Colin H. Yuckman
SBL-AAR Conference
Philadelphia
November 19, 2005
An Ulterior Gospel
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Every hermeneutic operates according to a critical rubric. Implied in each critical hermeneutic, however, is some sort of uncritical, fiduciary commitment. That is, in order to sustain a critical approach, one must remain committed to something else uncritically (one cannot be critical of everything, including one’s critical operating principles, or else he will philosophically implode). Therefore, an uncritical commitment underlies every critical hermeneutic. The purpose of this paper is to put side by side the hermeneutic operative in much historical criticism (which has had particular privilege in Western, biblical interpretation) and missional hermeneutics, examining their respective commitments, critical and uncritical, and the trajectory on which these commitments have set them. The result will indicate the degree to which each model represents an adequate example of critical hermeneutics and, furthermore, how missional hermeneutics can adopt the benefits of historical criticism without contracting its ailments.
Historical Criticism: Commitments and Presuppositions
Biblical scholars tend to agree on the scientific purpose of historical criticism—to find the purpose of a text (why it was written), its aim (for whom it was written), its life-setting (how it functioned), and its form (what kind of writing it is). Where scholars seem to disagree is on the emphasis placed on the various methodologies that comprise historical criticism, in order to determine a text’s meaning. Most exegetes simply employ a combination of these tools and differences emerge as they place their accent variously. The result, with which we have become familiar, is often a miscellaneous hermeneutic.
At a time when the results of historical-critical work are coming under increasing suspicion, it is important to identify what warrants that criticism and how that impacts its effectiveness as a methodological tool. In what follows I will lay out some arbitrarily chosen presuppositions of historical criticism, emphasizing its shortcomings and neglecting its benefits. The following seven characteristics represent several assumptions operative in historical criticism1 as it functions in much western, protestant biblical scholarship. Though rarely articulated by historical critics, nevertheless they represent claims2 which the practice of historical criticism assumes:
1. Autonomy. Peter Stuhlmacher produced in 1977 one of the ablest critiques of historical criticism, entitled Historical Criticism and the Theological Interpretation of Scripture. One of his primary critiques centers on historical criticism’s presumption of autonomy.3 Since historical criticism has grown increasingly less interested in tradition and dogmatics—in fact, its flourishing depends on the scarcity of such interest—it has driven a wedge between scientific inquiry and the vitality of Christian faith. To preserve the integrity of its method, historical criticism availed itself of conformity to enlightened scientific principles over against the dogmatic claims of the Church. As a result, a method which was conceived in and for the Church lost much of its built-in accountability. The locus of accountability came to lie more in the strictures of the scientific method than in any ecclesial tradition. Adherents to the scientific method mostly speak of it as an autonomous instrument, unaccountable to church or government; in other words, the truly ‘free science.’ While this represents a deep philosophical fallacy, historical criticism has adopted a similar notion.
2. Value-neutrality. What many scholars believe is that like a clean slate historical-critical methods only take on the values that practitioners bring to the task. By claiming to appeal to interpreters of every theological disposition, it supposes a kind of methodological universality. ‘Methodological universality’ implies that, given its presupposition of autonomy, historical criticism is not historically, culturally, or ideologically bound. Under this assumption many scholars and professors believe their appropriation of historical criticism leads them into a kind of value-free area of pedagogy, from which they can study and teach entirely free from having to make value judgments or commitments.4 Not only is historical criticism decidedly not value-neutral, but it actually implies its own value system.5 The classification of ‘critical’ and ‘pre-critical’ (and now ‘post-critical’) eras exhibits an instance of the value system implied in the method. With roots in both 18th century university ideals and the cause of the Church, the modern historical-critical method struggles to maintain what some have called a “double loyalty”—an allegiance to notions of the progress of human knowledge and responsibilities to the edification of the Church.6
3. A certain tradition of rationality. Not only does it rely on a particular view of history, but historical criticism also reflects a certain tradition of rationality, to which Alisdair MacIntyre has drawn considerable attention.7 The Enlightenment quest for a central point or principle around which philosophical and political consensus could be reached has resulted in the idolization of Cartesian rationality (and Baconian empiricism). Reason, pitted against religion, claims to be the only value-free, objective, universal, and trans-historical dogma worth holding. As MacIntyre shows at length, however, even the concept of rationality is conditioned by time and culture. With good reason Martin Luther called reason a “whore” and the great “enemy of faith.”
