Scriptural reasoning: Difference between revisions

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* In turn discuss with them the texts from their own traditions.<ref>{{Harvnb |Higton|Muers|2012|p=94-109}} provides a transcript and analysis of an SR group's conversation about a particular Qur'anic passage; for more general descriptions of SR, see {{Harvnb |Adams|2006a| pp=240–244}}; {{Harvnb |Bailey|2006}} and {{Harvnb |Ford|2006}}.</ref>

=== PurposeFeatures ===

It is impossible to give a definitive or authoritative account of the purpose of SR. Scriptural Reasoning is first and foremost a practice, and individuals and communities may engage in a practice for many and various reasons, while furthermore the purposes or agendas in SR of some practitioners have been contested or rejected by others. Moreover, the actual effects of a practice may outstrip the intentions of its practitioners. Thus Scriptural Reasoners frequently emphasize that doing and experimenting with SR as a practice logically precedes theoretical accounts of its grounds or function. According to Nicholas Adams, 'Scriptural reasoning is a practice which can be theorised, not a theory which can be put into practice. More accurately, it is a variety of practices whose interrelations can be theorised to an extent, but not in any strong sense of fully explanatory theory.'<ref>{{Harvnb|Adams|2006|p=387}}</ref> Peter Ochs makes the same point with reference to a [[midrash]] on Exodus 24:7 in b. Shab. 88a:<blockquote>In the book of Exodus, when Moses tried to deliver the Ten Commandments for the second time, the Israelites respond with the declaration ''naaseh v'nishmah!'' Literally, their declaration means "We shall do it and understand it," but, it was more likely an idiomatic expression for "We are on the job!" or "Consider it done!" The later rabbinic sages offered a homiletic rereading: "We shall first act and then understand"...We have nurtured SR in the same fashion, seeking to experiment with many forms of practice before discovering the one that best fits our goals and working over many years to refine it. We proceeded through experimentation first and only later through theoretical reflection.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ochs|2019|p=2}}</ref></blockquote>

Nevertheless, it is possible to distinguish three commonly-cited and not mutually-exclusive purposes.

=== 1. ''L'shma:'' For its own sake or for God's sake ===

According to David Ford, one should practice SR because studying scripture is intrinsically valuable. On this view, one practices SR for the same reasons and in the same spirit that most traditional Abrahamic readers have studied their scriptures. David Ford makes this point using the Hebrew term "''l'shma''":<blockquote>''This practice of shared reading could be done for its own sake—or, better, for God’s sake.'' Each of the three traditions has its own ways of valuing the study of its scriptures as something worth doing quite apart from any ulterior motive. Scriptural Reasoning might of course have all sorts of practical implications, but to do it above all for God’s sake—as Jews say, ''l’shma'' — encourages purity of intention and discourages the mere instrumentalising of inter-faith engagement.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ford|2011}}</ref></blockquote>The term ''l'shma,'' which literally means "for the name," is ambiguous, capable of signifying Torah study "for its own sake" or "for God's sake."<ref>As Mike Higton points out, Ford tends to slip from one sense to the other, "confident that each supports or feeds into the other, or even that they are two ways of saying nearly the same thing."{{Harvnb|Higton|2013|p = 291}}</ref>

Under the heading of SR as study ''l'shma,'' we might include those who approach SR as a practice that promotes the development of "wisdom," a central theme of David Ford's work on SR.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ford|2007}}. See also {{Harvnb|Torrance|2009|p=128}} and {{Harvnb|James|Rashkover|2021}}.</ref> In the same vein Peter Ochs speaks of SR as "open[ing] unexpected levels of textual and hermeneutical inquiry...for its own sake," an opening made possible by the affective warmth of SR study circles.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ochs|2013|p=631}}</ref> Others frame SR as a kind of ritual practice or even something approaching an act of worship. Marianne Moyaert, for example, argues that SR can be characterized as a formative "ritualized practice."<ref>{{Harvnb|Moyaert|2019}}</ref>

Study ''l'shma'' is motivated by desire, by love for the scriptures and/or for God. For this reason, by inviting participants to share ''l'shma'' study together, SR provides what Ochs calls "a venue for members of different traditions or modes of inquiry to share their affection for scripture." This affective aspect of SR, in turn, contributes to SR's capacity to form unexpected interreligious friendships.<blockquote>The most likely source of these friendships is that ''the style of Formational Scriptural Reasoning tempts participants (often unawares) to reveal at least a bit of the warmth and ingenuousness they display in intimate settings of scripture study among coreligionists at home.''<ref>{{Harvnb|Ochs|2013|p=631}}</ref></blockquote>

