what the text must have meant to its fi rst readers given our lexical and
sociological reconstructions. But of course the real trouble with scripture
is the demand it makes of us as witnessing creatures, as responsible co-
participants in the Spirit’s reconciling work. Scripture, as a direct address
to you and me from the living Christ-with-his-church, makes us answer-
able for ourselves and for our neighbor. 26 And so we need to think more
carefully about what Steiner calls the tactical and ontological diffi culties
presented by the scriptures.
Describing the almost occult nature of some poems, Steiner sounds vir-
tually Origenistic: the “radical but working poet” does not invent a secret
language, does not “forge a new tongue,” but instead works “to under-
mine, through distortion, through hyperbolic augment, through elision
and displacement, the banal and constricting determinations of ordinary,
public syntax.” 27 A poem’s diffi culty fulfi lls its purpose, therefore, just
by “dislocating and goading to new life the supine energies of word and
grammar.” 28 Andrey Tarkovsky, the renowned Russian fi lmmaker, casts a
similar vision. He insists that it is exceedingly diffi cult to “cross the thresh-
old of incomprehension” that lies between the viewer and the emotional
truth of the poetic image. As a result, “the beautiful is hidden from the
eyes of those who are not searching for the truth.” 29 The passage through
incomprehension into the truth is arduous, purgative; art’s purpose is to
make that passage possible. “The allotted function of art is not, as is often
assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as example.
The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his
soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.” 30
Reading the scriptures, at least in one regard, is not that different
from engaging poetry or fi lm as Steiner and Tarkovsky understand them.
Interpretation is meant to be diffi cult, soul-harrowing, purgative. We are
supposed to be marked by our efforts to make sense of these texts. In
T.F. Torrance’s words, “by their very nature the scriptures call for long
study, meditation and prayer, and for hard labor.” 31 Why would God give
us this trouble? Because the struggle to make sense of these texts works
on us in ways nothing else can. 32 Working to make faithful sense of the
scriptures makes us apt for the transfi guring work of God. We would do
well, therefore, to take Steiner’s description of tactical diffi culties in poetry
as axiomatic for scriptural hermeneutics:
We are not meant to understand easily and quickly. Immediate purchase is
denied us. The text yields its force and singularity of being only gradually.
BEAUTIFYING THE BEAUTIFUL WORD: SCRIPTURE, THE TRIUNE GOD... 107
