Abstract:
Matthew 18:15–18 proposed a disciplined strategy for dealing with disputes within the
Matthean emerging Christian community. The present study was designed to test the theory,
proposed by the SIFT approach to biblical hermeneutics, that reader interpretation of this
strategy is influenced by the individual readers’ psychological type preferences. Participants
attending two conferences in 2017 reflected on this strategy, working in groups that
distinguished between feeling types and thinking types: 15 biblical scholars at the Summer
School of the Urban Theology Unit, and 22 curates and training incumbents at a 3-day
residential programme. Consistent with psychological type theory and with the SIFT
approach to biblical hermeneutics, the feeling types found the whole tone of the passage
uncomfortable and unsettling. The thinking types identified more readily with the Matthean
strategy. These findings add weight to the reader perspective approach to the interpretation
of scripture that takes the psychological type profile of the reader into account.
