Book Review

Religion without Violence: The Practice and Philosophy of Scriptural Reasoning. By Peter Ochs. (Cascade Books, 2019.) 

Reviewed by Stephen Thomas Betts, University of Virginia 

Philosopher Peter Ochs has been working for peace for decades as a scholar of religion and conflict. His most recent book, Religion without Violence will interest peacebuilders working in spaces of inter- and intra-religious tensions. It outlines practical and philosophical frameworks for using a method of community-building called “Scriptural Reasoning,” a form of “reparative” scriptural interpretation based on Ochs’ innovative reading of the semiotics of American philosopher Charles Peirce. While the theory of scriptural reasoning — as worked out in symbolic logic — is enough to satisfy rigorous scrutiny by analytic philosophers, the practice is quite straightforward, though hardly easy. Simply put, Scriptural Reasoning (SR) is practiced among a “fellowship” of readers from different religious traditions (the original model — now expanded — focused on the Abrahamic religions) who sit around a table in a small group and alternate reading and interpreting selections from each tradition’s sacred texts.  

“Whatever the canon of Scripture,” writes Ochs, “none of the…participants acts as an authority. Together they discuss the plain sense of the verses as if they could read with equal facility. Then, they gradually turn to a discussion of what seems most challenging or surprising, perhaps contradictory…within the verses” (3). Discussing what is difficult is important to SR because SR is intended as a “form of reparative inquiry” (142). When interpreters collaboratively engage difficulties in scripture, they learn together that, “respond[ing] to hermeneutical dysfunction” is actually a beneficial training “in non-binary practices of reading and interpreting sacred texts,” or in other words, a training in there being more than one meaning to the words of scripture (143). Crucially, interpretive challenges in SR reflect aspects of the interpreters’ society that stand in need of repair. One reason that scripture is an ideal site for this collaborative work is that “practices of reading Scripture [serve] as signs of a scriptural community’s indubitable beliefs” about the world (147). The (often) conflictual process of collaborative, cross-faith interpretation that characterizes SR is thus a “hearth-to-hearth” encounter that both reveals and allows for repair of harmful tendencies of core interpretive commitments that can have effects in the day-to-day lives of interpreters (18-21). 

SR has been shown again and again to be a kind of relational knowing that results in “knowing enough” rather than “knowing nothing” or “knowing too much” (139). In practice, this means that SR empowers a “third way” of thinking where the primary goal is not to proselytize, find consensus, or “[uncover] ‘true’ meanings” (139) but to become habituated to thinking about interpretating scripture in “polyvalent and non-binary thinking” based on the “[testable] working assumption” that “monovalent reading and binary thinking accompany occasions of interreligious tension and conflict” (143).   

Over six chapters, Ochs works out the theory, practice, and implications of Scriptural Reasoning as a tool not only for interpretive repair among small groups of SR practitioners, but also for university classrooms in religious studies. Ochs also works out applications of the logic of SR for policy analysts and professional peacebuilders.  

Chapter 1 introduces the practice and basic theory of SR, including a helpful list of key principles (15–23). Chapter 2 compares SR with its predecessor-discipline of Textual Reasoning (a tradition-internal practice) and expounds on the primary differences, with examples of what each looks like in practice. Chapter 3 is an accessible introduction to the roots of Scriptural Reasoning in Peircean semiotics, which Ochs has written on at much greater length in Peirce, Pragmatism, and the Logic of Scripture (1998). Chapter 4 gives illustrations and practical guidance for teaching SR to undergraduate and graduate students in a university context. Chapter 5 is a deep dive into the epistemological and semiotic architecture of “What is (Really) Going On in the SR Classroom,” and features a helpful summary of key principles for non-specialists, as in previous chapters (139–49). Chapter 6 introduces an application of the logic of SR to peacebuilding in the form of “Hearth-to-Hearth” or H2H peacebuilding, which relies on measurements of semantic and linguistic flexibility in how a “Hearth” group talks about its values. The wager is that different degrees of flexibility in terms and meanings can be used to predict a group’s general behavior vis-à-vis potential violence or the potential for H2H dialogue.  

Undoubtedly, parts of this book will be challenging to those without a grounding in Peircean semiotics. That said, the key takeaway from Religion Without Violence is the abundance of practical wisdom for peacebuilders who work with or within religious communities or are concerned about the potential for religious conflict. Given that religion is among the greatest sources of violent conflict in the world today, Religion Without Violence should interest anyone interested in peacebuilding and conflict resolution. 

Bibliography 

Ochs, Peter. Peirce, Pragmatism, and the Logic of Scripture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).  

Stephen Thomas Betts is a doctoral candidate in religious studies at the University of Virginia. As an historian, his work focuses on religion and race in nineteenth century America. He is also broadly interested in how religion can be a positive force for social change in the public sphere.