=== 2. To repair academic methods and logics ===

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.<ref>{{Harvnb |Mudge|2008}}; {{Harvnb |Lamberth|2008| pp=460–461}}; {{Harvnb |Campbell|2001}}.</ref> These patterns of reasoning persist both in the Western academy and in religious traditions influenced by modernity. Thus according to Peter Ochs, SR was originally intended to repair academic methods of study and the habits of mind that they presuppose.<blockquote>For the founders of Scriptural Reasoning, the original purpose was to repair what they judged to be inadequate academic methods for teaching scripture and scripturally-based religions, such as the Abrahamic religions...Over time, both Scriptural Reasoning and Textual Reasoning acquired new purposes as participants discovered additional consequences of these practices.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ochs|2013|p=629-30}}</ref></blockquote>Nicholas Adams characterizes SR as a practice of "reparative reasoning" capable of advancing "the pragmatic repair of secular universalism."<ref>{{Harvnb|Adams|2008}}. For a thorough account of Ochs and Adams as reparative reasoners engaged in "immanent critique", see {{Harvnb|Rashkover|2020|p=130-151}}.</ref> Building on this description, Ochs frequently emphasizes SR's reparative capacity to accustom practitioners to new ways of reasoning and habits of mind. He says that "the primary purpose of Scriptural reasoning is to correct "binarism in modern Western civilization and in religious groups that have, willy-nilly, adopted this binarism as if it were an engine of indigenous religious discourse and belief."<ref>{{Harvnb|Ochs|2013|p=632}}. See {{Harvnb|James|2022}} for an account of the technical aspects of this logical repair.</ref> Binarism is this logical tendency to assume that difference entails opposition. As Ochs says, "All I mean by "binarism" is a strong tendency to overstate and over-generalize the usefulness of either/or distinctions."<ref>{{Harvnb|Ochs|2013|p=632}}</ref> SR repairs this tendency, in part, by training practitioners in alternative habits of mind: <blockquote>[To affirm] that scripture tolerates, say, two meanings of a crucial verse, and not only one, is already to soften the rage that such participants may feel towards those whose readings different from theirs. In place of rage, such participants may adopt, for example, a superior and patronizing--but nonviolent--attitude towards these others as errant, but guilty only of a weaker reading of scripture rather than a reading that defies the very truth of things.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ochs|2015|p=494}}. Ochs's fullest account of this logical repair is {{Harvnb|Ochs|2019}}, on which see also {{Harvnb|James|2022}}.</ref></blockquote>

SR also tends to repair the binarism that is a persistent feature of modern religious traditions.<blockquote>Scriptural Reasoning is stimulated by the perception, furthermore, that the religious institutions that reside in the modern West have tended to assimilate these binarist tendencies into their theological discourses. One result is that many movements labeled "[[fundamentalist]]" display tendencies to a modern Western-style binarism that has been written into the tissue of traditional religious practices and discourses.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ochs|2014|p=633}}. N.B. also his important caveat: "This is not to say that the various religions lack their own indigenous tendencies to nastiness, but only that binarist nastiness probably comes from the West."</ref></blockquote>

SR thus implies a distinction between fundamentalism and traditionalism: the former tends to apply when the indigenous logic of a religious tradition has been superseded by modern binarism. For this reason, SR can undermine fundamentalism without attacking religious tradition per se, and indeed, purporting to draw its repair from traditional texts and interpretive practices. SR, by contrast, undermines fundamentalism while adopting an optimistic posture towards religious tradition. "Liberal" religion itself tends to operate with the same modern logic; indeed, the opposition between "liberal" and "fundamentalist" forms of religion is plausible, in part, because both operate with similar logics. For this reason, as Kepnes says, SR is "neither Liberal nor Fundamentalist."<ref>{{Harvnb|Kepnes|2006}}.</ref> This is one reason that SR has often been described as a 'postliberal' or 'postcritical' theological or philosophical movement.<ref>For 'postliberal', see {{Harvnb |Pecknold|2006| p=339}}; {{Harvnb |Smith|2008| pp=469–472}} or {{Harvnb |Heim|2004}}; for 'postcritical', see {{Harvnb |Soulen|Soulen|2001| p=140}}; {{Harvnb |Mudge|2008}}; {{Harvnb |Lamberth|2008}}.</ref>