Furthermore, empiricism and rationality are a function of what is considered plausible given a certain worldview. Peter Berger’s description of “plausibility structures” proves helpful here. The reality of any world, in Berger’s definition, “depends upon the presence of social structures within which [a certain view of] reality is taken for granted and within which successive generations of individuals are socialized in such a way that this world will be real to them.”8 Historical criticism necessarily operates within the confines of a certain ‘plausibility structure’ which its practitioners assume. Only what is acceptable by the standards of a present-day plausibility structure can be considered legitimate results of its methodology.9 Many historical critics are guilty of apotheosizing this tendency, unaware of the fact that ‘plausibility structures’ are subject to the fluctuations of culture within history.
4. An outside-observer’s viewpoint. Levenson shows that two presuppositions undergird unreflective historical criticism in this respect: (1) the belief that a biblical text’s mythic elements possess a latent meaning not grasped by those for whom it was written (e.g. the post-exilic community), who only see the ostensible meaning; and (2) this latent meaning is only accessible to one outside that uncomprehending ancient community—i.e. the modern “outsider-anthropologist.” The logical conclusion is that this latent meaning is the text’s consummate meaning and the ostensible meaning is simply the product of the community’s inexorable self-deception or ignorance. Interpreters whose work rests on these two presuppositions are
actually asserting a secular analogy to a religious revelation: they are claiming to have a definitive insight into the meaning of things, even things that they have never directly experienced and that are interpreted very differently by those who have. They assume that the observer’s observation is truer than the practitioner’s practice.10
Because, in principle, historical criticism disallows the possibility of revelation, the ‘doctrine’ with which it has filled the resulting void is this notion that the “outsider-anthropologist” has the superior vantage point from which to interpret the meaning of a given phenomenon.
James D. Smart characterizes this tendency as that of a “spectator hermeneutic,” which dissects “the contents of ancient documents as the anatomist dissects a corpse, turning up a vast amount of valuable factual material but inhibiting any living converse with the authors of the documents.”11 In order to achieve the ideals of neutrality, objectivity, and certainty, an interpreter must minimize his interests and prior commitments. Without these ideological accoutrements, the historical critic believes he can assume a throne of sterile, non-partisan judgment. This presumption amounts to the belief that historical critics, by virtue of their methodology, can actually stand outside of a tradition, a culture, and even a belief system in order to maximize the objectivity of the critique and minimize any prejudices.
5. Immunity to its own scrutiny. In the minds of some, Bultmann’s “demythologization” project effectively relegated God and religion to the category of ‘other-worldly’, while at the same time permitting the biblical text to remain in the realm of scientific study. 12 For this reason, historical criticism exhibits a certitude and exactness borrowed from the natural sciences. Like a methodological automaton, it claims to be free from the prejudices of the humanities and belongs only to the realm of science. However, as Michael Polanyi has shown, science can turn in on itself and uphold false notions of objectivity and certainty. Likewise, historical criticism has grown so accustomed to its invulnerable position in the academy that it has become unwilling to submit itself to the rigors of its own scrutiny. That is, it thrives on a critical disposition toward everything but itself. Peter Berger articulates this double standard well.
The past, out of which the tradition comes, is relativized in terms of this or that socio-historical analysis. The present, however, remains strangely immune from relativization. In other words, the New Testament writers are seen as afflicted with a false consciousness rooted in their time, but the contemporary analyst takes the consciousness of his time as an unmixed intellectual blessing.13
6. Irresponsibly Theological. Avowedly scientific approaches, like historical criticism, presuppose some overview of reality, which in turn presupposes a religious belief.14 In the case of historical criticism we are compelled to wonder what religious belief is operative behind its methodological practices. Reflecting on our conversation up to this point, we must wonder whether the “presuppositions” are less methodological or philosophical and more theological. For this reason we might call a majority of historical critical work “inadvertently rather than responsibly theological.”15
The acceptance it generally receives, its continuity with a secular worldview, its affinity for the scientific process—all these things combine to make historical-critical scholarship the proclamation of another worldview, an ulterior gospel of sorts, which places on its consumers certain demands the likes of which we might only describe as that which we find in a religious conversion. All the evidence points to a troubling phenomenon: biblical critics, by a self-imposed hermeneutic, must read the Bible utsi Deus non daretur.
