Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.
of the current debate over the Scriptures among believing Christians is, at its core, a result of failure on the part of evangelicals to come to terms with the issue of hermeneutics. Because we who are living in this century have been occupied with many other bat- tles, usually not of our choosing, one issue that should have claimed our attention was neglected. Consequently, while many evangelicals may find a large amount of agreement on the doctrines of revelation, inspiration, and even canonicity, something close to a Babel of voices is heard on methods of interpreting the Scriptures.
Evangelicals are now being pressed on several sides, however, to attend to this missing part of theological curriculum. The herme- neutical debate outside our circles has grown so prolific and vigorous that at times it threatens to be, for some, the only issue. Yet the discussion may be “not less serious than that of the Reformation”
itse1f.l Indeed, we believe something comparable to a hermeneutical reformation is needed in our day.
As one of the contributions that arose outside evangelical circles, the new hermeneutic of some existentialist theologians focused on the problem of transcending the historical particularity and the an- tique address of Scripture by stressing the words now and too!ay and the need to recapitulate scriptural stories in the believer’s present existence.2 Meanwhile, two other offerings arose as a partial rebuke to the sterility of the liberal historical-critical approach:3 new crit- 1. The phrase is that of Bernard Ramm, Protestant Biblical Interpretation, 3d rev.
ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1970), p. vii.
2. Especially in Kornelis Miskotte’s Zur biblischen Hermeneutik (Zollikon: Evan- gelischer Verlag, 1959), pp. 42-46; and J. M. Robinson’s “Hermeneutic since Barth,”
in New Frontiers in Theology, II: The New Hermeneutic, ed. J. M. Robinson and J. B.
Cobb (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), pp. l-77.
3. See E. F. Scott, “The Limitations of the Historical Method,” in Studies in Early Christian+, ed. Shirley Jackson Case (New York: Century, 1928), p. 5; 0. C. Ed- wards, Jr., “Historical-Critical Method’s Failure of Nerve and a Prescription for a Tonic: A Review of Some Recent Literature,” Anglican Theological Review 59 (1977):
116 17; and my essay “The Current Crisis in Exegesis and the Apostolic Use of Deuteronomy 25:4 in 1 Corinthians 9:8-10,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological SocieQ
21 (1978): 3-11.
Reprinted from Znerrurny, ed. Norman Geisler (Grand Rapids: Zon- dervan, 1979), pp. 117-47.
111
1 1 2 THEOLOGICAL ATTITUDES
icism4 and canon criticism.5 In both approaches the focus of atten- tion was on the text itself rather than on the alleged literary sources and the reigning historical situation. As a redress to the previous imbalances and sterility of historical-critical exegesis, these solu- tions would have the interpreter now concentrate on repeated phrases, patterns, larger sense units, and the canon as a whole rather than on individual words, tenses, and literary sources. The literature and varieties of positions thus grew bulkier by the day, as more and more solutions were set forth.6
But what of evangelicals? The time was long past for our entry into this field once again. Already we were faced with problems arising from an accelerated culture, not to mention our own needs and the challenges of numerous novel hermeneutical systems. Where was one to begin?
In our judgment, we must first return to the basics and then make a frontal assault on the most difficult questions of interpre- tation faced today.
GENERAL HEMENEUTICS
No definition of interpretation could be more fundamental than this:
To interpret we must in every case reproduce the sense the scrtptural writer intendedfor his own words. The first step in the interpretive process is to link only those ideas with the author’s language that he connected with them. The second step is to express these ideas understandably.
Yet at no point has modern society, including many evangelicals, resisted hermeneutical rules more strenuously than at the point of this definition. In our post-Kantian relativism, most interpreters have concluded, as E. D. Hirsch correctly analyzes,’ that “all
‘knowledge’ is relative“’ and a return to the author’s own meanings is considered both unnecessary and wrong. Instead, meaning has often become a personal, subjective, and changing thing. “What speaks to me,” “what turns me on,” “what I get out of a text” are 4. Major exponents of the school of new criticism include R. S. Crane, Northrup Frye, I. A. Richards, Oscar Walzel, and W. K. Wimsatt. For a definition and criti- cism, see E. D. Hirsch, The Aims of Interpretation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), pp. 124-30.