=== 3. To further interfaith peace and understanding ===

Its purpose is sometimes described as 'humbling and creative' interfaith encounter<ref>{{Harvnb |Anglican Communion Network for Inter Faith Concerns (NIFCON)|2008| p=6}}.</ref> or 'deeper mutual understanding'.<ref>{{Harvnb|Clooney|2008|p=28}}</ref>

== Basic features ==

Most forms of SR exhibit the following basic features:

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==== Tent of Meeting ====

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

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==== Hearth ====

Scriptural Reasoning has been compared to gathering around the warmth of a hearth, where - Ochs explains - the hearth represents "those dimensions of life that members of a religion turn to in times of crisis, tension, or uncertainty in the hope of drawing nearer to the source of their deepest values and identities."{{sfn|Ochs|2019|p=18}} This metaphor builds on the rabbinic notion of Torah as a "fire," drawn from texts like Jeremiah 23:29--"Is not my word like fire, says the LORD?" and Deuteronomy 33:2, as interpreted midrashically by the rabbis. In ''Sifre Devarim'' 343, the editor concludes that "the words of Torah are compared to fire" before developing this comparison in various respects. Most relevant to SR is that, "Just as a person that is too close to a fire is burned and if he is too far coldness [results], so too with the words of the Torah. As long as a person is involved in them, they are life-giving, but when one removes himself from them, they kill him..."

In this vein, James and Rashkover write:<blockquote>The same sacredness and life that rewards ''l'shma'' study can also be the cause of absolutism and violence when a community feels under threat. Scripture is ''powerful'': "Is not my word like fire, says the Lord?" (Jer. 23:29). The same fire that warms and gives life can also kill and destroy. Ochs discerns that the impulse to guard the sacredness of scripture, even violently, is often an index of the community's ''love'' of their sacred scriptures as a primal source of divine life. Rather than unleashing the destroying fire of scriptural passion, SR is a practice of offering a measure of scripture's warmth to others.<ref>{{Harvnb|James|Rashkover|2021|p=23}}, with reference to {{Harvnb|Ochs|2015|p=489}}.</ref></blockquote>More recently, Ochs has generalized his concept of scripture into that of a ''hearth,'' "those dimensions of life that members of a religion turn to in times of crisis, tension, or uncertainty in the hope of drawing nearer to the source of their deepest values and identities."<ref>{{Harvnb|Ochs|2019|p=18}}. Ochs develops an extended account of a "hearth" in the same book.</ref> SR, in this view, becomes a prototype of a broader family of "hearth-to-hearth" engagements.

== Purposes ==

It is impossible to give a definitive or authoritative account of the purpose of SR. Scriptural Reasoning is first and foremost a practice, and individuals and communities may engage in a practice for many and various reasons, while furthermore the purposes or agendas in SR of some practitioners have been contested or rejected by others. Moreover, the actual effects of a practice may outstrip the intentions of its practitioners. Thus Scriptural Reasoners frequently emphasize that doing and experimenting with SR as a practice logically precedes theoretical accounts of its grounds or function. According to Nicholas Adams, 'Scriptural reasoning is a practice which can be theorised, not a theory which can be put into practice. More accurately, it is a variety of practices whose interrelations can be theorised to an extent, but not in any strong sense of fully explanatory theory.'<ref>{{Harvnb|Adams|2006|p=387}}</ref> Peter Ochs makes the same point with reference to a [[midrash]] on Exodus 24:7 in b. Shab. 88a:<blockquote>In the book of Exodus, when Moses tried to deliver the Ten Commandments for the second time, the Israelites respond with the declaration ''naaseh v'nishmah!'' Literally, their declaration means "We shall do it and understand it," but, it was more likely an idiomatic expression for "We are on the job!" or "Consider it done!" The later rabbinic sages offered a homiletic rereading: "We shall first act and then understand"...We have nurtured SR in the same fashion, seeking to experiment with many forms of practice before discovering the one that best fits our goals and working over many years to refine it. We proceeded through experimentation first and only later through theoretical reflection.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ochs|2019|p=2}}</ref></blockquote>

Nevertheless, it is possible to distinguish three commonly-cited and not mutually-exclusive purposes.

