A New Paradigm?
3. A postmodern hermeneutic will also need to take into ac- count the fact that meaningfulness (as contrasted with meaning)
or significance (as contrasted with signification) is the main is- sue today for many people. For such people, the primary ques- tion is not, “Is it true?” but rather, “Does it matter?“43 Whether this ought to be the primary question is not the issue. The point is that hermeneutics must address the question of the relevance of a given truth to individuals and groups. There is plenty of
43. Joe Holland, “The Postmodern Paradigm and Contemporary Catholi- cism,” in Varieties of Postmodern Theology, by David Ray Griffin, William A.
Beardslee, and Joe Holland (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), pp. 11-12.
room for demonstrating that apart from the question of truthful- ness, relevance is immaterial.
It should be observed in this connection that the question of meaningfulness versus meaning and of significance versus sig- nification is not a question of time. Perhaps through the con- cepts propounded by Hirsch we have tended to equate meaning and significance with meaning then and meaning now, but such really should not be the case.44 There is both past meaning and meaningfulness, and present meaning and meaningful- ness. It is a matter of showing the implications of propositions for our lives.
4. It may well be that the meaning of biblical propositions will not always be in terms of showing the meaning of each in- dividual statement. Rather, it may be a matter of showing the meaning and meaningfulness of the scheme as a whole, and then showing the relationship of individual parts to that whole.
This insight comes from two sources. It has often been thought that the meaning of language was to be found in the meaning of the individual units or words. Logical positivism modified this by contending that the proposition, rather than the word, was the basic unit of meaning. Now, however, it is ap- parent, based on some of the insights of narrative literary inter- pretation, that the unit must be made even broader, extended to the whole story. Without that, details may seem insignificant.
The pertinence of the story as a whole can be shown in ways in which individual segments of it cannot.
The other source from which this insight is drawn is the theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg. Pannenberg has developed a concept of revelation in which the whole of history is revela- tory, not merely certain elements or motifs within it. Yet the meaning of history is seen at the end, not at the beginning or some intermediate point. 45 Without necessarily espousing Pan- nenberg’s view of revelation and history, it is possible to see 44. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Validity in Interpretntion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), p. 8.
45. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Dogmatic Theses on the Doctrine of Revelation,”
in Revelation as History, ed. Wolfhart Pannenberg (New York: Macmillan, 1968), pp. 131-35.
that the meaning of any story depends on the outcome, and the content of a message requires the conclusion,
5. The significance or meaningfulness of biblical texts will be demonstrated by showing their relationship to fundamental hu- man needs.
What are these fundamental human needs? These needs are such things as the need to feel we have significance as individ- uals. In a day in which corporations and governmental agencies tend to treat persons as simply members of groups or masses of people, the biblical emphasis on the God who knows the very number of the hairs of our heads (Matt. 10:30), who knows when one bird falls to the earth (Matt. l&29), who knows his sheep and calls them by name (John 10:s) is an important re- sponse to this deep human longing. The need for forgiveness, not just for individual acts against individual persons but for cosmic forgiveness, is responded to by the teaching, “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” The sense that we are just ordinary, not excelling in anything and therefore unimportant and unloved, is responded to by the teaching that God made each of us in his own image, using him- self as the pattern for our creation; God gave his own Son, who died for us and in our place. Such teaching confers dignity. Our sense that our lives have no value, since everything we have done during them will simply perish when we die, is responded to by the doctrine of the second coming, the resurrection, and the eternal future state. It is important that these points of mean- ingfulness be established at least as a starting point for our ex- planation and presentation of the meaning of the biblical message.
In some cases this may be done with specific texts. In other cases, it may be accomplished by showing how the system as a whole serves this role. The remainder of the texts will have their meaningfulness by virtue of their coherent participation in the whole.
It should be noted that while some portions of Scripture can- not be directly seen to have meaningfulness, they contribute to and are presupposed by the whole, which ultimately gives the meaningfulness. We may therefore hold to the meaningfulness of these biblical passages on the basis of the “slope of the evi-
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dence,” as it were. The situation here is not greatly different from the approach of moderate harmonists on the matter of the phenomena, as these bear upon the doctrine of biblical in- errancy. We believe in the one group on the basis of the other and the trend of the validation.
6. We will also need increasingly to employ phenomenology as a method for identifying those dimensions of human experi- ence to which the biblical material can be related. It is here that our hermeneutic will be postmodern rather than merely pre- modern, for it is our aim to take the experience of the modern person, or perhaps we should term it, the secular person, and demonstrate the fundamental human needs that are presup- posed by it, or perhaps, which show around its edges.
One example of what we are advocating here is Langdon Gilkey’s Naming the Whirlwind. While this is ostensibly a treat- ment of the problem of religious language, it gives us much more than that. It is a careful phenomenological analysis of modern secular experience. In the constructive portion of the work, Gilkey explores what he calls “The Dimension of Ulti- macy in Secular Experience.” He shows that even within such secular experience there is that which transcends it, which goes beyond the limits of its own categories.46 The modern secular person does not and cannot live entirely within the categories of his own system. There are elements of ultimacy that continue to appear around the fringes, as it were, of secular experience.