_ 5. On this, see Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology in Crisis (Philadelphia: West- minster, 1970), pp. 97- 114; and Gerald T. Sheppard, “Canon Criticism: The Proposal of Brevard Childs and an Assessment for Evangelical Hermeneutics,” Stadia Biblica et Theologica 6 (1976): 3-17.
_- 6. A fairlv recent review article is Robert Lapointe’s “Hermeneutics Today,”
Biblical Thedogy Bulletin 2 (1972): 107-54.
7. Hirsch, Va.lia?~ in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), and The Aims of Interpretation.
8. Hirsch, The Aims ofInterpretation, p. 4.
LEGITIMATE HERMENEUTICS 113
the significant concerns, not what an author intended by his use of words.
But in our view, such “cognitive atheistsyys subvert the goal of objective knowledge and threaten the very possibility of learning.
All knowledge is reduced to the horizon of one’s own prejudices and personal predilections. This is true whether it is done for “spiritual”
or for philosophical reasons; both approaches usurp the author’s revelatory stance and insert one’s own authority for his. Our gen- eration will be delivered from this kind of outrageous interpretive solipsism only if we adopt the earlier distinction of E. D. Hirsch between meaning and significance:
Meaning is that which is represented by a text; it is what the author meant by his use of a particular sign sequence; it is what the signs represent. SigniJicunce, on the other hand, names a relationship be- tween that meaning and a person, or a conception or a situation.‘O Only by maintaining these definitions and distinctions will Scrip- ture be delivered from the hands of its enemies -and its friends. All our own notions of truth and principle must be set aside in favor of those the sacred writers taught if we are to be valid interpreters. In fact, the basic teaching of all of sacred theology is inseparably con- nected with the results of our hermeneutics; for what is that theology except what Scripture teaches? And the way to ascertain what Scrip- ture teaches is to apply the rules and principles of interpretation.
Therefore it is imperative that these rules be properly grounded and that their application be skillfully and faithfully applied. If the foun- dation itself is conjecture, imagination, or error, what more can be hoped for what is built on it?
The Bible Is to Be Interpreted b the Same Rules as Other Books Now it may be laid down as a first rule that the Bible is to be interpreted in the same manner and with the same principles as all other books. Of course, we mean by this the manner they were interpreted before the literary revolution that came in 1946, which autocratically announced the autonomy of a work, that is, its free- dom from its author, and which reversal E. D. Hirsch sought to rectify in his Validity in Interpretation.
But some will object that the Bible is not a common or profane book. It deals with supernatural things; therefore it ought to be treated separately from other books. While it is a fact that it is a unique revelation containing supernatural things that no human
9. Hirsch, The Aims ofInterpretation, pp. 4, 36, and 49.
10. Hirsch, Valid+ in Interpretation, p. 8. Unfortunately, even Hirsch undermines his own judgments in his later work The Aims of Interpretation; see my essay “The Current Crisis in Exegesis . . . ,” pp. 3-4.
1 1 4 THEOLOGICAL ATTITUDES may aspire to know on his own, yet the above conclusion, often drawn from this agreed-on fact, is not necessary. After all, it is a revelation to us that God deliberately designed to communicate to human beings what they themselves could not or would not know unless they received it from him. To deny this is to say that God gave a revelation in which nothing is revealed or that the disclosure of God is also a concealment! It reverses the meaning of words and of reality itself.
More recently, another objection has been voiced. To insist that Scripture is to be read like any other book, some maintain, cuts at the heart of understanding Scripture’s unique status and how it continues to function as a norm in a religious community. The rules must be loose enough to allow altogether new “meanings” to be attached to the ancient words if they are to function for people removed from the original audience by several thousand years.”
But this is to confuse the very distinction Hirsch makes between meaning and significance. Past particularity must not be transcended by substituting present significance as the new meaning of the text, for then the chasm between the “then” and “now” of the text is jumped too facilely and at terrible cost. One must sacrifice all ob- jectivism and divine authority. The price is too high.
