Scriptural reasoning

Scriptural Reasoning ("SR") is one type of interdisciplinary, interfaith scriptural reading. It is an evolving practice in which Christians, Jews, Muslims, and sometimes members of other faiths, meet to study their sacred scriptures together, and to explore the ways in which such study can help them understand and respond to particular contemporary issues. Originally developed by theologians and religious philosophers as a means of fostering post-critical and postliberal corrections to patterns of modern reasoning, it has now spread beyond academic circles.

Scriptural Reasoning involves participants from multiple religious traditions meeting, very often in small groups, to read and discuss passages from their sacred texts (e.g., Tanakh, the New Testament, and the Qur'an). The texts will often relate to a common topic - say, the figure of Abraham, or consideration of legal and moral issues of property-holding. Participants discuss the content of the texts, and will often explore the variety of ways in which their religious communities have worked with them and continue to work with them, and the ways in which those texts might shape their understanding of and engagement with a range of contemporary issues.

A participant from any one religious tradition might therefore:

Scriptural Reasoning has sometimes been described as a "tent of meeting" - a Biblical mishkan (Heb. משׁכן Ara. مسكن) - a reference to the story of Genesis 18. Steven Kepnes, a Jewish philosopher, writes:

Participants in SR practice come to it as both representatives of academic institutions and particular "houses" (churches, mosques, synagogues) of worship. SR meets, however, outside of these institutions and houses in special times and in separate spaces that are likened to Biblical "tents of meeting". Practitioners come together in these tents of meeting to read and reason with scriptures. They then return to their academic and religious institutions and to the world with renewed energy and wisdom for these institutions and the world.

As originally conceived, SR was an academic practice involving theologians, religious philosophers, and text scholars, and was said to be aimed at 'repairing' or 'correcting' patterns of modern philosophical and theological reasoning. That is, it was seen not only as a form of interfaith dialogue, but also as a form of philosophical or theological reasoning. It has often been described as a 'postliberal' or 'postcritical' theological or philosophical movement. Its purpose is sometimes described more simply as that of promoting the growth of 'wisdom', or, more simply still, as 'humbling and creative' interfaith encounter or 'deeper mutual understanding'.

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