There are four dimensions of this experience of ultimacy: the source or ground of what we are, the experience of our limits, the source and basis of our values, and the element of mystery.
Gilkey cites such experiences as awe that we feel at the birth of a child, the awareness of our finiteness in the “midlife crisis,”
the awareness of possible nonbeing as we face death. All of these are elements of ultimacy. Such phenomenological analy- sis is appropriate in the postmodern period, and will be of as- sistance in showing the meaningfulness of the biblical revelation by relating it to such experiences as these.
7. One of the developments that science has recently pro- duced is the breakdown of the conception of the universe as a
4s. I,angdon Gilkoy, hk1117ing t h e W h i r l w i n d : T h e R e n e w a l of God-Lnnguage (Indianapolis: BoblwMerrill, 1969), pp. 305-413.
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self-sustaining, fixed, law-bound entity. The idea of absolute determinism has been affected by such factors as Heisenberg’s principle of indeterminacy47 and the “Big Bang.“48 Conse- quently, scientists have considerably adjusted their conception of natural laws. Rather than absolute, iron-clad, and invariable, these laws are now thought of more as statistical constants.
They are inductive descriptions of how things ordinarily hap- pen, rather than impenetrable determinants of how things must happen. In the former view, only natural explanations for any phenomenon could be accepted. Now, other possibilities can- not be excluded a priori.4g
It is here that we must endeavor to be genuinely postmodern.
Historical criticism was the supreme hermeneutical tool of the modern period. It sought to account for the production of a given portion of the text on the basis of what were basically nat- ural factors. Thus, the laws that govern the formation and growth of oral tradition in various societies; the kinds of consid- erations that enter into an author’s choice of one set of words or one form of expression in light of a particular audience; the in- fluences of upbringing and culture-all of these are introduced as explanations for the particular content and reading of the text. The idea of a supernatural revelation of truth and of a supernatural guidance in the choice of wording does not really enter into the consideration of why the text says what it does.
While evangelicals have sometimes been quite categorical in their rejection of biblical criticism, many evangelical biblical scholars have in recent years adopted some of the methodology of the biblical critics. In so doing, however, they have usually emphasized their intention to practice great care not to adopt naturalistic or antisupernaturalistic assumptions. This has gen- erally meant rejecting any antecedent objection to miracles. So the miracle narratives in the Bible have been taken seriously and the incidents considered to have potentially really oc- curred. Taking seriously belief in an omnipotent, transcendent
47. David Ray Griffin, God and Religion in the Postmodern World: Essays in Postmodern Theology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), p. 36.
48. Allen, “Christian Values in a Post-Christian Context,” p. 22.
49. Griffin, God and Religion, pp. 79-80.
God, this approach held that he was capable of doing anything, nature notwithstanding.
There is, however, a more subtle form in which naturalistic assumptions affect hermeneutics, even evangelical hermeneu- tics. That pertains to the explanation of the process of writing.
It is quite possible to interpret the writing purely in terms of what natural factors would have led the writer to write what he did. In such a scheme, there would be no explanation of some- thing that the writer could not have otherwise known on the grounds that God specially revealed that matter to the author.
And, for that matter, there would not be an explanation of why one grammatical form was selected rather than another on the basis that the Holy Spirit guided the writer to make that selec- tion. Sayings attributed to Jesus that do not appear in any known tradition available to the author may be interpreted as prophecies given by the resurrected and ascended Jesus to the author, rather than as specially revealed sayings that Jesus ac- tually gave during his earthly ministry, but which do not occur in any of the traditions and of which the writer may not other- wise have been awaree5’ And discussions of authorial intent may treat the writing as if the human author is the sole author, without asking whether there may have been some additional, supernatural author.
It has not been easier in the past hundred years or so than it is now to accept the idea that God has supernaturally caused all that has occurred, including the production of the Bible.‘l It is important that any postmodern hermeneutic take seriously and seize the opportunities presented by modern developments in the understanding of causation within the universe.
8. A prized tenet of the modern era was the value of the indi- vidua1.52 The individual’s freedom and initiative were not to be restricted in any sense. Hermeneutics was also often carried on 50. Gerald Hawthorne, “Christian Prophets and the Sayings of Jesus: Evi- dence of and Criteria for,” SBL Seminary Papers (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1975), 2:174-78.
51. Allen, “Christian Values in a Post-Christian Context,” p. 22.
52. Joe Holland, “The Cultural Vision of Pope John Paul II: Toward a Con- serv~ltiv~:/I.it)eral Postmodern Dialogue,”
11. 120; Murphy and McClendon, “
in Vmieties of Postmodern Theology, Distinguishing Modern and Postmodern The- ologies,” pp. 196-98.
in an individualistic-and even ruggedly individualistic-fash- ion. Each person formulated his or her own interpretation of passages. These interpretations were, to be sure, submitted to colleagues for review and sometimes to peers in professional societies for critique, but it was still basically an individual ef- fort, although informed by observations from others. This, it would seem, must change. Knowledge is exploding so rapidly that no one person can keep abreast of the developments. Also, all of us have limited perspectives. A model that comes to mind is the so-called Pannenberg circle of graduate students at Hei- delberg in the early 196Os, which collaborated in the develop- ment of a doctrine of revelation. The same is possible with respect to hermeneutical treatments of passages of Scripture.