=== 1. ''L'shma:'' For its own sake or for God's sake ===

According to David Ford, one should practice SR because studying scripture is intrinsically valuable. On this view, one practices SR for the same reasons and in the same spirit that most traditional Abrahamic readers have studied their scriptures. David Ford makes this point using the Hebrew term "''l'shma''":<blockquote>''This practice of shared reading could be done for its own sake—or, better, for God’s sake.'' Each of the three traditions has its own ways of valuing the study of its scriptures as something worth doing quite apart from any ulterior motive. Scriptural Reasoning might of course have all sorts of practical implications, but to do it above all for God’s sake—as Jews say, ''l’shma'' — encourages purity of intention and discourages the mere instrumentalising of inter-faith engagement.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ford|2011}}</ref></blockquote>The term ''l'shma,'' which literally means "for the name," is ambiguous, capable of signifying Torah study "for its own sake" or "for God's sake."<ref>As Mike Higton points out, Ford tends to slip from one sense to the other, "confident that each supports or feeds into the other, or even that they are two ways of saying nearly the same thing."{{Harvnb|Higton|2013|p = 291}}</ref>

Under the heading of SR as study ''l'shma,'' we might include those who approach SR as a practice that promotes the development of "wisdom," a central theme of David Ford's work on SR.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ford|2007}}. See also {{Harvnb|Torrance|2009|p=128}} and {{Harvnb|James|Rashkover|2021}}.</ref> In the same vein Peter Ochs speaks of SR as "open[ing] unexpected levels of textual and hermeneutical inquiry...for its own sake," an opening made possible by the affective warmth of SR study circles.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ochs|2013|p=631}}</ref> Others frame SR as a kind of ritual practice or even something approaching an act of worship. Marianne Moyaert, for example, argues that SR can be characterized as a formative "ritualized practice."<ref>{{Harvnb|Moyaert|2019}}</ref>

Study ''l'shma'' is motivated by desire, by love for the scriptures and/or for God. For this reason, by inviting participants to share ''l'shma'' study together, SR provides what Ochs calls "a venue for members of different traditions or modes of inquiry to share their affection for scripture." This affective aspect of SR, in turn, contributes to SR's capacity to form unexpected interreligious friendships.<blockquote>The most likely source of these friendships is that ''the style of Formational Scriptural Reasoning tempts participants (often unawares) to reveal at least a bit of the warmth and ingenuousness they display in intimate settings of scripture study among coreligionists at home.''<ref>{{Harvnb|Ochs|2013|p=631}}</ref></blockquote>

=== 2. To repair academic methods and logics ===

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.<ref>{{Harvnb |Mudge|2008}}; {{Harvnb |Lamberth|2008| pp=460–461}}; {{Harvnb |Campbell|2001}}.</ref> These patterns of reasoning persist both in the Western academy and in religious traditions influenced by modernity. Thus according to Peter Ochs, SR was originally intended to repair academic methods of study and the habits of mind that they presuppose.<blockquote>For the founders of Scriptural Reasoning, the original purpose was to repair what they judged to be inadequate academic methods for teaching scripture and scripturally-based religions, such as the Abrahamic religions...Over time, both Scriptural Reasoning and Textual Reasoning acquired new purposes as participants discovered additional consequences of these practices.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ochs|2013|p=629-30}}</ref></blockquote>Nicholas Adams characterizes SR as a practice of "reparative reasoning" capable of advancing "the pragmatic repair of secular universalism."<ref>{{Harvnb|Adams|2008}}. For a thorough account of Ochs and Adams as reparative reasoners engaged in "immanent critique", see {{Harvnb|Rashkover|2020|p=130-151}}.</ref> Building on this description, Ochs frequently emphasizes SR's reparative capacity to accustom practitioners to new ways of reasoning and habits of mind. He says that "the primary purpose of Scriptural reasoning is to correct "binarism in modern Western civilization and in religious groups that have, willy-nilly, adopted this binarism as if it were an engine of indigenous religious discourse and belief."<ref>{{Harvnb|Ochs|2013|p=632}}. See {{Harvnb|James|2022}} for an account of the technical aspects of this logical repair.</ref> Binarism is this logical tendency to assume that difference entails opposition. As Ochs says, "All I mean by "binarism" is a strong tendency to overstate and over-generalize the usefulness of either/or distinctions."<ref>{{Harvnb|Ochs|2013|p=632}}</ref> SR repairs this tendency, in part, by training practitioners in alternative habits of mind: <blockquote>[To affirm] that scripture tolerates, say, two meanings of a crucial verse, and not only one, is already to soften the rage that such participants may feel towards those whose readings different from theirs. In place of rage, such participants may adopt, for example, a superior and patronizing--but nonviolent--attitude towards these others as errant, but guilty only of a weaker reading of scripture rather than a reading that defies the very truth of things.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ochs|2015|p=494}}. Ochs's fullest account of this logical repair is {{Harvnb|Ochs|2019}}, on which see also {{Harvnb|James|2022}}.</ref></blockquote>

