Sunday, August 31, 2008

3 Postmodern Complications

Somewhere in the middle of this section I passed my word limit. Oh well, I'm sure some of you could easily cut out parts of what I've written. I think I'm finally ready for my conclusion after this section. Then the pruning... or I suppose rewriting... will begin.

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The post-modern critique of meaning has forced at least some modifications to modernist evangelical hermeneutics. We would argue that these modifications actually cohere better with the hermeneutic of John Wesley and the nineteenth century holiness movement than they do with late twentieth century evangelical hermeneutics. For example, we have already seen the (professed) contemporary evangelical aversion to reading Scripture in any way other than with its original meaning. Richard Longenecker exemplifies this tendency in his study of the way the New Testament itself interprets the Old Testament.[i] His work and the work of evangelical scholarship in general have attempted to minimize the non-contextual orientation of New Testament exegesis.[ii]

Nevertheless, Longenecker is forced in the end to acknowledge that the biblical authors themselves come up short when evaluated by the canons of evangelical hermeneutics.[iii] Rather than let New Testament practice legitimize the pneumatic exegesis that typified groups like nineteenth century revivalists and twentieth century charismatics, he instead gives precedence to the evangelical perspective over the practice of the Bible itself. He relegates New Testament methods of exegesis to an aspect of ancient culture that does not transcend to the present! The guiding principles of evangelical hermeneutics are thus recognized to be based on principles brought to the Bible rather than derived from Scripture itself.

Ironically, Vanhoozer himself is a good illustration of the incoherency of evangelical hermeneutics as it attempts to respond to the post-modern critique of meaning. At the same time that he champions the literal meaning of Scripture, we find him deviating to a different hermeneutic, seemingly unaware, as he searches for a way from the particular meanings of individual passages to an overarching, coherent significance for Scripture as a whole.[iv] Scripture as a whole, he suggests, is a speech-act from God, which means that God has determined the meaning of Scripture as a whole. Certainly we do not fault him for this theological understanding of Scripture—it coheres well with John Wesley’s sense of the analogy of faith.

What it does not cohere with are his own claims with regard to the proper meaning of the Bible as its “literal” meaning. However the audiences of the biblical texts understood the books of the Bible, they did it from within their particular socio-cultural matrices and their accompanying symbolic universes. These diverse meanings constitute the plain (what he means by “literal”) meaning of the books of the Bible. Whatever it might mean to say that Scripture is an overarching, divine speech-act, it is de facto quite distinct from the several, “literal” meanings of the words.

On the other hand, others have taken the post-modern critique on board to the extent that they no longer seem to distinguish between the original meaning of the biblical texts and their own theological appropriation of it. Joel Green, for example, eschews the modernist hermeneutic that bids us think of the books of the Bible as “someone else’s mail.”[v] Unless we are willing to hear ourselves as the “you” of James, he writes, “we are not in a position to hear well the Letter of James as Christian Scripture."[vi] Again, these comments cohere well with the hermeneutics of both Wesley and the Christians of the ages, as well as with the nineteenth century holiness revivalists.

The issue with theological hermeneutics, as we might term Green’s approach, is that it seems to put its head in the sand and simply ignore the elephant in the room, namely, the fact that the meanings we see in the biblical text are almost certainly different from those of the original audiences. On the one hand, the twentieth century philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer rightly pointed out that we inevitably bring along the perspectives of our past, especially the traditions to which we belong, as we try to interpret texts such as the Bible.[vii] The result is that our understandings of the biblical books always blur our context with the original contexts, which inevitably remain somewhat inaccessible to us. Accordingly, Green’s hermeneutic largely gives up the chase. Indeed, it almost impugns the chase as inimical to understanding the Bible as Christian Scripture.

Again, we might easily conceptualize Wesley’s analogy of faith as the appropriate theological context within which to read the books of Scripture, the appropriate tradition within which to fuse our “horizon” with the “horizon” of the biblical texts. The diverse books of the Bible thus take on the coherent structure of faith that we bring to it and become unified Scripture. At the same time, we must recognize that although we may not be able to determine with full certainty what the original meaning of the books of the Bible was, we can say with a high degree of certainty that it must have differed in significant ways from the holistic theological perspective we bring to it by way of the analogy of faith.

We can say such things because of the principle of anachronism. Although we do not know the original meaning of the Bible definitively, we know enough about ancient symbolic universes to see that, for example, Christian understandings of the Old Testament must often differ from the understandings its original audiences would have had in the ancient near east. Similarly, unless we wish to suggest that the Christian thinkers of the second to fifth century had simply lost touch with the original meaning of the New Testament, we must conclude that their conclusions on the Trinity and the dual nature of Christ forged new ground with the biblical texts that differed to at least some degree from their original meanings. Otherwise they would not have had so much to debate.

In short, we see that the coherence of the Bible is as much a function of us as Christian readers as it is a function of the original meaning of these texts. The books themselves, as far as their original authors are concerned, largely were not written with a view to each other. The authors of the “Jewish Bible” by and large did not interact with each other to explain how, for example, comments the prophetic tradition makes about sacrifices (e.g., Jeremiah 7:22; Psalm 40:6-7) might fit with the assumptions of the Levitical tradition. It is true that New Testament authors do provide a certain perspective from which to find unity in the “Old Testament.” But the very label, Old Testament, implies a perspective that is not intrinsic to the Jewish Bible itself in its several original meanings.