Another illustration is the special interest groups within the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Lit- erature. Scholars with similar interests gather together and work synergistically to produce understanding and scholarly publications on their area of interest.
9. There will also need to be a genuinely philosophical basis to the hermeneutical work that is done. It is essential that hermeneuts understand that genuinely ideational differences separate various hermeneutical systems. A given hermeneutic will need to be understood as part of a much larger system of thought, and that system will have to be carefully evaluated.
This means that postmodern hermeneuts will need to be more broadly prepared than in the past. Certainly the discipline of linguistics must inform what is done. Frequently, a given hermeneutic has not been adequately based on linguistic under- standing. An example would be the Biblical Theology move- ment, and the devastating criticism leveled at it by James Barr.53 It was drawing conclusions that rested on unsustainable conceptions of language. Today’s and tomorrow’s hermeneutics will require a better knowledge of linguistics.
Beyond that, however, more purely philosophical knowl- edge and endeavor will be necessary. A model for us, in some ways, will be the work done by Anthony Thiselton in his signif-
53. James Barr, Semuntics o_fBiblicnl Lnngungn (New York: Oxford Ilniver- sity Press, 1961).
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icant books, The Two Horizons and New Horizons in Herme- neutics.54 Thiselton displays an extensive understanding of the philosophical basis of several different hermeneutical ap- proaches. Whether we agree with his conclusions or his pur- pose in engaging in this particular endeavor, we must certainly admire his philosophical sophistication. The type of hermeneu- tical work done in the future, whether of this same agenda or not, will certainly require the hermeneut to possess the re- sources and credentials that Thiselton displays in this work.
10. There will definitely need to be further development of what, for want of a better term, we might appropriately call
“metahermeneutics.” By this term is meant the discussion of hermeneutical theory, as opposed to the practice of hermeneu- tics. Much hermeneutics in the past has consisted of developing guidelines and rules for doing hermeneutics within a given framework or on a particular theoretical basis, and then of actu- ally doing that interpretational work. What is really at stake in our present time, however, is the very framework, the very foundation, on which this endeavor rests. It is primarily here that the discussion and debate will have to move. Whether there can even be rules for interpretation, whether truth is pri- marily subjective or objective, where meaning resides, are the big issues that need treatment.
11. We will need to pay more attention to global or multicul- tural issues. While there is a danger that saying this could re- flect merely a current fad, it is the case that in the postmodern period we are faced with large issues posed by greater contact with a divergence of cultures in our world.
In at least the initial stages of the modern period, an endeavor was made to find universal conceptions. The belief was, at least implicitly, that all humans thought the same way. Of course, not all humans had the same thoughts or agreed on every point, but the process of thinking, the way of looking at things, was the same.
54. Anthony Thiselton, The Two Horizons: New Testament Hermeneutics nnd Philosophical Description with Special Reference to Heidqger, Bultmann, Cudamer, and Wittgenstein (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980); New Horizons in Hr~rmeneutks (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 19%).
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Our increased contact with a variety of cultures has shown us that there are actually different perceptions of reality. There is a different way of grasping, or integrating, or conceptualizing reality in such basic matters as space and time.55 These pre- experiential differences are also prereflective. When we inter- pret literature, such as a biblical passage, these differences affect at an unconscious level what we see and how we under- stand it. Anthropology, whether technical or popular (contact with other peoples), is making this increasingly clear.
What I have said need not lead to a relativistic or subjective understanding of truth. We are talking about one truth, but dif- ferent people will look at that one truth from varying perspec- tives. They see some things, objectively there, which others do not. The results of these different perspectives are not contra- dictory, but complementary, insights.
This truth was brought home to me rather dramatically dur- ing a chapel series on the life of David. A woman New Testa- ment scholar talked about David and Bathsheba. Taking the perspective of Bathsheba, she pointed out some facets of the biblical narrative that were in the text, but which I had never observed, simply because they were issues which, as a man, I did not think of. Anyone who has consulted several commen- taries on a single passage of Scripture knows that different writ- ers have very different insights. Not all of them comment on every dimension of the text, in many cases just because of lim- itations of space. Whether they see the other dimensions, or whether they choose not to develop them, is a function, how- ever, of their own perspectives.
We have sometimes proceeded as if our interpretation of a given text is the way it is, the true and perhaps the only possible way to look at that text. In a postmodern world, a world in which Christianity is growing faster in the third world than it is in Europe and North America, we may discover that what we thought was the full meaning of the text was only the Western, white, middle-class, male, interpretation. A truly postmodern hermeneutic will need to be fully global and fully multicultural.
55. Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on hkn: An Introduction to u I-‘hilosophy oj Human Culture (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1944). pp. 62-?‘!I.