7. A fundamentalist approach. As we have seen, historicism can be so totalizing that it precludes the possibility of integration with other approaches. Its claim to be the most effective method universalizes its claim, implying that in the end other traditions of exegesis and interpretation must bow to it.16 If expressions of historical criticism can be called “a secular analogue to religious revelation,” on account of its intolerance toward other traditions we might even call it the secular analogue to religious fundamentalism. 17
Traditionally, fundamentalism (classically called ‘Biblicism’) has been associated with intolerance towards differing views. Liberalism, on the other hand, is seen as open-minded and always tolerant of a plurality of views. The more evidence we gather about the nature of biblical criticism and historicism, however, the more these traditional stereotypes seem to flip-flop. A system of thought like historical criticism thrives on its capacity to exempt itself from its own critique, making it the quintessence of hypocrisy—a quality we commonly associate with fundamentalism.
The sad irony is that fundamentalist historicism breeds fundamentalist Biblicism. Levenson recalls how most doctoral candidates often enter their programs as mildly Biblicist Christians, energized by a previous conversion experience, only to be ‘converted’ a second time, to the tenets of historical criticism. He soon realized that the doctoral program thrived on this ‘second conversion’ experience. From this example, we can recognize in much scholarship a counter-dependence on fundamentalism. Historical critics—reared on liberal education—constantly distill their approach to biblical interpretation through a desire to “correct” perceived fundamentalism. Hence, the existence of fundamentalism perpetuates “converts” to the historical-critical method and, in a counter-reaction, the proponents of the historical-critical method, possessing their own singular intolerance, perpetuate the sentiments of fundamentalism. In the end, one kind of fundamentalism breeds another, something for which the guild of scholarship will one day have to stand up and claim responsibility.
Missional Hermeneutics: Commitments and Presuppositions18
1. Mission and Interpretation. The connection between missional theology and hermeneutics may not be obvious. James V. Brownson, in one of the few works on the subject, draws the connection in a personal revelation: “Over the years, I have discovered that many of the core issues with which I grapple as a New Testament interpreter bear close affinities to the issue that missiologists address as they seek to understand how the gospel moves across cultural boundaries.”19 In other words, the hermeneutical process involved in cross-cultural mission is recognizably similar to that which we see happening within the Bible itself. Therefore, missional hermeneutics should be understood as a more organic approach to biblical interpretation, derivative of the texts themselves.
Lesslie Newbigin approaches missional hermeneutics in a similar fashion in his exposition of the Gospel of John, The Light Has Come. In what may be one of the highest expressions of missional hermeneutics, Newbigin raises important hermeneutical questions reflected in John 1:1-5.
…what if the new thing which [John] wants to introduce is so radically new that it calls into question all previous axioms and assumptions, all inherited tradition and all human experience, so that even language itself cannot serve to communicate it? What if the new thing is in fact the primal truth by which all else has to be confronted and questioned? How do you begin to explain that which must in the end be accepted as the beginning of all explanation? That is the problem of the evangelist.20
Here in the New Testament we see what only recently has been termed the “hermeneutical circle.” The proclamation of good news requires a corresponding faith on the part of the hearer for him or her to accept and understand the good news, and yet it is only this proclamation, accepted and understood, that can elicit the requisite faith. The “problem of the evangelist” is essentially a missionary problem. By learning more of the biblical God, one’s pre-understanding slowly succumbs to the claims the Bible makes about itself until the believer adopts the kind of commitments which were operative in the lives of the biblical authors, who were informed by the Holy Spirit.
2. Unequivocally Theological. Whereas “spectator hermeneutics” is “inadvertently rather than responsibly theological”, missional hermeneutics has a candidly theological foundation. Essentially, missional theology embraces the thought and practice of Christian formation in terms of the revelation of the triune God, namely that in God’s sending of Jesus and in their joint sending of the Holy Spirit, entrusted to communities of Christian discipleship, Christians are reflexively sent out to proclaim the good news in word and deed, endowed with the ministry of reconciliation, to serve as sign, foretaste, and agent of God’s reign in all the world. One of the many characteristics of missional theology is the notion that in history (indistinguishable from biblical history) God has consistently elected certain people to carry out God’s purposes in the world. From Abraham to Israel to Jesus to the Church, God’s gifts of salvation and blessing have been bestowed, but always under the condition that the election of some was purposed for the election of all. Missional theology holds that the Church (reflective of Abraham’s family and Israel), as William Temple was fond of noting, is the only community that exists for the sake of those who do not belong to it. This is one particular and by no means exhaustive understanding of “missional theology.”