Nor do the New Testament books tell us how to integrate their teachings with one another. James does not have a footnote at James 2:24—“a person is justified by works and not by faith alone”—that explains how this statement coheres with Romans 3:28—“a person is justified by faith and not by works of law.” Whether we like it or not, we are forced to take these two diverse biblical comments and construct from them a unified Scripture. We do this work of integration by assuming a unified stance in relation to the biblical text as a whole. We will presumably draw the elements of this unified stance from the materials of the Bible itself, but the stance must de facto be one assumed from the outside of the Bible looking in. We have no other choice; we can do no other.

[i] Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period.
[ii] Ben Witherington on Nazareth.
[iii] Longenecker
[iv] Meaning, First Theology
[v] Seized by Truth, 51.
[vi] ***, 55.
[vii] Truth and Method

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Two comments, Ken. (1) I am unclear whether you think words like "literal sense" mean the same thing throughout the history of interpretation. You seem to think they do; if so, I am puzzled that you would not account for contextual differences in meaning. (2) I am puzzled by your claim that my approach is tantamount to acting like an ostrich and failing to see elephants, and that my acting like an ostrich and failing to see elephants somehow lead to my giving up the chase. (So many metaphors!) Is it that I am in hiding and cannot see, or is it that I have prioritized some questions over others -- just as you have? By according privilege to the meaning as this would have been understood by the original audiences, have you not (A) ensured that interpretation can only be a highly speculative enterprise (How do we have access to how texts were in fact understood by those original audiences, since we have no access to those audiences? What kind of reader-response approach is this?); and (B) adopted a foundationalist hermeneutic that would just as easily lead to (say) Arianism as not?

Bill Heroman said...

Joel - forgive my ignorance and expedience [and butting in], but as you are all business, so shall I be. I trust that's fine & fair. :)

IMHO: James the Just wasn't writing to me and neither was Paul of Tarsus, most of the time. So understanding the scriptures as written can be a different thing than seeking God's voice in them today, but both are worthwhile. Yes, trying to see through the eyes of the ancient believers absolutely requires speculation. Maybe we can't know their thoughts for certain, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Who said any ironclad Theology has to be built on top of it? That would be irresponsible. But perhaps building theology on an improperly homogenized view of diverse authors [as many do, I take it] is no less irresponsible?

Please understand, I'm merely an amateur reconstructionist, and I'm certainly no theologian, so feel free to take this as the word of a fool to the wise. ;)

Ken Schenck said...

Great to hear from you Joel! Delighted to have your push back, especially since I want to make sure I have understood you correctly.

1) I would indeed be inconsistent if I presumed that "literal sense" always had the same use in the history of interpretation. My biggest concern would be if I have misapprehended Vanhoozer's use of the term.

2) I've been reading Galatians 3 of late... perhaps that accounts for the rapid shift in my metaphors?
:-)

I don't know that I intend to privilege the original meaning by the time I'm finished with this piece. But where I hope you'll correct me is if I've misunderstood you to have abandoned all interest in it (with Gadamer), not least because, as you say, it involves such speculation.

My point here is that, whatever it is, it is almost certainly to be something distinct at times from the Christian meaning of Scripture.

I accept your reading of Scripture and am willing to give it the place of choice. But I think it's almost certainly different at many points from the original meaning, even if we cannot know it completely. What then do we do with the fact that our Christian reading is at times not likely to be the meaning Isaiah and Paul understood?

What I think keeps us from Arianism is reading Scripture with the "rule of faith" in view. But rather than merge the Christian reading with the contextual one, as I think you have, I think we are more precise to separate the two out. Your way of reading is the truly Christian one and the more important one. In it, I am the "you" of the text.

But surely I am not speculating when I notice that, in terms of the original meaning, I am not the "you" of the text?

Hope you are enjoying being back in California!

Bill Heroman said...

Ken, I had to step away. I've got to say how much I loved this post. Maybe I need to take a closer look at Wesley and certain Wesleyan scholars, hmmm? Thanks very much for this series.

A couple of thoughts:

1) I LONG for an overarching, non-homogenized coherent view of the NT that deeply recognizes and acknowledges the diversity among authors and their 1st century views - and I dearly hope the reconstruction of this faith-based view can also minimize the amount of speculation involved. Now, come on, is that so much to ask? ;)

2) Have you got any further reading tips in this area?

3) I've been nursing a strong hunch that '1st John' was a peacemaking attempt to "integrate" the standpoints of James & Paul, while shrewdly & deliberately avoiding direct reference to their characteristic language usage. So this 'speculation' may or may not be an exception to the first statement of your last paragraph, but it's something to consider.

Thanks again.

Anonymous said...