The point remains. God has deliberately decided to accommodate mankind by disclosing himself in our language and according to the mode to which we are accustomed in other literary productions.
While the content is vastly different, the medium of language is identical.
The Principles of Interpretation Are as Native and Universal to Man as Is Speech Itself 2
A second rule is that man’s basic ability to interpret is not derived from some science, technical skill, or exotic course open only to the more gifted intellects of a society. The general principles of inter- preting are not learned, invented, or discovered by people. They are part and parcel of the nature of man as a being made in the image of God. Given the gift of communication and speech itself, man already began to practice the the principles of hermeneutics. The art has been in use from the moment God spoke to Adam in the Garden, and from the time Adam addressed Eve, until the present.
In human conversation, the speaker is always the author; the person
LEGITIMATE HERMENEUTICS 115
11. Sheppard, “Canon Criticism,” p. 17.
12. I am indebted for manv of my ideas in these rules to Moses Stuart; see his
“Remarks on Hahn’s Definition of Interpretation and Some Topics Connected with It,” The Biblical Repository 1 (1831): 139-59; and “Are the Same Principles of Inter- pretation to Be Applied to the Scripture as to Other Books?” The Biblical Repository 2 (1832): 124-37.
spoken to is always the interpreter. Correct understanding must always begin with the meanings the speaker attaches to his own words.
It is agreed that proper interpretation is more than a native art.
The science of hermeneutics collects these observed rules as already practiced by native speakers and arranges them in an orderly way for the purpose of study and reflection. But such a science does not alter the fact that the rules were in operation before they were codified and examined. The situation here is exactly as it is with grammars and dictionaries: they do not prescribe what a language must do; they only describe how its best speakers and writers use it. So it is with hermeneutics.
But all this sounds too facile to match the experience of many who have wrestled with the Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic of the original text of Scripture. How can the art of interpretation be of such a common-sense variety when it seems to be so dependent on great learning and dedicated study, placing the interpreter, as it does, back into the government, climate, society, and religious con- ditions of biblical times? How can we accurately hear the prophets and apostles without possessing a good command of Hebrew and Greek? Is not the object of language study to place the interpreter as close as possible to the times and thought of the sacred writers?
But does not such study then contradict our second rule stated above?
On the contrary, this study is only preparatory, an antecedent for the task of hermeneutics, which still must follow. Never can any or all of this learning and study be substituted for actual interpretation or by itself constitute the science of hermeneutics. If birth and prov- idence has so favored us that we were part of the culture and lan- guage when one or another of the prophets or apostles spoke, we could dispense with all background and language study. We would understand these areas as immediately as we now understand speak- ers and writers in our own day, basically without the aid of ency- clopedias, grammars, dictionaries, and geographies. It is only the passing of time that has rendered these additional steps necessary for those wh
“ij
the surface of must not only declare what is transparently clear on cripture with regard to our salvation (the perspicuity of Scripture, about which more later) but must also teach the full counsel of God.
True, scholars have occasionally in the science of general her- meneutics laid down rules that depart from the principles known to
US by virtue of the image of God and the gift of communication.
Fortunately, however, their recognition has been short-lived, and more reliable leaders have arisen to call for a return to rules that do not violate what God-given nature has taught, art has practiced, and science has collected and arranged in systems.
1 1 6 THEOLOGICAL ATTITUDES A good deal of learning is sometimes necessary to understand words that we do not ordinarily know from daily experience. We must study those words until they become as much a part of us as our native vocabulary. But the principles for interpreting these for- eign Hebrew and Greek words is not different from the principles for interpreting those of our normal conversations.
It would be wrong, of course, to argue that everyone is auto- matically and totally successful in the practice of hermeneutical art just because it is an integral part of the gift of communication. Surely there are conversations and books that are difficult for some persons to understand because the words and general subject are not “part of the person” as yet. Here again learning is necessary. Yet the basic rules remain the same, whether the language is Isaiah’s Hebrew, Virgil’s Latin, Paul’s Greek, or Shakespeare’s English.