3. Hermeneutic of Consent. Missional hermeneutics is responsibly theological where historical criticism is not. In the area of critical tools, however, historical criticism has much to offer. Among its achievements are an unprecedented historical awareness and contextual analysis that ground texts in the historicity of the biblical witness. We are left with the question: how do we appropriate tools leavened by the yeast of the Enlightenment without also adopting their assumptions and concomitant pitfalls? One of the primary responses to this question is what Peter Stuhlmacher calls the “hermeneutic of consent” (Hermeneutik Einverständnis). In contrast to the dominant “hermeneutic of suspicion”, the phrase conveys a sense of “assent” or “acquiescence” by which he means openness to or “hearing” (Vernehmen) of the possibility of God’s transcendence in history and historical texts.
Stuhlmacher observes that historical criticism appears to operate more within the scope of the interpreter’s conditioned sense of plausibility than within a real openness to the reality of the text at hand. “I plead for a correction of the historical-critical method on the basis of the reality of the text from which I anticipate a great deal more than from my inherited habits of judgment.”21 Criticism cannot determine in advance what is real, but must instead acquiesce to the multitude of possibilities within the text according to a hermeneutic of consent. While historical criticism issues a serious challenge to people with commitments to the Bible, we must not forget that the Bible issues an even more serious challenge to people with commitments to historical criticism.22
4. A Biblical Plausibility Structure. We are compelled to ask at some point, however, whether or not our ‘enlightened’ plausibility structure limits or frees our experience of God’s transcendent working in the world. Based on our study of the assumptions of historical criticism, the present plausibility structure seems especially intolerant toward the claims the Bible makes about God and itself. The hermeneutic of consent compels us to open our dominant plausibility structure to criticism from the biblical one. As Newbigin notes, “the difference between the two ways of telling the biblical story, the way of Religionsgeschichte and the confessional way, is…simply that one represents the reigning plausibility structure and the other calls it in question.”23
The question naturally follows: how do we challenge the present plausibility structure from the point-of-view of the biblical one? Perhaps nothing short of a radical Spirit-led metanoia must initiate it. After that, a gradual transformation is brought about by inclusion in a community, the members of which are themselves at various stages in this inhabiting of the biblical plausibility structure. This community, the Church, is identified in John’s Gospel as consisting of ones who dwell in Jesus and in whom Jesus dwells. Paul also speaks repeatedly of being “in Christ.” There is a radical conversion of worldviews, experienced at various rates, which inclusion into a community of biblically oriented Christians cultivates. Participation in this community becomes tantamount to participation “in Christ” himself.
5. Particularity and Universality. Another way of approaching the uniqueness of missional hermeneutics is its insistence on the Bible’s complex notions of universality and particularity. Richard Bauckham, in Bible and Mission, shows how God and the Bible are identified in the movement from particular to universal. He sums up his argument:
…God’s own identity is itself a narrative identity. It is a particular identity God gives himself in the particular story of Israel and Jesus, and it is an identity which itself drives the narrative towards the universal realization of God’s kingdom in all creation. God identifies himself as the God of Abraham, Israel and Jesus in order to be the God of all people and the Lord of all things. Moreover….the people of God is also given its identity in this movement from the particular to the universal, an identity whose God-given dynamic we commonly sum up in the word ‘mission’. God, God’s people and God’s world are related to each other primarily in a narrative that mediates constantly the particular and the universal.24
Bauckham locates missional hermeneutics in the constant biblical movement from particular to universal. Abraham is chosen so that all the nations of the earth might come to blessing through him. Israel is chosen so that all the nations might be drawn to their light. The disciples are chosen so that all people might come to the knowledge of the truth. God’s very identity is bound up in the intention to draw in the universal through active work in the particular, like an intersection of centripetal and centrifugal forces.
