriptures to support his oppressive government. Alongside with that I was involved in a justice group and we were saying that the scripture does not say that at all. I thought If I am going to teach scripture, how do I teach different competing interpretations of the Bible. It was then my director gave me a book by Philis Trible and her book is called “God and the Rethoric of Sexuality”. It was a first biblical studies book I’ve read that started to see the position of women in the Bible. A couple of years later when I was doing my Masters research. It was the time when Fiorenza a very famous feminist scholar which I once wrote a memorial for her, being groundbreaking in feminist studies. In one of the courses I actually studied her book quite carefully. That had set a direction of my work quite significantly.

I shall try to get hold of that book. From the lectures I can sort of speculate your stand on several issues. And I compare them with my own spirituality. Would you like to define how you see scripture?

You would have seen it. I see it as a sacred story that belongs to a community, from their experience of the divine or transcendence in their life situation. Out of that, they tell their sacred story. It is a developing process. I don’t see it as falling down from heaven. I see it as a story over a millennium where a group of people tell their sacred story, their dealings with God and each other. Certain elements of the story are being retold and retold. The sacred story journeys with the people who claim as their sacred story. Its my sacred story. It informs my life which I reflect on and engage with. Of course I engage with it out of who I am and the world that I live in. Its a sacred story, its a source of my spiritual nourishment and spiritual challenges. Its one of the underpinnings of my relationship with God and Jesus that is very grounded in scripture

Do you see it as authoritative in our lives? Is it culturally conditioned on the community of the day and how do we make sense out of it?

That’s probably one of the most challenging question around scripture. i do see it as authoritative but not like other groups who see simply search the meaning of it and apply it today. It is much more complex. The process of the authority of scripture is tied on with the community and how the community understands itself. I think it needs a process where the community works out and uses scripture, not laid individuals who can pronounce authority over it. Its a community grappling with issues of its day in dialogue with the sacred story. I think the authority of scripture is quite complex. But I see it as foundational in our lives. One interesting thing I found in dealing with scripture and contemporary issues is that, if we use the scripture all the time as foundational in our lives we would knew how to deal better with blown up issues. For example, the Anglican church is torn apart by the issue of gay ordination and homosexual union. I think that it is sad that if a community doesn’t puts its whole life to the scripture but when there’s a crisis it runs to the scripture and pick up a few passages selectively. But it should be used authoritatively to inform our whole life, and if it does that, tt will challenge us so much, Choon Wei, so much, about living justly and about what we do in the world. That’s what I think is the authority of scripture, not a help book to run to in the midst crises. I think if we believe that the scripture is authoritative, as a community we should work out how we live out the sacred story all the time. That’s what I think is authority. It will challenge us so radically as a community and as individuals.

One of the readings in the course, written by Walter Wink. He said that there is no clear biblical ethics but the ethic of love.

It is actually love and justice I think is the two deep streams of sources of Biblical ethics. We need the two of them. One of them can tip over to rigid totalitarianism or floppy pious loving one another without justice. Justice can be harsh. We need to work out what justice and love mean with some examples of how people in the past work out with it. For example in the homosexuality issue, we have very little text about that and so much dispute about the meaning. If we have both love and justice, then we would be able to work out the issue much differently.

Where do holiness fit in moral issues like divorce and murder. As much as we love the sinner, we do not condone the sin for example in the case of murder. How do we balance out love and justice?

I think its an ongoing challenge. I think there are transgressions against the community that are serious. Whether you call for punishment or call it protection, there are bound to be people in the community that protect the sinner. That is a balance between love and justice. However, we cannot limit justice on individual basis alone. We need to see justice in a broader context of a community. I think murder is quite clear. But homosexuality is a much more complex issue, what do you do in a context when a homosexual person lives in a relationship that is faithful, loving, commited to justice and all of the biblical ethics. Areas of morality is not clear cut. There more you encounter people in real life situation. I know myself, my experience has expanded enormously, as I meet more people who are living in good, faithful , sometimes struggling homosexual relationship. There is nothing that I should exclude them from having access to. It is not such that I should exclude them. We need this kind of data and experience with the people involved when making ethical decisions.

What are your views on the Evangelical tradition?

I am going to be more cagy on that. It is not my tradition. It is a tradition of which I know more and more people now are adhering to in Christianity. I would want to put Evangelicalism alongside with the gospel the same way I want to put everything else. I want to ask the question people in this tradition whether they are practicing love and justice, which is in the heart of the Gospel. Does the evangelical way of life, live out the Gospel? Do they live in rigid rejection of a certain group of people, naming and demonising others who do not hold to their views? Can this tradition live with other Christian traditions, like the Catholic Church in the past claiming that they alone hold the truth? How do they treat insiders and outsiders? They ought to stand with the Gospel like any other traditions. If they can prove that they interpretation of the Bible and its way of life is expressive of love and justice, then it validly stands. It is not a tradition that I was shaped into. Is that cagy enough? Hehe.

I was interested on how do you read the Bible ecologically, for example in the New Testament?

I think its not easy to read the Bible ecologically. It is a very different context from the bible as it is a 21^st century reading, but it is fine as we read the Bible through feminist and liberation lenses too. There is a great group at Adelaide, the Earth Bible group that has a number of publications. Norman Harbles developed some hermeneutical principals of how we read the earth, and its materials and find its voice in the Bible. I try to use it in some of my work. We need to shift our mind, for example in Feminist work, reading about women in the Biblical passages. I am still learning how to read through the lenses of the earth and its material. We can’t just find passages and point out literal description of the earth itself, but reading through the lines. It is a new, hard, yet exciting development that will change how we read the Bible.