Bill, I am unsure that you and I are talking about the same thing. Ken identifies the elephant in the room thus: "the meanings we see in the biblical text are almost certainly different from those of the original audiences." I am not querying whether what we see today is what James and Paul wrote, though, of course, this question could be asked. I am wondering why, in an apparent effort to talk about "meaning," Ken has moved beyond the author and the text to the reading performed by the original audiences. I am wondering what access he has to how James and/or Paul were understand by those original audiences. By commenting on the Scriptures "as written" you are saying something different than Ken has said, since he apparently wants to know how these texts were originally read.

Now, if in your reference to what James and Paul wrote, you mean to refer to their communicative intent insofar as this is represented in the texts we have before us, then I am happy to concur. (I thus leave to the side all sorts of other ways of talking about understanding a text "as written.")

By the way, I do think that constructing a "homogenized view of diverse authors" (assuming that by "authors" we refer to the biblical authors) is a lost cause -- or, to return to the metaphor, a chase on which we ought to give up. But this is because, it seems to me, what holds the Bible together is not its unitary propositions....

Anonymous said...

Ken,

If you think I have given up on "original meaning," then I would have to say that you and I have two different Joel Green's in mind. :-) It is true that I regard as problematic the view that makes "original meaning" THE meaning. It is also true that you and I might struggle over how best to adjudicate our access to "original meaning." (But I am not sure how much of a struggle that would be. My guess is that a key issue is where we put the weight of our descriptions of "the world of the Bible" -- whether in relation to "this God" or "this historical situation." In the case of Ken and Joel, my assumption is that, if we differ, it would be in terms of emphasis. If you account for the fact that much of my writing on this point is not to adjudicate the differences between Ken and Joel, but between Ken and Joel on the one hand, more secularized versions of historical criticism on the other, then the importance of the distinction may become more acute.)

BTW, I regard "literal" or "plain" sense as a slippery term....

Angie Van De Merwe said...

I "fear and tremble" to write about this, as I am ill-informed compared to some, but, it seems there are several points that need emphasizing...
1.)that history MUST be taken seriously, IF you believe that there is "Truth" (universal). This is contextually understanding the text, which as Ken pointed out, is diverse, spanning over a long number of years, and was situational in nature..."wisdom is understood by her children"...
2.) Since #1 is "true", the universal message is not so much theological, as it is psychological and philosophical. The universals of the "Greeks" of "hope", "faith", "justice", etc. are the "wisdom" of Scripture, which is not specifically "Christian", but universally humane.
3.)Since #2 is "true", is developing the individual in "God's image" is about education, ala the Greeks? And then, what does theology have to do with "moral man", unless "Christ"s attitude and life are exemplary for developing "man"?

It certainly isn't "Reformed"! I have had a "worldview change".

As far as Arianism, "heresy" is a construct of the "Church". At the time of the Arian controversy, the Church was a "political power" and theology held power over the people. Wasn't this the point at which the Eastern and Western Church split, over Christ's nature?

Human nature, then, is formed through education, and habit. The educational structures are the social structures of society.

Ken Schenck said...

Fair enough, Joel. I would agree that in the vast scheme of things our positions are far more similar than different, especially when you map the entire hermeneutical spectrum. If IWU's MDIV proposal gets accredited, I thought Seized might be a good book to address the dispositional outcome: "Be able to express the value of the sacramental dimension of Scripture."

For the record, I don't use the original audiences here as a definition of what a text means but as a gauge of the domain of likely meanings. I can see someone saying, "But Moses knew he was talking about the Trinity." By referring to the audience, I bypass that rebuff.

I appreciate Vanhoozer's sense of the meaning of a text as the communicative intent as represented in the texts before us. Although since I don't think texts have meanings "in" them, I don't think it can be as cut and dry as this. I don't think technically that there is such a thing as the "world of the text."

Thanks for taking the time to clarify, since I wouldn't want to misrepresent you in print. I don't mind doing it online :-)

Anonymous said...

Ken,

Thanks for yours.

I have often wondered what it would be like to be at IWU (or at SPU, for that matter), and thus to be in on the ground floor of constructing a curriculum for the formation of pastors and other church leaders. This process would be more exciting, and challenging, I think, than the perpetual work of curricular revision in which I have been involved. I wish you all well, and have high hopes for what you are able to do...

On your latest post, I wonder if you are familiar with Rabinowitz's "authorial audience," and whether this does not get at what concerns you...

Angie Van De Merwe said...

Maybe habit is too constrictive, as we have habits that reflect our values.
One's values are not understood as "right or wrong"...but as what is important to us.
We must decide between the extremes of two "worlds" where we "play out" in our life...whether Republican or Democrat. Both are representative of certain values that must be equally affirmed in a "free society"....And a free society, I believe is the most important value for any other value to be affirmed. Therefore, our government's form is an important ideal.

Ken Schenck said...

For anyone interested, I ended up rewriting the whole thing mostly from scratch. They weren't looking for a footnoted piece. I was happy enough for how it came out for Wesleyans. I've posted what I came up with unlinked at Scripture is Coherent for the time being. It will come out around the turn of the year in a book that I think will be titled A Wesleyan Hermeneutic. Maybe I'll develop the other into a broader article and send it off to SJT or something.