6. Interpretation with universal intent. Perhaps the most helpful tool for navigating between the twin dangers of unreflective objectivism and reactionary subjectivism is Michael Polanyi’s notion of “universal intent.” The thrust of his work, Personal Knowledge, is the assertion that all knowledge has a personal component, a commitment of sorts, if it is to be considered real ‘knowledge’. The modern concept of impersonal facts is epistemologically unsound, for it invokes certain principles of normativity to which a knower is not required to make fiduciary commitment. Any presumption of contact with reality must claim universality since it involves personal commitment. If the knower deems the knowledge worthy of commitment by him it necessarily follows that that commitment can be writ large in the form of universal intent. On this view, a personal commitment is the ground of a kind of objectivity, rather than subjectivity.
The possibility of error is a necessary element of any belief bearing on reality, and to withhold belief on the grounds of such a hazard is to break off all contact with reality. The outcome of a competent fiduciary act may, admittedly, vary from one person to another, but since the differences are not due to any arbitrariness on the part of the individuals, each retains justifiably his universal intent. As each hopes to capture an aspect of reality, they may all hope that their findings will eventually coincide or supplement each other.25
Polanyi insists that as humans, however fallible, we come to the knowledge of the truth by the risks of seeking it, stating our findings, and soliciting responses from others. Like a child, to whom Jesus points us, we cannot escape ‘our world’ sufficiently to make reference to impersonal facts. When we try to do so, we fall into hopeless subjectivity. However, when we understand and utilize the element of personal commitment in the act of knowing, our aims and experience necessarily become what we believe is true for all.26 In this sense, Christians committed to the enterprise of truth are compelled to believe their truth-claims with universal intent—that what is true for them is true for all; otherwise, it is no truth at all.
7. The Congregation as the Hermeneutic of the Gospel. Coined by Lesslie Newbigin27, this concept succinctly summarizes and combines the previous six assumptions of missional hermeneutics. In short, it refers to the notion that our constant instrument for understanding and learning the gospel is our believing community. Through a tradition of such interpretation, congregations (not only its leaders) become fully integrated members of a biblical plausibility structure, out of which they collectively testify to the bankruptcy inherent in the plausibility structure and totalizing discourse we call ‘secular modernity.’ With the ‘gospel’ as discrimen (Kelsey), different communities interpret the Bible with a ‘universal intent’, bringing their understanding of the Bible into full contact with other communities’ understandings. The resulting interdependence of particular Christian communities promotes the unity of the universal Church in reliance upon the work of the Spirit.
In contrast to unchecked historicism, in which an interpreter’s religious commitments are vigorously downplayed, missional hermeneutics assumes that one’s commitment to a community is not only accepted, but required. There can be no scholastic monad in missional hermeneutics, attempting to interpret in a vacuum or without community. Even the questions missional hermeneutics raises reflect this difference. While traditional biblical criticism28 asks, “which hermeneutic is most qualified to understand the Scriptures?” missional hermeneutics asks instead, “what kind of community does a faithful hermeneutic foster?”
The ‘Seeing Stick’
John Calvin more than once referred to the Bible as a set of spectacles, through which the world as it really is comes into focus. This is one of the most enduring images we have of the role of Scripture in Christian life. If we took into account the advances of technology, I suppose we would have to nuance Calvin’s analogy. In that case, the Bible would be like a pair of contacts, harder to remove than a pair of glasses. Or, even more contemporary, the Bible would be like Lasik eye-surgery where the eyes’ lenses are surgically brought into focus by means of a finely tuned laser.
I’d like to nuance Calvin’s original image even further, borrowing from an idea of Michael Polanyi, which was brought to attention in the works of Lesslie Newbigin. In his most comprehensive work, Personal Knowledge, Polanyi makes the distinction between two types of awareness— tacit (or subsidiary) and focal. For example, during a pianist’s performance of a complex sonata, she does not attend to each individual finger playing each individual note; her attention is on the musical shape of the sonata. We may say that she attends focally to the music and only subsidiarily or tacitly to her individual fingers and notes. In a sense, she indwells the piano keys, by pouring herself into them and assimilating them. The same could be said of a seeing person (or a blind person) wandering through a pitch-dark room who uses a ‘seeing’ stick to find his way. He does not attend to his hand grasping the stick, but rather to the contours of the room, which the movements of his stick help define.
