In the first chapter of Isaiah, God issues a call to Israel and Judah: “Come, let us reason together.” Though used in a specific context in Isaiah, the words themselves hold promise for conversation today between all who would talk respectfully and reasonably about difference.

Scriptural reasoning is one such promising conversation. It is a practice of study that invites Muslims, Jews, and Christians to sit around a common table and engage in reading, study, discussion, and inquiry about their scriptural traditions. An evolving practice of scripture study, it began in 1996 when Jewish scholar Peter Ochs of the University of Virginia, and Christian scholar David Ford of Cambridge University formed the Scriptural Reasoning Society. Both men, and Islamic scholar Aref Ali Nayed, spoke about scriptural reasoning as part of PTS President Iain Torrance’s inauguration in March 2005. Torrance had chosen “Faith in the Third Millennium: Reading Scripture Together” as the inauguration’s theme, emphasizing his intentional placement of scripture, meaning the sacred texts of the three Abrahamic faiths, at the center of the celebration.

Last July, Ochs returned to the PTS campus where he, along with William Taylor, researcher at the Grubb Institute in London, and Rumee Ahmed, assistant professor at Colgate University and formerly the first Muslim chaplain at Brown University, convened and led a week-long scriptural reasoning workshop hosted by Princeton Seminary, the first such workshop in the northeastern United States.

Providing a venue for scriptural reasoning is important. The meeting place—in this case the Erdman Conference Center—is likened to the biblical mishkan or “tent of meeting.” With the generous support of the F.I.S.H. Foundation, founded by Dorothy Hanle and led by the Reverend Dr. Kathy Nelson (M.Div., 1980) and committed to promoting interfaith understanding, Princeton Seminary provided the “tent” and ensured a hospitable environment for all participants.

After sitting together in this symbolic tent of meeting, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim workshop participants gathered separately according to their respective faiths, each to discuss the same texts selected from Deuteronomy, the Gospel of Mark, and the Qur’an. They then reassembled to share their discussions.

Dr. Gordon Mikoski, assistant professor of Christian education and one of the Christian participants, described the progression of the workshop. First, in the step called “textual reasoning,” practitioners of each faith read and shared, within their own faith group, their understanding of an assigned, particular text from the point of view of their faith tradition. The next step was more challenging: the Christians engaged in textual reasoning with the Muslims and Jews observing, and attempted to give their explanation of their own text to the observers, who could ask questions or offer insights.

The next step, specifically called scriptural reasoning, began with each group comparing and contrasting portions of its own text with corresponding texts from the others’ scriptures as they were juxtaposed. Finally, the participants read the texts of the others as if “owning the scripture,” treating all three texts as scripture for them.

The process does not exclude controversy, Taylor explained. “You might think we need to avoid the source of various faith controversies, but in a way scriptural reasoning is counterintuitive. It goes to the text.” Ahmed agreed. “Scriptural reasoning moves beyond the simple platitudes that we often content ourselves with in interfaith conversation. It takes into account not only our similarities but also our deep-seated differences, and celebrates them, so that we can understand our own traditions better and live together in more harmony.”

Mikoski explained what happened for him: “I found that I had brought assumptions in reading the Deuteronomy text about the law from a Christian ethos. My observation as a Calvinist was that following the law is primarily an expression of gratitude and a guide for our freedom. However, the Jewish participants took exception, and argued that it is by obeying and following the law that we encounter God.” For Mikoski, the progression of the conversation from textual to scriptural reasoning “was akin to tikkun olam ‘repair of the world,’ whereby the world is actually changed and healed.”

For Ochs, scriptural reasoning has come after years of more tentative and cautious forms of interfaith dialogue. “We’ve talked about liking each other and learning each others’ rituals and customs, and we’ve worked for civil rights together, and that was all foundational,” he explained. “Now we think we’re ready for something deeper, even eschatological. We want to talk about one another’s most profound beliefs as they are displayed in that most intimate source, our scripture.”

Ochs has experienced this deeper, eschatological hope offered by scriptural reasoning. Several years ago he spent a summer in Cape Town, South Africa, giving lectures about the practice. He described his experience: “After much effort, we were able to convince four Orthodox Jewish rabbis, four Shiite imams, and four Dutch Reformed ministers, each of whom loved his tradition, to spend four hours together in the Cape Town Holocaust Museum. It was very difficult to gather this company, but because we had talked together about our scriptures, it was one of the most intense, engaged, and jocular exchanges I’ve seen, and this among basically enemies.”

Although the practice of scriptural reasoning was originally introduced in academic institutions, it is now also being developed as a civic practice for community faith leaders and has been proposed as a model for political discourse. Thus, pastors were included in the workshop. However, it is not a practice that one can master immediately. “Because it is a practice, we have found that really the only way to get a sense of scriptural reasoning is by doing it, preferably with others who have been doing it for a while,” Taylor said.

In 2007, Christians received the Muslim letter, “A Common Word Between Us and You,“ and a reply was composed at Yale Divinity School’s Center for Faith and Culture. The response was called “Loving God and Neighbor Together: A Christian Response to A Common Word Between Us and You.” Both documents make a plea for peaceful dialogue and interfaith study, acknowledging that love of God and love of neighbor are commandments found in each of the three Abrahamic religions. Both documents also cite the alarming truth that the future of the world is dependent upon peace and understanding among these religions. President Torrance and many PTS faculty members responded by adding their signatures to the Yale document. The scriptural reasoning workshop on the campus is an added response, a seed to encourage greater ecumenical understanding.

Perhaps the most genuine result is friendship. At President Torrance’s inauguration, David Ford said: “What happens at best in such sessions is close engagement with each other’s texts in a spirit simultaneously of academic study, of being true to one’s own convictions and community, and of truth-seeking and peace-seeking conversation wherever that might lead. It does not usually lead to consensus—the differences between us often emerge more sharply, and at these points there is often a deepening awareness of the meaning of one’s own faith. It does often lead to friendship.”

Friendship between the scriptural reasoning initiative and Princeton Seminary is certainly flowering. Rumee Ahmed believes the role of host is the most important. “The host is central in providing a safe, neutral space where there’s ample hospitality for the participants,” he said. “We have felt at home at Princeton Seminary, and when you feel at home you’re able to open up and feel comfortable about exploring the text and knowing one another as brothers and sisters within the Tent of Abraham.”

For information on scriptural reasoning, go to http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/journals/jsrforum/

To read the addresses from President Torrance’s inauguration, go to http://www.ptsem.edu/inaugural/events/inauguration.php

For more information about the F.I.S.H. Foundation, go to http://www.fishfoundationinc.org

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