Abrahamic Scriptural Reading from an Anglican Perspective

AbstractThis article offers a distinctively Anglican evaluation of the practice of Scriptural Reasoning. It draws upon personal experience, and frames its discussion with two ‘case studies’ describing SR study in action. It engages closely with Peter Ochs's positive theorization of Anglican postliberalism from a Jewish perspective in his book Another Reformation. With Ochs, the article rejects the premise that a neutral ‘common ground’ of theoretical agreement is a prerequisite for fruitful encounter across religious traditions, and claims that the traditions in question have generated their own tradition-specific resources for dialogue. The central part of the argument looks for correlations between an Anglican trinitarianism that valorizes historical process and analogical reasoning (something that, with Ochs, might be described as a pneumatological emphasis on the ‘found’), and an Anglican legitimation of SR. The value of reading commentary from the Christian, Jewish and Muslim traditions alongside scriptural texts is asserted.