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.
Theologians of different faiths have strongly challenged the claims made by some of Scriptural Reasoning's founder practitioners that they have requisite knowledge of ancient traditions of Islamic, Jewish and Christian exegesis and, on that basis, "not only the capacity, but also the authority to correct" or "repair" modernist binarist or fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible or Quran.
Published articles by academics have also criticised some Scriptural Reasoning projects in the United Kingdom for alleged lack of parity between participating religions and instrumentalising of sacred texts for political agendas and money, while other scholars have alleged a history in Scriptural Reasoning from earlier SR conferences in the United States of exclusion and bullying of Christian theologian critics, and in later SR projects in the UK of victimisation of Muslim theologian whistleblowers.
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.
In this vein, James and Rashkover write: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.
[13]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.
Thus Scriptural Reasoners frequently emphasize that doing and experimenting with SR as a practice logically precedes theoretical accounts of its grounds or function.
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.
David Ford makes this point using the Hebrew term "l'shma":This practice of shared reading could be done for its own sake—or, better, for God’s sake.
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.
"[25] Building on this description, Ochs frequently emphasizes SR's reparative capacity to accustom practitioners to new ways of reasoning and habits of mind.
"[27] SR repairs this tendency, in part, by training practitioners in alternative habits of mind: [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.
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.
Its proximate origins, however, lie in a related practice, "Textual Reasoning" ("TR"),[34] which involved Jewish philosophers reading Talmud in conversation with scholars of rabbinics.
SR scholars formed an "additional meeting group" at the American Academy of Religion which later became the official Scriptural Reasoning Program Unit.
[54] The Rose Castle Foundation was founded in 2014 to equip leaders for peace and reconciliation work between the Abrahamic religions, with Scriptural Reasoning being central to its training.
He notes "the paucity of references to Jesus Christ" in the essays in The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning (see, e.g., Ford and Pecknold 2006), and asking whether this "may indicate … the further erosion of Christocentric biblical interpretation.
Christina Grenholm and Daniel Patte critique Scriptural Reasoning's presuppositions of Christian self-understanding and context for biblical interpretation.
He comments: "Ford's tent insinuates (and nothing stronger can be said here) the logic of liberalism: the Bible has no binding authority, nor has the church's reading of it got primary status, nor can Christian scripture/Christ actually narrate the other texts of scriptures: Jewish and Muslim".
[61] Under the title, The Broken Promise of Scriptural Reasoning, Muslim theologian, Muhammad Al-Hussaini, presents a critique of David Ford's Anglican-led Scriptural Reasoning initiatives, which he argues lack parity between participant religions, have been characterised by colonialist politics of control, and which he categorises as 'amalīyya fāsida (Arabic: عملية فاسدة), "corrupt practice".
[62] He states that Fordian Scriptural Reasoning has "No minhag/minhaj, no timeless established Judaeo-Islamic discipline of dialectical exegesis traditionis, of thickly-reading holy books using instruments of philology, grammar, received oral tradition and sensitive exposition of concentric layers of literal through to allegorical readings of a verse".
He contends, "Instead, Ford’s Anglican-led SR becomes merely a poor kind of inter-faith Protestant Bible study fashioned within the competency limitations of its self-appointed leadership".
He expresses concern at what he suggests "appeared to be SR’s failure to respect indigenous ways of reading Islamic Scripture, namely alongside hadith and classical commentaries", and further asserts, "Over time I became increasingly offended at the instrumentalising of biblical and Quranic materials for political and funding agendas".
He writes, "There cannot be a 'return to Scripture' in Peter Ochs's sense, since the Qur’an has nowhere been abandoned, and Muslim interlocutors in SR are much more likely to feel part of an unbroken tradition than advocates of a latter-day ressourcement".
[64] Muslim theologian, Mohamed Elsharkawy, positively contrasts practices of Scriptural Reasoning in different contexts but sees SR in the United Kingdom as particularly "heavily contaminated with a Church of England Orientalism and a state counter-extremism agenda".
He writes: The monied UK interfaith agenda exists in part to give credibility to a declining Church of England, and David Ford's Scriptural Reasoning openly admits its Anglican origins and dominant polity.
In place of our ancient tafsir al-qur'an, humbly seeking Allah's multifaceted meanings in every Arabic verse of His Book, Fordian Scriptural Reasoning is at times crude reading with an agenda, and those who have spoken out against this have been hurt.
Rather, along with its colonialism, the defining characteristics of Scriptural Reasoning in some contexts have been the gatekeepers and minders of the 'brand', the vigorous and expensive marketing of SR, 'invitation-only' tactics for some events, and the excluding and in some cases harming the academic lives of some of its Christian and Muslim critics.