My Personal Reception and Application of an Author3 Words Is a Distinct and Secondary Act from the Need First to Understand His Words
The “significance” of a literary work indicates a relationship between the “meaning” intended by the author in his use of a certain se- quence of words and some person, idea, or situation-as Hirsch so aptly contends in the definition already given. It is wrong, therefore, to confuse meaning and significance.
But some will contend that it is God who speaks in the Bible and not men; the men who wrote the Scriptures were the mere recep- tacles of what God wanted to say through them. Revelation, in this view, perhaps concealed as much from the authors as it made known to them. Therefore the normal rules of interpretation do not apply.
The answer to this charge is easy. What God spoke, he spoke in human, not heavenly, language! Moreover, he spoke through the vocabularies, idioms, circumstances, and personalities of each of the chosen writers. Try translating each of the writers of Scripture, and this difference will be immediately apparent. You will wear out a lexicon looking up new Hebrew words in Job and Hosea, but you will read Genesis and Haggai with delightful speed and ease. The Greek grammar of the book of Hebrews slows down even experi- enced translators to a snail’s pace, but John’s Gospel poses few grammatical problems. No, the superiority of the Scriptures over other books does not come in the manner we interpret it but in its
matter and grand source.
Still, it will be argued that “the man without the Spirit does not accept the things that comes from the Spirit of God . . . and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned”
(1 Cor. 2: 14). Surely, it is contended, the Bible calls for a different
LEGITIMATE HERMENEUTICS 117
set of rules. A person must be spiritually enlightened before he can understand Scripture.
The case is overstated, however. It is not as if there were two logics and two hermeneutics in the world, one natural and the other spiritual. Paul’s point (in 1 Cor. 2:14) has to do with the personal application and significance of the understood and basic meaning of his words. It is also true, of course, that a person must be in a sympathetic state of mind and in a proper mental condition to begin to understand subjects toward which he is not naturally inclined- whether those subjects are astrophysics, mathematics, poetry, or the Bible. Consequently, Paul’s word cannot be used to claim that peo- ple without the Spirit do not understand any part of the Bible until they become spiritual. Such a claim plainly contradicts both our own experience and the teachings of Scripture that man will also be judged for rejecting that which Scripture itself declares should be abundantly clear to them, because they refuse to receive it. A professor at the university I attended gave one of the best explana- tions of Romans 1- 6 I have ever heard, but when he was asked by a skeptical student if he “believed that stuff,” he scoffed and mock- ingly replied, “Who said anything about personally believing it? I just said that’s what Paul said, and you better remember that’s what he said!” He understood Romans well enough to teach it, but he didn’t “buy” it. He did not accept it because he refused to see any relationship between the text and himself. We believe it is the special work of the Holy Spirit to convict people so that they see that re- lation&hip and believe and act accordingly. But it does not contra- dict the fact that God means for his revelation to be understood.
One more attempt is made to break this third rule of general hermeneutics. It suggests that the prophets confessed that they themselves sometimes did not understand the words they wrote.
Why then should we attempt to return to the human author’s mean- ings when they confessed their own ignorance (e.g., 1 Pet. 1: lo- 12)?
I have examined this problem and the text of 1 Peter 1: IO- 12 in two other works.13 I strongly affirm that the prophets claimed ig- norance only on the matter of time. They decisively affirm that they knew five rather precise components of salvation. They knew they were writing about (1) the Messiah, (2) his sufferings, (3) his glo- rified state yet to come, (4) the precedence of his suffering to his glory, and (5) the application of the salvation they announced in pre-Christian days as being not only to themselves but also to those 13. See my essays “The Eschatological Hermeneutics of Evangelicalism: Promise Theology,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Socieg 13 (1970): 94-96, and “The Single Intent of Scripture,” in Evangelical Roots: A Ttibute to Wilbur Smith, ed. Kenneth Kantzer (Nashville: Nelson, 1978), pp. 125-26.