Multiple lenses of reading the Bible. Can you explain more?

What happened in Biblical studies, I said that is was opening up in the late 60s and early 70s. Methodologically and interpretative lenses had multiplied, the tools has increased such as historical criticism and questions you ask to the bible text. Now someone can be a feminist reader, liberationist reader, ecological reader, indigenous reader or postmodern reader, you could go on. In a hermeneutical course, I found out 14 hermeneutical groups with different names. There are multiple ways or lenses as they read the Bible. There is multiple recognition of where we stand and how it affects how we read. Say I am a Tongan, Australian, Maori, or Pakeha, where I stand and who I am is part of what I bring to the reading of text. I believe that it has always being so. What happened is that now we recognised that in an era of philosophical hermeneutics, the last century was the whole move around what is interpretation, interpretation of ourselves, life, and the text. That’s just exploded in Biblical Studies, it’s much bigger than postmodernity, its indicative of our world, multiple ways of people understanding themselves, with globalisation, and multiculturalism. In one of my hermeneutics class, there is a diverse culture represented from different ethnic group, which brings different interpretation of the bible, which we call it post-modern. 50 years ago, there’s not much mix, and we thought that might be just a single interpretation of the bible. This is the richness, fascinating God which gives us a text that is so rich and complex, that has multiple meanings in different places and ways.

In light of all of this, how do you see the future of Christianity?

I have no idea what will happen. Let me just try today. I think its not an easy place for Christianity to be, yet it is an exciting place for it to be. For those people who can be comfortable with diversity, possibility and opportunities for different understandings and multiple images of God. The possibilities are quite extraordinary around a recognition that truth is multiple, goodness is multiple, love and justice are multiple, all of them have different expression, of which we see and name it as God or divine in our lives. The opportunity or avenues of spirituality are quite extraordinary, where everybody can join in spirituality, with meditation or other spiritual practices available to many people today. Young people like yourself are entering religious traditions without security, with so much multiplicity. I don’t know how young people can manage with that. During my days in my 20s, my religious tradition have so much security that I was aware of where I was at that time, can be secure with multiplicity today. I think the increasing multiplicity and complexity today in religious traditions make it a more difficult place to be. However I believe that faith is not about being sure, its about entering into incredibly complexity of God, ourselves, the world, and relationships, and that’s quite different from a certainty that comes from reading a creed. I feel that you can read out a creed without faith. I feel that faith comes out from uncertainty rather than certainty. But I am very aware that there are people at different ages, that wants certainty or structure, that they can say “this is of God, that is not of God”, as we can see in certain debates today between two groups, one which is comfortable with uncertainty and one that wants certainty. That’s where we are. That will not go away in the future. My hope that this two groups can work together. My fear is that they will tear Christianity and various other religious traditions apart.

Can we live by love and justice alone, while excluding the divine or transcendent?

I believe that the mythos is what feeds your soul. The sacred story and tradition feeds my soul and my mind. The soul and mind is very closely related together. I am not sure what’s the difference between Christianity and an humanistic approach to life, if we exclude the mythos or the transcendent. But Christianity as I understands it, carries in it a sacred story. It assumes on a mythos.

Will it happen when one day Christianity will fall into humanism?

I suspect not, but some do. That’s fine. I think throughout human history, there is a continuing search for the expression in the mythos. I think and see that ass a recognition for the transcendent. Life is not all measurable, calculable and its not all about logos.

How do see yourself being in post-Christian or even anti-Christian society, while many places outside the western world are slowly embracing Christianity as a religious tradition? Are you worried about it?

No, I am not. I am not worried about it because I would suspect that history goes in spiral instead of a line. That’s not very different to the beginning of Christianity, so why not the spiral comes around again? I think we are coming to fear that we have a known history where we have been a dominant power in certain parts of the world. This includes countries which have a lot of political dominance at the moment for example the US and Australia. There is an imagination that these society is Christian first of all. A lot of them are not. They call themselves Christian and harping into the Religious Right at the moment, but I see what the policies that they are taking is not-Christian at all. They have nothing to do with justice at all. I think that they are blatantly unjust and unchristian. I think its not a surprising thing for me being a scholar of Early Christianity that Christianity should be a minority group withinin a society. Perhaps it is the place where it best works probably. Once it becomes a dominant religion, then it becomes cultural for many people. Its not a religious tradition where people would die for.

So, you imagine Christianity as a fringe group?

No I don’t imagine so. My hope would be, if its a small group, it will be a leaven, it will be doing the work of the Gospel, it will be doing public theology, it will be engaging with legislators together with other groups which are committed to justice and love, although they may not necessarily be Christian nor religious in nature to achieve.

What recommendation or resources that you would recommend for enthusiasts?

That’s a hard question. There are various good resources. One of the good scholars would be Walter Brueggemann, of which you encountered in the course. His work on the Prophets is excellent. Another person which we would recommend next year in the course would be Marcus Borg with his work, “Reading the Bible Again For The First Time”. There are just so many authors. In the middle of last century, people will ask who are the great theologians that we should read and you will get names like Bultmann, Moltmann, and Raymond Brown etc. Notice that they are all men? You would have read them all and say that they are the people that are impacting theology. Today you will encounter such a diverse group. Catherine Keller is a good one, her work is just fascinating. These will be some of the key people.

I guess that’s all for now. Thanks for your time, and thank you very much for a great semester doing the theology paper with you.

weecw