SR also tends to repair the binarism that is a persistent feature of modern religious traditions.<blockquote>Scriptural Reasoning is stimulated by the perception, furthermore, that the religious institutions that reside in the modern West have tended to assimilate these binarist tendencies into their theological discourses. One result is that many movements labeled "[[fundamentalist]]" display tendencies to a modern Western-style binarism that has been written into the tissue of traditional religious practices and discourses.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ochs|2014|p=633}}. N.B. also his important caveat: "This is not to say that the various religions lack their own indigenous tendencies to nastiness, but only that binarist nastiness probably comes from the West."</ref></blockquote>

SR thus implies a distinction between fundamentalism and traditionalism: the former tends to apply when the indigenous logic of a religious tradition has been superseded by modern binarism. For this reason, SR can undermine fundamentalism without attacking religious tradition per se, and indeed, purporting to draw its repair from traditional texts and interpretive practices. SR, by contrast, undermines fundamentalism while adopting an optimistic posture towards religious tradition. "Liberal" religion itself tends to operate with the same modern logic; indeed, the opposition between "liberal" and "fundamentalist" forms of religion is plausible, in part, because both operate with similar logics. For this reason, as Kepnes says, SR is "neither Liberal nor Fundamentalist."<ref>{{Harvnb|Kepnes|2006}}.</ref> This is one reason that SR has often been described as a 'postliberal' or 'postcritical' theological or philosophical movement.<ref>For 'postliberal', see {{Harvnb |Pecknold|2006| p=339}}; {{Harvnb |Smith|2008| pp=469–472}} or {{Harvnb |Heim|2004}}; for 'postcritical', see {{Harvnb |Soulen|Soulen|2001| p=140}}; {{Harvnb |Mudge|2008}}; {{Harvnb |Lamberth|2008}}.</ref>

=== 3. To further interfaith peace and understanding ===

Its purpose is sometimes described as 'humbling and creative' interfaith encounter<ref>{{Harvnb |Anglican Communion Network for Inter Faith Concerns (NIFCON)|2008| p=6}}.</ref> or 'deeper mutual understanding'.<ref>{{Harvnb|Clooney|2008|p=28}}</ref>

== History ==

=== Origins: Textual Reasoning ===

Scriptural Reasoning has roots in a variety of classical practices of scriptural interpretation, particularly rabbinic ''midrash.'' Its proximate origins, however, lie in a related practice, "Textual Reasoning" ("TR"),<ref>See [http://etext.virginia.edu/journals/tr/ The Journal of Textual Reasoning]</ref> which involved Jewish philosophers reading Talmud in conversation with scholars of rabbinics.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ochs|2006|p=147, n.4}}, {{Harvnb|Ford|2006|p=3}}: 'Scriptural reasoning had its immediate origins in "textual reasoning" among a group of academic Jewish text scholars .... on the one hand, and philosophers and theologians, on the other hand....'. Lewis S. Mudge speaks of ‘a traditional Jewish practice being opened, as an act of hospitality, to others.’ {{Harv|Mudge|2008|p=123}}</ref> Peter Ochs was one of the leading participants in Textual Reasoning (TR).<ref>{{Harvnb|Ford|2006|pp=3–4}} describes the involvement of Ochs in Textual Reasoning. The fullest description of Textual Reasoning can be found in {{Harvnb|Ochs|2002a}} and {{Harvnb|Levene|2002}} (and in the rest of the book from which those essays come); for some of the ways in which TR relates to SR see {{Harvnb|Hardy|2002}}.</ref> As James and Rashkover say,<blockquote>Textual Reasoning (TR) emerged in the 1980s from conversations among Jewish philosophers disappointed by the failure of modern Western philosophy to provide principles of inquiry capable of addressing the pressing concerns of living Jewish communities. These philosophers developed a novel practice of Jewish text study rooted in the Jewish textual tradition itself which they aspired to activate as a source of communal repair. Textual Reasoning brought text scholars familiar with rabbinic reading practices together with Jewish philosophers skilled in illuminating logics of reading and reasoning.<ref> {{Harvnb | James | Rashkover | 2021 | p =21}}</ref></blockquote>In 1990, Ochs and his colleagues founded what they then called the "Postmodern Jewish Philosophy Network" which hosted lively online exchanges, biannual meetings, an online journal. In 1996 they adopted the term "textual reasoning" for this practice, evoking classical Jewish practices of interpretation, and renamed their group the Society for Textual Reasoning.<ref>{{Harvnb |Ochs|2002b}}</ref> In 2002, they founded a ''[https://jtr.shanti.virginia.edu/ Journal of Textual Reasoning].''