Tacit and focal attention are two different facets of the practice of knowing and they are mutually exclusive, but not interchangeable. When we attend focally to that which we should attend tacitly, the results are disastrous. If the unseeing man focuses on his palm grasping the stick instead of the contours of the room, he will become overly conscious and likely stumble. After becoming the object of his focal attention, the ‘seeing stick’ ceased to be an instrument directed toward the focal purpose of determining the contours of the room.
As long as we make that to which we should give subsidiary attention the object of our focal attention or, in Augustinian terms, exchange signum for res, we corrupt the functional utility of our object. Polanyi never intended this illustration as an analogy for biblical interpretation; Newbigin, however, adopted Polanyi’s image for exactly this purpose. Expanding on Newbigin’s treatment, I believe an understanding of the Bible as a ‘seeing stick’ provides us with a helpful image for the role of the Bible in Christian life. Like Calvin’s image of the Bible as “lenses,” I suggest that Scripture acts like a ‘seeing stick,’ which, by our indwelling of it, becomes our mode of discerning a way through a dark world.
Put simply, like the stick for the unseeing man, the Bible is of little value unless it is used, and then used tacitly. When it functions as an instrument—a unique instrument, to say the least—it becomes something we indwell, taking its meaning from the purpose to which it is directed. Therefore, the meaning of the tool derives from its participation in the meaning of the whole enterprise of Christian experience. I would suggest that much biblical criticism in the last century has identified the Bible and its interpretation as the object of our focal attention, rather than of our subsidiary attention. Therefore, historical-critical approaches to Scripture, while sometimes effective, has over-attended to the Bible itself. The dissection and atomization of the Bible has made our use of it excessively self-conscious, rather than tacit. Instead of understanding the Bible as functional, as an instrument we indwell toward being faithful and effective Christians in the world, we have inadvertently reversed this paradigm. Instead of indwelling the Scriptures in order to interpret and critique the world, we have indwelled the world—with all its modern, Enlightenment rationality and plausibility structures—and critiqued the Bible. In more relevant language, we have tacitly understood culture as an extension of ourselves toward analyzing the Gospel, as opposed to understanding the Gospel as the instrument of our analysis of culture. Missional hermeneutics proposes nothing less than the theological transformation of this paradigm, by which the Bible comes to be used functionally, used tacitly, and, above all, used faithfully.
Bibliography of Works Cited
Bauckham, Richard. Bible and Mission: Christian Witness in a Postmodern World.
Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2003.
“Behind” the Text: History and Biblical Interpretation (Scripture and Hermeneutics
Series, v. 4), ed. by Craig Bartholomew, C. Stephen Evans, Mary Healy, and
Murray Rae. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003.
Berger, Peter L. A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the
Supernatural. New York: Anchor Books, 1990.
-----------------. The Sacred Canopy. New York: Anchor, 1967.
Bosch, David. “Toward a Hermeneutic for ‘Biblical Studies and Mission’” Mission
Studies 3 no. 2 (1986): pp 64-87.
Brownson, James V. Speaking the Truth in Love: Resources for a Missional
Hermeneutic. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1998.
Clouser, Roy A., The Myth of Religious Neutrality. Notre Dame, IN: Univ. of Notre
Dame Press, 1991.
Froehlich, Karlfried. “Biblical Hermeneutics on the Move” Ex Auditu v. 1 1985, pp 3-13.
Kiefert, Patrick. “The Bible and Theological Education: A Report and Reflections on a
Journey” in Ending of Mark and the Ends of God, Essays in Memory of Donald
Harrisville Juel, ed. by Beverly R. Gaventa and Patrick D. Miller. Louisville:
W/JKP, pp 165-182.
Levenson, Jon. “The Bible: Unexamined Commitments of Criticism” First Things 30
(Feb 993): pp 24-33.
Newbigin, Lesslie. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
1989.
---------------------. The Light Has Come: An Exposition of the Fourth Gospel. Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982.
Polanyi, Michael. Personal Knowledge Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. New York:
Harper & Row, 1958.
Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal [Pope Benedict XVI]. “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: On
the Question of the Foundations and Approaches of Exegesis Today,” in Biblical
Interpretation in Crisis: The Ratzinger Conference on Bible and Church, ed. by
Richard John Neuhaus. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989: pp 1-23.
Reclaiming the Bible for the Church, ed. by Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson. Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995.