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=== Beginnings of SR ===

According to James and Rashkover, "Textual Reasoning gave birth to Scriptural Reasoning (SR) as early Textual Reasoners developed friendships with Christian and Muslim scholars and began to experiment with reading scripture together."<ref>{{Harvnb | James | Rashkover |2021 | p=21}} </ref> Ochs recounts the early history: <blockquote>Beginning in 1994, a group of scholars of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity joined together to discover a way to conduct dialogue across the borders of these three Abrahamic scriptural traditions...We met for five years of biannual study until we discovered and refined the best method, which we called "Scriptural Reasoning" (SR).<ref>{{Harvnb | Ochs|2012}}</ref></blockquote>The term "Scriptural Reasoning" was coined by [[Peter W. Ochs|Peter Ochs]]<ref>{{Harvnb|Mudge|2008|p=123}}; {{Harvnb|Hauerwas|2008|p=19 n.43}}. Note that the phrase can also be found in some other contexts – sometimes in apparent dependence upon SR usage, as in {{Harvnb|Campbell|2006|p=60}}; '"scriptural reasoning" for Paul is necessarily a social and communal activity rather than being purely individual and personal.' Note that Campbell had already written on SR before using the term this way: {{Harvnb|Campbell|2001}}. Other uses, like that of {{Harvnb|Donnelly|2009}}, seem to be unconnected to SR.</ref> to distinguish the interfaith practice of scripture study from its tradition-specific antecedents. Ochs also argues, however, that SR presupposes parallel formation in practices of study across difference like TR: <blockquote>In its broadest meaning, SR includes two sub-practices: study-across-difference within a single scriptural tradition and study across the borders of different scriptural traditions...[T]he former, which we label "Textual Reasoning" (or TR), also makes an irreplaceable contribution to the overall practice of SR.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ochs|2019|p=35}}</ref> </blockquote>The international Society for Scriptural Reasoning (SSR) was founded in 1995.<ref>{{Harvnb |Ford|2007| p=278}}.</ref> The founders include Ochs himself, [[David F. Ford]], [[Daniel W. Hardy]], and Basit Koshul.<ref>{{Harvnb |Ochs|2006| p=147 n.3}}; {{Harvnb |Torrance|2009| p=128}}; {{Harvnb |Afzaal|1998| pp=3–5}} describes the importance of Basit Koshul in the extension of this practice to Muslims.</ref> In 2001, the SSR established a ''[https://jsr.shanti.virginia.edu/ Journal of Scriptural Reasoning]'' to publish research into SR and to displays the academic fruits of SR as a practice.

=== Developments ===

Scriptural Reasoning began as an academic practice and expanded rapidly in academic circles. SR scholars formed an "additional meeting group" at the [[American Academy of Religion]] which later became the official Scriptural Reasoning Program Unit.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ochs|2013|p=627}}. See also {{Harvnb|Mudge|2008|p=33}} and {{Harvnb|Clooney|2008|p=28}}.</ref>

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== Criticisms ==

Criticisms of Scriptural Reasoning which have been made by academics from different traditions address some of its founding practitioners' claims to their having requisite knowledge of ancient traditions of Islamic, Jewish and Christian exegesis and, on that basis, the purported authority to "correct" or "repair" binarist or fundamentalist interpretations of Scripture. Scholars also challenge SR's underlying presuppositions, and raise concerns about the dynamics of power, money and control in SR's practical outworking.

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== References ==

* {{Citation | last = Abernethy | first = Bob | title = Scriptural Reasoning (interview with David Ford, Rumee Achmed and Peter Ochs | magazine = Religion and Ethics News Weekly | date = October 12, 2007 | url = https://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/by-topic/worshipliturgy/cover-scriptural-reasoning/1026/}}

* {{Citation | last = Adams | first = Nicholas | title = Habermas and Theology | place = Cambridge | publisher = Cambridge University Press | year = 2006a | isbn = 978-0-521-68114-8 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=BvbJdgZgNJcC }}