Renewing Biblical Interpretation (Scripture & Hermeneutics Series, v. 1), ed. by Craig
Bartholomew, Colin Greene, and Karl Möller. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000.
Smart, James D. The Strange Silece of the Bible in the Church: A Study in Hermeneutics.
Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970.
Stuhlmacher, Peter. Historical Criticism and the Theological Interpretation of Scripture.
Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977.
NOTES:
1) Also called “classical historical criticism”; Alvin Plantinga distinguishes between three threads of “Historical Biblical Criticism” (HBC): Troeltschian, Duhemian, and Spinozistic (pp 31-8). While this typology can be helpful, in the end, Plantinga admits its limitations: “A real live Scripture scholar may be unlikely to have spent a great deal of thought on the epistemological foundations of his or her discipline and is likely to straddle one or more of the categories I mention” (p. 38). “Two (or More) Kinds of Scripture Scholarship” in “Behind” the Text: History and Biblical Interpretation, ed. by C. Bartholomew, C.S. Evans, M. Healy, and M. Rae. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003, pp 19-57.
For more resources on critical biblical interpretation, see John McIntyre, “Historical Criticism in a ‘History-Centred Value System’” in Language, Theology, and The Bible: Essays in Honour of James Barr, ed. by Samuel E. Balentine and John Barton (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994): pp 370-384; and the various essays in Renewing Biblical Interpretation (Scripture & Hermeneutics Series, v. 1), ed. by Craig Bartholomew, Colin Greene, and Karl Möller (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000); and Wright, N. T. The New Testament and the People of God, v. 1. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992.
2) I have distinguished seven different presuppositions for the sake of practicality; in actuality they are probably more integrated and interdependent than I have indicated, with each one laying the foundation for the next assumption.
3) Stuhlmacher, 39.
4) Levenson, 26.
5) Stuhlmacher, 59.
6) Froehlich, 7.
7) See After Virtue, pp 330-350 but especially Whose Justice? Which Rationality?
8) Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy, p. 46. Cf. also A Rumor of Angels, pp 42-47.
9) Cf. also Roy Clouser, The Myth of Religious Neutrality (Notre Dame, IN: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1991), p. 196.
10) Levenson, 28. In this analysis, Levenson credits Leszek Kolakowski, but cites no specific work. Cf. also Stuhlmacher, 39.
11) Smart, 48.
12) Ratzinger, 17-8.
13) Berger, A Rumor of Angels, 51.
14) Clouser, 66.
15) Smart, 44.
16) Levenson, 31-2.
17) Levenson, 29.
18) The following seven assumptions of missional hermeneutics are, like the seven assumptions of historical criticism, not meant to be exhaustive or in a particular sequence. Nor are these seven intended to correspond with or refute the previous seven.
19) Brownson, Speaking the Truth in Love: Resources for a Missional Hermeneutic (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1998), p. 2.
20) The Light Has Come, p. 2.
21) Stuhlmacher, “Hauptprobleme und Chancen Kirchlicher Schriftauslegung’, Theologische Beiträge 9/2 (1976), p. 60; quoted in Piper, 107. Italics mine.
22) Levenson, 33.
23) The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), p. 93.
24) Richard Bauckham, Bible and Mission: Christian Witness in a Postmodern World (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2003), p. 13.
25) Polanyi, 315.
26) For a fine and much fuller exposition of this idea, see Lesslie Newbigin’s Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth.
27)The title of ch. 18 of Lesslie Newbigin’s The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, pp 222-233.
28) A common question is the one raised by Braaten and Jenson: “Which hermeneutic is best qualified to understand the Scriptures?” in Reclaiming the Bible for the Church, ed. by Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), p. xi. For further study: other helpful surveys of biblical interpretation in crisis include Frances Watson, Text, Church, and World: Biblical Interpretation in Theological Perspective (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1994); Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: On the Question of the Foundations and Approaches of Exegesis Today,” in Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The Ratzinger Conference on Bible and Church, ed. by Richard John Neuhaus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989): pp 1-23; Roy Harrisville and Walter Sundberg, The Bible in Modern Culture: From Spinoza to Childs (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995); John J. Collins, “Is a Critical Biblical Theology Possible?” in The Hebrew Bible and Its Interpreters, ed. by William H. Propp, Baruch Halpern, and David N. Freedman (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990): pp 1-18; Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998); and Christopher Seitz, Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998).